[PHOTO] Water Prince Corner Shop, 141 Water Street

The Water Prince Corner Shop at 141 Water Street is one of the best small, and relatively inexpensive, seafood restaurants of my acquaintance. All the glowing reviews on Yelp can't be wrong!

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• BlogTO links to vintage photographs of Bloor Street.


• Centauri Dreams documents intergalactic flows of star-fueling hydrogen around the galaxy M82.


• D-Brief explains what Hawking meant when he said black holes didn't exist.


• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper analyzing the likely structures of the Nu Ophiuchi and Gliese 581 systems.


• The Financial Times's World Blog doesn't think Italy is likely to escape its institutional deadlock and examines the issues related to German-style labour market reforms in France.


• The New APPS Blog's Jon Cogburn writes an interesting piece comparing Nazi plans for conquered eastern Europe with North America's own racial issues.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer links to a recent set of scenarios on Syria's future. Best-case scenario involves a partition, worst-case scenario involves wholesale regional war.


• Supernova Condensate takes a look at the pharmacology of tea.


• Window on Eurasia notes China's use of soft power to win hearts and minds in Central Asia.

[URBAN NOTE] "On Thursday at the Economic Club, Rob Ford Lied Several Times Every Minute"

Christopher Bird and Hamutal Dotan's extended fisking of a speech given by Toronto mayor Rob Ford, highlighting his exaggerations and outright lies, is an achievement.

We have often pointed out that Rob Ford lies all the time; he lies habitually, ceaselessly, and carelessly. He does not even lie particularly well: his lies are blatant, easily disproved with a little research or basic knowledge.

But how mendacious, exactly, is our mayor? How often does he omit, mislead, prevaricate, or just make stuff up? Luckily, Rob Ford gave what was his first real campaign speech of 2014 (as opposed to the countless unofficial campaign speeches he has been giving for years now) at the Economic Club of Canada, and we have decided to record, for posterity, every single time Rob Ford was less than honest. We have divided these instances into two categories: straight-up This Ain’t Right moments in red, and statements that are distortions, but not quite as clear cut, in orange.

They count 54.

Go, read the whole thing. (The more than 200 comments at the bottom of the page are also worthy of reading, if only out of morbid curiosity.)

[LINK] "The Little Bit of Neanderthal in All of Us"

Carl Zimmer's New York Times article summarizing two recent studies on the degree and nature of Neanderthal ancestry in modern human beings is interesting, as much for its suggestions as to what Neanderthals did contribute as to what they didn't. They may have been more genetically distinctive than a mere isolated hominid population.

The first draft of the Neanderthal genome was too rough to allow scientists to draw further conclusions. But recently, researchers sequenced a far more accurate genome from a Neanderthal toe bone.

Scientists at Harvard Medical School and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany compared this high-quality Neanderthal genome to the genomes of 1,004 living people. They were able to identify specific segments of Neanderthal DNA from each person’s genome.

“It’s a personal map of Neanderthal ancestry,” said David Reich of Harvard Medical School, who led the research team. He and his colleagues published their results in the journal Nature.

Living humans do not have a lot of Neanderthal DNA, Dr. Reich and his colleagues found, but some Neanderthal genes have become very common. That’s because, with natural selection, useful genes survive as species evolve. “What this proves is that these genes were helpful for non-Africans in adapting to the environment,” Dr. Reich said.

[. . .]

Both studies suggest that Neanderthal genes involved in skin and hair were favored by natural selection in humans. Today, they are very common in living non-Africans.

[. . .]

Both teams of scientists also found long stretches of the living human genomes where Neanderthal DNA was glaringly absent. This pattern could be produced if modern humans with certain Neanderthal genes could not have as many children on average as people without them. For example, living humans have very few genes from Neanderthals involved in making sperm. That suggests that male human-Neanderthal hybrids might have had lower fertility or were even sterile.

Overall, said Dr. Reich, “most of the Neanderthal genetic material was more bad than good.”

io9/u> and National Geographic go also have posts discussing the findings.

[URBAN NOTE] On Saks Fifth Avenue's replacement of The Bay

BlogTO's Derek Flack's post on the planned opening of a Saks Fifth Avenue store in the Yonge/Queen location of the Bay was remarkable news, as Torontoist's Jamie Bradburn had noted in his nice history of that particular retail location.

For years, the crosswalk between Simpsons and Eaton’s on Queen Street was nicknamed “the cattle crossing” because of the high volume of shoppers flowing between downtown Toronto’s rival department stores. By the end of next year, those pedestrians (along with those using the skywalk above) may be shuffling between Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom.

Less than two weeks after Nordstrom announced it would replace Sears, Hudson’s Bay Company announced that it will be selling its landmark store at Queen and Yonge and the adjoining Simpson Tower to Toronto Eaton Centre owner Cadillac Fairview. Under the $650-million deal, HBC will continue to lease the site for the next 25 years.

Shoppers will notice a major change by fall 2015: a fifth of the 750,000 square foot store will become Canada’s first Saks Fifth Avenue location. HBC, whose corporate parent bought the high-end American department store last year, previously indicated that the Hudson Bay store at Bloor and Yonge would be converted into Saks. According to the Star, Cadillac Fairview CEO John Sullivan convinced HBC CEO Richard Baker that, with Nordstrom coming to the Eaton Centre, Saks would be a good fit for the mall.

The changes announced this morning mark the latest chapter in the site’s history as a department store. Robert Simpson launched a dry goods business on the west side of Yonge Street a few doors north of Queen in 1872, then moved a block south in 1881. Simpson’s new store quickly burst out of its confines, and for nearly a century, the company bought adjoining properties to allow for its continued expansion.

[. . .]

Just as rival Eaton’s expanded rapidly on the north side of Queen Street, Simpsons built numerous extensions that stretched the store west toward Bay Street. The poshest expansion was a nine-storey, art deco–inspired addition that opened in 1929. Its centrepiece was the Arcadian Court restaurant, which Simpsons officials added to retain the lunch trade the store feared losing to the recently opened Royal York Hotel and the Eaton’s store under construction at Yonge and College (now College Park).

I've mentioned in passing the planned opening of a Nordstrom's in the Eaton Centre location where Sears used to be (and before Sears, Eaton's). I'm largely OK with the apparent trend for distinctive Canadian retail chains to disappear ... and yet.

[URBAN NOTE] On how opening a Loblaws in Kensington Market is a perfectly good thing

As I noted last February among other times, grocery chain Loblaws has long had an interest in establishing a presence in the Kensington Market area. As CBC observed earlier this week, it has done so. There are plans to set up a storee on the second floor of a condo development, its doors scheduled to be open by 2016.

The grocery store giant has announced it will open a new "urban format" grocery store in the Toronto neighbourhood as part of a mix-use condo project at College Street and Spadina Avenue.

By "urban format," the company means a store much smaller than its usual size, which can be as large as 85,000 square feet. This location, nestled among the iconic Toronto community known for its versatile mom and pop shops, will be one quarter that size — at around 20,000 square feet.

A group known as the Friends of Kensington Market say that the presence of a large grocery store will do more harm than good for the neighbourhood and began opposing the proposed plans last winter.

Yvonne Bambrick of the Friends of Kensington Market says she is concerned about the impact on the vendors who make their living selling fresh food there.

"They are what make this place a market and why it’s so special to so many people," Bambrick told CBC News in an interview on Tuesday.

Bambrick also said she feels it is a "predatory" move to set up shop in an area that is already well-served by food retailers.

Now this announcement comes as the area continues its war against a proposed Wal-Mart store — which have since stalled — saying that letting in such big business risks hurting the existing smaller shops within the area.

Where to start?

1. For starters, this store isn't located in Kensington Market, but rather near it, at most on the periphery. The lot in question, near the southwest corner of Spadina Avenue and College, is at the very most on the northern fringe. It is not, say, located on the neighbourhood's central artery of Augusta.

2. Kensington Market isn't isn't necessarily well-served with food retailers past an early point in the evening. Shops tend to close early.

3. Kensington Market is, critically, a neighbourhood set to have rapid population increases in coming years as the densification of the area continues. A neighbourhood without easy access to food stores is a problem neighbourhood.

4. Most importantly, is there any evidence that Loblaws' opening of a large store will actually hurt the specialty stores of Kensington Market? Kensington Market's specialty shops cater to specialty markets, people who want the coffee, or the fish, or the cheese, or the Turkish delight, that they can only find there. Will they really start shopping at a Loblaws? St. Lawrence Market has survived three major grocery chains opening up in its neighbourhood, after all.

The commenters at BlogTO and Torontoist seem to likewise have a relaxed attitude towards this. I think it a good thing: NIMBYism is never helpful in a dynamic city.

[BRIEF NOTE] On Gigi Chao's open letter to her father about her wife

Gigi Chao has addressed her father's highly public offering of a huge dowry to any man who would take her from her wife with an open letter.

The daughter of a flamboyant Hong Kong tycoon whose offer of a massive dowry inspired a movie wrote an open letter on Wednesday asking him to accept who she is after he reportedly raised the price.

Cecil Chao made world headlines in 2012 when he tried to find a man who could successfully woo his daughter, Gigi Chao, away from her partner by offering 500 million Hong Kong dollars (more than $71.7 million Cdn), an offer that a Malaysian newspaper who interviewed him last week said he has doubled.

In a letter to her father published Wednesday by two Hong Kong newspapers, Gigi Chao said she knows it's "difficult for you to understand, let alone accept" how she could be romantically attracted to a woman.

[. . .]

Cecil Chao, who made his fortune as a Hong Kong property developer, has a reputation for being a playboy with a love for Rolls-Royces. He once claimed to have had 10,000 girlfriends but has never married. Gigi Chao is one of his three children by three different women.

Shanghaiist has the text of the open letter, as does the South China Morning Post.

My regret is that you have no idea how happy I am with my life, and there are aspects of my life that you don’t share. I suppose we don’t need each other’s approval for our romantic relationships, and I am sure your relationships are really fantastic too.

However, I do love my partner Sean, who does a good job of looking after me, ensuring I am fed, bathed and warm enough every day, and generally cheering me up to be a happy, jolly girl. She is a large part of my life, and I am a better person because of her.

Now, I’m not asking you to be best of friends; however, it would mean the world to me if you could just not be so terrified of her, and treat her like a normal, dignified human being.

I understand it is difficult for you to understand, let alone accept this truth.

I’ve spent a lot of time figuring out who I am, what is important in my life, who I love and how best to live life, as an expression of all these questions. I am proud of my life, and I would not choose to live it any other way (except also figuring out how to be gentler on the planet).