[PHOTO] Missing tile, Eglinton station

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• At Antipope, Harry Connolly analyzes a paragraph of Charlie Stross' writing in detail.


• Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait and the Planetary Society Blog's Casey Dreier both note NASA's interest in sending a probe to Europa.


• blogTO notes that Wrigley will shut down a gum-manufacturing plant in Toronto, at the cost of 400 jobs.


• The Dragon's Gaze links to a survey of 12 nearby red dwarf stars indicating that none of them have massive planets in close orbits.


• The Dragon's Tales notes India's interest in Japan's Soryu submarine.


• Kieran Healy analyzes vaccination data in California, looking at rates of vaccination in different types of schools.


• Language Hat analyzes the complexities of Gogol's writing style.


• Marginal Revolution looks at a debt-restructuring plan for Greece.


• The Planetary Society Blog shares the latest images from Ceres.


• Strange Maps looks at the distribution of federally-owned lands across the United States.


• Transit Toronto notes the passage of a new TTC budget aiming to fix underfunding-related problems.


• The Volokh Conspiracy considers when voters should defer to the views of scientists.


• Window on Eurasia suggests Russia might be trying to de-Turkify Crimea, notes the non-Russian past of Siberia, and suggests that current Russian policy is a self-fulfilling prophecy of enemy-making.

[LINK] "Nancy Reagan Turned Down Rock Hudson’s Plea For Help Nine Weeks Before He Died"

Joe. My. God. and Towleroad each linked to an article by Buzzfeed's Chris Geidner noting that, despite a long-standing friendship with the Reagans, when Rock Hudson asked in 1985 for help from President Ronald Reagan to get into a French military hospital that was his only hope for HIV/AIDS treatment, he was turned down.

“I spoke with Mrs. Reagan about the attached telegram. She did not feel this was something the White House should get into and agreed to my suggestion that we refer the writer to the U.S. Embassy, Paris,” he wrote at the time.

“That refers to special treatment for a friend or celebrity. And that’s all it refers to. It had nothing to do with AIDS or AIDS policy or — that’s a whole different issue. We weren’t talking about that,” Weinberg told BuzzFeed News. “I know, I know that conversation,” he added, referencing long-standing criticism of the Reagan administration’s response to AIDS.

In his memo to Martin, while Weinberg noted that the White House would not be intervening in Hudson’s attempts to see Dormant, he added that the president had personally called Hudson. Also, the press should be informed of the call: “Mrs. Reagan asked, however, that we inform the press of the President’s telephone call to Rock Hudson today, which I did.”

[. . .]

Told of the communications and Weinberg’s explanation, Peter Staley — an early member of ACT UP and founder of the Treatment Action Group who was prominently featured in the Oscar-nominated AIDS documentary How to Survive a Plague — was incredulous.

“Seems strange that the Reagans used that excuse, since they often did favors for their Hollywood friends during their White House years,” Staley told BuzzFeed News, pointing out a time when President Reagan personally intervened to assist a fundraising effort led by Bob Hope, as detailed in a biography of the entertainer. “I’m sure if it had been Bob Hope in that hospital with some rare, incurable cancer, Air Force One would have been dispatched to help save him. There’s no getting around the fact that they left Rock Hudson out to dry. As soon as he had that frightening homosexual disease, he became as unwanted and ignored as the rest of us.”blockquote>

[LINK] "Uighurs flee China for Turkey in search of peace"

Al Jazeera's Sumeyye Erkekin looks at the flight of Uighurs from their Chinese homeland to Turkey, leaving being a homeland marked by state repression.

Many of the hundreds of ethnic Uighurs who have fled China illegally to escape religious persecution and discrimination have made harrowing journeys to reach Turkey. But those who have finally settled in state housing in the city of Kayseri, in central Turkey, say despite the sufferings of their journey, they needed to escape injustice at home.

The Xinjiang region of western China, called East Turkestan by Uighur separatists, is home to about 10 million Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group. Uighurs say they are repressed in their homeland and are unable to practice their religion freely. A 2012 Amnesty International report highlights incidents of "detailed widespread enforced disappearances, torture and ill-treatment of Uighurs" and harsh retribution against those who seek information about missing relatives.

The Chinese authorities say Uighurs are separatists and "terrorists."

When they first arrive in Istanbul, many of those fleeing Xinjiang are forced to live in cramped conditions, with about six families, or an average of 15 people, per apartment or small house. Observing their miserable conditions, the East Turkestan Culture and Solidarity Charity, a Uighur charity, in cooperation with the governor and mayor of Kayseri decided to allocate to them 100 apartments that were once used as official residences for transportation department employees.

Many charities offer assistance of food and supplies to refugees who stay in these units, and volunteer doctors offer them health services and free medical examinations.

Refugee children, undeterred by the cold weather and muddy ground, play in the garden and try to ride a broken bike. For them and their parents, this a safe haven.

[LINK] "CBSA learned of its own detainee’s death by accident – three weeks later"

Patrick Cain linked to a Global News report of his observing how the Canada Border Services Agency completely lost track of a man in their custody. How did he fall through the cracks? None of the answers Cain provides are reassuring.

On January 14 2013, Canada Border Service Agency officials showed up at a detention hearing for a dead man.

Shawn Dwight Cole, a Jamaican national with a lengthy criminal record who’d been held in the Toronto East Detention Centre for 106 days awaiting deportation, died on Boxing Day, 2012. Ontario’s corrections ministry records attribute his death to “natural causes.” He had a history of seizures.

But when he died no one thought to tell the the CBSA, on whose behalf the provincial jail had been incarcerating him.

And no one told the Jamaican government until 87 days after Cole’s death, in apparent contravention of a treaty requiring Canada to inform other countries of their citizen’s deaths “without delay.”

Cole’s death also came as a surprise to the immigration consultant hired to represent him.

[URBAN NOTE] "Those Wrapped-Up Boats off Queens Quay Have People Living in Them"

Torontoist's Megan Marrelli has a photo essay looking at people who live year-round on their boats docked in Toronto's harbour. Even in winter.

On November 23, 2014, Danica Brown was rounding the corner of the Leslie Street Spit in her 29-foot 1991 Cruisers 2970 Esprit—a boat she took a loan out to buy two years earlier. The waves on Lake Ontario were rough that day, about eight feet high, she says. Her boat smacked against the water after every wave, making it sound like the hull was going to crack in half. “I totally thought I was going down,” says the 27-year-old former latte-art instructor. Inside the boat’s cabin her television was rolling around, her records were falling onto the floor and her cabinets were swinging open from the crashing of the waves. “My body was in total shock.”

Her tumultuous journey was part of the annual migration that she and 87 other Toronto boaters make when the season changes. Winter “liveaboards” bring their boats from summer locations around Toronto Island to winter spots at nearby Marina Quay West and Marina Four, where Brown’s boat will be docked until the spring thaw. There, they live on Toronto’s frozen water through winter—sub-zero temperatures. Biting winds be damned.

There are year-round challenges to living on a boat, such as the logistics of occupying a small, cramped space (picture vacuum-packing most of your clothing) and having to constantly monitor equipment (if a seacock breaks, your boat’s going to start to sink). In summer, plenty of boaters are willing to face these nuisances—perhaps because close quarters are alleviated with outdoor barbecues and the vibrant boater community situated on Centre Island. Brown calls the warmer days “adult summer camp.” But winter is a different story.

[URBAN NOTE] "That’s a nice laneway, but it’s no woonerf"

Spacing Toronto's Dylan Reid argues, with the help of photos from the Netherlands and from Toronto's own Trolley Lane, that Toronto has not yet built its first woonerf.

One of the more intriguing elements of the West Don Lands development was the promise that it would include some “woonerfs“ — a Dutch concept generally translated as “living street” though more literally (according to Wikipedia), “living yard.”

The first one, Trolley Lane, has now been partially built, and has already been touted as Toronto’s first woonerf. It’s a U-shaped route just south of King St. East, intersecting twice with Lower River Street (the joining part is not yet complete).

I recently went to check out this promising new feature, but it was rather disappointing. While Trolley Lane is nicely designed, it’s not really a woonerf. There’s no fixed definition of a woonerf, but it seems fair to say that, if we are using the Dutch word, it should somewhat resemble what the Dutch do. In essence, a woonerf is intended to be a front yard for the residents who live on it. Cars should be rare, local, and restricted to walking speed. Often the street is configured to be narrow and a bit awkward so that cars have to be careful manoeuvring in it. Parked cars are sometimes arranged to deliberately contribute to this awkwardness. There are no sidewalk curbs restricting pedestrians to the side of the street, and signage indicates that pedestrians have priority and playing children should be expected.

Netherlandic types, can you chime in?

[LINK] What are the best known books of the countries of the world?

Livejournaler Nicholas Whyte has started an interesting series of posts, examining book-related social networking sites to see which books are cited most often in reference to particular countries.

I was very interested by this list of the most famous books set in each US state which I saw last week, to the extent of thinking about how I might measure the best known book set in neach European country. As ever in these matters, I have turned to my trusty friends LibraryThing and GoodReads, each of which allows users to record the books that they own and also to tag (LT) or shelve (GR) by key words such as setting. I did a quick response on Twitter using those figures for the four main divisions of the British Isles.

But in fact that only records how often people reading a particular book thoguht to tag it as set in a particular country. They may be wrong about its setting; the book itself may be have a universal appeal that transcends its location. With a little more effort, one can dig into the numbers and find which books that are (sometimes) tagged as being set in a particular country are also the most widely owned among users of both websites.

The results have been interesting. In more than half of all cases that I have looked at so far, LibraryThing and GoodReads users agree on a particular book that has Country X as a setting and is particularly well-known. In a couple of cases - three Shakespeare plays, to take a convenient example - the actual presentation of country X in the work is rather different from the reality; it's as if the author had never been there but just chose to write a story that was set there. In those cases I shall also strive to present an alternative book more firmly grounded in that country's setting than you might get if you were adapting an obscure sixteenth-century novella or historical chronicle for the stage.

I hope you will find the results interesting.

Whyte began by looking at the statistics for England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and Northern Ireland, and has since gone further afield.

[DM] "'The Year Having Kids Became a Frivolous Luxury'"

At Demography Matters I link to a Jessica Grose post at Slate looking at the spread of the attitude mentioned in the title. Is it spreading? Why did it come about?

Go, read.