[PHOTO] Garden Centre, Loblaws, Dupont and Christie

There's something cheery about the sheer quantity of green things in the parking lot garden centres of the large grocery stores, like the one at the Loblaws at Dupont and Christie.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bag News Notes' Michael Shaw takes a look at NSA Edward Snowden, as good as look as can be taken.


• Centauri Dreams' Paul Gilster reflects on Iain M. Banks as a designer of megascale structures.


• The Dragon's Tales' Will Baird reports on Chinese interest in paying for the reconstruction of a Nicaragua canal.


• Eastern Approaches notes that the iconic Gdansk shipyards, which fostered the growth of solidarity, are at risk of closing.


• Geocurrents' Asya Perelstvaig writes about the coverage of the news of the last speaker of the Baltic Finnic language of Livonian, in all of its flaws.


• Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen likes a book describing why some East Asian economies hit the First World and others didn't, while Alex Tabarrok advocates for a new regime in the United States for the approval of medications.


• New Apps Blog's Lisa Guenther uses a documentary on the fate of the long-term incarcerated to start a discussion on what we grow to tolerate.


• Normblog's Norman Geras interviews Daniel Libeskind.


• The Signal's Bill LeFurgy writes about word processing, the killer app that jumpstarted the computer revolution.


• Window on Eurasia argues that Ukrainians generally haven't assimilated the Crimean Tatar history of deportation into their own and quotes from a Kazakhstani writer who argues that real, broad-based Russian influence is much more threatening to Kazakh identity than anything the Chinese have done or are likely to do.

[URBAN NOTE] "Piecing together the story of three missing men from Toronto's gay village"

Andrea Houston's Xtra! article noting the disappearance of three queer men of South Asian heritage over the past several years from the Church and Wellesley area--Skandaraj “Skanda” Navaratnam, Abdulbasir “Basir” Faizi, and Majeed “Hamid” Kayhan--makes for worrisome, and sad, reading. While Navaratnam was out, Faizi and Kayhan were both married heterosexually with children, in the closet. This may have left the latter two vulnerable.

Being “out-ish,” especially for some new Canadians, is not uncommon. People who come to Canada from homophobic countries often take years to venture out of the closet, if they ever do, he says. “It’s all part of the process,” he adds.

Faizi has a similar family situation to Kayhan. His sister-in-law Nijiba tells Xtra that his family is very worried. She knew nothing about the connection to the Village. She says Faizi has a wife and two daughters who live in Mississauga.

[. . .]

Harris says police have done an extensive background search on Navaratnam, including accessing “numerous judicial authorizations” to try to determine his whereabouts, such as immigration, but have discovered no leads from that.

“The key connection for us is that all three disappeared from the Church and Wellesley area, they have family and friends who are concerned about them, and everything that we’ve done from the onset, there is nothing that tells us where these three people are,” she says.

[. . . El-Farouk] Khaki says police should continue to expand the search by looking at cold cases and outstanding missing-person reports, in Toronto areas outside the Village and beyond. If these three men are indeed connected, Khaki says, it’s important for investigators to understand the cultural sensitivities and discrimination that explain why men like Kayhan and Faizi live double lives. With that in mind, it’s possible other missing-persons cases could be connected as well.

“I don’t think it’s problematic that police are looking at all possibilities, but I think they need to cast their net a little bit wider,” he says. “Start looking to see if other people have been reported missing from other areas. If there’s people connected to this community and also living closeted lives, the person who reports them missing could change how it is investigated.”

[URBAN NOTE] On the restoration of 1 Spadina Crescent

blogTO's Chris Bateman and Spacing Toronto's Matthew Blackett and Torontoist's Steve Kupferman have all written about how 1 Spadina Crescent--a University of Toronto building on Spadina north of College--is going to be refurbished. Writes Kupferman:

[A]fter decades of letting the 138-year-old Gothic Revival building slowly turn ramshackle, the university says it will be putting $45 million in contributions—including $19 million from architect John H. Daniels and his wife Myrna—towards turning the property into a new home for its John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. (The total project cost is expected to be $62 million.)

The proposed design—which you can see if you click through the image gallery above—would definitely make a difference at Spadina Crescent, and that’s no trivial thing. If you think about it, the circle is one of Toronto’s most visible addresses. It’s right in the middle of a major thoroughfare. How many cars and streetcars pass it every day? How many pedestrians lay eyes on it as they walk past the intersection of College Street and Spadina Avenue?

The design, by Nader Tehrani of NADAAA and Katie Faulkner, calls for a new addition to the building. The turrets and the south facade are expected to retain their existing appearances, more or less, but the north facade is shown in renderings as a kind of glassy prism. There would be a new roof, which a press release says would “bathe the building’s interior in natural light.”

Inside, there would be new studios, labs, and a public gallery. The area around the building would be newly landscaped, and would have what the university calls “pavilions”—smaller structures that would house some programs, including a new Institute for Architecture and Human Health.

All three blog posts include abundant photos and images, of the building as it exists now and of what it is hoped it will become.

[URBAN NOTE] "I Spent the Night with Jane Jacobs in an Abandoned Post Office"

Prince Edward Island blogger Peter Rukavina describes what sounds like a delightful evening piece of drama and performance art in New York City, a tour of the recent history of that city by none other than ... Jane Jacobs!

The James Farley Post Office is an imposing behemoth of a building right across 8th Avenue from Madison Square Garden and Pennsylvania Station. To say it’s “abandoned” isn’t completely accurate: it’s still a functioning post office – you can mail letters and buy stamps there – but the building is slated for redevelopment and many of its vast interior spaces, from mail sorting rooms to the headquarters of the Postal Inspector, lie vacant.

It was in those abandoned spaces that Catherine and Oliver and I journeyed on Monday night.

It was raining. We followed the instructions on the tickets to gather at the 31st Street entrance. We found a rag-tag group there, from well-dressed society types to poorly-dressed bohemians, and everything in between, all huddled under umbrellas. As it turned out we’d all gathered by the wrong door, but fortunately someone figured thise out and we went around the corner to the other 31st Street entrance.

At the top of the stairs our tickets were checked on a list and we were assigned to a group. Our group, as it happened, was to be led by Jane Jacobs.

Well, not Jane Jacobs herself, as she’s been dead since 2006.

But a pretty credible facsimile: an actor playing the role of Jane Jacobs in Manna-Hata, a singing, dancing, projecting, acting, shouting, moving, hiding, jumping, drinking and wandering spectacle held in the upper levels of the Farley Post Office.

[LINK] "Ancient Martians May Have Been Hydrogen Powered"

Discovery.com's Markus Hammonds writes about a chemical reaction that creates energy that might well support life on Mars. (More here.)

A group of researchers led by Lisa Mayhew, of CU Boulder, has identified a particular chemical reaction that may take place between iron-containing minerals and water, which produces hydrogen gas. So much hydrogen gas, in fact, that it could potentially support life in underground habitats — either here on our own planet, or in similar ecological niches on Mars.

Specifically, this chemical reaction is known to occur between seawater and igneous rocks under the ocean floor. Near hydrothermal vents, at high temperatures, the rocks release iron ions into the water that react with the surrounding water to produce iron oxides and hydrogen gas.

While this hydrogen (dissolved in the water) is produced in regions too hot for life to flourish (over 200°C), it seeps out from the rocks into cooler regions where some microbes are already known to be sustained by it. Mayhew and her colleagues have found the first evidence that this reaction can work perfectly well at lower temperatures too. She explains, ”Water-rock reactions that produce hydrogen gas are thought to have been one of the earliest sources of energy for life on Earth.”

“However,” she elaborated, “we know very little about the possibility that hydrogen will be produced from these reactions when the temperatures are low enough that life can survive. If these reactions could make enough hydrogen at these low temperatures, then microorganisms might be able to live in the rocks where this reaction occurs, which could potentially be a huge subsurface microbial habitat for hydrogen-utilizing life.”

With a reaction like this happening so easily, it gives some interesting insight into how primitive life may have survived on the infant Earth — and if primitive terrestrial life could have survived this way, then primitive Martian life could have just as easily done the same.

Could hydrogen-powered life have lived on Mars? Currently, the possibility still can’t be ruled out. A mechanism like this one could certainly have provided a plentiful supply of energy for indigenous martian microbes. Mayhew and her team found that hydrogen could be produced at temperatures in the range of 50-100°C, by rocks containing a specific mineral called spinel.

Spinels are a common type of mineral found on both Mars and Earth (they’re often found together with rubies here on our own planet). On close investigation, the researchers found that the spinels helped facilitate the formation of hydrogen, allowing the reaction to proceed even at lower temperatures than it had been observed before.

[URBAN NOTE] "Calm down, Kensington – Wal-Mart won’t destroy you"

I largely agree with the sentiments expressed in Marcus Gee's Friday article in The Globe and Mail about the impending threat of a Walmart in Kensington Market, while adding that Kensington Market's shops--unlike the ones at Church and Wellesley, perhaps--have specializations that would let them outlast any large shopping centre.

But hang on a bit. Before the villagers get out the pitchforks and torches, let’s remember the proposed mall isn’t actually in Kensington Market. It’s four or five blocks to the west. There is nothing to suggest that it would suck the life out of the market, whose produce vendors, butchers, spice merchants, fishmongers and vintage-clothing stores draw shoppers from all over the city.

On a bike ride through the teeming quarter on Friday morning, I passed a tattoo parlour, a specialty cheese shop, several places selling Latin American foods, a store selling stuff from Tibet, a hat vendor and numerous independent cafés, restaurants and taco joints. None would seem to face much of a threat from Wal-Mart, which offers mass-produced general consumer goods and an entirely different shopping experience. If Wal-Mart moved in, locals might go there for underwear, toilet paper and milk, but still head to Kensington for their coffee beans and fresh fruit.

Far from wrecking the neighbourhood, the new complex could improve it. The stretch of Bathurst where it would go is a bit of a dead zone, with rundown houses on one side and old commercial buildings on the other. The mall would replace an auto body shop, an electrical-supply company and the former Kromer Radio. Parking would go underground and ground-level stores below the Wal-Mart would face the sidewalk, enlivening, not deadening, the streetscape.

It is wrong to think of big-box retail as an alien, suburban form necessarily destructive to the denser fabric of downtown life. The old Eaton’s and Simpsons stores in the heart of the city were the big-box stores of their day. There has been a Wal-Mart in the Dufferin Mall for years. Neighbouring shopping streets such as Bloor, College and Dundas continue to thrive.

Big-box retailers keen to get in on the trend to downtown living are adapting to the urban environment. Target and Office Depot are opening smaller outlets in the centre of some U.S. cities. Loblaws recently opened supermarkets at Carlton and Church and Queen and Portland. Despite the fears of neighbouring merchants, neither has proved to be a retail death star. Instead, they have added to the growing hum of urban life in those neighbourhoods.

[DM] "Hans Rosling: Religions and babies"

Over at Demography Matters, I point--thanks to Will Baird--to a 2012 TED talk by the Gapminder Foundation's Hans Rosling, examining the question of the relationship between religion and fertility.