[PHOTO] Snowy sidewalk, Dupont Street, Toronto

Yesterday saw the first sustained snowfall of the winter season. I've been especially careful of it on account of my knee, especially since the warm temperatures means this can too readily melt into slush, but it looks lovely.

[OBSCURA] Cyclops selling eyeglasses in Brampton, Ontario

Via Tumblr, I came across cyrilleantonio's tweet sharing an incongruous image local to the Greater Toronto Area.

"Things I find at a Pho Restaurant - an optical store poster with James Marsden as Cyclops in X-Men"



Someone combing the Internet for available images must have found this one useful for Vina Vision Optical, a store in the Toronto suburb of Brampton.

[LINK] "Manchu, Former Empire’s Language, Hangs On at China’s Edge"

Andrew Jacobs' article in The New York Times about the Sibe, a minority group in Xinjiang that is probably the only sizable group of speakers of the Manchu language left, was remarkable in its description of a small language community.

Loyal to the core and prized for their horsemanship, several thousand Manchu soldiers heeded the emperor’s call and, with families and livestock in tow, embarked in 1764 on a trek that took them from northeastern China to the most distant fringes of the Qing dynasty empire, the Central Asian lands now known as Xinjiang.

It was an arduous, 18-month journey, but there was one consolation: After completing their mission of pacifying the western frontier, the troops would be allowed to take their families home.

“They were terribly homesick here and dreamed of one day going back east,” said Tong Hao, 56, a descendant of the settlers, from the Xibe branch of the Manchus, who arrived here emaciated and exhausted. “But sadly, it was not to be.”

Two and a half centuries later, the roughly 30,000 people in this rural county who consider themselves Xibe have proved to be an ethnographic curiosity and a linguistic bonanza. As the last handful of Manchu speakers in northeast China have died, the Xibe have become the sole inheritors of what was once the official tongue of one of the world’s most powerful empires, a domain that stretched from India to Russia and formed the geographic foundation for modern China.

In the decades after the revolution in 1911 that drove the Qing from power after nearly 300 years, Mandarin Chinese vanquished the Manchu language, even in its former stronghold in the forested northeast. But the isolation of the Xibe in this parched, far-flung region near the Kazakh border helped keep the language alive, even if its existence was largely forgotten until the 1940s.

For scholars of Manchu, especially those eager to translate the mounds of Qing dynasty documents that fill archives across China, the discovery of so many living Manchu speakers has been a godsend.

“Imagine if you studied the classics and went to Rome, spoke Latin and found that people there understood you,” said Mark C. Elliott, a Manchu expert at Harvard University who said he remembered his first encounter, in 2009, with an older Xibe man on the streets of Qapqal County. “I asked the guy in Manchu where the old city wall was, and he didn’t blink. It was a wonderful encounter, one that I’ll never forget.”

[LINK] "India Could Edge Out China From Top Growth Spot in 2016"

Bloomberg's Josh Robinson and Harumi Ichikura write about how India might be starting to take the lead from China, economically.

Could this be India's year to shine?

With China's growth targets in doubt, India will stand out for being the only economy in the world to expand more than 7 percent, according to surveys of Bloomberg economists. China, on the other hand, is enduring the slowest growth in a quarter century and is forecast to expand 6.5 percent this year.

While many of 2016's economic underachievers will cluster in Latin America and Europe, we now look to Asia and Africa as the motor for global growth this year, accounting for 12 of the 20 best performers. The largest of these — China, India and Indonesia — combined make up more than 17 percent of global gross domestic product and 40 percent of the world's population.

The world's two most populous nations are in a constant tussle for supremacy. With an economy nearly five times larger than India's, China remains the true heavyweight. Yet after a rotten start to the year, economists are increasingly zeroing in on its South Asian rival's growth potential.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's goal is to transform India into a more pro-business economy by slashing red tape and boosting manufacturing. To spur investment, Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan cut borrowing costs four times last year. Though competitors, China is also India’s largest trade partner, so a slowdown there would hurt exports.

[LINK] "The Sorry Legacy of Internet Explorer"

Wired's Klint Finley shares in the general relief at the impending end of Internet Explorer, and describes how it was a bad thing.

Internet Explorer soon will be a thing of the past. Starting today, Microsoft will stop supporting Internet Explorer versions 7, 8, 9 and 10 on most operating systems, its biggest step yet toward phasing out one of the most contentious pieces of software ever written.

Microsoft has been distancing itself from the Internet Explorer brand since March, when it launched the Microsoft Edge browser, but it isn’t quite dead. Edge runs only on Windows 10, so Redmond will continue backing a few versions of Internet Explorer on older operating systems it still supports. But it’s still a big departure. Historically, Microsoft has kept several versions of Internet Explorer current each supported version of Windows. Starting today, it will support only the latest version of IE that an operating system can run. It will not create new security patches for the older versions, leaving anyone who doesn’t upgrade vulnerable to new hacks or attacks.

Thankfully, the time has come to move on.

That could be a huge hassle for organizations that use custom-built applications that run correctly only on older browsers. But it could be a boon to web developers and designers still trying to find ways to make websites good on older browsers. Newer web browser still have their quirks, and sites might look different from one browser to the next. But these differences are small compared to how Internet Explorer mangled web pages in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

By insisting on following its own path with IE rather than follow generally accepted standards, Microsoft dictated web design by years. That probably drove many aspiring web developers careers that didn’t require trying to figure out why the margins between images looked different from one browser to another. Keeping too many old browsers in circulation contributed to that mess. Thankfully, the time has come to move on.

Because Internet Explorer didn’t stick to the guidelines established by World Wide Web Consortium the organization that establishes standards for web technologies, it often would display web pages in ways that made them look entirely different from other browsers, such as Netscape, Opera or, later, Firefox. Desperate designers cobbled together ways of making sites work across multiple browsers, but a complex layout sometimes required numerous workarounds. And Internet Explorer 6 was notorious for security vulnerabilities that Microsoft was sometimes slow to patch.

[LINK] "Istanbul Bomb Targets Tourism Already Reeling on Putin Snub"

Bloomberg's Isobel Finkel, Selcan Hacaoglu and Tugce Ozsoy describe how the recent suicide bombing in Istanbul will hurt Turkey's tourist industry.

A suicide bomb in the heart of Europe’s largest city didn’t just target innocent tourists, it also hit a $32 billion industry already caught up in the conflict next door.

No one made a greater contribution to Turkey’s tourism receipts last year than Russians and Germans, who have helped make the country the world’s sixth most-popular holiday destination. Russians are staying away from Mediterranean resorts because of a political row over the war in Syria. Now Germans have been affected in the most-visited square in Istanbul, accounting for all of the 10 people left dead on Tuesday morning.

“The tourism sector will suffer even greater losses in 2016, particularly given that Germans constitute Turkey’s largest group of tourists,” said Naz Masraff, director for Europe at political risk consultants Eurasia Group. “The deteriorating security environment and its impact on tourism will weigh on economic sentiment.”

Turkey plans to increase the importance of tourism to help underpin a pickup in the economy following the collapse in emerging markets and a political quagmire that led to two elections in six months. Last year, though, was on course to be the first since 2006 when the number of tourists failed to rise.

[LINK] "How Ukraine Weaned Itself Off Russian Gas"

Bloomberg View's Leonid Bershidsky describes how a combination of Ukrainian changes (industrial collapse, substantially) and changes in the European Union have helped Ukraine diversify its gas supplies away from Russia.

Not so long ago, Russia could bend Ukraine to its will by threatening to cut off natural gas supplies. Now, Russia is offering discounts, but Ukraine is not interested because it's getting plenty of gas in Europe. This change reflects developments in the European gas market that don't augur well for one of Russia's biggest sources of export revenue.

The decline in Ukraine's imports of Russian gas is partly the result of economic stagnation under former President Viktor Yanukovych, a huge drop in output after the 2014 "Revolution of Dignity" and Russia's annexation of Crimea. Ukraine's gross domestic product has shrunk around 19 percent since 2013, and its industrial sector needs less fuel.

That, however, is not the most important reason for the decline in Ukrainian imports. The government is determined to end its dependence on Russia as the two countries are in a semi-official state of war. More than once, Russian threats to stop supplies or raise prices as winter approached forced Ukrainian governments to accept political concessions that slowed the country's drift toward the European Union. In response, Ukraine sought "reverse supplies" from Slovakia in 2014.

It was a good year to experiment: The winter of 2014 was warm in Europe, and there was a surfeit of gas. In Slovakia, the gas was Russian, delivered by the state-owned monopoly Gazprom through the Ukrainian pipeline system. Gazprom had tried to ban resale, but those conditions were in violation of European rules. In April 2015, the European Commission cited such stipulations as an example of Gazprom's abuse of its dominance in eastern and central European gas markets. Gazprom, which is trying to avoid steep fines and arrive at a settlement with the commission, could do nothing to prevent its customers from supplying Ukraine.

[ISL] "Jamaica’s Drought Tool Could Turn the Table on Climate Change"

The Inter Press Service's Zadie Neufville notes one tool used by Jamaica to help its citizens and economy adapt to climate change.

On a very dry November 2013, Jamaica’s Meteorological Service made its first official drought forecast when the newly developed Climate Predictability Tool (CPT) was used to predict a high probability of below average rainfall in the coming three months.

By February, the agency had officially declared a drought in the eastern and central parishes of the island based on the forecasts. July’s predictions indicated that drought conditions would continue until at least September.

Said to be the island’s worst in 30 years, the 2014 drought saw Jamaica’s eastern parishes averaging rainfall of between 2 and 12 per cent, well below normal levels. Agricultural data for the period shows that production fell by more than 30 per cent over 2013 and estimates are that losses due to crop failures and wild fires amounted to one billion dollars.

Jamaica’s agricultural sector accounts for roughly seven per cent of the island’s gross domestic product (GDP) and employs about 20 per cent of its workforce.

The Met Service’s, Glenroy Brown told IPS, “The CPT was the main tool used by our Minister (of Water, Land, Environment & Climate Change) Robert Pickersgill throughout 2015 to advise the nation on the status of drought across the island .”

[LINK] "Is geoengineering the solution to saving the Earth?"

Brian Bethune's article in MacLean's is one mainstream look at geoengineering. I predict that there will be more to come, as climate change progresses.

On a snowy March day in 2012, Oliver Morton, a British science writer and Economist editor, sat in a University of Calgary conference hall and listened to the two questions that came to frame the contents of his new book, The Planet Remade: How Geoengineering Could Change the World. Ask yourself this, said Princeton physicist Richard Socolow: Do you believe the risks of climate change merit serious actions aimed at mitigating them, and do you think that reducing human-generated carbon-dioxide emissions to near zero is very hard?

Morton, who answered yes and yes, soon realized the consequence of that dual affirmation. If carbon emissions bring the risk of climate catastrophe and little can be done about them in time, then—for reasons as much moral as practical—geoengineering had to be considered. The term broadly encompasses the use of science and technology on a massive scale to bend Earth’s climate to human ends. Its champions have suggested, and even—in the case of American entrepreneur Russ George, who dumped 100 tonnes of iron sulphate into the Pacific off Haida Gwaii in 2012—experimented with ideas ranging from feeding iron to ocean plankton (to encourage them to absorb more carbon) to giant mirrors in space or atmospheric veiling to reflect sunlight away from the planet.

Climate change skeptics, naturally, are not interested in what geoengineering might accomplish, and oppose it for its usually astronomical costs. Among environmentalists, rejection is more visceral—Al Gore has called it “delusional in the extreme”—because tinkering with the Earth’s natural systems is simply more of the hubris that brought us to the brink of disaster in the first place.

Morton sympathizes with the green side, but he thinks they are far too optimistic about cutting emissions. In 2013 humans burned three trillion cubic metres of gas over the year, three million barrels of oil monthly and 300 tonnes of coal every second. How fast can that possibly change? Bring a new nuclear power plant on stream every week, and it would take 20 years to replace the coal-fired plants; replacing the coal output with power from solar panels would take 150 years at current installation rates. And the oil and gas would still burn.

The real moral issue—the true reason geoengineering has to be considered, according to Morton—is the plight of the global poor. There are seven billion humans now, many of them still in grinding poverty; there will be two or three billion more before the population curve turns downward. A world that aims, as it should, “to support nine billion in comparative comfort will need a great deal of energy. The idea you can reduce carbon emissions suddenly, in a way that’s politically feasible and economically non-disastrous—no.” Nor would fast action bring fast results. “Emissions reduction is the absolutely necessary answer to people suffering in the future, but it won’t make any difference for people suffering over the next couple of decades.”

[URBAN NOTE] "Davenport GO train bridge stirs opposition from residents"

CBC notes continuing controversy at Dupont and Davenport over a new downtown rail crossing.

To the province, a proposed rail overpass just north of Dupont Street is an essential piece of infrastructure, key to expanding GO train service along the busy Barrie line. But for many residents of the Davenport neighourhood, the overpass they're calling a "Gardiner for GO trains" is a bridge too far.

Metrolinx — which manages regional transit for Toronto and Hamilton — will host a public meeting Monday evening to gather public feedback about its plans to build the overpass, which will allow GO trains along the north-sound Barrie line to pass over the Canadian Pacific freight corridor.

The bridge would eliminate the existing Davenport Diamond, where the two rail lines meet at grade level and create, according to Metrolinx, a choke point for train traffic.

Metrolinx is moving ahead with plans to build the bridge despite opposition from some residents who would rather see a tunnel built to separate the rail lines.

"We have a lot of concerns about it, it's going to be elevated three storeys high," said Davenport resident Sam Barbieri Wednesday on CBC Radio's Metro Morning. Barbieri is with the group Options for Davenport, which is opposed to the overpass plan.

[URBAN NOTE] "What if City Council actually talked about buses?"

Spacing Toronto's John Lorinc wonders why Torontonians do not talk more about TTC buses.

Bad choices beget more bad choices.

If I lie on a government form, I will almost inevitably have to dissemble more in order to ensure the continued viability of the original lie. If I buy a luxury car on impulse without bothering to calculate how to cover the monthly payments, I will soon have to stop doing something that I need to do.

And that’s where we find ourselves with the $3.5 billion (but probably more) Scarborough subway. The bad decisions continue to pile up.

Consider the weekend’s news, unconvincingly denied by the mayor’s office, that there’s a plan afoot to sell Toronto Hydro and some parts of the Toronto Parking Authority portfolio, presumably to raise much needed capital to cover the costs of the things we can’t afford, like three-stop subways running through low-rise residential neighbourhoods.

Such sell-offs, though not yet approved, are the result of the specific sort of fiscal desperation that John Tory has brought down upon the city by pledging too many super expensive projects and then adamantly refusing to make tough choices.

At such moments, it’s always useful to bring the conversation back to opportunity cost: What is it that we won’t be able to do as a result of these choices? You don’t often see an “opportunity cost’ section on a staff report, but given the madness of council’s current transit plans, perhaps that kind of analysis — like the dissenting opinion of a Supreme Court justice — might prove useful.

Which brings me to the subject of buses, and specifically why we don’t talk more about the goal of making Toronto’s bus network into a service that is just so outstanding, and so easy to use, that local politicians compete with one another to promote major investments in this critical part of the TTC’s operations.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• blogTO identify five neighbourhoods in downtownish Toronto with cheap rent.


• The Dragon's Gaze notes one paper suggesting Earth-like worlds may need both ocean and rocky surfaces to be habitable.


• The Dragon's Tales reports that Pluto's Sputnik Planum is apparently less than ten million years old.


• Geocurrents begins an interesting regional schema of California.


• Language Log notes a Hong Kong ad that blends Chinese and Japanese remarkably.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes that societies with low inequality report higher levels of happiness than others.


• The Map Room points to the lovely Pocket Atlas of Remote Islands.


• Marginal Revolution wonders why Amazon book reviews are so dominated by American reviewers.


• Savage Minds considers, after Björk, the ecopoetics of physical geology data.


• Window on Eurasia commemorates the 25th anniversary of the Vilnius massacre.


• The Financial Times' The World blog looks at Leo, the dog of the Cypriot president.

[LINK] NOW Toronto's 2016 Body Issue

Last week, weekly NOW Toronto had a lovely cover page feature, examining the relationships between people and their bodies and between individual people and their bodies.

The new year should be a time for positivity and celebration, but too often that gets lost in negative messaging designed to make you feel like a load of crap.

"Diet! Eat less! Join a gym! Survive on juice/tea/kale alone!" Corporations and media alike seem determined to spread self-hate disguised as discipline, ambition and health-consciousness. It's all about the New You. Never mind the perfectly good old you.

Tired of the ubiquitous body-shaming that rears its ugly head each January, we decided to change the conversation and create the Love Your Body Issue. It features an inspiring and diverse mix of Torontonians willing to bare (almost) all for the camera to promote body positivity. In these pages you'll find stories of tragedy, growth, transformation and acceptance alongside compelling photos of brave subjects representing an array of shapes, sizes, abilities, orientations, genders and colours.

On the surface, 2015 seemed like a pretty good year for diversity. Jourdan Dunn became the first model of colour to cover Vogue UK in 12 years. Beauty and fashion brands tapped older women like Joan Didion, Joni Mitchell and Iris Apfel to star in ad campaigns. c debuted on the cover of Vanity Fair, accepted Glamour's Woman Of The Year Award and the ESPY Arthur Ashe Courage Award. The United States Supreme Court ruled states must allow same-sex marriage.

Genderless dressing exploded on the scene, and major brands did away with separate male and female styles. The ROM's exhibition of local designer Izzy Camilleri's IZ Adaptive line for people in wheelchairs was honoured by the prestigious Costume Society of America.

The core of this feature are the nude photos of twelve different people, of varying races, genders, and sexual orientations, and these individuals' descriptions of how they've come to relate to their body. It's a fascinating read, one that's relevant for me right now.