[PHOTO] Looking east, Queen and Dovercourt, August 2013

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Centauri Dreams notes a new, sensitive technique that can distinguish the signals of planets from those of their stars. (Tau Boötis b was the subject.)


• Crooked Timber has a whole series of posts on Ukraine's issues, one on ethnic and language issues, and two--one here and one here--about institutional issues.


• The Dragon's Gaze notes a new model for the Fomalhaut system and observes the discovery of two Jupiter-analog planets.


• The role of gas warfare in the First World War's final year is expanded upon at Far Outliers.


• Geocurrents notes that Norway and Slovenia are big winners at the Olympics measured in medals per capita.


• Marginal Revolution observes that foreign aid can boost group.


• Justin Petrone writes about his experience in Estonia under Prime Minister Andrus Ansip, retired after nine years.


• Russian Demographics links to a chart showing the different languages spoken in the United States. The rapid decline of most European immigrant languages--though, curiously, not French--is noteworthy, as is the ascent of Spanish and Asian languages.


• Supernova Condensate's stunning true-colour image of the Martian surface got more forty thousand shares on Tumblr.


• Towleroad notes that Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands have diverted aid from the Ugandan government following that country's recent passage of a terrible anti-gay law.

[URBAN NOTE] "Why the World's Biggest Bookstore is better off closed"

This blogTO post about the soon-to-be-closed World's Biggest Bookstore by former employee Sarah Khan has gotten wide circulation. This linking is not endorsement.

All I'll say is that successful bookstores--or at least surviving bookstores--are ones that have diversified beyond selling only books. For a generation, the World's Biggest Bookstore filled a niche until that niche disappeared, something not aided by the very large floorspace of the bookstore in the Yonge and Dundas area where rents have been rising. Blaming the company for not supporting a store that wasn't likely to make money no matter what was done when--in fact--the company did support the store for quite some time is nonsensical to me.

Rumours circulated the entire time I worked there about the future of the store. Rumour always had it that Indigo's CEO, Heather Reisman, wouldn't agree to renew the lease for the store. The former Coles flagship store, the property was owned by the Cole family who make a tidy sum charging rent for the massive downtown location. However, running a bookstore (especially one of that size) is a losing venture in today's world of eBooks and digital magazines and the Cole family was wise to sell off the property.

I'm guessing the trouble really started when eBooks starting becoming a big thing. People were enamoured with the new technology and the ease of carrying around a library of books without the weight, but that meant that brick and mortar stores were becoming obsolete. While the United States saw the closing of Borders bookstores across the country, Canada fared better with many of the large format Chapters and Indigo stores remaining open. Reisman's attempts at diversification of products sold have thus far kept most of the stores in the chain from succumbing to the same fate. However, in the process, she has partially abandoned books.

While we had an impressive selection of books, magazines and DVDs, we couldn't say the same for our gift merchandise. In fact, when I started there we had no gift merchandise, but rather a clearance section where all the unsellable gift items from other Indigo stores came to die. This clearance section was the bane of everyone's existence because it was hell to keep tidy and there would always been customers who were dissatisfied with the heavy discount they were already getting and demand more.

When Reisman brought in more gift items to keep brick and mortar stores going, we started getting first hand merchandise as well as an attempt to prove to everyone that we could survive as a book and gift store. But the truth was, we couldn't.

[. . .]

To be honest, I never actually suspected that the company would decide to close the store down, regardless of the trouble we had keeping up. I always, naively, suspected that the company would finally realize that we were unlike their other cookie-cutter stores and would hold us to different, fairer standards. At the same time, having been under their regime for five years, I knew in my heart of hearts that the store would never be given the same love and attention as the other stores. We were the black sheep of the Indigo family, the odd man out. We were an embarrassment and it seemed like the company was going out of its way to make us fail just so they'd have a reason to shut us down.

[URBAN NOTE] "Yorkdale’s 50th anniversary a reason to celebrate — and remember"

In today's Toronto Star, fashion journalist Jeanne Beker celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Yorkdale Shopping Centre, one of the largest malls in Canada and at the time one of the most forward-thinking. Jeanne Beker has fond memories of her youth.

For the record, Yorkdale is also aging and in need of revitalization. On this theme, see also my 2005 reflection on Yorkdale as an arcology and my 2009 imagining of Yorkdale as an artifact of a future that didn't quite happen.

With the first section of the Spadina Expressway construction underway just a couple of minutes from my house, Yorkdale became our new shopping mecca, and while my mom went for groceries at the big “jet-age” Dominion store, (which boasted an underground conveyor belt that carried your purchases to a pick-up station in the southwest parking lot) I’d window shop, exhilarated by all the sparkling new stores and thrilled that, finally, Eaton’s and Simpson’s — those two downtown institutions — were both practically in my own backyard.

Then there was the fact that Yorkdale actually housed cinemas! Famous Players’ Yorkdale Theatres was the first dual auditorium facility of its kind, and the first cinema in Canada to be located in a shopping centre. Heading out to Yorkdale in our 1959 Chrysler Imperial for a movie and shopping on a Friday night or a Saturday afternoon brought new meaning to weekends, and provided welcome new oomph to my previously drab suburban world.

In many ways, Yorkdale helped define the ’60s for me, and I had at least a few “coming-of-age” experiences there. Watching Beach Blanket Bingo in 1965, the year I officially became a teenager, felt like a rite of passage. And then there was the afternoon I went shopping for my first bra, at a store called Young Canada. The coveted undergarment was dubbed a “training bra,” and was comprised of a flat band of jersey in the front, attached to those very grown-up bra straps I yearned to show off under my white shirts. After the life-changing purchase, I cruised through the glorious corridors of Yorkdale, proudly clutching my Young Canada bag, and feeling as though I’d finally arrived.

Within a couple of years, my girlfriends and I were organizing group outings to the shopping centre, thanks to the Dufferin bus. If we weren’t taking in a movie, or ordering “Kishka à la Tony”— described on the menu as “stuffed derma with brown gravy” and priced at 45 cents — at the Noshery Encore restaurant, the lure of all the costume jewelry and cosmetic counters at our beloved Yorkdale provided us with hours of entertainment.

[LINK] "Tim Hortons plans 800 more restaurants"

CBC reported on Tim Horton's plans for yet further expansion, most of which is expected to be in Canada.

(For the record, I don't really like Tim's coffee. McDonald's coffee, mentioned in the article, is actually better--better-tasting, at least--and quite cost-competitive.)

Tim Hortons has laid out an ambitious plan to add 800 more franchise outlets by 2018, the latest shot in an escalating war to stay on top of the quick breakfast and coffee market.

The TSX-listed company said Tuesday it will add as many as 300 new locations in the U.S. in the next four years, a market where it has had difficulty gaining a foothold.

It also plans 500 more locations in Canada by 2018, including 160 as early as this year, a market where the brand enjoys extreme brand loyalty but is perceived to be near saturation.

[. . .]

Franchise consultant Douglas Fisher says Tim Hortons has almost saturated the Canadian market, and that shows in its year-over-year sales increases of 1.6 per cent, less than inflation.

In Ontario and most other regions outside Quebec, there is one restaurant for every 7,500 people, and that’s meant less business for individual franchisees.

“Once you saturate a market, you have to go look for a new market or you’re going to die,” Fisher told CBC News, saying he supports a strategy of expansion in the U.S. and the Middle East.

But the U.S. has been a difficult market for Tim Hortons, so it is selecting a few areas where it believes it will do well, he said.

The Middle East may have greater potential, because the chain offers a fresh concept for people there, said Fisher, who has done work for both Tim Hortons and McDonald’s.

[LINK] "Why the Plan to Dig a Canal Across Nicaragua Could Be a Very Bad Idea"

Greg Miller's Wired Science article explaining the Nicaragua Canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans is a worthy read. This canal, currently being promoted by the Nicaraguan government in conjunction with Chinese investors, could have serious environmental consequences, by dividing areas of land and uniting hitherto-separate bodies of water. (A background of extensive seismic and even volcanic activity complicates.)

A final route for the canal has not yet been announced, but the proposed routes pass through Lake Nicaragua, which covers about six times the area of Los Angeles and is Central America’s largest lake.

The lake is a major source of drinking water and irrigation, and home to rare freshwater sharks and other fish of commercial and scientific value, Huete-Pérez and Meyer say. The forest around it is home to howler monkeys, tapirs, jaguars, and countless tropical birds–not to mention several groups of indigenous people (some of whom have challenged the project in court, so far to no avail).

Meyer, who’s done field work in Nicaragua for 30 years, says the area is a natural laboratory for evolutionary biology. Just as Darwin’s finches evolved into different species as they adapted to the unique environment of individual islands, so it goes with fish as they’ve colonized the region’s network of crater lakes. “These crater lakes are like islands in a sea of land from a fish’s perspective,” said Meyer, who has been characterizing genetic changes in the region’s cichlid fish populations.

[. . .]

Huete-Pérez and Meyer worry primarily about the dredging necessary to accommodate massive container ships: The proposed canal is 90 feet deep; the lake averages just 50 feet. “The initial digging would create a huge sediment issue that would be bad for water quality in the lake and the wetlands around it,” Meyer said.

Pedro Alvarez, a civil and environmental engineer at Rice University raises another water-related concern. It may be necessary to dam the San Juan River, the main route for water flowing out of the lake, to keep the water levels high enough for the canal’s locks to work properly, Alvarez says. “If you do that you’re going to change the hydrology of many lakes and rivers,” he said. “Some may dry up.”

Lovejoy sees other potential problems. He’s especially worried about creating a conduit between the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea. “It’s creating the potential for an enormous invasive species problem,” he said. That problem could include venomous Pacific sea snakes invading the Caribbean and a disruption of Caribbean fisheries from an influx of competing species, predators and disease.

[. . .]

The seismic risks may have been overblown for political purposes. But they’re not negligible, and they probably represent the worst-case scenario, says Alvarez, the engineer from Rice University. “Releasing a dam could be a catastrophic event that I don’t even want to think about,” he said.

[LINK] "Loretta Saunders homicide sparks call by native group for public inquiry"

The horrifying story of the murder of Inuk student Loretta Saunders, here reported by CBC, has been widely carried on the Facebook pages of my Atlantic Canadian friends. The effect of horror is doubled for me: not only is it a brutal murder of a young woman in Atlantic Canada, but it does highlight a worrisome trend that the Robert Pickton affair in British Columbia highlighted.

What is going on? What are the factors that exacerbate risk so terribly for First Nations women in Canada? An inquiry might not be the best sort of forum to raise this issue, but it is a forum, at least.

The slaying of Loretta Saunders should trigger a national inquiry into the hundreds of murdered and missing aboriginal women in Canada, the president of the Nova Scotia Native Women’s Association says.

Cheryl Maloney spoke hours after police found the body of Saunders off a New Brunswick highway. Police are treating her death as a homicide.

"I'm never going to let Stephen Harper or Canadians forget about Loretta and all the other missing or murdered aboriginal people," Maloney said.

"There’s something wrong in Canada if aboriginal people have to live this fate."

Saunders, an Inuk woman from Newfoundland and Labrador, was doing her master’s thesis at Halifax's Saint Mary’s University on missing and murdered aboriginal women.

Maloney said aboriginal Canadian women are five times more likely to be violently attacked than non-aboriginal women.

Aboriginal men also face higher risks of violence than non-aboriginal men, she said.

A researcher has found 800 cases of missing or murdered Canadian aboriginal women.

Maloney said the “bright, smart” student didn’t fit stereotypes.

"She wasn't what society expected for a missing aboriginal girl. Canadian society, and especially our prime minister, has been able to ignore the reality of the statistics that are against aboriginal girls,” Maloney said.

"This is not what everyone expects, but she is at risk. Every aboriginal girl in this country is vulnerable. For Canada to be ignoring it for so long, it's disheartening. How many more families does this have to happen to before they take seriously the problem?”

[LINK] "Does Free Will Exist? Ancient Quasars May Hold the Clue"

The title of Jason Major's Universe Today article is fantastic.

[R]esearchers at MIT were trying to determine how to get past a more recent conundrum in physics: Bell’s Theorem. Proposed by Irish physicist John Bell in 1964, the principle attempts to come to terms with the behavior of “entangled” quantum particles separated by great distances but somehow affected simultaneously and instantaneously by the measurement of one or the other — previously referred to by Einstein as “spooky action at a distance.”

The problem with such spookiness in the quantum universe is that it seems to violate some very basic tenets of what we know about the macroscopic universe, such as information traveling faster than light. (A big no-no in physics.)

Then again, testing against Bell’s Theorem has resulted in its own weirdness (even as quantum research goes.) While some of the intrinsic “loopholes” in Bell’s Theorem have been sealed up, one odd suggestion remains on the table: what if a quantum-induced absence of free will (i.e., hidden variables) is conspiring to affect how researchers calibrate their detectors and collect data, somehow steering them toward a conclusion biased against classical physics?

“It sounds creepy, but people realized that’s a logical possibility that hasn’t been closed yet,” said David Kaiser, Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science and senior lecturer in the Department of Physics at MIT in Cambridge, Mass. “Before we make the leap to say the equations of quantum theory tell us the world is inescapably crazy and bizarre, have we closed every conceivable logical loophole, even if they may not seem plausible in the world we know today?”

So in order to clear the air of any possible predestination by entangled interlopers, Kaiser and MIT postdoc Andrew Friedman, along with Jason Gallicchio of the University of Chicago, propose to look into the distant, early Universe for sufficiently unprejudiced parties: ancient quasars that have never, ever been in contact.

There is a news release that goes into the final technical detail. Quasars as calibrators of reality? Why not?