[PHOTO] Looking down the tracks, eastbound at Bathurst

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• blogTO notes that Yorkville's Lettieri is shutting down.


• Crooked Timber starts a debate as to who won the latest Greece/Eurozone confrontation.


• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper suggesting a new way to analyze carbon-rich exoplanet atmospheres.


• The Dragon's Tales observes that India is hoping to build its next aircraft carrier quickly.


• Languages of the World's Asya Perelstvaig announces that people can now apply for her online Stanford course.


• Marginal Revolution argues that antibiotics are of underestimated value.


• Spacing reviews an interesting-sounding book, The Language of Space.


• Towleroad notes an anonymous college lacrosse player who has just published a book of love poems to his boyfriend.


• Window on Eurasia argues that Russia wants to weaken Baltic faith in NATO and suggests that everyone, detractors and supporters alike, overestimate Putin.


• The Financial Times' World blog notes that apparently Russia was unhappy with being ignored, so explaining in part why it went into Ukraine.

[LINK] "'Rotisserie' Planets Could Host Alien Life — If Wet Enough"

Space.com's Charles Q. Choi notes a new study suggesting that exoplanets with extreme axial tilts, like that of Uranus in our solar system, could be quite habitable so long as they would have oceans.

"The expectation was that such a planet would not be habitable — it would basically boil, and freeze, which would be really tough for life," lead author of the exoplanet study David Ferreira, a climate scientist at the University of Reading in England, said in a statement.

However, Ferreira and his colleagues' new findings challenge those expectations, showing that such extremely tilted planets may remain habitable if covered entirely by oceans. "In the search for habitable exoplanets, we're saying, don't discount high-obliquity ones as unsuitable for life," Ferreira added in a statement.

To see what life might be like on habitable planets with extreme tilts, researchers simulated Earth-size planets covered entirely in water circling their stars at the same distance as Earth orbits the sun. The 3D models simulated circulation among the atmosphere, ocean and sea ice on "aquaplanets" with oceans 1.8 miles (3 kilometers) deep and "swamp" planets with relatively shallow oceans that were 33 feet (10 meters), 165 feet (50 m) or 655 feet (200 m) deep.

[. . .]

The investigators simulated planets at three obliquities. The first was 23.5 degrees, like Earth's. The next was 54 degrees, the point at which the poles receive more annual sunlight on average than the equator. The last was 90 degrees, the point at which a planet is essentially lying on its side — the poles would each point at the star for a quarter of the year, and then away for another quarter, alternating between extremes of light and darkness.

Ferreira and his colleagues found that a global ocean would absorb enough solar energy from the star and release it back into the atmosphere for such a world to maintain a rather mild, springlike climate year round.

[LINK] "Most HIV Infections Come From Undiagnosed or Untreated People: Study"

U.S. News and World Report is one news source of many sharing news of a recent study suggesting that the overwhelming majority of HIV transissions in the United States--nearly 92%--are a consequence of untreated people passing the virus on.

If an American becomes infected with HIV, chances are he or she contracted the virus from someone who didn't know they were infected or wasn't getting proper treatment.

That's the message of a new U.S. study, which found that undiagnosed and untreated people with HIV may be responsible for more than nine out of 10 new infections.

The findings "highlight the community-wide prevention benefits of expanding HIV diagnosis and treatment in the United States," a team led by Dr. Jacek Skarbinski, of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, wrote in the report.

Looking at 2009 data, Skarbinski's team said that about 45,000 new cases of HIV were transmitted that year, adding to the total of more than 1.1 million Americans who were already living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Using national databases, the investigators estimated that more than 18 percent of that total remained undiagnosed, while another 45 percent were aware of their status but were not getting medical care.

Only about one-quarter of HIV-infected Americans had managed to get their viral status under control by using the current standard of care known as antiretroviral therapy, the researchers found. These drugs can lower an HIV patient's viral load to undetectable levels.

Science Daily goes into greater detail and links to the study.

[LINK] "Argentina Moves Towards Marriage of Convenience with China"

The Inter Press Service's Fabiana Frayssinet notes Argentina's recent rapprochement with China, driven by changing economic dynamics.

The government of Argentina is building a marriage of convenience with China, which some see as uneven and others see as an indispensable alliance for a new level of insertion in the global economy.

[. . .]

President Cristina Fernández called the new relationship with China an “integral strategic alliance,” after signing a package of 22 agreements with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing on Feb. 4.

The accords include areas like space technology, mining, energy, financing, livestock and cultural matters. They cover the construction of two nuclear and two hydropower plants, considered key to this country’s goal of energy self-sufficiency.

“Although they are important, the new agreements and others that were signed earlier are insufficient to gauge the dimension of the bilateral commitment,” said Jorge Castro, the director of the Strategic Planning Institute and an expert on China.

“For Argentina, the relationship with China has elements that are essential for insertion into the international system of the 21st century, along with other countries of the South, headed by Brazil,” he told IPS.

“These ties are between the new fulcrum of the global economy, China-Asia, and Argentina as a nation and as a regional unit,” he said.

[LINK] "The Origins of Separatism in Donetsk"

Transitions Online shared an article by The Ukrainian Week's Denys Kazanskyi1 looking at separatism in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region. Kazanskyi1 makes the case that separatism, and a sense of separateness from the rest of Ukraine, has been extant for quite some time.

Crimea was long considered the only potentially dangerous region in this regard. A certain degree of Donbas isolation was acknowledged, but this was initially written off as the result of machinations by oligarchic clans who sought to turn the local population against other regions of Ukraine and reaffirm the myth of Donbas as the nation’s leading breadwinner.

To be sure, these clans are still able to divide and to rule. They skillfully directed the wrath of Donbas’ depressed mining communities against similarly disenfranchised workers from western Ukraine. While average people squabbled with one another on the Internet, the clans were quietly appropriating the Donetsk region’s industries. However, the same officials from former President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions in Donetsk and Luhansk who convinced their electorates that Donbas is a “special region” with the right to occupy a dominant position in Ukraine were more often themselves the captives of stereotypes.

Donetsk separatism existed long before it was popularized by the Party of Regions. It is not about the “Donetsk-Kryviy Rih Soviet Republic,” whose existence was noted only by the Bolsheviks who invented it and Donetsk native Volodymyr Kornilov, who wrote a book on it. In the USSR, Donbas showed no discernible desire for independence. The first signs of separatism appeared in the mining regions at the end of the 1980s before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but it was primarily economic and not national in origin.

Solidarity became the foundation of the Donetsk miners’ separatism. The popular assertion that “Donbas feeds the entire country” originated among them. The profession had been lionized in the 1920s and 1930s, with the mine worker portrayed by official propaganda as a true Atlas on whose shoulders rested the economic power of the country. And as Donbas was a major coal mining region of the Soviet Union, its residents overflowed with a sense of self-worth. It was here that the saying “miners are the guardians of labor” was coined; it was here that the legendary Soviet miner Alexey Stakhanov set his world record; it was Donbas that a famous Soviet poster named “the heart of Russia.”

Inspirational newspaper editorials about Donbas miners were common until the late 1970s, when the region achieved its peak for coal production. Coal output has been decreasing ever since. After the discovery of huge oil fields in Siberia, the Soviet fuel and energy industry began switching from coal to oil and gas. Priorities and investments changed. For the next two decades, the holdings of Donbas coal mining companies remained practically unchanged, with mines continuing to operate without renovation. In the 1980s the coal industry of the Ukrainian SSR inevitably deteriorated, hitting a crisis at the end of the decade that resulted in massive strikes.

[URBAN NOTE] "Detroit homeowners face new wave of foreclosures"

Al Jazeera America's Peter Moskowitz notes a new wave of foreclosures on residential real estate set to sweep through Detroit.

I wonder about the good sense of this plan. How can the city be revived if still more of its long-time residents are displaced?

Tens of thousands of Detroit homeowners are facing possible foreclosure in the next year as the county cracks down on back taxes owed, which activists say are often extremely inflated because the county assesses property taxes on the basis of their value before the city fell into financial crisis.

When Wayne County officials opened the Cobo Center convention hall in early February to property owners hoping to work out payment plans to save their homes from tax foreclosure, more than 6,000 people streamed through the doors.

There was Krystal Malone, who finished up coursework to become a teacher just as the recession hit and is now underemployed as a substitute teacher and $9,000 behind on her taxes, even though her house is worth only about $10,000. There was Gabriel McNeil, who bought his house for $1,500 in 2013 without realizing it had nearly 10 times that owed in back taxes and is now trying to work out a plan with the city to pay that off. There was Brenda Johnson, whose aunt recently died, leaving her a house full of furniture and several thousand in taxes owed to the county.

“I just don’t want to get padlocks on my door and I can’t get my personal property out,” Johnson said. “I’m just trying to buy some time.”

Even though Cobo’s largest room was packed every day it was open to people people waiting to meet with county officials, the residents there represented only a fraction of the tens of thousands of occupied properties facing foreclosure by the county this year.

[URBAN NOTE] "Poll Position: Toronto Wants a Downtown Relief Line (If They Live Downtown, at Least)"

Torontoist's Kelli Korducki reports on a new poll suggesting that, of all of the potential plans for subway expansion, the Downtown Relief Line connecting downtown Toronto with the east of the city has the edge.

A new poll shows that Torontonians are keen on a Downtown Relief Line—at least, keener than they are on other transit priorities. Unsurprisingly, the poll showed that opinion is largely dependent on where respondents live. Scarborough residents want a Scarborough subway, while downtowners are pro-DRL (even though the name is a misnomer, and primarily helps suburban residents commuting downtown). While 44 per cent of respondents approve of Mayor John Tory’s SmartTrack plan, only 23 per cent think it will have any benefit to them personally.

Forum research president Dr. Lorne Bozinoff says, “Despite the fact that the Mayor’s signature SmartTrack plan has the approval of most, the citizens of Toronto still see a downtown relief line for the junction of the Yonge and Bloor lines as the most urgent transit need in the city. And it is interesting to see that the ‘St. Clair Disaster’ is rated a success by those who actually use it.”

[BRIEF NOTE] On the undeniable eloquence and political chops of Kathleen Wynne

Yesterday, Kathleen Wynne had a crowning moment of awesome as she defended her government's proposed new sex education curriculum.

Progressive Conservative Monte McNaughton is openly critical of the updated curriculum and says it’s not the job of the premier — “especially Kathleen Wynne” — to tell parents what is age appropriate for their children.

Wynne, who is openly gay, responded by pointedly demanding that McNaughton explain why he feels she is not qualified to set standards for kids in schools.

Her response was wonderfully eloquent.

“What is it that especially disqualifies me for the job that I’m doing? Is it that I’m a woman? Is it that I’m a mother? Is it that I have a master’s of education? Is it that I was a school council chair? Is it that I was the minister of education? What is it exactly that the member opposite thinks disqualifies me from doing the job that I’m doing?”

And today, PC MPP Rick Nicholls came out about his disbelief in evolution.

Who these days remember that Kathleen Wynne was supposed to be a Liberal placeholder before an inevitable Progressive Conservative government in Ontario?