[PHOTO] Province House, looking south in the rain

From a vantage point looking south at the intersection of University Avenue with Grafton Street, I took a picture of the north face of Province House. Prince Edward Island's legislative assembly building is also of note as the place where, in 1864, politicians from across what is now central and eastern Canada met to discuss the formation of a British North American union.

My other photographs of Province House are available here.

[PHOTO] The Black Bull Tavern on Don Cherry, December 2012

Walking past the Black Bull Tavern (298 Queen Street West) late last month with a friend, I was curious to see this sign. What did it mean?

It turns out that the bar's own, former CFL player Bobby Taylor, was quite upset with Don Cherry over statements he made about injured players.

On Nov. 30, 2013, Don Cherry took to the airwaves on CBC’s Hockey Night In Canada – wearing what appeared to be a shabby chic down comforter as a jacket – and blasted the former NHL players who are suing the League for the way its handled concussions through the years.

“It’s a money grab,” said Cherry, calling the lawsuit ridiculous. “I feel sorry for the guys, but it’s a money grab.”

Bobby Taylor had heard enough. The owner of Black Bull Tavern on Queen Street West in Toronto doesn’t have the bully pulpit that Cherry does; what he does have is a street sign, which he turned into a billboard calling out Cherry’s comments.

The one side reads: “HNIC Don Cherry ‘money grab’ throws hockey players under the bus.”

The other side lists the names of Derek Boogaard, Wade Belak and Rick Rypien, former enforcers who all died in the Summer of 2011.

Good for Taylor.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• BlogTO notes that some politicians want Toronto to submit a bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics. Please, no.


• Centauri Dreams' Paul Gilster examines the electric sail propulsion concept mentioned for a prototype space probe to Uranus.


• The Dragon's Tales links to a paper wondering if a brown dwarf in the WD0137-349 is being irradiated by its companion white dwarf.


• Far Outliers notes the oil rush occurring in different parts of the Middle East in 1913.


• Joe. My. God. shares the news that Russian actor Ivan Okhlobystin, noteworthy for his homophobic statements including a desire to burn non-heterosexuals alive, has quit his job as creative director for an Apple-affiliated cellphone manufacturer. He blames teh gays.


• Language Log's Victor Mair celebrates the 108th birthday, on the 13th of this month, of Zhou Youguang, the man who invented the pinyin Latinization.


• At Lawyers, Guns and Money, Scott Lemieux observes that a tendency among some Republicans to liken anything they like to slavery doesn't play well among non-white voters.


• Savage Minds' Rex links to a mass of interesting public-domain anthropology studies.


• Strange Maps shares some fascinating maps about the distribution, by region and by depth, of bivalves in the North Sea.


• Torontoist notes that mayoral candidate David Soknacki wants to restore the Scarborough light rail plan.


• Towleroad notes that the popularity of slash fan fiction concerning the protagonists of the hit show Sherlock in China may be indicating a sea change in Chinese opinions on LGBT issues and people.


• Window on Eurasia observes, after some American scholars, predictions as to the sorts of Russian (and other post-Soviet) urban settlements that might disappear by 2050. (Small cities and one-industry cities are vulnerable.)

[ISL] On the place of the Charlottetown library in the Confederation Centre

I received an E-mail this afternoon from my parents letting me know that the Confederation Centre of the Arts complex would like to move Confederation Centree Public Library, the central location of Prince Edward Island's provincial library system and the main library of Charlottetown, out. At the Centre's end, apparently it would like to take the space back and use it for events of its own. At the library system's end, meanwhile, apparently it would like a more functional space. The story was detailed by the Charlottetown Guardian's Ryan Ross.

The provincial library in Charlottetown could be on the move after the Confederation Centre of the Arts approached the government about finding somewhere else to house it.

Few details were available Wednesday about a potential move, but a statement from a Tourism Department spokesman confirmed the centre approached the province about freeing up the space the library uses.

“The province has not yet received an official proposal from the centre and the discussion is very preliminary in nature.”

[. . .]

Although the Confederation Centre has housed the library since it opened in 1964, the provincial government staffs and runs it and pays $178,000 a year to lease the space. The centre pays for maintenance and upkeep.

[. . .]

In an interview with The Guardian, Jill MacMicken Wilson, acting director of libraries and archives, said she couldn’t talk about a potential move, but did discuss some of the issues the library has to deal with because of the space it’s in.

MacMicken Wilson said the centre has served the library well over the years but its changing needs aren’t being met.

“Libraries are not just places where you can borrow books,” she said.

The library has turned into a community gathering space with different programs on offer, such as reading clubs for teens and social media training for seniors, but it doesn’t have meeting rooms where groups can get away from other library patrons, she said.

The library is a fit for the Centre, and I'm not saying it only because I worked there for three years. The Confederation Centre is a cultural complex; the library is about culture.

Where would it move to? Is there any space nearby that would be suitable for the library? I'm concerned.

[LINK] "Possibilities of life around Alpha Centauri B"

The Dragon's Tales linked to an interesting paper, by Antolin Gonzalez, Rolando Cardenas, and John Hearnshaw. Gonzalez et al. suggest that Alpha Centauri B--an orange dwarf somewhat less massive and substantially dimmer than our own sun, already believed to host one exoplanet, the controversial Alpha Centauri Bb--could easily support planets hospitable to our sort of life.

We make a preliminary assessment on the habitability of potential rocky exoplanets around Alpha Centauri B. We use several indexes: the Earth Similarity Index, a mathematical model for photosynthesis, and a biological productivity model. Considering the atmospheres of the exoplanets similar to current Earth's atmosphere, we find consistent predictions of both the Earth Similarity Index and the biological productivity model. The mathematical model for photosynthesis clearly failed because does not consider the temperature explicitly. For the case of Alpha Centauri B, several simulation runs give 11 planets in the habitable zone. Applying to them above mentioned indexes, we select the five exoplanets more prone for photosynthetic life; showing that two of them in principle have better conditions than Earth for this kind of life.