[LINK] Life on Mars

From the Nunatsiaq News' Jane George:

A unique spring on Ellesmere Island may reveal how life could exist in the extreme, ultra-cold conditions found on other planets.

While scientists and wanna-be Mars explorers head to Devon Island because its Haughton Crater is a dead-ringer for Mars, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration says a glacier on Ellesmere Island is worth studying because it may be the closest thing to Europa - one of the planet Jupiter's faraway moons - that can be found on Earth.

Ellesmere, with its glacial ice, exposed rock, sulphuric water, and potential for microbial life, is "the best terrestrial analogue" for Europa around, said Bob Pappalardo of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in a recent edition of Lunar and Planetary Science.

I'm amused.

[BRIEF NOTE] Who needs Google News when you've got neighbours?

I knew that Italy had defeated Germany at the World Cup as soon as I'd climbed up the steps of the Dufferin TTC station: The flags, waves from cars, were everywhere. Crossing Bloor to walk south along Dufferin in the absence of the bus, I noticed a teenage boy wearing kaffiyeh in the colours of the Italian tricolour even as I admired the ingenuity of the drivers who managed to wedge a flagstaff through their passenger door's window. The size and number of the flags, and the frequency of honking car horns, increased proportionally as I approached College Street and Little Italy.

I wonder what Cafe Diplomatico (594 College Street) would be like now.

[BRIEF NOTE] Starbucks and those lattes and those critics

In issue 75 of the magazine Frieze, I came across an interesting statement made by filmmaker Nick Relph about a certain type of anti-Starbucks radical. "Smashing a window is a lifestyle choice now, so you might as well go full circle: buy a fucking latté, sit down and have a think."

Too true. I'm reminded of the people in Kingston who, back in May 2004, were protesting a new Starbucks that had just opened up the street from the excellent workers' coop The Sleepless Goat (91 Princess Street). Yelling and swearing seemed to feature heavily; that, to communicate regurgitated slogans. I myself found that another coffee shop in the same area increased my coffee consumption. Perhaps I'm atypical. (Perhaps; Kingston is a university town.)

Note nonetheless, please, that the Goat is still open and, so far as I know, doing fine. There is room.