[PHOTO] Dufferin Street underpass, at night, August 2013

I've blogged a fair bit about the underpass built for Dufferin Street, allowing it to proceed in a straight line north under the railway tracks at Queen Street. These shots was taken at night, from the east.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Centauri Dreams wonders if extraterrestrial civilizations might not be found through large-scale megaengineering but rather through nano-scale artifacts.


• Crooked Timber's Maria Farrell takes a look at trends in Internet governance in a post-American world.


• The Dragon's Tales notes that Arianespace may need more subsidies.


• The Financial Times's World blog follows increasing instability in Venezuela.


• Otto Pohl wonders when neocolonial economics will stop in Ghana, a country that could become a manufacturing power but doesn't.


• Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw likes the gentler and less strident politics of New Zealand.


• Registan features a guest post from David Levy on the subject of Kyrgyzstan's entrance into the new Russian-dominated customs union. Yes, it might be an instance of Russian force majeure, but it is also what large segments of Kyrgzystan would like. (Protection from Chinese products features.)


• Savage Minds features a guest post from Elizabeth Cullen Dunn explaining why she is boycotting Sochi, not only because of the historical ethnic cleansing of the Circassians but because of the contemporary ethnic cleansing of Georgians. (She did fieldwork in Georgia; it sounds grim.)


• Window on Eurasia paraphrases an argument to the effect that supporters of a European linkage will have to overcome the fears of the industrial but uncompetitive southeast as to how their economies will survive.

[LINK] "China’s Yutu Moon Rover Alive and Awake for 3rd Lunar Day of Exploration despite Malfunction

Universe Today's Ken Kremer shared the good news. (What, I wonder, is the current state of affairs?)

Yutu Lives!

The little ‘rabbit’ beloved worldwide has now phoned home and actually survived the perils of the long lunar night and is alive and awake to start a 3rd day of scientific exploration despite suffering a serious malfunction as it entered the latest hibernation period two weeks ago.

“Yutu has come back to life!” said Pei Zhaoyu, the spokesperson for China’s lunar probe program, according to a breaking news report by the state owned Xinhua news agency.

[. . .]

Yutu’s new lease on life also comes after Monday’s (Feb. 11) premature report of the robots demise by the state owned China News Service, reported here.

However, “Yutu failed to power-up Monday [Feb 11] and data about its current condition and repair progress is still being collected and analyzed,” Xinhua and CCTV (China state run television) reported.

This indicates that Yutu was in fact feared lost for some time by the mission team, until further efforts finally resulted in the detection of a signal from the spacecraft – and a welcome reversal of yesterdays news!

The robot “has now been restored to its normal signal reception function,” says Pei.

[. . ]

But much technical work remains ahead for the engineering and science teams to ascertain why it malfunctioned and whether the six wheeled rover can be restored to partial or full functionality.

[LINK] "There Will Never Be Another American Revolution"

Ben Schreckinger's Slate article, subtitled "Our bars are too loud, our cafés too quiet", seems to me to oversimplify matter susbstantially. Are there truly no alternative venues?

Bars have gotten louder at least in part in response to research showing that louder music encourages patrons to talk less and drink more. By rendering conversation obsolete, the loud atmosphere also nudges people towards imbibing past the point where intelligent conversation is possible. It’s not easy to find a large, crowded bar in an American city where conversation isn’t drowned out by music or a sports telecast. In fact, the Saloon, On U St. in Washington, D.C., has made its name by refusing to play loud music and forcing patrons to stay in their seats, making conversation possible.

The cafés, meanwhile, have gotten quieter. For centuries, coffee was used as a conversation stimulant. But in the present-day U.S., it functions primarily as productivity booster. Coffee long ago penetrated the workplace, and now cafés themselves have become workplaces—not just for eccentric writers and artists, but for knowledge workers of all stripes, who are often plugged into headphones that are plugged into laptops.

[. . .]

The shift in both scenes amounts to more than just a loss for conversationalists. For centuries, bars and cafés around the world have fostered dissent and bottom-up political action. Cafés, especially, have bedeviled the authorities as long as they’ve existed. In 1511, worried about loose political talk stimulated by coffee, the governor of Mecca ordered all of the city’s cafés to shut their doors. In 1675, Charles II of England condemned coffee houses as sites where “False, Malitious and Scandalous Reports are devised and spread abroad, to the Defamation of His Majestie's Government, and to the Disturbance of the Peace and Quiet of the Realm.” He ordered all of them disbanded by January. Neither ban proved enforceable.

[. . .]

This isn’t coincidence—a variety of factors have made bars and cafés the spaces where potent political change begins. Alcohol loosens inhibitions and caffeine stimulates conversation. The spaces offer a meeting place for people who don’t have access to private clubs, boardrooms, and the halls of power—people, in other words, who are less invested in the status quo. Crucially, these are also semi-public spaces that can deliver a measure of privacy, a place where it’s easy to congregate yet hard for authorities to monitor.

But that sweet spot can only be achieved at a certain level of din: A bar or café needs to be quiet enough that you can engage in conversation but loud enough to create both the perception and the reality that you won’t be too easily overheard by the wrong people. (Not that the authorities won’t try. Louis XV’s spies haunted the cafés of 18th-century Paris. The NYPD’s controversial 21st-century infiltration of Muslim neighborhoods in New York City and beyond sent plainclothes officers to spy in cafés where they eavesdropped on conversations about politics, cricket, and kebab.) It’s this din, created by a large number of people closely congregated and engaging in regular conversation, which has been increasingly hard to find in our coffee houses and beer halls.

[URBAN NOTE] "Why Charlottetown Is the No. 1 Place to See in 2014"

Writing at the Huffington Post, Adrian Brijbassi makes the case for visiting Charlottetown now, at the time of the 150th anniversary of the Charlottetown Conference of 1864.

The new icon of the recently rebranded Prince Edward Island Brewing Company is a top hat. It's drawn a touch off-kilter and with a silhouette of a beer bottle above its brim. Students of Canadian politics will instantly connect the image to the father of the nation, who could look dapper or dishevelled, depending on his level of sobriety. In 2014, Canadian political history will be unmistakeable to all PEI visitors -- even if they're simply pulling up to a bar for a cold brew.

While Sir John A. Macdonald's legacy stretches across the country, it could be argued that what he accomplished in Charlottetown in 1864 stands right behind the formation of a national railway as the greatest achievement of his career. In a nine-day period in late summer, Macdonald and a coterie of 22 other politicians -- who at one point all posed in top hats for a photograph -- gathered in Prince Edward Island to forge the terms for a union of colonies that would create an independent Canada. They debated "unreservedly," as Macdonald put it, and came to an agreement on how to proceed. It was an achievement unthinkable today, when politics plods and rancour reigns.

What occurred in Charlottetown 150 years ago can't be understated -- and in 2014 it won't be. The sesquicentennial of the Charlottetown Conference, the pivotal event that led to the 1867 constitution, will include a year-long celebration that revs up on Canada Day and continues through September 6, the height of Founders' Week when the likes of Macdonald, George Brown and George-Étienne Cartier gathered in Province House to muscle out a deal.

"We will have a Celebration Zone that includes free family activities, concerts, cooking demonstrations. The island's chefs will be involved. There will be interactive entertainment. It's going to be one giant party," says Patti Devine, director of communications for PEI 2014, the organization that has invested $1.4 million into planning the festivities in Charlottetown's pretty downtown core.