[MUSIC] Róisín Murphy, "Gone Fishing"

Towleroad's Occupy the Disco feature pointed me to the news tha Róisín Murphy is coming out with a new album, Hairless Toys, with the lead single "Gone Fishing".

"Róisín Murphy - Gone Fishing" (Watch on YouTube)

This song was written after I watched the documentary film Paris Is Burning, having read an article which referenced it in a discussion about House music's origins in black, gay culture. I was deeply moved by this film. 'I had to run this far from home' - it's about the outcasts who could never fit into mainstream society and how they created a safe place in the drag 'Ball' scene of New York in the ‘80s. 'Will we live on? The children of La Beija' refers to the 'house' of Pepper La Beija, who was one of the most notable figures on the scene, Pepper is also quoted in Malcolm McLaren's song on the same subject 'Deep In Vogue'. The culture was a flamboyant reaction to persecution and disillusionment, the imagination and bravery of these kids is simply awe-inspiring. I envisioned 'Gone Fishing' almost as a song from a Broadway musical version of this story. The making of one's own world, a safer world and the creation of a new, better family in music or youth culture is a theme I touch upon elsewhere on my album Hairless Toys.

[PHOTO] Looking between the cars, northbound train

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• io9 notes that kale, cauliflower, and collards all are product of the same species.


• The Dragon's Gaze speculates on the detection of Earth analogues late in their lifespan and notes the failure to discover a predicted circumbinary brown dwarf at V471 Tauri.


• The Dragon's Tales shares Lockheed's suggestion that it is on the verge of developing a 300-kilowatt laser weapon.


• Far Outliers considers the question of who is to blame for the Khmer Rouge.


• Joe. My. God. notes that One Million Moms is hostile to the free WiFi of McDonald's.


• Spacing Toronto notes an 1855 circus riot sparked by a visit of clowns to the wrong brothel.


• Torontoist notes how demographic changes in different Toronto neighbourhoods means some schools are closing while others are straining.


• The Volokh Conspiracy notes a California court ruling not recognizing the competence of the Iranian judicial system in a civil case on the grounds of its discrimination against religious minorities and women.


• Window on Eurasia considers the implications of peacekeepers in eastern Ukraine, notes the steady integration of Abkhazia and South Ossetia into Russia, and notes Russian fascism.

[URBAN NOTE] "A Toronto statue from the graveyard of the British Empire"

Spacing Toronto's Adam Bunch describes the strange story of the equestrian statue of Edward VII in Queen's Park, gifted from India. (My photograph is above.)

Our story ends in Toronto, but it starts nearly 12,000 kilometers away: in India, at a place called Coronation Park. It’s a grand, wide-open space on the edge of Delhi, the dusty capital of what will soon be the most populous nation in the history of the world, a city teeming with more than 11 million people.

It was right here, in this park, that the British threw their biggest parties to celebrate their rule over the “crown jewel” of their empire. The first one was in 1876, to honour the day Queen Victoria was crowned as the Empress of India. There was an immense, lavish procession, with the country’s most important British officials riding in on elephants and 70,000 people in the crowd.

When Queen Victoria died and the crown was passed down to her son, King Edward VII, they did it all over again. This time, the durbar (which is what they called these things) was even bigger. The celebrations went on for two whole weeks. More than 100,000 people showed up. There were fireworks. Parades. Even polo matches. An entire city of tents rose up on the grounds, supplied with their own electricity, running water and rail lines. There were commemorative stamps printed. Maharajas, Viceroys and Governors came from all over India. The king’s own brother even made the trip from England.

And that was nothing. A few years later, King Edward was dead. And the new one, King George V (who you probably know as Colin Firth’s dad in that movie), decided he wanted to attend his durbar in person. He and his Queen sat on golden thrones under golden umbrellas as 80,000 Indian troops paraded through the park before them. There were vast seas of horses and camels and cannons. King George even seized the moment to declare that Delhi would be the new capital of India.

Of course, the whole thing was a facade — a pretty spectacle to help to mask the vile things the British were doing. At the Jallianwala Bagh massacre they ordered fifty British Indian Army troops to fire on a trapped crowd of unarmed men, women and children for ten to fifteen minutes until their ammunition ran out. By the end there were more than a thousand bodies on the ground. At the Qissa Khwani Bazaar massacre, they drove armoured cars through crowds of non-violent demonstrators, used machine guns on the ones who refused to leave the injured behind, and then hunted the rest through the streets for hours. The members of a regiment who refused to fire on the crowd were all arrested. Some got life in prison.

[URBAN NOTE] "Staggering Basquiat show a triumph for the AGO"

blogTO's Aubrey Jax reacts effusively to the Art Gallery of Ontario's new Basquiat show. Photos and more at the link.

Jean-Michel Basquiat's first retrospective in Canada opens in Toronto this weekend, with nearly 100 large paintings as well as drawings, sculptures, and video filling the halls of "Now's the Time," (a Martin Luther King quote/the title of a painting) at the AGO.

More impactful and comprehensive than past shows like the Brooklyn Musem's Street to Studio, the exhibit witnesses the curators separate Basquiat's works into nine sections that successfully represent the themes and stylistic variety of the multifaceted 1980's American artist. The show's only downfall may come from Toronto itself.

At Tuesday's press preview, speakers engaged in much trumpeting over Basquiat deserving a place in art history (yeah, what?) -- a place that, perhaps unbeknownst to Canadians, the artist achieved long ago. The idea that Toronto needs someone to explain to us why Basquiat is an artist whose work is as important as that of Munch, Twombly, and Rauschenberg is either laughable or insulting, depending on your mood.

The gallery was also self congratulatory about the community outreach it engaged in while preparing the exhibit, hoping to create a show "of Toronto" rather than "for Toronto." The AGO's obvious insecurity over displaying the works of a world famous, highly respected, extremely collectable black artist was embarrassing at best, and distressing at worst.

[LINK] "Life-destroying 'spice' drug engulfs Russia"

Al Jazeera's Mansur Mirovalev describes the advent of a new, terrible drug in Russia, a local variation on bath salts that is being blamed on Ukrainians.

"Spice" has nothing to do with pepper or saffron and is named after a drug that triggered an interstellar war in The Dune, Frank Herbert's sci-fi novel series. First synthesised in 2004, it is an umbrella brand for the ever-growing family of substances whose chemical formula has been constantly changed to avoid blacklisting.

Banned in the United States and the European Union, it is widely available in Russia and several ex-Soviet republics in myriad variations.

But millions of Russians, mostly youngsters, who have tried "spice" in the past decade, believed that it was a harmless, cheap and legal substitute to marijuana. "Spice" pushers maintained the myth with online ads or business cards that can be found on trains or in nightclubs that show laughing cartoon characters, ganja-smoking musician Bob Marley, or slogans such as "100 percent harmless".

It had been openly sold in tobacco shops or tiny kiosks in underground passes, next to transportation hubs or shopping malls until 2009, when authorities started to ban one spice formula after the other. Vigilante youth groups punished "spice" pushers by beating them up, dousing them with paint, and burning their product.

But it's a hydra-headed business with a "designer" drug whose makers are no longer limited by nature and can alter the formula any way they like - turning the users into involuntary guinea pigs that try and test the alterations. "Spice" highs can now mimic the effects of amphetamine, cocaine, or psychedelic drugs.

These days, precursors or the chemical base for "spice" are mass-produced in China or Southeast Asia. They are shipped to Russia as contraband or simply mailed - several grams of the substance hidden in an envelope is enough for several ounces of the market-ready product.

[LINK] "Alberta squandered oil wealth with big spending, Fraser Institute says"

CBC's Tracy Johnson described how, at least judging by the examples of Alaska and Norway, Alberta squandered its oil wealth.

In the next week, Alberta will release its third-quarter fiscal update. It's not going to be pretty.

Premier Jim Prentice says the drop in energy prices, particularly for oil, has drained $7 billion from government revenues. This fiscal update is widely expected to show the province sliding into a deficit for the current fiscal year.

A report from the Fraser Institute says it didn't have to be this way, and that with some restraint, Alberta could still be in surplus and have saved billions in the Heritage Savings Trust Fund.

Ten years ago, before the boom started in earnest, Alberta spent $8,965 (in 2013 dollars) per person in program spending. This does not include capital spending on items like hospitals, schools and roads.

The report argues that had the province increased program spending in the following years at the rate of inflation plus population growth, it would have spent $295 billion on programs over the next nine years.

Instead it spent $345 billion, a $49-billion difference. Last year alone it spent $8 billion, a little more than the expected hole in next year's provincial budget.

[LINK] "Pizza Hut Returns to Africa"

Janice Kew and Christopher Spillane, writing for Bloomberg, describe how Pizza Hut is trying to break into booming African markets.

Pizza Hut knows a few things about fast expansion in emerging markets. In less than 25 years, the chain has added more than 1,300 restaurants across China. But Randall Blackford, the general manager of Pizza Hut’s operations in Africa, says the restaurant operator is taking its time expanding on the continent. In Africa, “we are a small company right now and will stay small for some time,” he says, eating pizza at one of his restaurants in Soweto township in Johannesburg. “It gives us flexibility to respond to local tastes, to engage more. We can’t be first, can’t be the cheapest, so we got to be the best.”

Blackford has reason to be cautious: The world’s largest pizza purveyor, a unit of Louisville-based Yum! Brands, failed in sub-Saharan Africa seven years ago, after consumers were cool to its prices and dine-in model. This time around, Pizza Hut is targeting takeout and delivery service. It will limit drop-off distances to a few miles, which means eventually it will have smaller stores in lots of neighborhoods. From its current eight stores in South Africa and Zambia, it aims to have 200 stores across the continent in three years.

While fast-food purchases in South Africa are growing, with about 34.8 million people expected to buy meals from such restaurants by 2017, up from 31 million now, much of that nation’s fast-food industry is homegrown, according to Euromonitor International analyst Elizabeth Friend. In countries such as Ghana, Kenya, and Nigeria, there’s less competition than in South Africa. So while supply chains are less reliable, those newer markets offer foreign restaurant players good growth opportunities, “at least for those chains that can survive until that investment starts to pay off,” Friend says.

Almost half of Africa’s fast-food restaurants are focused on chicken, then comes burgers. Pizza is a distant third, accounting for about 5 percent of total spending. One reason: the more moderate cost and wider availability of poultry supplies. Some Pizza Hut toppings, such as air-dried pepperoni, have to be imported. That affects customers’ checks. The Streetwise 5 meal from Yum’s KFC, which includes a large order of fries and five pieces of chicken, costs $5.50 in South Africa, while a fully loaded large Pizza Hut pizza approaches $8. In Zambia, the same pie costs about $10. “The pizza outlets are going to have to focus on pricing, bringing it more in line with what chicken costs,” says Wayne McCurrie, a money manager at Momentum Asset Management in Johannesburg.

[LINK] "Rogue 'Electro-Fishing' Puts River Dolphins at Risk in Myanmar"

National Geographic's Hereward Holland describes how an age-old history of cooperation between dolphins and Burmese fishers is being undermined by new destructive fishing techniques.

On a pale blue dawn on the Irrawaddy River in Myanmar (Burma), Maung Lay crouched at the front of his canoe, rapping the gunwale with a short stick. He then made a throaty, high-pitched purr, like the ringtone of an old telephone: his call for assistance.

On cue, the shiny gray flipper of a dolphin broke the surface and waved—dolphinese for: "We're ready to cooperate."

Standing up, Maung Lay pulled a pleated net over his right elbow and shook the lead weights woven into its hem against the hull. At the other end of the 15-foot (5-meter) boat, an assistant splashed the water with an oar.

More dolphins arrived, exhaling heavily as they breached the surface, their mission to corral schools of fish around the canoe. After about a minute, a dolphin flicked its tailfin out of the water, a sort of aquatic thumbs up. Maung Lay responded by casting his net in a wide arc into the tea-brown water.

But when he hauled the net back in, it was empty—not a single fish.

Such scenes are increasingly common on the Irrawaddy River. That's because of "electro-fishing"—a new, and illegal, technique in which rogue fishermen send an electric current through the water to stun fish, making them easier to scoop up in bunches.

The tactic is depleting the fish stocks that feed the already endangered Irrawaddy dolphins and is thought to have inadvertently killed two dolphins. It also seems to have made some dolphins wary of helping legitimate fishermen round up fish, a longtime tradition on the river.

[LINK] "China’s Harbin City courts Jews once again"

At Canadian Jewish News, Ng Weng Hoong writes about the interest of at least some Chinese in a revival of the Jewish commnunity in the northeastern metropolis of Harbin.

When Chinese tour guide Eric Liu found out that Jews were fleeing Paris and other European cities to escape their worsening anti-Semitic environment, he asked if they might want to “return” to his city of Harbin, once among the most vibrant and important Jewish centres in the Far East.

“We welcome them. They are smart, educated and hard-working, and will be a very positive influence for the city,” he said as he recounted the role of Jewish businessmen, musicians, writers, bankers and engineers in making this northeastern Chinese city one of the country’s most prosperous early last century.

[. . .]

China has been quietly growing trade and investment with Israel and Jewish businesses. From about $2.6 billion (US) in 2005, Israel’s bilateral trade with China had grown to $15.59 billion in 2013, just slightly below the $16.3 billion worth of business conducted with the United States.

Given recent growth rates, China could soon overtake the United States as Israel’s largest trading partner, said Ophir Gore, the head of trade mission at the Israeli embassy in Beijing. With China hungry for Israeli water expertise, information technology and farming know-how, the government of Israel has set a target to double its exports to the Asian nation over the next five years.

As if catching up with its own past, Harbin is eager to attract a new wave of Jewish businesses and settlers to replicate the success that the earlier legendary generation had brought. Mayor Song Xibin is leading a delegation to Israel this month to invite Israeli investors to his hometown.

[DM] "Three links on African immigration to China"

I've a post up at Demography Matters linking to one blog and two articles examining the phenomenon of African immigration to China. Go, read.