[PHOTO] 1968, from year of revolution to perfume ad fodder

I was struck by this ad in a Bloor Street West storefront. Has 1968, that year of incipient revolution and radical change, come down to this? Clearly, it has.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• On St. Patrick's Day, blogTO offers a guide to Irish Toronto.


• Centauri Dreams notes the existence of chaotically-orbiting Earths.


• The Dragon's Tales links to a paper suggesting that the Yucatán peninsula was hit by a tsunami a millennium ago.


• Joe. My. God. notes an anti-gay American who claims that Obama orchestrated the Ukrainian crisis at the behest of gays who wanted to punish Russia.
  
• Marginal Revolution notes the interest of Chinese in California real estate.


• Peter Rukavina reports on Prince Edward Island's latest snowfall.


• Spacing Toronto looks at the prospects for subways in Scarborough.


• Torontoist notes that Build Toronto has failed to provide affordable housing on nearly the scale promised.


• The Volokh Conspiracy notes the dismissal of a civil case brought by a man who had sex with a minor he met through Grindr brought against Grindr.


• Window on Eurasia observes a Russian nationalist's call to partition Belarus, suggests that Russia has been trying to split Ukraine for a while, and wonders if the families of Russian gastarbeitar from Central Asia could fall into support for Islamist terrorism.

[URBAN NOTE] "80-storey tower planned for Stollerys site at Yonge and Bloor"

As the Toronto Star's David Rider notes, the southwestern corner of Yonge and Bloor where menswear store Stollery's once was located may soon be occupied by one of the highest towers in the city. (blogTO also has more, including renderings.)

Developer Sam Mizrahi is proposing an 80-storey tower mixing upscale condo units and retail at the intersection of Yonge and Bloor Sts. — a development which would become the city’s second-tallest structure.

Mizrahi unveiled his vision for the former Stollerys store and adjacent lands on the intersection’s southwest corner on Wednesday night at a presentation at the Park Hyatt hotel.

The proposed 318-metre structure would be second only to the CN Tower, which stands 553 metres high.

Mizrahi told the Star it will be built by Foster + Partners of London and will have PATH connections to both the Bloor and Yonge lines, along with “a very significant public realm to enhance the pedestrian experience.”

The building will also feature eight levels of global retailers and over 600 parking spots with valet service.

[LINK] "Why Alanis still matters"

Sonya Bell of MacLean's makes a convincing case for the continued relevance of Alanis Morissette, newly-inducted to the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.

The reason it’s important to recognize Morissette in 2015 is that, 20 years on, we can fully appreciate Jagged Little Pill’s legacy. Its wildly successful blend of Riot Grrrl feminism and pop hooks announced to the music industry—in that distinctive husky screech—that there was a mass market for female singer-songwriters.

In the mid-1990s, that still wasn’t obvious.

“There was a quota for a very small [number] of female artists,” Morissette says in a piece she wrote looking back on that time. This meant her label, Maverick, initially had a hard time convincing radio stations to give You Oughta Know a shot.

As Morissette tells it, “Before a certain time, the response was, ‘We’re already playing two female artists. We’re playing Tori Amos and Sinead O’Connor, so we have plenty of females. We’re good.’ ”

It’s a hard attitude to wrap your mind around today, when the charts are dominated by Taylor Swift (who has been spotted with the You Learn lyrics scrawled on her arm) and Katy Perry (who says she grew up idolizing Morissette).

But Morissette is widely credited for helping to open the floodgates, ushering in a generation of mainstream female artists who sang about love very differently from Mariah Carey and Céline Dion. She paved the way for Fiona Apple, Nelly Furtado, Avril Lavigne and Pink, many of whom cite her as a direct influence.

[LINK] "Via train plot trial: The strange non-defence of Chiheb Esseghaier"

CBC's Laura Lynch reports on the strange defenses, legal and otherwise, of former Tunisian graduate student Chiheb Esseghaier on charges of terrorism.

Since the trial began on Feb. 1, virtually all of Esseghaier's words and actions in court — save for a brief, rambling statement at the end, read out by a court-appointed lawyer — have been kept secret from the jury and public under a court-ordered publication ban that has been lifted today as the jury goes into its deliberations.

They include:

■Asking the judge to help him persuade members of Parliament to change the Criminal Code to reflect the Qur'an
■Praying in the prisoner's dock and ignoring the judge's order to stop
■Displaying an unusual aversion to the number three

What those words and deeds suggest is a man whose level of religious zeal is unmatched by many, and whose unorthodox actions have clearly tested the patience of Judge Michael Code and the conduct of the trial.

Perhaps the most unusual of Esseghaier's interjections are those surrounding the number three. On at least two occasions, with the jury absent, he spoke about his apparent aversion to matters involving three.

Last month, noting that Esseghaier was falling asleep in court, Judge Code asked him whether he was sleeping well in the prison where he is being held.

Esseghaier told him he realized not long after his arrest that the jail had given him one blanket and two sheets and he saw it as a symbol, a symbol he could not accept.

"I told them I cannot accept symbolism because one blanket and two sheets suggests God has a son and a wife and God does not need to have a son and a wife because God is the creator of all things. So I can't accept the metaphor."

Much more at the link.

[LINK] "Chip Zdarsky Strikes Again"

Torontoist's Will Sloan has a nice interview up with Toronto cartoonist Chip Zdarsky, the offbeat cartoonist who is behind the revival of Howard the Duck as well as the artist for Sex Criminals.

Torontoist: Like a lot of people, my main exposure to Howard the Duck has been through the bad George Lucas movie. Did you know the comics?

Chip Zdarsky: I knew the comics before the movie, or around the same time. I love the movie—I was in Grade 6 when it came out, so I was kind of the perfect age for it. At that age, it’s a walking, talking duck—I’m going to enjoy it on some level. And actually, I really loved the closing song, I don’t know if you…

(*singing*) “Howaaard… the Duck…”

Yeah, yeah… it’s got that great ‘80s movie moment where Howard stumbles onstage, someone throws him a guitar, and he can just play really well. But I loved that song so much as a kid I actually recorded it off the TV.

But I had a weird Uncle Fred, who was the old hippie guy who collected all the underground comics. So whenever I was at his house, I’d go through all the Robert Crumb books I probably shouldn’t have looked at, and Howard the Duck, and I loved them. He kind of bequeathed them to me a few years ago. So when Marvel asked me to pitch on it, I was like, “Oh my God!” and I just pulled out the stack of old black-and-white magazines, and I was ready to go.

[LINK] "Medium gets a little more Twitter-like, and a little more blog-like"

Mathew Ingram suggests that Medium is starting to occupy the online space once occupied by Livejournal. (I really should get back to my account there and see what's what.)

When it first emerged, and for most of the time since then, Medium has been seen as primarily a place for long-form posts or articles, in part because the site has a clean and flowing design that encourages large images. Most of the content that the site itself commissioned and paid for has also tended to be long-form, and Williams has often talked about his vision for the site as being similar to a magazine.

On Tuesday, however, Medium announced a number of new additions to the service, including a very Twitter-like instant post-creation tool that appears on the front page of the site, with a simple box and the phrase “Write here,” and allows users to publish quickly. In a blog post, Williams said he wanted to make it easier “to start writing whenever you have an idea?—?and also to make it feel like less of a big deal to do so.”

Another feature is more of a redesign of the individual author pages, profiles and tag pages — the latter being the new name for what used to be called topic “channels.” Now authors and editors can add tags to their posts and those posts show up in a feed that is arranged by tags such as Tech or Media or Photos, and then filtered by an algorithm based on how many users shared or recommended each post. The redesign of tag and author pages turns them into more of a stream, Williams said — in fact, a very blog-like stream, with a mix of the shorter posts that the site is trying to encourage and longer posts that readers have to click through to view. Much like tweets, the shorter posts can be read within the stream in their entirety, and readers can click to recommend or share them without leaving the stream.

Although Williams didn’t say this, it seems fairly clear that Medium is trying to lower the barriers to creating content on the site — in much the same way that Twitter has been trying to decrease the friction between new users and the service, in order to increase engagement. Although Medium doesn’t really talk about numbers, it seems likely that it wants to broaden the reach of the site beyond just people who feel comfortable writing a 1,000-word blog post, choosing multiple images, etc.

[LINK] "St. Patrick's Day tradition made in U.S., not Ireland"

CBC's Meagan Fitzpatrick writes about how the modern celebration of St. Patrick's Day is really a product not of Ireland but of the Irish-Americans.

Irish immigrants in the U.S. began their own St. Patrick traditions in the 18th century. According to [academic Mike] Cronin's research, a group of elite Irishmen first gathered for a celebratory dinner in Boston on March 17, 1737.

The parade tradition was born about 30 years later in New York City in 1766 when Irish Catholic members of the British army took to the streets.

"What the Irish start doing is parading on St. Patrick's Day as a way of declaring their ethnicity," said Cronin.

Not all Irish immigrants to the U.S. were welcomed. They were characterized by some as drunken, violent and disease-carrying. The parades offered Irish-Americans an opportunity to showcase their pride and cultural identity.

As more immigrants arrived they felt strength in numbers, and the Irish started climbing the social ladder, moving into positions of power in local police forces, for example, and in commerce.

They kept marching, in more cities, in more public spaces, and not just in typically Irish neighbourhoods.

"We are here, we're not going away, and we are powerful," Cronin said of the attitude behind the parades.

[DM] "Some St. Patrick's Day notes on how Irish immigrants became integrated into Toronto"

I've a post up at Demography Matters noting how the Irish become integrated into Toronto despite starting off with very little other than the prejudice of the city's Protestant majority. There's lessons for us all even now in their story.

(Go, read.)