Monday 8 January 2018

Toomas Karmo: A Fourth Resolution for the 2018 New Year

Quality assessment:

On the 5-point scale current in Estonia, and surely in nearby nations, and familiar to observers of the academic arrangements of the late, unlamented, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (applying the easy and lax standards Kmo deploys in his grubby imaginary "Aleksandr Stepanovitsh Popovi nimeline sangarliku raadio instituut" (the "Alexandr Stepanovitch Popov Institute of Heroic Radio") and his  grubby imaginary "Nikolai Ivanovitsh Lobatshevski nimeline sotsalitsliku matemaatika instituut" (the "Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky Institute of Socialist Mathematics") - where, on the lax and easy grading philosophy of the twin Institutes, 1/5 is "epic fail", 2/5 is "failure not so disastrous as to be epic", 3/5 is "mediocre pass", 4/5 is "good", and 5/5 is "excellent"): 4/5. Justification: Kmo had time to develop the necessary points to reasonable length.
 
 
Revision history:
 
All times in these blog "revision histories" are stated in UTC (Universal Coordinated Time/ Temps Universel CoordonĂ©,  a precisification of the old GMT, or "Greenwich Mean Time"), in the ISO-prescribed YYYYMMDDThhmmZ timestamping format. UTC currently leads Toronto civil time by 5 hours and currently lags Tallinn civil time by 2 hours. 


  

  • 20180125T2208Z/version 1.3.0: Kmo made some small changes in substance, most notably by supplying somewhat better legal background on the controversial 2008 sale of the David Dunlap Observatory. -  He reserved the right to make nonsubstantive, purely cosmetic, tweaks over the coming 48 hours, as here-undocumented version 1.3.1, 1.3.2, 1.3.3, ... .
  • 20180123T1915Z/version 1.2.0: Kmo made some small changes in substance in the existing text, and added a graphic. -  He reserved the right to make nonsubstantive, purely cosmetic, tweaks over the coming 48 hours, as here-undocumented version 1.2.1, 1.2.2, 1.2.3, ... .
  • 20180109T0116Z/version 1.1.0: Kmo improved his fine-grained outline.
  • 20180109T0033Z/version 1.0.0: Kmo had time to upload a duly polished fine-grained outline. He hoped to convert this into full-sentences prose at some point in the coming 36 hours, perhaps through a series of incremental uploads.


[CAUTION: A bug in the blogger server-side software has in some past months shown a propensity to insert inappropriate whitespace at some points in some of my posted essays. If a screen seems to end in empty space, keep scrolling down. The end of the posting is not reached until the usual blogger "Posted by Toomas (Tom) Karmo at" appears. - The blogger software has also shown a propensity, at any rate when coupled with my erstwhile, out-of-date, Web-authoring uploading browser, to generate HTML that gets formatted in different ways on different downloading browsers. Some downloading browsers have sometimes perhaps not correctly read in the entirety of the "Cascading Style Sheets" (CSS) which on all ordinary Web servers control the browser placement of margins, sidebars, and the like. If you suspect CSS problems in your particular browser, be patient: it is probable that while some content has been shoved into some odd place (for instance, down to the bottom of your browser, where it ought to appear in the right-hand margin), all the server content has been pushed down into your browser in some place or other. - Finally, there may be blogger vagaries, outside my control, in font sizing or interlinear spacing or right-margin justification. - Anyone inclined to help with trouble-shooting, or to offer other kinds of technical advice, is welcome to write me via Toomas.Karmo@gmail.com.]


I have now made a fourth, relatively minor, resolution for the 2018 New Year. My intention is to supplement the three rather more serious resolutions I published here on blogspot just after the New Year. 

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Before setting out my fourth resolution, I give its wider context. 

When life was still normal at Ontario's David Dunlap Observatory and Park, i.e., DDO&P (that is to say, up to the troubled summer of 2008), two species of large mammal dominated our woodland. We had white-tail deer (Odocoileus virginianus, I presume), and we had coyotes (Canis latrans, I presume).

In respect of the deer, I maintained a reserved stance, even while mindful of the admiration which those DDO&P creatures were getting in our Observatory and Town-of-Richmond-Hill communities. Graceful though our deer were, they had also a habit of attacking perennial borders. As the person then mainly doing the DDO&P gardening, I was able to protect our six main roses, flanking the entrance to the main dome, with companion plantings of Lavandula angustifolia. (This is one of the lavenders.) There was not,  on the other hand, enough time or money to plant Lavandula angustifolia in significant quantities near the Administration Building, were most of our perennials were. Consequently, we had incursions, with the white-tails evidently preferring blossoms to leaves, and among the blossoms specially selecting phlox and daylilies. 

During this period, my diplomatic sympathies lay less with our deer than with our coyotes. Here, at least, were true colleagues - posing no threat to perennials, and moreover engagingly shaggy, shy, brainy, and melodious! 

I recall a pre-2008 night on which I was rostered as "Observer", and on which we for some reason had not one but two "Telescope Operators", or "T.O.'s". The coyotes were in full voice, having perhaps succeeded in bringing down a deer. (I would in my then frame of mind have thanked them for it, were they capable of reading diplomatic cables.) The two T.O.'s and I, hearing the racket, went out to the main dome catwalk and howled along with them. - I have read somewhere (though I have not bothered to check this) that when humans howl to coyotes, the coyotes realize in their brainy way what species is addressing them, and accordingly howl a specially constructed response, not used by them when howling merely amid their own kind. 

And I remember one very cold winter night, on which I think I was again "Observer", and the roster was following its normal custom of providing the Observer with just a single supporting T.O. Since the sky was overcast, the T.O. and I finished our work and left, walking south from the Administration Building toward the car park. To our surprise, several coyotes approached us, as they normally (being timid) would not. I talked to the closest one, for a minute or two, and fancied myself securing a hearing. I think that these habitually invisible animals were clever enough to have formed the thought that in such bitter weather humans might be inclined to look kindly on them, and might therefore now be inclined to toss a bit of food onto their snow. Since, however, humans should not feed wild animals except when lives are at risk, the T.O. and I kept to ourselves the scraps of food which I think we were carrying.

With the miseries of 2008 and subsequent years, triggered by the University's controversial sale of DDO&P to Corsica Development Inc. in defiance of Jessie Donalda Dunlap's 1932 Deed of Indenture, my attitude to the deer shifted. (When I write "controversial", I have in view several points, including the fact that the legal theory behind the sale never got tested in court. Ontario Superior Court was indeed looming, a little after the year 2000. Then, however, the Dunlap heirs, having already been enduring 15 or 20 or so years of University of Toronto pressure, caved in, reaching an out-of-court settlement.)  I found myself able to think of the deer in a sympathetic way when, in the course of our many bad events, they really did appear to face a life-threatening emergency.

In 2010 or so, Corsica Development Inc. had ploughed up some of the modest DDO&P fieldland, adjacent to the more extensive DDO&P woodland. This made the deer unable to forage effectively. (Fortunately, Corsica was called to account by the municipality, and I think did not repeat its mistake in subsequent years.) Several of us conservationists mounted a rescue operation. We secured the services of a gentleman (since moved away) whose property helpfully abutted DDO&P. My assigned job was to enter the grounds - illegally, in the breach of a personal 2008-07-30 police prohibition - and scatter corn cobs.

I suppose this will forever be one of the cherished memories from my long decades in Canada: twilight is closing in; and one has the special, sickening, Soviet-Estonian feeling of legal exposure, with the so-to-speak KGB for once having the law on their own side; and then silently, under the trees, there approach bucks with huge antlers. They are not particularly shy. They are even intelligently appreciative of the food which their worried human visitor is about to toss onto that clean snow, projecting in their movements a certain impatience to get fed. In their eerie setting of failing Canadian sky, the bucks looked and behaved almost like farm animals. One might have thought them overgrown calves, or slimmed horses, except that they sported magnificent head-racks. One in consequence felt rather inclined to overlook the attacks which they or their female consorts had in some past summers mounted on our phlox and daylilies.

In our various 2008-onward DDO&P conservationist troubles, I eventually contracted the bad habit of doing comic impressions of one of our municipal politicians, when safely outside the Town Council chamber. At some subsequent point, I realized that such impersonations, although comic, were far from constituting correct behaviour. I accordingly made myself an undertaking to cease and desist. This promise I have pretty much managed to keep, catching myself in general after just the first couple of parodic syllables, and reminding myself that "I hold it all in - I restrain myself - for the sake of my brothers the coyotes."

I herewith formally declare to myself that I will be behaving correctly, at all future times, for the sake not of the coyotes alone, but of the coyotes and the deer.

****

It is in such a context, then, that I now approach Mr V.V. Putin. Realizing that I wronged Town Council behind their back with my comic impersonations, I am now realizing also that I have been wronging Mr V.V. Putin here on this blog, by disrespectfully writing "Vovan Vovanich" or "Vovan Vovanitch" or "Vovan Vovanitsch". "Vovan V." is underworld argot. It is the sort of thing you call a criminal associate in Russia - as you perhaps might, if counterfactually and hypothetically a member of the old-fashioned London underworld, call your accomplice in extortion "Sam the Grease", and your voluptuous brace of lady friends "Babs" and "Bubbles".

So enough of this, say I, respectfully, to the Kremlin. For the sake of peace, I retract "Vovan V.", even while continuing duly and warily mindful of the contemporary Kremlin's overall criminality,. No, say I, by way of a fourth New Year 2018 resolution: there is now to be no "Vovan V.", here at blogspot. Henceforth, here at blogspot, I am to use simply "Mr V.V. Putin" - or at worst, in a wan and fleeting glow of just the mildest levity, "Gospodin Vladimir Vladimirovitch".

I am strengthened in my resolution by recent photos on the Web, showing Mr V.V. Putin attending the 2018-01-07 Orthodox Christmas liturgy. I do hope copyright law allows my showing a couple of them, by way of a screenshot from one of my Debian GNU/Linux 9.3 desktops (under Gnome), in which I have launched the /usr/bin/firefox browser:


Clockwise, from lower right: a /usr/bin/firefox window, showing  Alamy stock material from http://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-vladimir-putin-at-the-orthodox-christmas-church-service-in-novo-jerusalemnovoerusalimski-44240097.html, or from a similar page; a second /usr/bin/firefox window, showing material from http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/47457; a /usr/bin/xterm window, showing some interesting private flat-ASCII ("plain *.txt") casenotes. Alamy explains that Mr Putin was attending the "Novo-Jerusalem (Novoerusalimski) Voskresenski monastery near Moscow". The kremlin.ru site indicates that on the occasion of its own photo, Mr Putin had travelled a long way out from Moscow: "The President attended a Christmas mass at the Church of the Intercession of the Holy Virgin in the village of Otradnoye on the outskirts of Voronezh. The service was attended by local parishioners and children from the church orphanage." - I hope, subject to correction by others, that through merely putting onto blogspot a screenshot showing a couple of browser windows, I am conforming to copyright law on images. (It is a bit like this, that if I photograph a street with a billboard of municipal politician I.M.Reel-Bigge, with Mr Reel-Bigge's face in all its glory, I am not thereby making an improper use of his expensively procured studio portrait. My reasoning - I am here subject to correction by jurists - is that my photo is in legal terms of the street, and is not a mere reproduction of what Mr Reel-Bigge bought from the photo studio.) - Many will complain that I am being too nice to Mr V.V. Putin. The complaint will be that he is using the trappings of religion in exactly the calculated, self-serving way familiar from the politics of North America. Well, say I in response, be that as it may: liturgy is still liturgy. If all of us have our motives probed when we are in church, few of us will end up looking good. (As it says in the de profundis psalm, in the KJV translation: "If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?") - I may as well take this small opportunity not only to thank the kremlin.ru team for publishing Voronezh liturgical photo material, but also to suggest to them that Mr Putin pay me a visit. Russia has been continuing, this past week, to monitor my blogspot writing. I would respectfully submit that FSB or SVR are likely to have been among my readers. If, however, we are to have a visit, then let it be done not just now, but when I am safely settled "Back Home", I hope in the near vicinity of Tõravere (as explained this week in my long, fancy, now-polished "Operatsioon Kodune Koli/Operation 'Eastward Ho!'" blogspot posting). My visiting foreign dignitary sits in the armchair by my envisaged Rumford fireplace; I sit in another chair; and we have a nice, sensible, 45-minute chat, more about religion than about politics. - Tartu Observatory personnel would in this scenario likely be upset by the presence, near their very gates, of so many guys in shades and black suits, each sporting an enormous bulge at the breast pocket. The strong presence of our own earnest little Mossad-or-Shin Bet-or-MI6-or-MI5, the "Kaitsepolitsei", is not likely to go down well either. Still worse will be the massive buzzing of choppers, both Kaitsepolitsei and foreign. But well, what the heck: you can't please everyone. - As is usual with blogspot publishing, the image can be enlarged by mouse-clicking. 


[This is the end of the current blog posting.]

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