[PHOTO] Laneways

The laneway is something perhaps characteristically Torontonian, providing access to doors--even apartments--accessible only from the rear.



Here, it looks like the laneway might connect to a basement apartment of some kind.



This laneway leads to a white-painted garage, somewhat battered.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

A big one, today!

• 80 Beats notes a proposed NASA probe, a boat that would float on the cryogenic hydrocarbon seas of Titan.


• BAGNewsNotes comments on the misogyny lying behind that American newspaper's digital removal of two women, including Hillary Clinton, from that photo of the American cabinet watching footage of Osama's death.


• blogTO's Robyn Urback examines Toronto's Agincourt Mall, one that the writer describes--to some comments' considerable disdain--as reasonably functional and with some positive bits.


• Centauri Dreams' Paul Gilster examines models of exoplanets which speculate about the habitability of the different broadly Earth-like planets discovered by Kepler, and the different conditions of Earth-like worlds (or non-Earth-like worlds).


• Russian-languagedemographer comments, with links, on the Nazis' Generalplan Ost, which would have seen the mass deportation of Slavs and full-scale German colonization of central and eastern Europe.


• The Global Sociology Blog reviews Florence Aubenas' The Night Cleaner, a book that depicts the author's experience of life in France as a cleaning lady, terribly frustrating and precarious.


• GNXP comments on the collapse in the quality of handwriting in our computerized world. The shift between my neat Grade 12 handwriting and what I have noiw is fairly remarkable.


• Joe. My. God. notes the existence of a separatist movement in southern Arizona, "Baja Arizona", inspired by opposition to the--let's say, problematic--policies of the state government. Interesting reaction, if just a protest movement.


• Marginal Revolution observes that the Polynesian island nation of Samoa is shifting the International Date Line to its east, so as to share the same day with Samoa's major trading partners in Asia and Australasia.


• Nissology PEI reports on the use of foreign workers in a Prince Edward Island fish plant. Here as elsewhere, despite high local unemployment, there are jobs the natives won't do.


• Gideon Rachman doesn't think that Scotland will vote for independence, on the grounds of weak support in the polls and concerns over the country's economic viability as an independent state.


• Strange Maps shows a remarkable East German subway map for Berlin, one that manages to reduce enclaved West Berlin and its network--still connected, barely, to the East's--to a minor enclave.


• Towleroad reports that Uganda's gay-killing bill has been dropped by parliament. Hopefully ...

[BRIEF NOTE] On British constitutional issues after Scottish independence

David Rickard's Open Democracy essay "Scottish independence would open the way for constitutional reform" makes the case that Scottish independence would, well, open the way for constitutional reform in a rump United Kingdom of England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

If, then, Scotland departs from the Union, there is no more Great Britain, and all pretensions of British nationhood fall away. But the / a United Kingdom could remain, albeit perhaps renamed the ‘United Kingdom of England, Wales and Northern Ireland’. So Tim Luckhurst was wrong when he suggested in a discussion on Radio Four’s ‘Today’ programme today that all UK citizens should have a say on Scottish independence in a referendum because Scottish independence would mean the end of the UK, which Luckhurst regards as his ‘nation’. He is not wrong in suggesting the need for a UK-wide referendum but is wrong in asserting that the UK would be broken up by Scottish independence: it’s Britain that would be finished, but the UK could continue in a new form.

And it’s the need to re-define the UK, and re-design its constitution and structures of governance, that should be seized upon by constitutional reformers as a great opportunity presented by the prospect and process of Scottish secession. Indeed, this could be the occasion for a radical re-design of the constitution that reformers have been longing for. For starters, Parliament would have to be completely overhauled. Just as the idea of a unitary ‘Britain’ is designed to suppress the thought that the UK is really England plus its ‘Celtic’ appendages, so the stubborn holding on to the idea that the UK parliament remains integrally British even when so many of its powers and actions relate to England only is designed to suppress the idea that Parliament is really an English parliament: that it has always been so and should honestly re-style itself as such if it is to be a truly democratic forum for England on a par with the parliament and assemblies for the UK’s other nations.

If the UK were to become the ‘United Kingdom of England, Wales and N. Ireland’ – if Scotland departs and the need for a unitary ‘Britain’ and its parliament fades away – there would be a golden opportunity to craft a new federal UK. Civic English nationalists such as myself would rather the new UK was a federation of nations, including perhaps an autonomous Cornwall; while many liberal reformers would rather see a regional model of governance applied to England. But we could at least have the argument along with many other arguments, such as how to evolve the Lords into a federal parliament (dealing with reserved UK matters)-cum-revising chamber for the national / regional parliaments; a written constitution; the monarchy and the Church; proportional representation; a new Bill of Rights; a referendum on the new state’s membership of the EU; etc.

This may be possible. One major problem with this plan is that England would be overwhelmingly dominant in this new state, with something in the area of 95% of the British population and a still greater share of the British economy. With little likelihood of devolution taking off in England--earlier referenda are more than indicative of a pan-English identity--the risks of Wales and Northern Ireland being almost satellitized would seem very significant to me.

Am I off on this?

[DM] "The Baby Bust of 2009 in the United States"

I've a post up commenting on Carl Haub's Population Reference Bureau post describing the significant fall in fertility in the United States over 2007-2009. The decline is greater among non-whites than whites. Will this shift be permanent?

Go, read and comment.

[URBAN NOTE] "CN Tower EdgeWalk: How far you willing to go for a thrill?"

I am so going to do this.

The CN Tower is adding a new attraction that will let thrill seekers walk on a narrow ledge around the top of the tower, 356 metres above the ground.

Participants in the so-called EdgeWalk will walk hands-free while attached to an overhead safety harness.

Specially trained guides will encourage visitors to push their personal limits, even allowing them to lean out 116 storeys above the city.

"EdgeWalk is both thrilling and unique and will push visitors to their limits -- literally and figuratively," said Mark Laroche, president and CEO of Canada Lands Company, which owns and operates the CN Tower.

Reports say the EdgeWalk, which will begin on Aug.1, will cost $175.