[PHOTO] Underpass on Dufferin north of Dupont

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• blogTO notes that some Toronto-area Starbucks will now feature wine and beer options.


• Gerry Canavan has his own massive post of links.
  
• Centauri Dreams looks at the promise of a NASA mission to Europa.


• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper suggesting that compact exoplanetary systems are common around red dwarf stars.


• The Dragon's Tales reports on an extinct South American rodent, Josephoartigasia monesi, that used its giant teeth as elephants used their tusks.


• Joe. My. God. notes that the Harlem home of Neil Patrick Harris and his husband David Burtka has been profiled by Architectural Digest.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes an unintentionally hilarious 1914 book aiming to curtail the spread of lesbianism.


• The Planetary Society Blog shares pictures from the Indian Mars probe featuring rare views of that world's moon Deimos and shares the New Horizons probe's first pictures of Pluto.


• Peter Rukavina talks about podcasts.


• Spacing Toronto shares descriptions of the fallout shelters built into a Toronto subdivision's homes.


• Strange Maps notes the many maps of the world of The Man in the High Castle.


• Torontoist looks at the local measles outbreak.


• Towleroad notes a Russian group that plans to out teachers.


• Window on Eurasia argues that arming Ukraine would help stabilize the situation and suggests there are alternatives to Putin.

[LINK] "The Myth of the Gay Community"

The Atlantic's Evan Beck makes the case.

A couple months before graduating from college last spring, a friend and I went out for pizza. Our conversation touched on the usual senior year talk—spring break plans, theses, the like. Sprinkled throughout, though, was a banal discussion of what it was like to be gay men on campus.

My friend made a comment in passing that stuck with me—that he felt an immediate bond with other gay people because, as he put it, “We all went through a special hell in middle school.” It’s a sentiment I agree with, and yet, it was not until after graduating that I started to realize how diverse the identities and needs of the gay community were—so much so that I am not sure the word “community” is either fair or accurate.

History has a tendency to airbrush a culturally accepted arc. Gay identity is no different. In his book Gay New York, Yale professor George Chauncey dispelled the myth that gay culture sprang from nothing out of the 1969 Stonewall Inn riots. Yet this inferred “beginning” of gay culture—and therefore community—exists today as the springboard for LGBT America. Following this liberation came a new, more macabre form of rage as the AIDS epidemic spurred gay male activists to coalesce, leading to organizations such as the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) and the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). When the root causes and consequences of the HIV/AIDS epidemic were unknown in its early years, the disease was so tied to the homosexual identity it was referred to as gay-related immunodeficiency (GRID).

More than thirty years after the first cases of HIV/AIDS spurred an organized response by the budding gay community, the final frontier of gay rights has been reached: the ability to assimilate into the mainstream, the equity of legal standing, the right to marriage. But as gay men and women realize legal equality, some gay individuals still face uneven social challenges that diverge from the perceived interests and needs of the group. Nine years ago, Andrew Sullivan foreshadowed the dissolution of a communal gay identity in his article “The End of Gay Culture”, writing, “[W]hat encompasses gay culture itself will expand into such a diverse set of subcultures that ‘gayness’ alone will cease to tell you very much about any individual.” Arguments that the gay community should redirect and broaden its approach beyond marriage equality, while well intentioned, rely on the existence of a monolithic gay community. Today, the use of the word “community” goes beyond the semantics, creating an outdated premise for viewing gay individuals whose dissimilarities often mean their only common thread is being a sexual minority. This is not a strong enough link to define a community whose different interests and needs will not always align, if at all.

[LINK] "Crimea’s Vanishing Religious Communities"

Writing for Transitions Online, Felix Corley suggests that many religious communities in Russian-occupied Crimea--particularly ones with Ukrainian or Western links--are facing quiet repression.

Almost 18 years after it was founded, a small Catholic convent in Crimea's capital, Simferopol, was forced to close down in November when its three Franciscan nuns had to leave. They were refused the possibility of extending their residence permits in Crimea, the chancellor of the Odessa and Simferopol Catholic diocese, Krzysztof Kontek, told Forum 18 News Service from the Ukrainian city of Odessa on 15 January. The sisters, who are from elsewhere in Ukraine and Poland, had been helping in pastoral work in the city's Catholic parish. Their enforced departure came a month after the parish’s main priest was similarly forced to leave.

In addition, December saw the enforced departure of the last of Crimea's 23 imams and Muslim teachers from Turkey, a spokesperson for the Muslim Board told Forum 18 from Simferopol on 20 January.

Officials from the Crimean branch of Russia's Federal Migration Service said in October that only registered religious communities are able to invite foreign citizens. No religious community in Crimea or Sevastopol (an administratively separate city) has state registration recognized by the Russian authorities.

A Russian law from 31 December extended the deadline for re-registering religious communities (and other entities) in Crimea until 1 March.

Fines for religious books the Russian authorities regard as “extremist” seem to have reduced in recent months, though they did not stop. However, as a moratorium on raids, seizures of literature, and prosecutions in such cases ended, it remains unclear if such raids, fines, and confiscations will resume. Muslims, Jehovah's Witnesses, and librarians have been particular targets.

The moratorium was announced by the head of Crimea's Russian-backed government, Sergei Aksyonov, in mid-October.

[LINK] "Scotland poll shows a nation on the verge of abandoning Labour"

At The Guardian's datablog, Alberto Nardelli suggests that, come the next British general election, the SNP will sweep Scotland and practically destroy Labour. This has implications for the future of Britain's Labour Party, but even more so for the future of Scotland within the United Kingdom.

Make no mistake, Labour’s crisis in Scotland is profound. That’s the inescapable conclusion of Lord Ashcroft’s 14 constituency polls that show the party losing all but one of the Labour-held seats surveyed.

The swing from Labour to the Scottish National party (SNP) is above 20% in all 14 of those seats – the average is 25% – the kind of shift that is arguably seen only once in a generation.

That is not all. More troubling for Labour is the fact that among all voters under 44, support for the SNP is nearly double that of Labour. The SNP leads across all age groups, except among those aged 65 and above.

To make matters even worse for Ed Miliband’s party, the seats polled by Ashcroft are among the ones Labour won with the highest margins five years ago – and the swing in these is even greater than the one implied in Scotland-wide polls.

On the Guardian’s modelling, based on current polls, the SNP would win 54 out of the 59 seats in Scotland. The Lib Dems would retain one, Orkney and Shetland, and Labour four.

But, curiously, when you look at the impact of these polls on the most recent projection, the most likely next government remains unchanged. Some sort of Labour-SNP alliance is still the most probable starting point of any feasible government because the Conservatives remain far short of an overall majority, where 326 seats are needed. The current arithmetic also means that feasible Tory options fall some way short of the required numbers.

[LINK] "It Looks Like an Asteroid Strike Can’t Cause a Worldwide, Dinosaur-Killing Firestorm"

Universe Today's Nancy Atkinson shares the relatively good news.

For decades, scientists have debated the cause of the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs and other life 65 million years ago. While the majority of researchers agree that a massive asteroid impact at Chicxulub, Mexico is the culprit, there have been some dissenters. Now, new research is questioning just a portion of the asteroid/Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction scenario. While the scientists involved in the study don’t doubt that such an asteroid impact actually happened, their research shows it is just not possible that vast global firestorms could have ravaged our planet and be the main cause of the extinction.

Researchers from the University of Exeter, University of Edinburgh and Imperial College London recreated the vast energy released from a 15-km wide asteroid slamming into Earth, which occurred around the time that dinosaurs became extinct.

They found that close to the impact site — a 180 km wide crater in Mexico — the heat pulse would have lasted for less than a minute. This intense but short-lived heat, the team says, could not have ignited live plants, challenging the idea that the impact led to global firestorms.

However, they did find that the effects of the impact would actually be worse on the other side of the planet, where less intense but longer periods of heat could have ignited live plant matter.

“By combining computer simulations of the impact with methods from engineering we have been able to recreate the enormous heat of the impact in the laboratory,” said Dr. Claire Belcher from the University of Exeter. “This has shown us that the heat was more likely to severely affect ecosystems a long distance away, such that forests in New Zealand would have had more chance of suffering major wildfires than forests in North America that were close to the impact. This flips our understanding of the effects of the impact on its head and means that palaeontologists may need to look for new clues from fossils found a long way from the impact to better understand the mass extinction event.”

[URBAN NOTE] "It's more buses or bust"

Former TTC chair and NOW Toronto columnist Adam Giambrone makes the case for more spending on buses by the TTC.

[F]or the mayor to realize further improvements in crowding conditions beyond this year, more buses will be needed. And here's where things get tricky.

It’s 2014 fleet plans suggest the TTC intends to retire some 350 buses, maybe as many as 400 during this term of council, while buying 400 replacement buses. This is while ridership is expected to rise to close to 600 million, from the current 540 million‎, which means there will be few buses left to deploy to increase rush hour service with buses already promised to cover the increased express service promised under Tory's plan.

The purchase of the hundreds of new buses will require tens of millions in new capital funding which, with all the other transit and city projects, will be hard to find.‎

With capital dollars tight, t‎he TTC will need to consider rebuilding older buses in its current fleet (‎like its recent decision to do a limited rebuilding of 30 of its streetcars)‎ to meet Tory's services commitments.‎

The TTC has resorted to this tactic at least three times in the last two decades to respond to funding shortages. The most recent life extension of 28-year-old buses, cost around $70,000 per bus (although some needed much more work) and this turned out to be a faster and cheaper‎ way of getting needed buses into service quickly.

[LINK] "I Married a Jew"

A biographical essay written by an anonymous American woman of Christian background and published in The Atlantic's January 1939 issue has surfaced to become a reasonably popular article. In it, the author defends her marriage to a Jewish man. The thing is, even though she does seem to be trying, on numerous occasions she is tone-deaf, invoking stereotypes and missing things.

My husband's father and mother are Jews. My parents are both what Mr. Hitler would be pleased to call 'Aryan' Germans. I am an American-born girl, and the first to defend my Americanism in an argument; yet so strong are family ties, and the memory of a happy thirteen-month sojourn in the Vaterland a few years ago, that I frequently find myself trying to see things from the Nazis' point of view and to had excuses for the things they do—to the dismay of our liberal-minded friends and the hurt confusion of my husband.

Here we are then, Ben and I, a Jew and a German-American, married for four years, supremely happy, with a three-year-old son who has his father's quick brown eyes and my yellow hair. Ours was a fervent love match, made more fervent by the fact that we had to wait in secret for two years until Ben earned enough at his profession to support a family. He had known other girls and, as I was twenty-five before we married, I had had my share of other men's attention. Consequently our marriage was not the hasty, impassioned leap of two people soaring on the Icarian wings of a first love. That which was between us was calm as the night, deep as the sea; in the light of it we both knew that forever afterwards he would look upon other women, and I upon other men, as pale wraiths. We determined that no obstacle should prevent our union, and obstacles there were a-plenty as soon as our families learned our intention.

'Child,' entreated my mother, who deep in her heart had always hoped that what she referred to as my superior intelligence, careful upbringing, talents, and attractiveness, would land me a husband well up in the social levels, ‘bethink yourself what this means. Married to a Jew, you will be barred from certain circles. They can say what they like about Germany, but democratic America is far from wholeheartedly accepting the Jews. Remember that Ben couldn't join a fraternity at his university. Remember there are clubs and resorts and residential districts that bar Jews. Remember there are a dozen other less tangible discriminations against them.'

'That makes not a whit of difference, to me,' I stubbornly maintained. 'I love Ben. I'd marry him if he were a Hottentot.'

'But, child, remember the racial and religious differences between you. Remember that your children will be pulled in two different directions.'

Yesterday Olga Khazan, also at The Atlantic, published an article of her own responding to the stereotyping contained therein.

For all its cringeworthiness, this story accomplishes a lot: It’s a good cautionary tale about sensitivity and judgment calls for modern journalists, a powerful remembrance of how much more hateful our world was just a few generations ago, and yet it still contains a plus ça change element.

It’s striking, for example, the way this section echoes current conversations about European Muslim identity in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo tragedy: “The Jews must come off the fence and make up their minds whether they want to be primarily citizens of, say, France or England or primarily citizens of Jewry. They cannot be Jewish in their homes and French or English outside. They cannot pledge their pride and loyalty to Israel and expect Frenchmen and Englishmen to treat them exactly like other Frenchmen and Englishmen.”

What prejudices of our own era, Khazan suggests rightly, will future generations see as being ridiculous?

[DM] "A possible compromise on the census?"

Aaron Wherry of MacLean's notes the defeat of a parliamentarian's bill to reinstate Canada's long-form census, and notes said parliamentarian's proposed compromise.

Ted Hsu’s bill to reinstate the mandatory long-form census was defeated last night by a vote of 147 to 126. Every opposition MP voted in favour, but nearly every Conservative voted against—Michael Chong was the only Conservative to vote in favour. By that turnout, Hsu would have needed another 11 Conservatives to support him.



It’s difficult to parse all those nays without a full survey, but I imagine it could conceivably be some combination of political, ideological and practical concerns with the bill (the legislation is more complicated than a simple reinstatement of the long-form census). Hsu does point to the fact that both Michael Chong and Brent Rathgeber supported his bill as “a little bit of evidence that this is not something small-c conservatives are necessarily opposed to.”



Hsu told me this morning that he’s happy with the attention his bill generated and that he’s going to continue to press the issue. He also mentioned a compromise that he has brought to the attention of Industry Minister James Moore (whose responsibilities include Statistics Canada).

The long-form census has about 50 or so questions, you don’t have to make them all mandatory. If you had eight more mandatory questions, two education, two employment, two income and two about dwelling, which are those kind of major sections of the long-form census, you could use the mandatory answers from those eight extra questions … to reduce the sampling bias from surveying the rest of the questions in a voluntary manner.



… So we know, for example, that lower income people tended to not return the national household survey, the voluntary survey. But let’s say you made one question mandatory, namely household income. Then you would have a really good idea of the income level of people and you could use the answer from that mandatory question to adjust the answers from the rest of the income questions to adjust for the fact that fewer lower income people answered the rest of the questions about income.



Just like the mandatory long-form census is used to correct the sampling error in all sorts of voluntary surveys that you do following the census, if you made a few carefully chosen questions mandatory … you could correct the sampling bias for the rest of the questions that you left voluntary.

Failing that, I would note that Canada is set to have national elections this year. If the Conservative governent falls, I doubt either of the two political parties best-placed to challenge it--the centrist Liberals and the more left-wing NDP--would be likely to have problems. The 2011 data is compromised, but future data sets will hopefully be complete.