[PHOTO] Miniature ship models, Art Gallery of Ontario

Part of the Art Gallery of Ontario's Thomson Collection of Ship Models, these small ships caught my eye.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• blogTO notes that Kensington Market staple Zimmerman's Discount is set to close.


• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper documenting the discovery of exoplanets orbiting a red giant star.


• The Dragon's Tales reports on China's J-31 stealth fighter.


• Language Hat links to what seems to be a charming Chinese memoir of reading.


• Language Log's Victor Mair claims that the peculiarities of Chinese script explain high levels of myopia in East Asia.


• Marginal Revolution starts a discussion on the latitude-income correlation.


• The Russian Demographics Blog notes that Ukraine is gingerly starting on the path of European integration, away from Russia.


• Savage Minds reports on the aftermath of the Italian trial of seismologists for allegedly underestimating the L'Aquila earthquake's effects.


• Strange Maps shares a counterfactual map imagining what Africa would look like uncolonized by Europe.


• Torontoist makes the case for anti-suicide platform barriers on the TTC.


• Window on Eurasia suggests that Russian regional policy is dominated not by economic rationales but by the need to shore up vulnerable peripheries.

[ISL] "Amish communities checking out province"

The Guardian of Charlottetown's Maureen Colter writes about the apparent interest of some Amish to set up colonies in Prince Edward Island. It's worth noting that some commenters have suggested that this settlement could be economically problematic due to low Amish labour costs. Inexpensive farmland and a compatible culture, though, are definitely alluring.

[Amish ally Anthony] Wallbank has tried moving some communities to Northern Ontario where the land is cheaper but the terrain is rugged and not conducive to mixed farming, he said.

“This past spring they couldn’t even grow oats which is a pretty basic crop. You can grow oats almost anywhere but up there the crops were no good at all so that was discouraging to the Amish I took there.”

There are many reasons why Amish would thrive on P.E.I.

The soil is excellent, the growing season is longer than Northern Ontario and the land prices are cheaper, said Wallbank.

On Oct. 14, Wallbank and a group of Amish from Millbank Ontario made the 22-hour drive to check out P.E.I., mainly the eastern part of the Island.

The Amish noticed Route 3 and Route 4 had paved shoulders wide enough for a buggy to go down, he said.

“There is little chance that there would be a collision. It’s a safer environment than what it is here in Ontario.”

[LINK] "Catalonia has voted: now what?"

Patrice de Beer describes how the Spanish government's terrible mishandling of Catalonia has created a situation where a rapid change has to be undertaken, else Spain come apart.

As always in statistics, everyone has been able to twist results for their own ends. But the political results are there: 90% of voters against the status quo (instead of two thirds in 2012) and a massive, peaceful manifestation - devoid of violence, Basque style - of a vast majority of Catalans for change. Whatever Mr. Rajoy – or his PSOE (Socialist) opposition, equally hostile to granting more autonomy to Catalonia – can say, demonstration after demonstration, vote after vote, have shown a growing chasm between Madrid and Barcelona politicians together with a growing dissatisfaction within the richest and most developed region of the peninsula.

In Monday's editorials in Madrid, centre-left daily El País encapsulated the national establishment's disarray when presented with a situation they are unable to contain or repress. One editorial asked Mr. Rajoy and Mr. Artur Mas (the Catalan head of government) to “come back to the (negotiating) table”; another denounced the “day of disloyalty” in Catalonia; a third said that, now, “Rajoy knows who is the leader (in Catalonia)” and the last that “refusing to see the political effects of the N9 would be following the ostrich policy” while, in its Catalan edition, it wrote that “Mas has seized back the rudder”.

The strong arm policy adopted by the PP since its victory at the 2011 national elections, has refused to engage in dialogue not based on an iron clad status quo. Meanwhile, the PP have been playing the strategy of death by a thousand cuts, i.e. of local prerogatives, first of all on language and education – considered as provocations by Catalans so proud of their own culture. With such an obstinate attitude to Catalonia, it is no wonder tensions have been increasing steadily – then dramatically – for years.

What strikes one most when one looks at statistics is that, since 2010 when, at the PP's request, the Constitutional Court cancelled key provisions of a new Statute which had been ratified by referendum by the Catalans and a vote of the Spanish Cortes, the percentage of pro-independence has doubled to reach just under 50% (49.5% in recent polls).

A large number of “new” nationalists have joined the “old” ones. Bourgeoisie from Mr. Mas’ centre right CiU coalition, as well as leftists from Esquerra Republicana (ERC) have united to protest the lack of prospects for their nation within Spain. Another crucial reason has been Madrid's refusal to grant Catalonia a “fiscal pact” allowing them to collect taxes, a privilege which the Basque Country enjoys.

Contrary to what most Spanish politicians say, or think, Catalan leaders are not irresponsible firebrands who have been pushing Catalans to the streets only to protect their own interests (financial or others) but have merely followed their voters for fear of losing touch with them. Mr. Mas is almost as conservative, economically and socially, as Mr. Rajoy.

[ISL] "Prince Edward Island’s silver fox bubble"

At the National Post, Mark Bourrie describes Prince Edward Island's silver fox pelt boom of the 1920s. It's a story of significant, if ephemeral, achievement.

In the 19th century, Prince Edward Islanders were frugal, if poor, people. Before the fox bubble, they had one of the highest savings rates in the world. After sometimes violent confrontations with agents representing absentee land owners, by the end of the 1800s most farmers had been able to buy the land they worked.

But some Islanders looked for ways to make easy money. Silver foxes are a mutation of the common red fox. The gene for the black/silver colour is recessive, and to have a reasonable chance of breeding more silver foxes, both parents should be silver. Every once in a while, trappers caught a silver fox and sold the pelt for a jaw-dropping price. They were popular among the nobility of the Hapsburg and Russian empires, a customer base that would eventually have serious problems of its own.

Charles Dalton, a druggist from Tignish, and Robert Oulton, a New Brunswick-born farmer, began working together in a secret location on Oulton’s farm on Savage Island, near Alberton, in the 1890s to catch, domesticate and breed black foxes.

The trick was to get the foxes, which were territorial animals that didn’t adapt well to captivity, to breed. Oulton and Dalton discovered foxes are monogamous, so they built them small apartments within larger pens. They made sure the fox pens were located in quiet places and kept visitors out from January until July, since mother foxes kill their babies when they’re distressed.

Close confinement in small pens exposed the foxes to diseases, especially internal parasites, so the breeders built big, spacious enclosures with lots of room for exercise. Oulton set up his pens in copses of trees. He found a British-made wire mesh that the foxes couldn’t chew through and sank the wire deep into the ground so the foxes could not escape by tunneling.

It worked. Oulton perfected the breeding operation while Dalton quietly sold the pelts on the London market as wild-caught animals. In January, 1900, a single pelt brought $1,807 at auction, but the sheer volume of Dalton’s inventory tipped off the London fur merchants that the source of the pelts was too productive to be wild.

[LINK] "Uranus Bland? Nope, It’s A Stormy Planet With Interesting Insides"

Universe Today's Elizabeth Howell makes the case for Uranus, first-discovered ice giant, to be considered interesting.

Sometimes first impressions are poor ones. When the Voyager 2 spacecraft whizzed by Uranus in 1986, the close-up view of the gas giant revealed what appeared to a be a relatively featureless ball. By that point, scientists were used to seeing bright colors and bands on Jupiter and Saturn. Uranus wasn’t quite deemed uninteresting, but the lack of activity was something that was usually remarked upon when describing the planet.

Fast-forward 28 years and we are learning that Uranus is a more complex world than imagined at the time. Two new studies, discussed at an American Astronomical Society meeting today, show that Uranus is a stormy place and also that the images from Voyager 2 had more interesting information than previously believed.

Showing the value of going over old data, University of Arizona astronomer Erich Karkoschka reprocessed old images of Voyager 2 data — including stacking 1,600 pictures on top of each other.

He found elements of Uranus’ atmosphere that reveals the southern hemisphere moves differently than other regions in fellow gas giants. Since only the top 1% of the atmosphere is easily observable from orbit, scientists try to make inferences about the 99% that lie underneath by looking at how the upper atmosphere behaves.

“Some of these features probably are convective clouds caused by updraft and condensation. Some of the brighter features look like clouds that extend over hundreds of kilometers,” he stated in a press release.

[LINK] "Former CBC employee 'frustrated' with union response to Jian Ghomeshi allegations"

CBC's Ioanna Roumeliotis reports on the CBC's internal response to the Jian Ghomeshi controversy. Who knew what when?

A former CBC employee who says Jian Ghomeshi, an ex-radio host at the public broadcaster, allegedly sexually harassed her at work is shocked and outraged that the nature of her allegation is being disputed.

In an interview with CBC News, the woman, who has asked to remain anonymous, says she is infuriated at suggestions she did not tell a colleague familiar with union matters in 2010 that Ghomeshi made lewd sexual comments to her.

"This is infuriating. There is not a chance in the world that I would have stuck my neck out, gone to the union —something I felt deeply uncomfortable about doing for fear of being seen as a whiner or a baby — and not said everything that was happening to me. I am not someone who holds information back."

But what she shared is being questioned by the Canadian Media Guild, the trade union that represents most CBC employees.

[LINK] "Malls Rise in Soweto as South African Townships Boom: Cities"

Bloomberg's Amogelang Mbatha describes one sign of the increasing wealth of black South Africans: shopping centres in their urban townships.

The Maponya Mall is a five-minute drive from one of the starting points of the June 16, 1976, riots in which police killed at least 200 people. It epitomizes the increasing gentrification of townships, with more than 200 stores, restaurants and health clubs, as well as a cinema offering the latest blockbusters.

Township economies can become an important driver of near-term growth, according to the World Bank’s Economics of South African Townships Study. The country has about 2,200 townships on the outskirts of almost every city and town, a legacy of apartheid rule that designated separate residential areas for black people far from manicured suburbs inhabited by whites.

Owned by business tycoon Richard Maponya, the mall is one of more than seven shopping centers that have mushroomed in Soweto alone as retailers compete with small businesses to cash in on South Africa’s emerging black middle class.

Townships have evolved as incomes almost tripled in 10 years. So-called black-empowerment laws opened the way for more professional positions that had been reserved for whites. Blacks also were granted access to better education and jobs after democratic rule started in 1994, when the African National Congress was voted into power under the leadership of Nelson Mandela, the country’s first black president.

Townships also benefited from a growing welfare system to fight poverty. The number of township households with no income at all “fell sharply” to 1.6 percent by 2010, the World Bank report found. Annual consumption per capita rose 12.5 percent in the townships to 18,419 rand ($1,644) in the five years ending in 2011, about the same as the increase for urban areas.

[LINK] "Poroshenko's choices"

Open Democracy's David Marples is appropriately concerned about the prospects for positive change in a Ukraine faced with a whole slew of adverse issues, domestic and otherwise.

After almost six months in power, Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, appears to have strengthened his position following the victory of pro-Western parties in the 26 October parliamentary elections. In theory, with a new parliamentary coalition, Poroshenko can now turn to address the two most pressing problems — the breakaway regions of the Donbas and radical economic reforms. Concerning the Donbas, he has already responded firmly to the ‘elections’ in the Donetsk and Luhansk ‘People’s Republics’ (LNR and DNR): the elections were illegal and violated the Minsk Protocol signed in September.

Poroshenko’s position, however, is weaker than it might appear.

In the first place, whether or not the ‘elections’ in the DNR and LNR broke the Minsk Protocol, the Minsk accords themselves represented a form of recognition for regimes that can at best be called ‘thugocracies,’ and which are unsustainable in the long term. Even if those regimes should manage to expand their territories to capture Mariupol or other towns previously under control such as Slovyansk, the DNR and LNR cannot survive without support from Ukraine for such basic commodities as food and water. Yet in order to reach an agreement that would halt the advance of Russian regular troops, the Ukrainian side gave de facto recognition to the two Donbas regimes when they signed the Protocol in Minsk on 5 September.

[. . .]

Second, while Western media circles hailed the Ukrainian parliamentary elections of 26 October as a triumph for pro-European forces, the elections were probably not such an unqualified success in the eyes of Poroshenko. The turnout was woefully low by Ukrainian standards, at 52%, even accounting for the difficulties in voting in some regions, signifying the weariness of the electorate. Moreover, the popular success of Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk’s People’s Front, which received a higher percentage of electoral support than the President’s Petro Poroshenko Bloc, may have secured the coalition, but it also represents a potential divergence of official goals. Yatsenyuk took a more militant position in his election campaign than Poroshenko; and the People’s Front became known as 'the party of war,' with a more confrontational anti-separatist stance.

[. . .]

The national currency, the hryvnia, has fallen dramatically — it was trading at over 16 hryvnia to the dollar on 11 November — and Ukraine has lost several important industrial bases since the spring of 2014. Currently, 40% of the national budget is devoted to debt repayments and servicing, and GDP has fallen by an estimated one-third over 2014. The only solace is the agreement on reduced prices for Russian gas, achieved as a result of discussions between Ukraine, Russia, and the European Union. But the country remains the third largest purchaser of Russian gas after Germany and Turkey.

[LINK] "'Doctor' treating First Nations girls says cancer patients can heal themselves"

The saddest thing about this quack, as reported by the CBC's Connie Walker and Marnie Luke, are the child patients who apparently won't have the chance that they could have enjoyed if only they followed actual medical treatment. May the people responsible for their suffering and potential deaths feel guilt that they did this to the young ones who depended on them.

A Florida health resort licensed as a “massage establishment” is treating a young Ontario First Nations girl with leukemia using cold laser therapy, Vitamin C injections and a strict raw food diet, among other therapies.

The mother of the 11-year-old girl, who can not be identified because of a publication ban, says the resort’s director, Brian Clement, who goes by the title “Dr.,” told her leukemia is “not difficult to treat.”

Another First Nations girl, Makayla Sault, was also treated at Hippocrates Health Institute in West Palm Beach and is now critically ill after a relapse of her leukemia.

The resort has declined CBC’s request for an interview with Clement, who is described as a “naturopathic doctor” on the resort’s website.

But the Florida state health authority has said Clement is not a licensed doctor or naturopath, and inquiries regarding the institutions where he is described in online biographies as having earned degrees have raised questions about their credibility.

The 11-year-old girl was receiving chemotherapy at McMaster Children’s Hospital in Hamilton. Doctors gave her a 90 to 95 per cent chance of survival with chemotherapy.

But her mother says she wanted to pursue a combination of traditional indigenous medicine and alternative therapies because she believes chemotherapy is “poison.”