[PHOTO] From IBID, Michael Portnoy

From Villa Toronto:

As the martini was to the 1950s, so is kale to our times — a towering and unavoidable presence in the cultural landscape. Michael Portnoy consulted with a team of futurologists, trend forecasters, environmental scientists and agricultural experts to predict what will be the new hot vegetable twenty years from now. Although the Kalochromes appear to be innocent bitmapped images of kale screenprinted onto canvas, they are actually encrypted images of photographs of another vegetable — the “kale of 2034.” In image steganography, the digital information for one image (or message) is hidden within the digital information of another image. An especially robust technique of steganography was developed with a leading cryptography expert so that the images could withstand the most aggressive forms of cryptanalysis. Twenty years from now, the decryption key to the Kalochromes will be provided, so the images of the predicted vegetable can be revealed.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Centauri Dreams argues why manned deep space missions are important.


• The Dragon's Gaze notes the solar-type stars may share a common origin in the inner galaxy.


• The Dragon's Tales links to a paper speculating as to the origin of Mars' water in wet periods.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money looks forward to same-sex marriage before the Supreme Court.


• Marginal Revolution wonders if Denmark will join Switzerland in breaking its currency's Euro peg.


• Out of Ambit's Diane Duane is very unhappy about Internet websites which claim to be libraries without sharing in their responsibilities towards authors like herself.


• Personal Reflections shares some interesting links.


• Savage Minds considers the importance of the endnote in writing.


• Torontoist and blogTO both note impending TTC fare hikes.


• Towleroad notes Colin Farrell's support for same-sex marriage in Ireland, motivated at least partly by his gay brother's experiences.


• Transit Toronto shares speculative maps as to what an improved TTC network might look like.


• Understanding Society examines the networks associated with the formation of elites.


• Window on Eurasia argues that Ukrainians destroying Lenin statues paradoxically make Lenin more of a status quo fiogure among Russians, and commemorates the anniversary of the ill-fated Black Friday Soviet armed intervention in Azerbaijan.

[URBAN NOTE] The 192 Airport Rocket on the TTC subway map

Looking up at the map of the TTC's subway routes while riding the subway into work this afternoon, I saw 192 Airport Rocket marked. It looks like the integration of the TTC's routes with the airport really is occurring.

[URBAN NOTE] On the increasingly unaffordable nature of rent in Toronto

My attention was caught this morning by Abrey Jax's blogTO post entitled "Many Toronto renters spend half of pay cheques on rent". Oh, I empathize.

One of Toronto's clearest class divides can be visualized quite succinctly by reaction to a new report from TD Economics regarding the housing market in the city. Camp A is shocked to learn that, instead of following the handy "30%" rule of income-to-rent ratio, Toronto renters are donating an average of 50% of each pay cheque to their landlord's designer dog + Muskoka cottage lifestyle. Camp B, on the other hand, is saying "duh" and getting on with their seven day work week.

According to the report, the renters' statistic applies to non-one per cent (actually non 60%) of workers, while those in the upper bracket are bleeding cash at similar volumes to mortgages and other home owning fees that people like myself can't even begin to comprehend. The heart of the matter is that if you're only paying half your income on housing, the landlord hasn't left you without heat for weeks at a time, and you don't have bed bugs, congratulations, you're doing okay in Toronto. For now.

Right now, there are 101 comments at the site. (The Toronto Dominion report mentioned is here.)

CBC has more.

While about one quarter of the city’s new jobs created over the past ten years can be credited to the housing boom, certain dynamics have resulted in less affordability for a growing number of people and a drastic decrease in the diversity of housing options.

Construction of condo units has skyrocketed while other forms of housing has remained stagnant, presenting a potentially serious economic quagmire when the boom inevitably ends since condos are generally considered lower quality housing stock than, for example, semi-detached homes.

“A healthy economy should have a good degree of mobility and a good degree of housing choices,” said deputy chief economist and vice-president at TD Bank Derek Burleton in an interview with CBC’s Metro Morning on Monday.

“What we’ve seen in the past ten years is this affordability challenge has spread to the middle class and even to other, higher income levels,” says Burleton.

[. . .]

Among other recommendations that include easing regulations on landlords looking to rent property, Burleton said the GTA’s staggering lack of regional transit is exasperating the problems.

“Transit is key … Transit system helps to direct residents to where land costs might be a little bit cheaper, for example. It’s not so much about building along corridors as it is about building more transit corridors.”

I have no idea where I would find an affordable apartment in Toronto if I had to move. This all is a terribly upsetting economic dynamic for me.

[LINK] "Cuban Diplomacy Looks Towards Both Brussels and Washington"

The Inter Press Service's Patricia Grogg notes how Cuba is not neglecting the European Union, its second-largest trading partner after Venezuela, as it tries to relaunch relations with the United States. European insistence on reforms in exchange for a bilateral accord is apparently a sticking point.

“We first thought we had slipped down a bit on the list of priorities; now the message is that no, the Cuban state wants to keep a balance between the two processes, which is good news for us,” the EU ambassador in Havana, Herman Portocarero, told IPS.

Delegations from Cuba and the United States will meet Jan. 21-22 in Havana, in the first meeting since the two governments announced Dec. 17 that diplomatic relations would be reestablished, and since sweeping new measures to ease trade and travel between the two countries were presented by Washington on Jan. 15.

In a process that got underway in 2008, Cuba and the EU finally held their first round of talks Apr. 29-30 for a future bilateral accord on political dialogue and cooperation which, according to Portocarero, should define aspects like the role of civil society and the main issues involving long-term cooperation.

[. . .]

The main aim of Cuban diplomacy in this case is to push for more trade, but above all for an increase in capital inflows under the new law on foreign investment.

[. . .]

According to analysts, the government of Raúl Castro hopes that a stable relationship under a framework accord like the one sought with the 28-member European bloc will lead to increased trade, but also to the diversification of economic and trade ties given the possibility that the normalisation of relations with the United States will lead to the lifting of the half-century U.S. embargo.

[LINK] "The Dark Energy Survey Begins to Reveal Previously Unknown Trans-Neptunian Objects"

Universe Today's Tim Reyes notes that the Dark Energy Survey, with its sensitive telescopes, has already been confined to have found new trans-Neptunian objects.

Sometimes when you stare at something long enough, you begin to see things. This is not the case with optical sensors and telescopes. Sure, there is noise from electronics, but it’s random and traceable. Stargazing with a telescope and camera is ideal for staring at the same patches of real estate for very long and repeated periods. This is the method used by the Dark Energy Survey (DES), and with less than one percent of the target area surveyed, astronomers are already discovering previously unknown objects in the outer Solar System.

The Dark Energy Survey is a five year collaborative effort that is observing Supernovae to better understand the structures and expansion of the universe. But in the meantime, transient objects much nearer to home are passing through the fields of view. Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs), small icy worlds beyond the planet Neptune, are being discovered. A new scientific paper, released as part of this year’s American Astronomical Society gathering in Seattle, Washington, discusses these newly discovered TNOs. The lead authors are two undergraduate students from Carleton College of Northfield, Minnesota, participating in a University of Michigan program.

The Palomar Sky Survey (POSS-1, POSS-2), the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and every other sky survey have mapped not just the static, nearly unchanging night sky, but also transient events such as passing asteroids, comets, or novae events. The Dark Energy Survey is looking at the night sky for structures and expansion of the Universe. As part of the five year survey, DES is observing ten select 3 square degree fields for Type 1a supernovae on a weekly basis. As the survey proceeds, they are getting more than anticipated. The survey is revealing more trans-Neptunian objects. Once again, deep sky surveys are revealing more about our local environment – objects in the farther reaches of our Solar System.

[. . .]

In the mean time, the young researchers of Carleton College – Ross Jennings and Zhilu Zhang – are discovering the transients inside our Solar System. Led by Professor David Gerdes of the University of Michigan, the researchers started with a list of nearly 100,000 observations of individual transients. Differencing software and trajectory analysis helped identify those objects that were trans-Neptunian rather than asteroids of the inner Solar System.

While asteroids residing in the inner solar system will pass quickly through such small fields, trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) orbit the Sun much more slowly. For example, Pluto, at an approximate distance of 40 A.U. from the Sun, along with the object Eris, presently the largest of the TNOs, has an apparent motion of about 27 arc seconds per day – although for a half year, the Earth’s orbital motion slows and retrogrades Pluto’s apparent motion. The 27 arc seconds is approximately 1/60th the width of a full Moon. So, from one night to the next, TNOs can travel as much as 100 pixels across the field of view of the DES survey detectors since each pixel has a width of 0.27 arc seconds.

[URBAN NOTE] "Welcome To Whittier, Alaska, A Community Under One Roof"

NPR earlier this week took a look at the Alaskan port of Whittier, noteworthy for housing most of the town's population and business in a single building.

Whittier, Alaska, is a sleepy town on the west side of Prince William Sound, tucked between picturesque mountains. But if you're picturing a small huddle of houses, think again.

Instead, on the edge of town, there stands a 14-story building called Begich Towers — a former Army barracks, resembling an aging hotel, where most of the town's 200 residents live.

Writer Erin Sheehy and photographer Reed Young visited Whittier for a report, "Town Hall," in The California Sunday Magazine.

[. . .]

Finding your way to the remote town isn't easy. You can get to Whittier by sea or take a long, one-lane tunnel through the mountains, which at any given time only runs one way.

"It's still a fairly inaccessible town," Young says. "Plus, at night, they close the tunnel completely."

Then there's the weather: The 60 mph winter winds are brutal. That's why residents inside Begich Towers have everything they need under one roof.

"There's a laundromat, a little market," Sheehy says.

"And there's a convenience store," Reed says. "There is a health clinic." It's not a hospital, but they can handle minor ailments.

There's even a church in the basement.

[URBAN NOTE] "Shanghai on the Nile"

Slate's Miriam Berger recently posted an article about Cairo's surprisingly thriving Chinese restaurant scene.

Amina and her panda suit have gone back to China. In her absence, the fiery flavors at the one-room Chinese Muslim restaurant in Abbasiya, Cairo, have faded. Amina had for a while memorably served food at her mother’s restaurant wearing a onesie panda suit her grandmother bought in China. But it was really the tantalizingly long and succulently addictive hand-pulled noodles, or lamian, that kept my friends and me coming back to this secret staple of Cairo cuisine.

Amina may be gone, but a new owner keeps the noodles coming. Egypt’s revolution (and counter-revolution) has not deterred the Chinese. There are now more than 10,000 Chinese in Cairo, mainly clustered in three areas. Chinese Muslims, like Amina, typically live either in Abbasiya, a dense neighborhood with dusty buildings in need of a deep shine, or Nasr City, close to Al-Azhar University, the revered Islamic institution where many of them study. Then there’s a large Chinese community in Maadi, where the big Chinese companies are centered. These Chinese come from all over China and are largely here for business of all sorts, not religion. Only it’s Egypt, so all the meat is still halal.

When I first moved to Cairo three years ago, the other American khawagat—Egyptian slang for foreigners—raved about Abbasiya’s Uighur restaurants. Only the main restaurants in Abbasiya now aren’t actually Uighur, the Turkic minority living predominantly in Central Asia and China’s (or, to the Uighurs, Chinese-occupied) western Xinjiang province: They’re Hui, another mainly Muslim ethnic group with communities (and cuisines) in northwest China and dispersed and assimilated throughout the country.

Now take a right at the gas station near the Abbasiya stop, and there’s a fork in the road with four (Hui) Chinese Muslim restaurants: two cheap adjacent storefronts with photo albums as menus, a third inside a shisha café two doors down, and the fourth (and most expensive) on El Fardus Street on the other side. The names and reputations of the restaurants, like their owners, are often in flux. In a way, it seems fitting that the Chinese have settled in Abbasiya: A century ago, a Jewish community thrived.

On a cool night in December, I take the metro to Abbasiya with friends to retry the second of the cheap eats. We settle into plastic chairs at an outdoor table, sip green tea, and begin the ordering process: What from the picture book was available that night? We switch off between the server from Northwest China’s formal Arabic and our Cairene dialect. Soon the dishes begin to haphazardly fill the slanted tables.

[DM] "On 'Why the Muslim 'No-Go-Zone' Myth Won't Die'"

I respond at length to David Graham's essay in The Atlantic debunking the myth of ubiquitous Muslim-run "no-go zones" in western Europe.