[PHOTO] Two takes on Alex Colville, "To Prince Edward Island" (1963)

Going through my Flickr archives, I found the below image of "To Prince Edward Island" stored there.



And I saw it in real life, too!



(Still pleased with the exhibition.)

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• blogTO shares a list of the five most cliched music video locations in Toronto.


• The Dragon's Tales notes that Germany has abandoned its support for upgrading the Ariane 5, instead opting for a new Ariane 6.


• Eastern Approaches notes the surprise election of Transylvanian Saxon Klaus Iohannis as president of Romania.


• The Everyday Sociology Blog looks at the sociology of aging.


• Geocurrents' Martin Lewis compares the diverging political patterns of northern California and Minnesota.


• Joe. My. God. links to the new Giorgio Moroder single and notes the AHF's anti-PReP ad.


• Language Hat notes that the Mayan glyphs on the walls of Chipotle restaurants actually mean something.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money mocks Nicolas Sarkozy's opposition to same-sex marriage.


• The Map Room's Jonathan Crowe shares geological maps of Vesta, produced by the Dawn probe.


• pollotenchegg lists the ten largest Ukrainian cities of the long 19th century.


• Window on Eurasia notes the firebombing of some Crimean Tatar mosques.

[LINK] "Venezuela and Russia Discuss Coordinating to Defend Oil Price"

Bloomberg's Robert Tuttle notes an apparent effort by Venezuela and Russia to keep oil prices high. It's not difficult to imagine the geopolitical reasons for this--economic reasons, too, since Russian and Venezuelan exports are so dominated by oil.

Venezuela’s foreign minister and Russia’s oil minister discussed ways to support falling oil prices amid a flurry of meetings by producers before a scheduled OPEC meeting later this month.

Venezuela’s Rafael Ramirez and Alexander Novak talked about “coordinating action” to defend the market, according to a statement published on Venezuela’s foreign ministry website. Crude prices have dropped 31 percent since June amid rising U.S. production and tepid global demand growth.

[. . .]

Brent crude, the benchmark for more than half the world’s oil, fell to a four year low of $76.76 in London on Nov. 14 before closing at $79.41. The price dropped 10 cents to $79.31 today.

While Russia, the world’s second-largest oil producer in 2013 behind Saudi Arabia, isn’t an OPEC member, the country stands to be the biggest loser from the drop in oil prices, according to a Bloomberg Global Poll of international investors. President Vladimir Putin said Nov. 14 that the drop in crude is potentially “catastrophic” for the world’s largest energy exporter.

Venezuela, South America’s biggest oil producer and a member of OPEC, relies on oil for 95 percent of its exports. As prices slumped, the country called for an emergency OPEC meeting last month, a request that wasn’t heeded.

[LINK] "Merkel Concerned about Russian Influence in the Balkans"

Spiegel International notes the new official concern in Germany about Russian influence in southeastern Europe. Serbia, embittered by its losses in the Yugoslav wars and traditionally pro-Russian, comes out as an object of particular concern, but Bosnia (due to Republika Srpska) and Bulgaria (due to historical leanings and current Russian investment) are also mentioned.

From the perspective of Berlin, Russia has gone from being a difficult partner to being an adversary within just one year. The effort launched in 2008 to tighten cooperation on a number of issues, one in which German leaders placed a great deal of hope, would seem to have come to an irrevocable end. Instead, Berlin is now discussing ways in which it might be able to slow down Russia's expansionary drive -- particularly in the Balkans, a region in which some states are not entirely stable. Elmar Brock, a member of Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and the chairman of the European Parliament's Foreign Policy Committee, is also concerned about the region. "It is part of a broad strategic approach by Russia to 'infiltrate' the countries politically but mostly economically," he says.

Cold War recipes are coming back into fashion. It is time to begin thinking about a new "containment strategy," says one high-ranking diplomat. The reference is to the concept for curbing Soviet power that was first sketched out in a famous telegram sent in February 1946 by then-US Ambassador to Moscow George Kennan. It went on to become the foundation for Western policy in relations with the Soviet Union.

[. . .]

Merkel would seem to have drawn her own conclusions. At a Monday lecture held by the German chancellor at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney, where she was following the G-20 summit in Brisbane, Merkel was clear about her view of Russia. "Truly, the Ukraine crisis is in no way a regional issue," she said. "It affects all of us." During the following discussion, she warned that the EU will not yield to Moscow like East Germany once did. "Otherwise, one would have to say: We are too weak, be careful, we can't accept any others, we have to first ask Moscow if it is possible. That's how things were for 40 years; I never really wanted to return to that situation." She then made a particularly notable comment: "And that doesn't just apply to Ukraine. It applies to Moldova, it applies to Georgia. If the situation continues ... we'd have to ask about Serbia, we'd have to ask about the western Balkan countries."

[. . .]

Apart from such tit-for-tat pettiness, Berlin has observed a broad new approach by the Kremlin in the Balkans. The focus, officials believe, is an attempt to prevent the region's further rapprochement with, or even accession to, the European Union. "RUS attaches great strategic importance to the Western Balkans," reads a Foreign Ministry analysis entitled: "Russia's Influence in Serbia."

The paper, which is classified as confidential, describes Moscow's efforts to link Belgrade closer to Russia. The endeavor goes beyond military cooperation and Russian deliveries of natural gas. Moscow, the paper indicates, is engaging in "public diplomacy with clear pan-Slavic rhetoric" and enjoys high esteem in the population, not least because of its approach to the Kosovo issue. "Putin's goal is to exert so much pressure on Balkan states that they either back away from EU membership or that, once they become members, influence EU resolutions in a pro-Russian manner," says EU parliamentarian Brok.

[LINK] "Summer and politics in Crimea"

Open Democracy's Ariadne Arendt describes her experiences this past summer vacationing in Crimea, in its first post-Soviet summer under Russian occupation. Things felt, according to Arendt, unusually suspended: many important topics of conversation were off-limits, many things were worse, and people feared worse to come.

Upon arrival in Crimea this year, I found that two things stood out immediately: the general euphoria at the annexation, and the new travel circumstances. This was aptly embodied by my own journey with my family. We happened to travel on the very first flight of a new huge 700-seater Boeing, operated by Transaero, so TV crews saw us off from Moscow and greeted us in Simferopol upon arrival. The plane was ceremoniously welcomed by a celebratory 'water arch,' pumping water over the plane on the runway from two fire engines, a bizarre yet typical display of Russian (Soviet) bravado. Previously, the majority of holidaymakers would travel by train through Ukraine, but this had now become a risky affair, and the previously neglected Simferopol airport was bursting at the seams, unable to cope with the sudden volumes of traffic.

Understandably, travel became the first topic for any conversation with newcomers. Aeroflot audaciously launched its new budget airline 'Dobrolet' ('good flight') which after 55 days had to cancel its flights because of the sanctions. There was also the 'single ticket' route option from Russian Railways: a combined ticket to the coastal cities of the Black Sea (Anapa or Krasnodar); buses to the port; a journey by ferry to Crimea; and further buses to local destinations – quite a journey and by no means simple or 'single.'

A 'direct' train avoiding Ukraine started operating in August. It took 46 hours from Moscow (as opposed to the usual 26) and also involved passengers having to disembark and re-embark for the ferry crossing. There was also talk of a direct bus route following a similar route. Independent travellers could go by car, but hugely overcrowded ferries caused queues of up to two days at the ports.

The usual train route still exists, though few people are aware of it, and those who are avoid it. There were rumours that almost anyone could be taken off the train at the border if they were suspected of being a Russian forces volunteer trying to gain access to the country as a tourist; special travel permits were essential. I chose this option for my return journey: the train is now mainly used by short-distance travellers, and I ended up having to pay Ukrainian customs small bribes amounting to approximately £60 for travelling without a permit.

This huge variety and unpredictable nature of routes, making it ironically more difficult and more expensive for Russians to reach Crimea now than when it was part of Ukraine, was a natural subject of hype and rumour. But also a popular subject, not least because it was a generally neutral introductory topic, a good ground for gauging your companion’s political stance without directly approaching it, which caution had suddenly become very necessary.

[LINK] "Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman Once Spent an Afternoon Together. Here's What Happened."

David M. Friedman's New Republic article describing the encounter of Walt Whitman with Oscar Wilde in 1882 is a delight to read.

On January 31, 1882, a partially paralyzed man living with his brother and sister-in-law in a row house in Camden, New Jersey, wrote to a friend to tell him of a recent visitor to that home. “He is a fine large handsome youngster,” the man wrote of that guest. And “he had the good sense to take a great fancy to me.”

Thus Walt Whitman described the day he spent with Oscar Wilde. This meeting between the self-described “old rough” who revolutionized American poetry with his masterpiece Leaves of Grass and the self-anointed “Professor of Aesthetics” who was touring America with a lecture praising sconces and embroidered pillows, has been examined often in the intervening years, usually through the lens of what is now called queer history, or as an interesting, if not particularly consequential, moment in the history of literature.

But neither approach takes the true measure of the meeting’s importance. For Wilde didn’t travel to Camden to talk about gender roles or belles lettres. The writer was still years away from becoming the author whose peerlessly witty plays are still staged today. What drew him to Whitman’s home was the opportunity to discuss fame. He wanted to listen to the singer of “Song of Myself”—an older man (Whitman was 62, Wilde 27) with inexhaustible energy, despite his infirmity, for self-promotion. Whitman was an international icon who exploited the fuzzy line between acclaim and notoriety and a media-savvy poet who understood the crucial role of image in the making of a literary career. Wilde didn’t travel to Camden to learn how to be a famous writer. That, he was certain, he would later teach himself. He went to learn how to be a famous person. It would be hard to imagine a more apt pairing of teacher and student.

Wilde had been sent to America by Richard D’Oyly Carte, the business manager for Gilbert & Sullivan, whose latest operetta, Patience, had recently opened in the English capital to rave reviews and huge ticket sales. Carte had dispatched his clients’ previous hits to America, where they were well-received. He planned to do the same with Patience, but he was nervous. Patience was a satire of the British aesthetic movement, a movement united behind the slogan “art for art’s sake.”

[URBAN NOTE] "That time when Train 48 left Union Station"

blogTO's Ed Conroy makes the case that Train 48, a local soap opera set on a Toronto area commuter train that lasted from 2003 to 2005, was more important than people gave it credit for.

Does anyone who watched the show have any opinions? I did not watch myself, one small reason why the show ended.

Anyone who commutes daily on GO Transit knows about Train families - those groups of 2-4 people who sit together morning and night, gossiping loudly about their mundane lives, the weather, their idiot bosses, current events, did you see that on TV last night? Blah, blah, etc., etc. Spending ludicrous amounts of time huddled together in transit hell with strangers forges unlikely bonds, so it's not all that surprising these mostly annoying archetypes might yield dramatis personae for a soap opera.

Australia got there first with Going Home (2000), a shot-on-the-same-day-as-aired soap detailing a shared public transit commute between a cast of local characters, with loosely improvised storylines based upon suggestions made by viewers on the show's interactive website. While in Australia participating in a debate about the importance of lucrative international co-productions to compete with moneyed American TV hegemony, Toronto based producer Steve Levitan optioned the rights for Going Home on the spot.

Its creator had offered up a compelling argument that cheap local content married to audience interaction could be just as compelling and competitive as bigger budgeted U.S fare. "I instantly became very excited about the production model. I still think it is the way of the future" muses Levitan.

[. . .]

Focusing on 12 or so GO commuters, Train 48 took its cues from British "kitchen-sink" soaps more than glossy American dailies (Coronation Street has been a CBC fixture for almost 50 years and its warts and all realism is certainly more "Canadian" than the assorted waxworks of Genoa City), specifically its improvisation techniques a la Mike Leigh.

Scripts were written very loosely, then beefed up through actor input and improv - shot by 1:30pm, edited by 5:00pm and ready to air by 7:00pm - allowing for timely real life events to be incorporated. Many wrongly recall Train 48 as being driven by headline news such as the Iraq war, SARs and Transgender issues, but mostly the material served as window dressing for defining the characters.

[URBAN NOTE] "Dufferin Station "revitalization": TTC closes station, November 22 to 24"

Transit Toronto's Robert Mackenzie warned me that this weekend, the Dufferin subway station will be closed as its ongoing renovations finish up.

Since 2010, the TTC has been working on a project to upgrade Dufferin Station. After nearly 45 years, the station infrastructure, including the tiles, stairwells and escalators, needed major work to continue to effectively serve passengers.

Moreover, the station was not accessible to passengers using wheelchairs or other mobility devices or who have other accessibility issues. At the end of this project, Dufferin Station passengers will find a barrier-free path to all levels of the station.

This weekend, from Saturday, November 22 until 6 a.m. Monday, November 24, the TTC will close the station to complete finishes, test the three new elevators and “perform a deep clean”.

All trains operating along the 2 Bloor - Danforth subway line will pass through, but not stop, at Dufferin Station. Frequent shuttle buses operate between Lansdowne and Ossington stations for passengers traveling to and from the Bloor Street West and Dufferin Street area.

[LINK] "Homogeneous cosmology with aggressively expanding civilizations"

The Dragon's Tale linked to S. Jay Olson's recent <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1411.4359arXiV paper. Its abstract describes the paper's rather provocative explorations.

In the context of a homogeneous universe, we note that the appearance of aggressively expanding advanced life is geometrically similar to the process of nucleation and bubble growth in a first-order cosmological phase transition. We exploit this similarity to describe the dynamics of life saturating the universe on a cosmic scale, adapting the phase transition model to incorporate probability distributions of expansion and resource consumption strategies. Through a series of numerical solutions covering several orders of magnitude in the input assumption parameters, the resulting cosmological model is used to address basic questions related to the intergalactic spreading of life, dealing with issues such as timescales, observability, competition between strategies, and first-mover advantage. Finally, we examine physical effects on the universe itself, such as reheating and the backreaction on the evolution of the scale factor, if such life is able to control and convert a significant fraction of the available pressureless matter into radiation. We conclude that the existence of life, if certain advanced technologies are practical, could have a significant influence on the future large-scale evolution of the universe.

After exploring various models for the spread of civilization across intergalactic distances, and noting the likely effects in terms of radiation consumption, the paper makes some provocative analogies and suggestions.

We have argued that the dynamics of nucleation and bubble growth in a first-order phase transition is naturally carried over to a description of aggressively expanding life saturating the universe, due to the geometrical similarities (spatially random events and spherical expansion). However, due to the abundance of waste radiation appearing in this picture, it is tempting to regard the effects of aggressively expanding life as a literal thermodynamic phase transformation -- an abrupt change to the equation of state and thermodynamic variables describing the universe. We are accustomed to regarding the thermal effects of life as due to very special initial conditions. A Petri dish, for example, filled with nutrients and a few bacteria can be expected to have a very different thermodynamic future than a Petri dish filled with nutrients alone, due to the special initial conditions implied by specifying that bacteria are present -- the initial conditions are pre-configured for an immediate collapse in the free energy. The cosmological process we have described, however, begins with no life initially, so it must represent a general kind of transition between states, i.e. one that is not merely a consequence of fine-tuning the initial conditions. The statistical process by which the universe ends and abruptly transitions to the radiation-filled, higher-entropy state we have described is not through thermal uctuations or tunneling directly to a new vacuum -- it is through the elaborate and indirect route of evolving life and general intelligence that forever hungers for new sources of free energy.