[PHOTO] A tree stump in Davenport

The clean and level cut of this stump in the front yard of a home in the Toronto neighbourhood of Davenport caught my eye when I was walking past. I'm also idly curious about the dendrochronology of the tree--it seems as if midways through its life, after a long period of restricted growth, the tree started to grow rapidly.

[LINK] "Georgia’s President Concedes Defeat in Parliamentary Election"

Ellen Barry's New York Times article is one of many reporting that, in the aftermath of the defeat of his party, Georgia's president Mikheil Saakashvili has conceded defeat and is going to allow for a democratic transition.

This is a good thing. Whatever good he may have achieved has to be weighed against his authoritarian, as well as his fatal decision in 2008 to invade South Ossetia and start a losing war. Here's to hoping that Saakashvili will keep his word, and that the Georgian Dream coalition will govern wisely.

Georgia’s larger-than-life president, Mikheil Saakashvili, conceded defeat on Tuesday after early results in Georgia’s hotly contested parliamentary race showed that a coalition backed by the billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili had edged out his party.

“After summarizing the preliminary results of parliamentary elections, it is obvious that the coalition Georgian Dream has gained an advantage in these elections,” Mr. Saakashvili said in a statement. “It means that the parliamentary majority should form a new government and I, as the president, will contribute — in frames of the Constitution — to the process of launching Parliament’s work so that it is able to elect its chairman and also to form a new government.”

Georgia’s Central Election Commission said that with about 25 percent of the vote counted, Mr. Ivanishvili’s coalition, Georgian Dream, had 53 percent and the governing United National Movement had 42. The result is a sobering verdict on Mr. Saakashvili and his ruling team, who took power in the peaceful Rose Revolution nine years ago.

In his years in office, Mr. Saakashvili has restyled Georgia as a bastion of resistance to Russian influence and a laboratory for free-market economic policy.

He faced no formidable challenges until the emergence last year of Mr. Ivanishvili, a reclusive philanthropist who has spent years spreading his Russian-earned billions around Georgia’s countryside. Mr. Ivanishvili has tapped into long-simmering grievances over poverty and the heavy-handed ruling style of Mr. Saakashvili and his team.

It was a remarkable upset. After the exit polls were released, cars flying Georgian Dream flags screamed down the central artery here, and thousands gathered in Freedom Square. Temur Butikashvili, 52, a filmmaker, said it was the first time Georgia had changed its leadership through an election.

“We have done what all our ancestors aspired to. We have calmly, quietly transferred power,” Mr. Butikashvili said.

[LINK] "Laser-etched quartz will store data for hundreds of millions of years"

After yesterday's post marking the 30th anniversary of the commercial introduction of the compact disc, today's announcement by Hitachi--as communicated by Liat Clark for Wired.co.uk--of the development of a new method for storing data for potentially geological time periods seems apropos.

Clark mentions the relatively low capacity of these quartz memory slabs. Another point against this new technology, raised by journalist Nora Young interviewed on the CBC, is the question not of memory capacity but rather of changing formats. What good would it serve to preserve something if the data preserved is indecipherable? Already, I can read my school notes from the late 1990s, saved in Microsoft Works format, only with difficulty.

Hitachi says it's about to solve our data problems, with the announcement that information could potentially be preserved for hundreds of millions of years if it's laser-encoded onto slabs of quartz glass. The downside -- you can't fit all that much on to each piece.

Hitachi concedes that the technique, developed in collaboration with professor Kiyotaka Miura of Kyoto University, is about longevity and does not tackle the more pressing problem of managing the vast and growing amount of world data. Nevertheless, as it turns out, the chemical properties of a piece of quartz are a bit of an embarrassment for the average hard drive. While the former can (according to experiments carried out at Kyoto University's lab) withstand temperatures of 1,000 degrees Celsius for two hours and have its information "played" back without "degradation" using an optical microscope, the latter will probably fail within a decade in average conditions. The more old school the data storage method, it seems, the better the chance of survival -- Hitachi says tape (remember that) will last between 15 to 30 years.

Since the method -- which works by imprinting a series of dots in binary code (100 at a time) using femtosecond laser pulses onto four layers of quartz -- can only store around 40MB on an area about 2cm squared and 2mm thick (a hard drive can store a terabit in the same surface area), it's likely to be used for the long-term storage of "historically important items such as cultural artifacts and public documents, as well as data that individuals want to leave for posterity".

Hitachi calls it "CD-level digital data volume" -- but imagine if you could chuck that CD into a burning pool of lava and use it again later. The point is not quantity, it's quality. The quartz glass is basically impervious (unless you smash it) -- it can withstand water and magnetism and still function.

[. . .]

Hitachi says that as society continues its rapidly accelerating shift from paper to digital data, there should be a long-term storage option like this. Artefacts like the Dead Sea Scrolls need to be stored in special temperature-controlled rooms -- Hitachi's method is the future-proof version of this for your data. The method is, however, going to preliminary be aimed at companies with "large amounts of important data to preserve, rather than individuals," said Hitachi spokesperson Tomiko Kinoshita. The company believes that by 2015 the system will be commercially viable and companies will be able to send data to Hitachi for conversion.

[CAT] "Russia’s Museum Cats"

Sally McGrane's New Yorker blog post--found by me via C.J. Cherryh's Facebook page--recounts the story of how the Hermitage Museum came to house a population of dozens of contented cats living.

Winding beneath the magnificent halls of St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum, with its Da Vincis, diamonds, Greek statuary, Egyptian parchments, enormous number of paintings, mechanical peacock clock, and other treasures, there is a catacomb of cellars. It was into this windowless nether region—far below the Winter Palace’s expansive view of the waters of the Neva—that Maria Haltunen and I had cautiously descended. As I followed her through a narrow, imperfectly-lit corridor, full of large pipes and jutting wires, Haltunen gasped. “Look!” she said.

In the semi-darkness, a little being had appeared. He perched, a foot-tall shadow, on a water pipe.

“Oh, you are a fat one!” said Haltunen, jangling the chain of her I.D. pass like a talisman as she approached the pointy-eared creature. “How nice you are!”

The cat sat, perfectly still. Then he vanished.

“Some of them like to be around people,” said Haltunen, who has been the personal assistant to the museum’s director for the last eighteen years and, in addition to her regular duties, also serves as the museum’s semi-official Press Secretary to the Cats. She peered behind the pipes to see where the creature had gone, but found only a blanket, tucked against the wall, and a bowl. “Some of them prefer to be by themselves.”

Once a motley crew of frightened strays hiding, half-starving, in the palace’s basement, the Hermitage’s cats are now a well-loved, well-fed part of the museum’s family. Some seventy former street cats live at the Hermitage, where, thanks largely to Haltunen’s efforts, they have their very own underground cat infirmary and three full-time volunteers to care for them.

Underground, in their domain, there were signs of them—tiger-striped cat beds, bright pink and blue plastic bowls, places where the heating system’s pipes had been covered in soft, flowered material so that the cats could nest there. Now and then, a pair of bright eyes glanced out from a shaft; in a fenced-off corner, beneath blue and red water pipes, sprawled a little black kitten with white paws. As we passed, he jumped up, sprightly, and sidled out of the off-limits area.

“Our director is always saying they are the spirit of the place,” said Haltunen. “The museum’s genius loci.”

[URBAN NOTE] On the Frank Gehry reconstruction of the Entertainment District

The news that architect Frank Gehry has been recruited by Toronto theatre magnate David Mirvish to rebuild the heart of the Entertainment District along King Street West into a very striking condo/art complex has gone international.

Toronto's theater district and the skyline of Canada's biggest city will be transformed by star architect Frank Gehry as a tribute to the city in which he spent his childhood under an ambitious plan unveiled on Monday.

The project, the brainchild of Canadian theater impresario and arts patron David Mirvish, involves erecting three condominium towers 80 to 85 stories tall.

"These towers can become a symbol of what Toronto can be," Mirvish told a news conference. "I'm not building condominiums. I'm building sculptures for people to live in."

At the base of the buildings will be two six-story podiums that will provide retail space, seminar rooms and lecture halls. Two new museums will be constructed, including one to house a contemporary art collection owned by the Mirvish family.

"We hope to deliver a streetscape that is evocative of old Toronto," said Gehry, 83, who was born in the city and is known for his iconic designs, such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.

Mirvish said he sees the project, which may take many years to complete, continuing the work of his late father, Ed Mirvish, who was a driving force in Toronto's arts and theater community.

"This area was transformed 50 years ago after my father purchased the Royal Alexandra Theatre, and this project will continue the theater's future and transform the neighborhood again for the next 50 years," Mirvish said.

The results--shown in the street-level model immediately below, and from a distance--would be striking.





This is going to be a very big project. There's already a measure of controversy around the plan, as it would require the demolition not only of various heritage buildings on the block but the but the Princess of Wales Theatre, just two decades old. (Apparently the theatre is a very good venue, but there's a reluctant consensus that with the long-term decline of theatre in Toronto, with hit shows lasting only months not years and low rates of attendance, the theatre isn't independently viable.) So far, the consensus seems to be broadly in support of the plan, as an architecturally striking approach to increasing density in downtown Toronto. The comments in posts at blogTO and Torontoist are indicative.

Me, I quite like Frank Gehry's 8 Spruce Street tower in lower Manhattan at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge.



Getting one tower like that in Toronto would be an achievement. Getting three towers is a practical necessity. Toronto needs it.