[PHOTO] A mosaic of Dupont station

A mosaic of Dupont station
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

I blogged last May about the mosaic art at the Dupont TTC station. Here's a sample of said.

[LINK] Some Friday links

• blogTO reports that Church Street restaurant Zelda's has moved away on account of too-expensive rents.


• Excitingly, Centauri Dreams talks about a model of the Europan interior ocean that allows for the possibility of large amounts of oxygen dissolved in that moon's water, creating the possibility for macroscopic life, not just microorganisms.


• Crooked Timber argues that European left-wing political parties have done so badly of late because, well, there isn't much left-wing about them any more.


• Daniel Drezner doesn't think that China's possession of US Treasury bonds makes it all that much a financial power, and likewise doesn't think that Europe's long experience with multinational negotiations via the European Union will help it at the G-20 table.


• English Eclectic's Paul Hall is critical of some criticism of an increasingly queer-friendly British Conservative Party for its anti-gay European Parliament allies.


• Far Outliers quotes a reflection on the frequent contradictions between official and personal histories as illustrated by the history of Thessaloniki.


• Gideon Rachman blogs about the intensification of Latvia's ongoing economic crisis.


• Hunting Monsters says that the problems surrounding the European Constitution's passage and the documents lack of popularity generally reflect wider European ambivalence about an unaccountable Union.
  
• Normblog cites a couple of paragraphs by David Malouf making the point that one of the best things about cities is the way they can detach people from tribes.


• Slap Upside the Head reports on a recent court ruling in Russia establishing the legal non-existence of same-sex marriage in that country.


• Window on Eurasia reports that most Ukrainians don't see a military threat from Russia and observes the growing role of Central Asians and Caucasians in Russian Islamic communities.

[DM] "The UNDP on Russia's demographic crisis"

I've a post up over at Demography Matters linking to a recent UNDP report on Russia's demographic situation that isn't encouraging at all. Go, read.

[URBAN NOTE] Randy meets the LaRouchites

As I was walking west down Harbord Street towards the heart of the University of Toronto's main campus and Robarts Library, I saw a gathering of people gathered around a table on the corner by Robarts. Presuming that was part of one of the campus movements that try to recruit students at the beginning of the year, I went over. Who was there?

LaRouchites!

Advertising their website www.larouchepub.com, the LaRouchites had an array of impressive displays, everything from pamphlets promising Britain Delenda Est to posters featuring Obama wearing a Hitler mustache next to Prince Philip to a painting of a spacesuited astronaut on Mars holding a fossil-bearing rock in awe.

As I was standing there, a handsome guy approached me. He was personable enough, explaining that the current economic crisis was precipitated by the world not doing was LaRouche wanting, arguing that an alliance founded by the US and China then expanding to the rest of the BRIC should reform the system (not the Eurozone, incidentally, which actually makes sense given that currency union's complete lack of coordination in dealing with the crisis). "And in thirty years," he triumphantly concluded, "we'll be on Mars."

What can you say to that? I smiled, took a pamphlet, gave him an E-mail address I never use for them to send materials then, and briskly walked north.

[BRIEF NOTE] One certain way to get a Nobel Peace Prize

Like most of the rest of the planet, I'm stunned that President Obama won this year's Nobel Peace Prize. I mean, he's a nice guy and everything, but has he doesn't seem to have done anything. He hasn't brokered peace in the Middle East; he hasn't stabilized Afghanistan; he hasn't institutionalized the G-20 as an effective proto-world government. He's just, well, Obama.

This sort of thing hasn't been rare. Remember back in 2007 when Al Gore won that year's Nobel Peace Prize? Yes, his work on popularizing the various problems facing the environment was good and important, but did it really merit an award?

To most of the world these prizes were deserved. What do Obama and Gore have in common? They're not George W. Bush. The Democratic presidential candidate defeated by Bush back in 2000 and the Democratic presidential candidate who defeated Bush's successor last year have of late been much more popular than Bush, and what better way to reward them for not being Bush and opposing so strongly his agenda than to give them international honours and $US 1.4 million?

The effect on domestic US politics won't be good, of course, but I don't think that the rest of the world cares. We're just so relieved.