[PHOTO] Closed for condos, Yonge Street below Wellesley, Toronto

This entire city block of stores and restaurants, one block below Wellesley on Yonge Street, has been closed down. Condos will be here, sooner or later.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper considering rates of water loss in a moist greenhouse world's atmosphere.


• The Dragon's Tales notes that leftists in Catalonia blocked separatists from forming the government.


• Far Outliers notes Persian cultural influence in the South Caucasus, among Christian and Muslim cultures alike.


• Joe. My. God. notes that the Catholic cardinal of the Dominican Republic insulted the gay American ambassador in a manner combining homophobia with misogyny.


• Language Log notes the growing multilingualism of Hong Kong, beyond Chinese languages.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money responds to a feminist criticism of Jessica Jones, and notes it is entirely possible to respond to a feminist criticism without sending death or rape threats.


• Towleroad notes the publication, by the Russian edition of Maxim, of a list of gay respected by the magazine.


• Transit Toronto notes that you only need proof of payment to board streetcars by any door.


• Window on Eurasia notes a move in Russia to undermine that country's ethnofederalism, to the demerit of minority peoples like the Tatars.


• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell notes how the old habit of the Enlightenment to organize museums by curiosities does not work if you use artifacts from indigenous peoples in the mix.

[LINK] "Bruce Power to invest $13B in nuclear station creating 23,000 jobs"

The Toronto Star's Robert Benzie reports on the good news for Ontario.

Privately owned Bruce Power will invest $13 billion to refurbish the world’s largest nuclear station on Lake Huron.

In a first for Ontario, the company will as‎sume all financial risk of cost overruns from the overhaul of six of Bruce’s eight reactors that is to begin in 2020.

But that’s four years later than the refurbishment that had been expected to begin in 2016. ‎ The delay is because the company has determined there is additional life in the reactors, the oldest of which were built in the 1970’s.

“The agreement makes 23,000 jobs possible and supports an estimated $6.3 billion in annual, local economic development,” Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli said Thursday.

“These actions will save the electricity system $1.7 billion and provide important relief for electricity consumers,” said Chiarelli.

No public money‎ will go into the Bruce refurbishment, but the company will earn a premium for the power it sells to the system.

[LINK] "The World’s Rarest Ape Lives—and Sings—on a Chinese Island"

National Geographic's Sarah Lazarus reports on the search for the Hainan gibbon.

When dawn breaks on Futou Ling, a mountain on Hainan Island off China’s south coast, the last remaining gibbons begin to sing.

Males climb to the treetops, where their voices will carry the farthest, and start warbling, hooting, and shrieking. Females and youngsters join in, creating an intense musical cacophony that fills the tropical forest.

Samuel Turvey and Jessica Bryant are ready at their listening posts. When they hear the song of the gibbons, they run toward it.

“The Hainan gibbon,” says Turvey, a senior research fellow at the Zoological Society of London, “is the world’s rarest ape, the world’s rarest primate and, almost certainly, the world’s rarest mammal.” (Only three northern white rhinos remain, but that is a subspecies of white rhino.)

Some 28 gibbons survive in a six-square-mile (16-square-kilometer) patch of rainforest in Bawangling National Nature Reserve, in western Hainan. They are found nowhere else. With such a tiny population, there’s a high risk of a random catastrophic event—a typhoon, a forest fire, an outbreak of infectious disease —wiping out the entire species.

[LINK] "Google shuts Songza, unveils free version of Google Play Music"

CBC reports on the imminent absorption of free streaming music service Songza into Google Play Music.

Say goodbye to Songza.

Nearly a year and a half after Google acquired the popular music streaming service, the technology company will shut it down as of Jan. 31, choosing to integrate Songza's popular Concierge playlist features into its own Google Play Music.

The move comes as Google looks to step up its game in the increasingly competitive streaming music industry.

Google Play Music — which has only been available in the past as a paid subscription service — will now also have a free version supported by advertisements in Canada.

That puts it in line with Spotify, one of its biggest competitors, which also has a free version with ads.

[LINK] "Hidden For Decades, Pollocks, Rothkos And More Go On Display In Iran"

NPR reports on the opening of the closed art galleries of Iran, filled with works accumulated under the Shah but kept behind lock and key since the Islamic Revolution, to the public. As an art lover, I'm glad.

The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art has a new exhibition and the lineup of artists is stunning: Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg, just to name a few.

The art, now worth billions, was bought in the 1970s under Shah Reza Pahlavi, whose coffers were overflowing with oil revenue at the time. The shah sought to modernize and Westernize the country in general, and put his wife, Empress Farah Pahlavi, in charge of acquiring the art.

The result was considered by some to be the greatest collection of contemporary Western masterpieces outside of Europe and North America. The trove includes works by Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, Vincent Van Gogh and roughly 30 by Pablo Picasso.

"The latest things that were available in Western galleries, they were bought for the collection here. All the big names from the beginning of the 20th century until the '70s, you know, we have them," Faryar Javaherian, one of the curators of the exhibition, tells Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep.

When the shah was ousted in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, everything Western instantly became toxic. The Western art was placed in a vault at the museum. For years, the museum was closed, then was used to display revolutionary propaganda. The museum has kept its Western collection hidden away, though in recent years, it has been displaying a few Western pieces for several weeks at a time.

[WRITING] "On The Dark Matter Of The Publishing Industry"

Techcrunch's Lee Epp suggests that the data surrounding e-books is flawed, not taking into account non-traditional e-book vendors and their sales. As someone who has read a wide variety of e-books, I do have to wonder if this is what is going on. Are Smashwords' sales counted?

[T]he New York Times gleefully reported that ebook sales were down in general. The surprising news was predictably greeted with what Mathew Ingram memorably called “a whiff of anti-digital Schadenfreude”.

Problem was, the news wasn’t just untrue, it was obviously untrue.

Essentially, the numbers the New York Times article was based on were limited to just 1,200 publishers, all of them being what are euphemistically referred to as “traditional” publishers — meaning “doorstopper” paper codex publishers whose business is essentially composed of a highly structured web of legal arrangements that historically evolved to maximize profit from the various physical characteristics of, you guessed it, the paper codex.

The title of this awesome takedeown of the whole shameless episode says it all: “AAP Reports Own Shrinking Market Share, Media Mistakes It for Flat US Ebook Market”.

It was like the “traditional” publishing industry just pretended the ebooks being traded outside its own grumpy universe didn’t exist, because their “traditional” methods of tracking couldn’t see them.

Here’s what we really found out in the last couple of months: ebook sales for traditional publishers in the US declined because they raised ebook prices, driving readers to buy and read non-traditionally published books, shock horror; and an ebook service that succeeded technologically was undermined by contractual negotiations over commercial distribution rights that were inherently flawed.

[URBAN NOTE] "Shaping Toronto: Public Space Philanthropy"

Torontoist's Jamie Bradburn took an interesting look at the role of public philanthrophy in the development of public parks in Toronto.

When Judy and Wilmot Matthews announced a donation of $25 million in November to revitalize the land underneath the elevated section of the Gardiner Expressway, it was one of the largest gifts of public space from a private donor in Toronto’s history. The Matthews’ Under Gardiner project follow in the footsteps of past donors who, especially in the realm of parks, have used their generosity to provide spaces for residents to enjoy.

One of the first philanthropists to look after our public space needs was John Howard. One of the first professional architects in Upper Canada, Howard worked for the city during its early years as its official surveyor and engineer. Among his projects was the Bank of British North America building at the northeast corner of Yonge and Wellington and the Provincial Lunatic Asylum on Queen Street (now the site of CAMH). In 1836 Howard purchased 165 acres outside the western limit of the city, and spent decades beautifying the properties which became Colborne Lodge and High Park.

In 1873, Howard acted on his desire to see his property become a public park. During negotiations with the city, he donated 120 acres up front, with the remainder reserved for his personal use until his death. Several conditions were imposed on his gift: the land would be forever held as a free public space for Torontonians to enjoy; a grave plot was reserved for Howard and his wife, surrounded by an iron fence originally belonging to St. Paul’s Cathedral in London; and that no intoxicating liquor could ever be sold on the grounds. Howard requested an annual annuity of $1,200 per year, and an appointment as the park’s forest ranger for $1 per year.

City council mulled over the offer for six weeks. Arguments against accepting Howard’s gift included the amount of the annuity, and the park’s location outside the city limits—how many people would venture that far west? Farsighted councillors who sensed the city would expand to the park and beyond carried the day in a 13-2 vote in favour of Howard’s wishes. Two years later, following Howard’s advice, the city added to the park 170 acres purchased from Percival Ridout.

[URBAN NOTE] On issues of wealth and class in "Our Year of Living Airbnb"

Lawyers, Guns and Money's Scott Lemieux linked. David Roberts' article in The New York Times, "Our Year of Living Airbnb". There, Roberts and his wife described how they spent a year living in different places in New York City found on Airbnb.

We initially focused on the downtown name-brand neighborhoods — Chelsea, West Village, SoHo — which happily also seemed to have the most Airbnb listings. We read the reviews closely, screening for noise and other potentially nasty surprises, from among the listings for places within our budget, which we based on the median rent in New York — roughly $100 a night, or $3,000 a month.

Our intent, actually, was to stay at least 30 days at each place, so our hosts would be on the right side of the law. Rental of a private room in the city for less than 30 days is legal only when a permanent resident is present during the stay, and we wanted the places to ourselves.

A handful of hosts denied us, presumably because we were new to the Airbnb system and there were no host reviews of us as guests, another Airbnb feature. But finally, after a week of back and forth with hosts, we found a place just a few days before the date we wanted to move in.

As winter set in, and while the bulk of our belongings made their languorous journey across the Pacific from Bangkok, we took our three suitcases to Chelsea for our maiden Airbnb foray.

Here was artsy New York, where Sid and Nancy became Sid and Nancy, and from which an imposing branch of the Gagosian Gallery presides over the art world today. A residential neighborhood of walk-ups, cafes and rats, right in the center of it all, Chelsea epitomized our image of city living, a fitting first stop on our home-free journey.

As Lemieux points out, this sort of mobility is not open to everyone, not at all. The three thousand dollars a month spent on rent speaks to a total combined income that's certainly a multiple of what I and most of the people I know make in a week, for instance.

[URBAN NOTE] On two unfortunate deaths at the site of St. Thomas' High Line-style park

The National Post carried Jennifer Bieman's article, "Two plunge to their deaths at site proposed for Canada’s first High-Line style elevated", noting the deaths of two trespassers at a site in the southwest Ontario town at a site intended for an elevated park

The deaths have cast a shadow over plans to redevelop the site into Canada’s first elevated park. Originally built as a single-track wooden structure in 1872, the bridge was expanded into a twin-track archway in 1929 and has been recognized as a national historic engineering site. The landmark bridge towers over Sunset Drive, at Fingal Line.

While plans for the elevated park are being drafted, On Track St. Thomas, the bridge owner, keeps access to the 1,300-metre span sealed off with three-metre fences and barbed wire at either end of the trestle.

“We’ve done the best we can to keep people off the bridge. So it’s really tragic that people have found a way to get on there,” said Serge Lavoie, president of On Track St. Thomas.

Lavoie said he visits the trestle barriers at least once a week to check their condition.

In the five years since the fences have gone up, he said, there’s been vandalism and evidence of attempts to get on the bridge. Any damage is fixed promptly, added Lavoie, although he plans to have a fencing company check the bridge gate in the wake of Monday’s falls.