[PHOTO] Queen and Dufferin as the condos rise, August 2013

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• City of Brass' Aziz Poonawalla takes issue with Muslims who have issues with Valentine's Day. What's wrong with celebrating love?


• Discover's D-Brief notes the new official survey of Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede.


• The Dragon's Tales notes a study from China suggesting that while reforested areas are cooler in daytime, they are also warmer at night.


• Eastern Approaches notes that coalition politics in the Czech Republic mean that country's post-Communist lustration laws won't be revised.


• Language Log notes the utter failure of an app supposed to make its users write like Hemingway (it doesn't like Hemingway's writing) and observes just how recently passed comedian Sid Caesar was able to learn his famed double-talk.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer observes turbulence in Argentina's oil sector.


• Supernova Condensate commemorates the Valentine's Day gamma-ray burst of 1990.


• Torontoist notes another Rob Ford conflict of interest, this time involving fundraising in 2011.


• Towleroad traces the background behind Nigeria's anti-gay law.


• The Volokh Conspiracy maps the liberalization of gun laws across the United States.


• Window on Eurasia notes that, of the three traditionally Buddhist minorities of Russia, the Buryats have gone furthest towards a revival--the more shamanistic Tuvans and the Stalin-deported Kalmyks have further to go.

[NEWS] Some Friday links

• National Geographic notes the cultural and political revival of the Nubians, an ethnic minority originally from far southern Egypt displaced by the flooding caused by the Nasser Dam.


• thenews.pl claims that a half-million Poles emigrated last year, most to the United Kingdom and Germany.


• The Havana Times wonders why, after the reforms of recent years, so many Cubans want to leave. (I think that the wonder is tongue-in-cheek.)


• thejournal.ie notes that, for all its woes, Ireland is a desirable destination for young Venezuelans.


• NASA's press release on the Ganymede survey is great.


• Al-Jazeera notes that many male Syrian refugees in Lebanon are turning to prostitution to make ends meet.


• The BBC notes that dredging won't necessarily do anything to stop severe flooding in the United Kingdom.


• The Global Post provides background into Nigeria's impending ascent to largest economy in Africa, based on everything from better measurement in Nigeria to South African stagnation.


• The Wall Street Journal's Emerging Europe blog traces much Ukrainian anger to its underperformance economically since 1991, relative to Poland and Russia and the Baltic States.


• The South China Morning Post contrasts and compares income in Singapore and Hong Kong, arguing Singaporean figures are inflated by foreign investment.

[LINK] "Winter in the Antarctic Shows What It Will Take to Live on Mars"

Scientific American's Clara Moskowski writes about the lessons of life at Antarctica's Concordia Station for crews on future long-range missions. (I'd learned of Concordia a few years ago in connection with extraterrestrial life; Concordia's usefulness for social sciences also makes sense.)

This week 13 people will begin a nine-month mission inside a small, remote station largely cut off from the world. Outside their habitat there is little air, extremely cold temperatures and no sunlight. The crew must eat only what they've stockpiled and recycle their precious water for reuse. Despite appearances, however, these people are not going to space, but to the next best thing: Antarctica.

The European Concordia Research Station is set to begin its 10th winter season on the southernmost continent, where the sun will not rise for more than three months starting around May. In addition to conducting astronomical, atmospheric and glacier research, among other projects, the crew will serve as test subjects on a mock mission to Mars. After all, their experiences are the closest we can come to learning how astronauts will fare on a real long-distance space voyage without actually sending them off Earth. "We’ll never be able to be 100 percent prepared for everything," says Oliver Angerer, project manager for Concordia at the European Space Agency (ESA). "We can only do the best we can by learning as much as we can from similar situations."

Scientists will closely monitor how the Concordia crew members fare physically, mentally and emotionally. "You have limited space for a bunch of people, no contact with the outside world in a normal way, no sunlight or normal circadian triggers," says Peter Gräf, life sciences program manager at the German Aerospace Center, who has worked on numerous Mars analogue missions. "You have a bunch of people you have to get along with, and you have no alternatives and no escapes." Studies will track how their diet and metabolism correlate with mood changes, whether their sleep is disturbed by the lack of sunlight and pressure changes, and how the isolation and stress of the situation affect crew dynamics. All of these data will eventually be used to help plan the first official missions to Mars and other deep-space destinations.

Concordia station, which is jointly operated by the French Polar Institute and the Italian Antarctic Research Program, is just one of several Mars analogue missions undertaken by the world's space agencies and science organizations. In 2010 Russia, the ESA and China collaborated on the Mars 500 mission, which sent six volunteers inside a sealed habitat for 520 days on a mock mission to and from the Red Planet. NASA routinely sends astronauts to the desert as well as deep under the sea on the Aquarius research station to simulate space missions. And the nonprofit Mars Society is planning a yearlong mission simulation at its Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS) in northern Canada starting in summer. "By practicing these missions you can find out what technologies you need and what technologies you don’t need," says Mars Society president Robert Zubrin. "You can find out what the real requirements for crew psychology are. And I think these things do one other thing: they focus people's attention on what the space program should be doing." Simulating a mission to Mars, he says, can excite the public and galvanize support for a real journey there.

[URBAN NOTE] "Why Gayborhoods Matter"

Writing at The Atlantic Cities, urbanist Richard Florida makes an argument for the continued importance of GLBT-heavy neighbours in the United States (and by extension elsewhere, like Toronto's Church and Wellesley) for cities.

Economists have long speculated about the effects of gayborhoods on everything from diversity to gentrification to housing prices. One common theme of this analysis is that neighborhoods with a higher than average density of gay residents are by definition more diverse and open-minded, with a wider range of racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups as well. Another common argument is that gays often pioneer the revitalization of disadvantaged, crime-filled urban neighborhoods – and their presence can be seen as an early marker of gentrification and a precursor to a jump in housing prices.

[. . .]

New research from the University of Pennsylvania’s Janice F. Madden and the University of Colorado Boulder’s Matt Ruther attempts to sort out the difficult questions of whether, where, and why gayborhoods form. The research, presented at the American Economic Association’s annual summit in January, uses data from the 2000 and 2010 Census and the 2005-9 American Community Survey to look at census-tract level concentrations of same-sex couples within 38 large central cities of 35 metropolitan areas across the U.S. (Though this data is clearly just a portion of the country’s gay and lesbian population, it’s the best proxy we have right now).

[. . .]

Gay men and lesbians tend to gravitate to different neighborhoods, according to the study. Gay men also cluster more substantially than lesbians, according to the study. This is especially the case out West, particularly in greater San Francisco, San Diego, and Seattle. Lesbian couples were far less clustered than their gay male counterparts in both 2000 and 2010, and their level of separation from the rest of the population declined over the course of the decade.

Contrary to popular perception, there was little evidence that gay or lesbian households were more likely to live close to downtown. Gay men, however, were more likely to live in neighborhood tracts with older, historic housing stock.

The study also found little evidence that gay couples gravitate toward areas with large existing LGBT populations. Moreover, there was little evidence that gay and lesbian neighborhoods are more diverse than other neighborhood on racial or ethnic lines.

[. . .]

The results of the study do point to a connection between gay neighborhoods and some of the markers of gentrification. Across the board, the researchers found neighborhoods that began the decade with larger concentrations of gay men saw greater income growth, and, especially in the Northeast, greater population growth as well. This last finding, perhaps one of the most significant in light of current debates about gentrification, largely backs up research done a decade ago by UCLA’s Gary Gates. (However, several of the study’s other conclusions, including the finding that gay couples were no less likely to live in racially or ethnically diverse neighborhoods, contrast Gates’s research from the 2000 Census).

[BRIEF NOTE] On two African crops making it into the West

It's not every day that I come across two Guardian article written about the emergence of different African grains onto the world food market. Yesterday was that day.

First, published last month, was Claire Provost and Elissa Jobson's "Move over quinoa, Ethiopia's teff poised to be next big super grain" celebrating teff.

At Addis Ababa airport, visitors are greeted by pictures of golden grains, minute ochre-red seeds and a group of men gathered around a giant pancake. Billboards boast: "Teff: the ultimate gluten-free crop!"

Ethiopia is one of the world's poorest countries, well-known for its precarious food security situation. But it is also the native home of teff, a highly nutritious ancient grain increasingly finding its way into health-food shops and supermarkets in Europe and America.

Teff's tiny seeds – the size of poppy seeds – are high in calcium, iron and protein, and boast an impressive set of amino acids. Naturally gluten-free, the grain can substitute for wheat flour in anything from bread and pasta to waffles and pizza bases. Like quinoa, the Andean grain, teff's superb nutritional profile offers the promise of new and lucrative markets in the west.

In Ethiopia, teff is a national obsession. Grown by an estimated 6.3 million farmers, fields of the crop cover more than 20% of all land under cultivation. Ground into flour and used to make injera, the spongy fermented flatbread that is basic to Ethiopian cuisine, the grain is central to many religious and cultural ceremonies. Across the country, and in neighbouring Eritrea, diners gather around large pieces of injera, which doubles as cutlery, scooping up stews and feeding one another as a sign of loyalty or friendship – a tradition known as gursha.

Outside diaspora communities in the west, teff has flown under the radar for decades. But growing appetite for traditional crops and booming health-food and gluten-free markets are breathing new life into the grain, increasingly touted as Ethiopia's "second gift to the world", after coffee.

The article goes on to wonder whether or not the growing popularity of teff could displace it as something regularly eaten in the Ethiopian diet.

Published this month was Nina Roberts' "Fonio: the grain that would defeat quinoa as king among foodies". I've not eaten anything made of the West African grass fonio, but--if the experiences of the Senegalese enclave in New York City are indicative--I may.

“I don’t want Americans knowing about fonio,” says Fatoumata Fadiga, sternly shaking her head. Fadiga, an immigrant from Guinea in West Africa, stands in a matching flowered shirt and skirt in the back room of her New York beauty supply shop after a lunch of fonio with stewed chicken and okra puree.

Fonio will be the next quinoa in America, if Pierre Thiam has his way. The chef and restauranteur has big plans for the little grain. In 2008 Thiam published a Senegalese cookbook – Yolele!, which translates to “let the good times roll” in the Wolof language – so that western cooks could easily prepare Senegalese dishes. He even battled celebrity chef Bobby Flay over papaya (and lost) on the garish, dry ice fog infused Iron Chef show, a show whose brashness is an odd fit for Thiam’s affable, calm demeanor. Since the late 1990s he’s been cooking high-end Pan-African influenced food for his catering company, serving a range of clients from the Clinton Foundation to Mos Def.

His next project is fonio. Fonio is a kind of millet that has a nutty flavor – a cross between couscous and quinoa in both appearance and texture. It has been cultivated in West Africa for thousands of years, and is a favorite in salads, stews, porridges and even ground into flour. It’s gluten-free and nutritious because of two amino acids, cystine and methionine, which make it a favorite to be baked into bread for diabetics, those who are gluten intolerant or have celiac disease. It is, in short, the perfect new grain for juice-cleansing, diet-conscious yogis … if they can get their hands on it.

Thiam, a chef and entrepreneur from Senegal living in New York City, is preparing to import fonio by the end of 2014 for mainstream US consumption, working with a women-owned and -operated collective in Senegal near the Mali and Guinea border. Fonio will start its US journey, as so many immigrants do, in New York. In the city’s Little Senegal neighborhood, you can order fonio á la sauce mafé, peanut beef stew with fonio.

Fonio is currently for sale in New York’s West African shops, amid pungent smells and little baggies of mysterious-looking herbs with no labels; it costs about $6 for a 32oz bag. Fonio can also be purchased online from importers.

The article also ends among speculation that fonio's growing popularity could lead to its displacement, etc. etc.

[URBAN NOTE] On the World's Biggest Bookstore becoming Restaurant Row

The above is a quick shot I took this evening of the exterior of the World's Biggest Bookstore, located on 20 Edward Street just north of Yonge and Dundas.

I learned as early as June 2012 that , was set to close. I was quite surprised to learn that the bookstore will be replaced not by condos, but by a row of restaurants. blogTO's expression of surprise was understandable.

The iconic World's Biggest Bookstore in downtown Toronto will become a row of four restaurants by fall of 2015, promises the developer which bought the property last year.

The new property owner, Lifetime Developments, is building a "new culinary mecca" at 20 Edward St.

No restaurants have been named as possibilities for the space, but the developer has offered "multi‐level patio opportunities, soaring ceiling heights, column free space, and common 'back of house' elements."

The plans began when the closure of the World's Biggest Bookstore was announced in November of last year. It will close in March.

[LINK] On the rise of Goodreads

Svati Kirsten Narula's interview at The Atlantic with Otis Chandler and Elizabeth Khuri Chandler, co-founders of Goodreads, makes for interesting reading. As someone who maintains a profile there, I like reading about how this interesting online social network came to be.

Let’s flash back to seven years ago when you launched Goodreads. Can you tell me the founding story?

Otis Chandler: In 2006, I moved to Los Angeles to be closer to Elizabeth. The company I was working at before had launched an early social network called Tickle, and I had also worked on online dating sites. So I had a good understanding of online social dynamics.

The interesting thing with dating sites was that they really splintered—every niche, genre, ethnicity, and sport has a dating site! But for as long as I worked on dating sites, I didn’t use them—I was not single. I wanted to build a social network around something that I loved. Elizabeth and I are both big bookworms, and my freshman project at Stanford was building a digital e-reader—so I guess I’ve always had an itch to scratch there.

Elizabeth Chandler: I was working as a journalist at the Los Angeles Times, and I’m a words person. I like writing, [and I was] an English major – probably the typical Goodreads user, especially in the beginning! So I got really excited when he built it, like “This is for me! Now I’m going to catalogue every book I have in my house.”

OC: We found that Elizabeth and all her English major friends were our power users, and we thought, “There’s something here.”

But if there was an epiphany moment, it was when I was in my friend’s room, and he had a bookshelf of all the books he’d ever read, and I just kind of grilled him: “Well, what did you think of this book, what did you think of that book?” And I came away with a long list of five or 10 books I was excited to read.

Putting my social networking hat [on], I thought, if I could only get my all friends to put their bookshelves online and say what they thought of them. That seemed like it would just be a really good way to find good books. And I think that’s been proven true.

EC: People of all types who read all sorts of books really gravitated to the product and loved it. People started making connections over their shared love of, you know, sci-fi or paranormal romance or steampunk.

OC: I think between all our friends and friends of friends, it got up to maybe 800 people. And then it got a little bit of press, Mashable picked it up, and then the blogosphere found it. It turned out there was a massive community of people who had book blogs, and were blogging [as they read books and writing reviews after they finished them], and they each had 10 friends on their blogroll who did the same thing. Goodreads was just a better way of doing what they already wanted to do, and they adopted us in droves.

As noted in April of last year by Jordan Weissman, also at The Atlantic, Goodreads' purchase by Amazon provided the latter book retailer with a huge amount of potential data.

According to Codex's quarterly survey (in 2012, the company interviewed some 30,000 readers total), far fewer people are finding their reading material at brick-and-mortar bookstores than two years ago. Instead, they're relying more on online media (including social networks and author websites) and personal recommendations from people they know (which tend to happen in person, but can also include some social network chatting). What they're not relying on much more heavily are recommendation engines from online booksellers, like Amazon.

In short, Barnes and Noble's in-store displays don't rule the book business like they used to, but they haven't been usurped by Amazon's algorithms either. Instead, the business model is moving further towards word of mouth. And, much as a very small portion of Americans do most of the book reading in this country, so too are they responsible for a vast majority of book recommending. Codex estimates that 11 percent of book buyers make about 46 percent of recommendations.

The sorts of lit lovers who like to evangelize their favorite new novel are the same sorts of folks who tend to show up on Goodreads. And so, perhaps unsurprisingly, the site is a great platform for convincing people to buy books. Roughly 29 percent of Goodreads users told Codex they'd learned about the last book they bought either on the site, or at another book-focused social network.* At traditional social networks, the number is 2.4 percent. When all is said and done, in the world of books, Goodreads is just about as influential as Facebook.

In the interview, the co-founders say that Amazon hasn't tried to interfere with the rich social ecology of Goodreads, particularly by stacking reviews. I only hope this keeps on.