In an early scene in Joss Wheden’s superhero epic The Avengers, team leader Nick Fury bets a newly thawed Captain America that he won’t believe how insane society has become since the supersoldier was freeze-dried in 1945. An hour into the film, Cap slips Fury a ten-spot.
Small moments like these make The Avengers, opening Friday in the United States, one of the best comic book movies in years, despite the third act’s inevitable CGI explosions and seen-it-all-before fight scenes.
[. . .]
Whedon succeeds in crafting the wittiest superhero movie in years. Instead of cranking out a generic narrative that forces each character to plod through predictable bits of “growth,” Whedon reinvigorates the clutch of Marvel Comics superheroes that first came together in 1963, with a script bristling with sly surprises while remaining true to each character’s essence.
The Avengers also serves as rare proof that every now and then, a master plan actually leads to masterful results. After releasing Iron Man in 2008, Marvel Entertainment peppered a string of standalone superhero flicks with brief appearances by Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury. Those snippets set the table for this all-star smackdown. It was the most meticulously orchestrated tease in Hollywood history, and the payoff for this five-year rollout was well worth the wait.
“You can easily love the island to death,” said Mark Butler, policy director of the Ecological Action Centre.
He and other conservationists fear that the expected influx of tourists eager to see the stark beauty of the island for themselves could harm the fragile ecosystem.
The island usually gets between 50 to 250 visitors a year.
Parks Canada has not yet decided how they will open the national park to the public, says spokesperson Julie Tompa. As a site management plan is being developed to ensure the island is protected and the best visitor experience possible is provided.
Meanwhile the old restrictions for hopeful visitors remain the same — except that written requests must be submitted to Parks Canada rather than the director of Maritime Services.
If permission is granted, don’t feed the horses — a key point in the 2006 visitors guide drafted by Gerry Forbes, one of the island’s two permanent residents. Forbes works at the island’s meteorological centre run by Environment Canada.
Other stipulations: all garbage brought onto island must go off again. There is no camping permitted. And great care must be taken of the diverse wildlife — include the rare Ipswich sparrow.
The guide also requests that “should you find yourself under attack by a shark, please try to note identifying features. If you survive, researchers would like to know which shark species was responsible.”
“In this great city, where the Irish and German Catholics have recoiled from no sacrifice to have their own churches and priests, how is it that the French, so famous for the faith of their fathers, alone remain indifferent?” [Charles Auguste Marie Joseph, the bishop of Nancy and Toul in France] asked. “How, in fact, can this nationality be long preserved in a foreign land without the powerful bond of religion?”
That is exactly what some parishioners are asking today as the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York prepares to close the Church of St. Vincent de Paul at 123 West 23rd Street — the very church that emerged 170 years ago in response to the bishop’s exhortation — and merge the French-speaking parish with the Church of St. Columba at 343 West 25th Street. No date has been set.
How will an unusually diverse body of Catholics from France, Belgium, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Switzerland, Togo and elsewhere maintain their connection with one another and with the mother church? What will keep them from dispersing, even if accommodated at St. Columba?
“The consequences are so grave, so overwhelming, they don’t even want to hear about it,” said Sylvestre Kouadio, a 51-year-old Ivorian taxi driver from the Bronx who directs the choir at St. Vincent. “The church has become a second home, a home away from home for Africans who speak French. This is the anchor.”
[. . .]
St. Vincent was identified in 2007 as one of 21 parishes that would be closed or lose full parochial status. “The decision to merge the parishes was reached because of the small congregation at St. Vincent de Paul, leading to the inability of the parish to sustain and support itself; the deteriorating physical condition of the building; and the close proximity of St. Columba,” said Joseph Zwilling, the director of communications for the archdiocese.
One factor delaying the merger has been the question of “how best to continue to provide pastoral care to the French-speaking population that currently worships at St. Vincent de Paul,” Mr. Zwilling said. French and French Creole services are offered in Manhattan at the Church of the Holy Name of Jesus on the Upper West Side and at the Church of St. Jean Baptiste on the Upper East Side.
Olga Simon Statz, a leader in efforts to save St. Vincent de Paul.Because of the impending closing, the archdiocese has purposefully not repaired water damage caused when the church roof was breached during Tropical Storm Irene last August. The out-of-bounds pews and crumbling plaster prompted an urgent renewal of a six-year-old preservation drive by a nonprofit group called Save St. Vincent de Paul.
[. . .]
Admirers of St. Vincent and its history have been requesting a hearing by the Landmarks Preservation Commission since 2006. They include President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, who said in a 2009 letter to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg that he was surprised the city had not paid greater attention to St. Vincent — “un élément important de l’identité française et de la présence francophone au cœur de Manhattan.”
However, the commission’s staff has determined that St. Vincent does not merit a formal public hearing. “Our decision not to recommend its designation to the full commission was based on a careful review of the building’s architectural and historical qualities,” Elisabeth de Bourbon, a spokeswoman, said. “We found that the existing facade, a neo-Classical facade that replaced the original Romanesque Revival facade in 1939, was designed by a little-known architect and lacked architectural distinction.” The original church was by Henry Engelbert; the renovation was by Anthony J. De Pace.
[. . .]
“Every parish has five trustees: the archbishop, the vicar general, the pastor and two lay parishioners,” Mr. Zwilling said. “The courts have upheld the right of the archdiocese to determine where parishes will be located, and which will be open and closed.” The pastor of St. Vincent, the Rev. Gerald E. Murray, deferred to the archdiocese when approached by this reporter on Monday.
According to research by Shantanu Basu of the University of Western Ontario and Eduard I. Vorobyov from the University of Vienna in Austria and Russia’s Southern Federal University, brown dwarfs may have been flung out of other protostellar disks as they were forming, taking clumps of material with them to complete their development.
Basu and Vorobyov modeled the dynamics of protostellar disks, the clouds of gas and dust that form “real” stars. (Our own solar system formed from one such disk nearly five billion years ago.) What they found was that given enough angular momentum — that is, spin — the disk could easily eject larger clumps of material while still having enough left over to eventually form a star.
Model of how a clump of low-mass material gets ejected from a disk (S. Basu/E. Vorobyev)
The ejected clumps would then continue condensing into a massive object, but never quite enough to begin hydrogen fusion. Rather than stars, they become brown dwarfs — still radiating heat but nothing like a true star. (And they’re not really brown, by the way… they’re probably more of a dull red.)
In fact a single protostellar disk could eject more than one clump during its development, Basu and Vorobyov found, leading to the creation of multiple brown dwarfs.
If this scenario is indeed the way brown dwarfs form, it stands to reason that the Universe may be full of them. Since they are not very luminous and difficult to detect at long distances, the researchers suggest that brown dwarfs may be part of the answer to the dark matter mystery.
“There could be significant mass in the universe that is locked up in brown dwarfs and contribute at least part of the budget for the universe’s missing dark matter,” Basu said. “And the common idea that the first stars in the early universe were only of very high mass may also need revision.”
Based on this hypothesis, with the potential number of brown dwarfs that could be in our galaxy alone we may find that these “failed stars” are actually quite successful after all.
I understand that Ford may have felt he was being spied on, and that he's fully entitled to his privacy. That being said, if you want someone to get off your land, there are better ways to go about it instead of charging gung-ho at a guy whose only weapon is a cell phone. What, are you afraid he's going to slowly radiate your brain to death?
This isn't about Ford's ideology, or his point of view, or anything other than the fact that this kind of conduct is not becoming of a representative of Toronto. I don't think highly of Ford as a mayor, and it has less to do with his politics, and more to do with his willingness to put himself in these kinds of situations. If a city elects you to office as a representative of the city, it's your responsibility to be level-headed and not get into, as Latrice Royale would call it, "Rumpus Room Shenanigans".
Like it or not, Mayor Ford, your position of power comes with responsibility. YOU are a representation of Toronto. And shit like this is a terrible way to represent the people who gave you your position. You're supposed to be better than this. Even if the guy was infringing on your territory, charging angrily into a situation without thinking of the consequences instead of following the proper procedures (calmly questioning his actions, asking him to leave, calling for help) is only making the city you claim to speak for look bad.
Toronto's reputation is increasingly undermined by the antics of its bombastic mayor, some political observers and insiders warned a day after Rob Ford's latest clash with the media.
[. . .]
Counc. Shelley Carroll, who has frequently butted heads with the mayor, said his chronic "overreactions" are drawing jokes and eye rolls in political circles outside the city.
"It's the conversation opener" when meeting officials across Canada and even parts of the U.S., she said Thursday.
Wednesday's incident "takes us into the realm of _ one could almost say _ international embarrassment," she added.
Graham White, a political science professor at the University of Toronto, said Ford's blunders have given the city "a really bad image" beyond simple ridicule.
Unlike former mayor Mel Lastman, whose many gaffes both irritated and charmed the public, Ford "is coming across as a thug," a far more alarming reputation, he said.
The mayor's threatened media blackout is "absolutely appalling," White said. That it came on World Press Freedom Day adds a note of irony to an otherwise troubling development, he added.
[. . .]
This isn't the first time Ford has been involved in a dust-up with a member of the media.
In October, Ford called 911 after Mary Walsh of the CBC's comedy series "22 Minutes" confronted him in his driveway dressed as her Marg Delahunty, Princess Warrior character.
Ford, who has had death threats, said he didn't know who Walsh was and feared for his safety.
Dale, if you’ve never met him, is a mild-mannered, quiet, gentle guy. He is an award-winning journalist. And he has handled the media attention this situation has garnered with a great deal of composure.
None of that matters for the purpose of this point. The point would hold even if Dale was a talentless loudmouth who bungled at every turn.
What matters is that Dale had a 300-pound angry man with a football player’s build coming at him. He got the hell out of there. And for this he has been widely mocked.
We can continue to discuss those other questions about media relations at City Hall, but there should be no debate about whether running from a guy who is twice your size and has his fist raised, when nobody else is in danger and nothing but your phone is at stake, makes you less of a man.
It makes you a sensible human being with survival instincts. It means you are capable of keeping your head under pressure. It is, most of all, a sign that you have a sense of proportion—that you prize safety over some ego-driven display of bravado that can make a precarious situation worse. And if you did run when there was something more vital at stake—someone else’s safety, for instance—that wouldn’t make you less of a man, either, though it might make you less of a person.
[. . .]
Maybe the Star does have a vendetta against the mayor. Or maybe this is just the kind of scrunity they bring to every mayor: they sent a photographer to David Miller’s house to see if he kept his lights on during Earth Hour back when he was in office, after all. But whether he should have been working on this story or not, at that hour or not, nobody should fault a male reporter—one working on a real estate story in Toronto rather than, say, a street battle in Syria—for running from a raised fist.
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