[PHOTO] Two shots of the Metropolitan United Church in Winter

The Metropolitan United Church, located at the corner of Church Street and Queen Street East, is one of the most prominent churches in the United Church.

The Metropolitan United Church, from the southeast
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

Here it is, seen from the southeast in winter.

The Metropolitan United Church, from the east
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

And here it is seen from the east.

[LINK] "The case for testing and licensing cyclists"

Writing in the Toronto Star, Peter Gorrie advances a great idea.

I've cycled throughout the city, including daily commutes, for 25 years, with only two accidents: On one occasion I was doored by the driver of a parked car; on the other, my front wheel got caught in the streetcar tracks where King St. angles into Queen. I avoided becoming road kill only because no traffic was coming up close behind.

So I'm all for making things easier, and safer, for cyclists. I take heart whenever I encounter bike traffic jams here. I'd love it if Toronto's streets were like Beijing's rivers of two-wheelers 20 years ago.

Still, cyclists increasingly piss me off. I'm getting, pardon the pun, cranky about those who weave in and out of traffic, ignore signs and, worst of all, zip along sidewalks.

It was bad enough recently that some advocates insisted cyclists be allowed to ignore stop signs. Their arguments centred on the terrible hardship of losing momentum.

[. . .]

I've come to the view that once you hit your teens, cycling on any public thoroughfare is, just like operating a motor vehicle, a privilege, not a right. I realize this is anathema to a free-spirited breed, but cyclists should be tested and licensed, and expected to obey the rules of the road, just like any driver. Past age 12 they should not be on sidewalks – period.

This would offer cyclists a few benefits, including acceptance they're entitled to be on the road; permitted, for example, to take enough space to avoid being hit by drivers who pull out or open their door without looking.

Obviously, responsible riding would make cyclists safer, since weaving through traffic, barging across lanes, running stop signs, crossing laneway and driveway exits on sidewalks, and running into people are all dangerous. Licensing might improve the tracing of stolen bikes.

The cyclists in the comments don't exactly disprove Gorrie's case.

[DM] "How migration transformed Martha’s Vineyard"

Over at Demography Matters I've a post up linking to Daniela Gerson's Financial Times article of the same name, which explores the origins and effects of the relatively quite large migration of Brazilians to the tourist island of Martha's Vineyard. Go, read her article.

[BRIEF NOTE] On the problems of the New Democratic Party

This CBC article doesn't begin to explore the silliness of the above debate within the social-democratic New Democratic Party.

Federal New Democratic Party members wrapped up their weekend convention in Halifax with no movement on changing the party name.

"It didn't happen today," the CBC's Alison Crawford reported on Sunday.

"The issue's dead for now."

The name change idea was to have been the sixth resolution for discussion in a one-hour time frame on Sunday morning during the annual meeting.

But the 60 minutes ran out before that was possible, and no action was taken.

There had been speculation the renaming issue might move ahead, Crawford said.

"There have been proposals in the past to make name changes but it's never got this high up on the resolution list," she said.

Now, with the name issue on hold, Crawford said party members were looking at other ways to rebrand the NDP.

An earlier CBC article made the point that, frustrated 16 times in its efforts to form a majority government, the NDP was ready to rebrand itself.

The New Democratic Party name first came into existence into 1961 at a convention where Tommy Douglas took the helm. Douglas, who later became known as the father of Medicare, stepped down as Saskatchewan premier under the CCF banner to move to the federal stage.

Its original incarnation was known as the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, a party founded in 1932 in Calgary.

After the CCF suffered a disastrous blow in the 1958 election, with only eight MPs elected to office, they sought to broaden their appeal by reinventing themselves with a name change.

Nelson Wiseman, a political science professor at the University of Toronto, suggests calling it "social democratic party" would be more consistent with its philosophy.

At the time of its name selection, however, the term socialist was avoided because of the Cold War climate and radical connotations, notes Wiseman.

Putting aside questions of whether the party is still "new" after almost 50 years, Wiseman says the name change proposal has done one thing: "It gives fodder for media and it gives the NDP something to talk about."

That last sentence is somewhat pathetic, no?

I'll make a bold prediction: As a niche party appealing to certain narrow geographical and class constituencies, the New Democratic Party will never form a federal government. It may well be part of a coalition government--a Liberal-NDP coalition with Bloc Québécois support is really the only alternative to the Conservatives at this point--but acquiring that kind of power on its own is impossible.

People are talking about the name change, sure. I doubt that most of them are talking about it with the sort of sympathy or curiosity that would help the NDP.

[URBAN NOTE] Toronto FC, anyone?

Over at his blog Noel Maurer has an entertaining overview of the recent men's World Cup qualifier for the Mexican and American soccer teams, with Gancho Blog providing more perspectives and a thoughtful discussion in Noel's comments about how one should react to foreigners who wear the Confederate flag without knowing what it means.

All this makes me think. Toronto has its own Major League Soccer team, Toronto FC, but I know nothing about it other than what I've heard from some big soccer fans at work. It's not too far away from me, the Portuguese-Canadian fanbase is certainly something I've become familiar with (in a way) after five years in their neighbourhoods, and soccer culture seems to be pretty darn fun, minus the riots and Italian fans trying to revive the Red Brigades. Maybe I should go, and soon.

Thoughts? Advice?

[BRIEF NOTE] How were the Americas first settled?

Will Baird linked to a very interesting bit of research introduced by one Cecil Lewis, examining patterns of genetic diversity among indigenous populations in the Americas.

Lewis studies genetic variation in populations to learn about the peopling of the Americas, but his studies also have an impact on genetic-related disease research. Some 15,000-18,000 years ago, people came from Asia through the Bering Strait and began to fill the American continents. The Americas were the last continents to be populated, so Lewis wants to understand how this process happened. His recent study focuses on South America and asks what part of the subcontinent has the most genetic diversity.

A complete understanding of this research depends on a very important population genetic process called the "founder effect." The geographic region with the most genetic diversity is characteristic of the initial or "parent" population. For example, a group of people leave a parent population and become founders of a new daughter population in an uninhabited geographic region. They typically take with them only a small set of the parent population's genetic diversity. This is called a founder effect.

The world pattern of founder effects in human populations begins in Africa. The genetic diversity in the Middle East is largely a subset of the genetic diversity in Africa. Similarly, the genetic diversity in Europe and Asia is largely a subset of the genetic diversity in Africa and the Middle East. The genetic diversity of the Americas is largely a subset of that in Asia. As a result, DNA tells a story about human origins, which began in Africa and spread throughout the world

Lewis is interested in the founder effects within the Americas with a particular focus on South America. At the outset, Lewis expected western South America to have a more diverse population than eastern South America because most anthropologists believe South America to have been peopled from west to east. Unexpectedly, the genetic data from the Lewis study was not consistent with this idea.

In this new study, Lewis looked at more than 600 independent genetic markers called short-tandem repeats. These markers were dispersed throughout the human genome. They were initially published by Lewis and his colleagues in large scale collaboration; the dataset is the largest survey of Native American genetic diversity today. Surprisingly, genetic analysis of these data estimated more genetic diversity in eastern than western South America. This was not the first time Lewis observed this pattern.

Lewis first observed this pattern in 2007 with his post-doctoral advisor using a more limited genetic dataset. The fact that the new genome-wide dataset provided a similar result was surprising; this result questions the most widely accepted scenario for the peopling of South America. While the focus of this study was South America, a similar and interesting pattern of genetic diversity emerged in North America. The pattern suggests another major founder effect in North America, but after the initial founder effect from Asia.

This raises the fascinating question of how the Americas were settled. The traditional hypothesis was that the continents were settled by migrants crossng the Beringian land bridge between Siberia and North America some eleven thousand years ago, these migrants then constituting the Clovis technological culture. While it does seem as if the settlers of the Americans constituted a genetically homogeneous population reflecting a single migration, other sites have been discovered predating Clovis. The Monte Verde site in coastal Chile dates back some thirteen thousand years, while Pedra Furada sites in Brazil provide evidence of human habitation as early as 12 000 years ago, and--very controversially--as long ago as 48 thousand years. The fact that many of these sites predate signs of settlement in North America is perplexing, to say the least. Is the Pacific migration theory, suggesting that humans travelled quickly down the coast of the two continents, correct? But then, if that theory is correct, how is the greater genetic diversity of eastern South America to be explained?

[LINK] "Tourists are stealing St Kilda"

The Scotsman's John Ross reports that the abandoned Scottish island of St. Kilda is being threatened by tourists taking souvenirs.

Among the mementoes being pocketed are stones from ancient structures and fleece shed by the islands' primitive Soay sheep, depriving Europe's most important seabird colony of their natural nesting material.

Ian McNee, the trust's seasonal ranger, said: "People take whatever they can get their hands on. There are a lot of old stone structures, stone was the main building material here and people like to take little bits from a wall.

"Most of the walls date from the early 1800s and some are even earlier than that.

"It's always been a bit of a concern, but with the increase in visitors, people taking just a little bit ends up as quite a lot."

Mr McNee talks to visitors when they arrive about the importance of not taking anything away from the island.

He said: "It's just 1 per cent of people, but with the enormous rise in visitors even 1 per cent is too much. It's irresponsible."

He added: "People take things they assume won't be too important, but they can be. It's a very primitive sheep here and it moults – and people take the wool from the ground, which is valuable for the nesting birds. It's all part of the system."