[PHOTO] Closed for condo construction on Yonge Street, Toronto

Back in December, I posted a photo of a block-long strip on Yonge Street below Wellesley, once full of stores and restaurants but now rezoned for condo construction. This vista, I think, deserves another picture.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Discover's Body Horrors notes éléphants can transmit tuberculosis to humans.


• Crooked Timber shares a photo of a street of San Francisco.


• The Dragon's Tales links to a study suggesting impacts by comets and asteroids could not have eroded Mars' atmosphere.


• Marginal Revolution notes a study suggesting ethnic groups with a long history of agriculture fare better in modern capitalism.


• Strange Maps depicts shifting patterns of male names in France from the Second World War on.


• Window on Eurasia notes what I think is the fundamental unacceptability of the Minsk accords for Ukraine and describes the history of the Nogays, a Turkic group of the North Caucasus.

[URBAN NOTE] "Get Rid of Those Sideburns!"

In his enlightening Historicist feature for Torontoist, David Wencer explains how, well into the 1960s, something seemingly as conventional as sideburns was controversial in Toronto. This city used to be quite conservative, if you did not know.

In March of 1969, the National Ballet of Canada premiered its production of Grant Strate‘s Cyclus. Howard Marcus, one of the company’s most promising young dancers, was conspicuously absent from the premiere, and the Toronto newspapers soon revealed the reason why: artistic director Celia Franca refused to allow Marcus to perform on the grounds that his sideburns were too long. Marcus refused to trim them, and the Ballet subsequently terminated his contract.

Sideburns certainly weren’t completely new to Toronto in the 1960s, but they had been out of fashion for several decades. In the 19th century, it was fashionable for men to grow extremely long and thick sideburns, almost to the point of absurdity. Those that adopted this look in Toronto were frequently amongst the most prominent and respected citizens, including longtime Ontario Premier Oliver Mowat, piano manufacturer Samuel Nordheimer, and several of the city’s mayors. Allan Peterkin, in his 2001 book One Thousand Beards: A Cultural History of Facial Hair, attributes the decline in popularity of sideburns at the end of the 19th century to “the advent of safety razor,” which enabled men to shave more frequently, without the higher level of skill generally needed for traditional razors.

With a few exceptions, sideburns were a rare sight in Toronto during the first half of the 20th century. By the mid-1960s, however, long hair and facial hair had grown popular with men immersed in North American and European counterculture. “Men were sprouting facial hair as an expression of individualism and creativity,” writes Peterkin. “Allegiance belonged to [new] cool tribes, who cultivated distinct looks but shared a discontent with urban, middle-class life.”

In 1960s Toronto, long hair and beards were soon associated with Yorkville, which emerged as the centre of the city’s bohemian community. In Making the Scene: Yorkville and Hip Toronto in the 1960s, Stuart Henderson observes that “Yorkville’s hip aesthetics were lagging behind the curve of most stylish urban centres in Europe and North America…[but] by midsummer, 1964, Yorkville’s hip archetype was developed around the hirsute male…By early 1965, archetypal Villagers sported long hair (over the ears, the eyebrows, touching the collar) and a beard (where hormonally possible).”

[URBAN NOTE] "What Toronto will lose when Mirvish Village is gone"

In a photo essay at blogTO, Derek Flack explores the personal importance of the neighbourhood of Mirvish Village. Great stuff, with good photos and enlightening comments.

If ever there was a Toronto redevelopment scheme worthy of ambivalence, it's Westbank's plan for Honest Ed's and Mirvish Village. There are many reasons to be optimistic about what's coming to the micro neighbourhood that exists just beyond the southwest corner of Bathurst and Bloor, but it's also worth remembering that Mirvish Village as it exists today is a unique part of Toronto.

Amongst the things going for Westbank's plans for the area is the scale of the development. With about 1,000 residential units on the way, it's big, of course. But the vertical scale of the project is kept in check. The fact that these will also be rental units is also a boon for a neighbourhood that houses a significant chunk of U of T students.

On the other hand, no matter what replaces Mirvish Village, the city will lose one of its most interesting retail areas not housed on a main street. The plan is to retain some commercial space along Markham in the future, but it's unclear if this type of strip can function in any other manner that's not organic.

Mirvish Village started as an artist colony thanks to cheap rent. Even today, one is reminded of these origins with the presence of shops like Suspect Video, The Beguiling, Vintage Video, Coal Miner's Daughter, and Neurotica Records. This is small retail strip that works in part because of the history from which it has arisen.

A teenage ritual of mine was to cut through the alley behind David Mirvish Books on the way to Suspect Video from my best friend's house on Palmerston. On occasion we would be be hassled for using the laneway, which we handled by claiming that our uncle Dave said it was okay - yes, as in David Mirvish.

[URBAN NOTE] "America’s long history of trashing ‘New York values’"

At Politico, Kevin Baker explores the United States' long history of distrusting New York City, of seeing it as fundamentally alien. Long live the cosmopolis, I say!

The nonsense piles up so quickly in this silliest of all political silly seasons that it’s hard to keep up with it. Nonetheless, Ted Cruz’s assertion, in the last Republican debate and again in a television ad this week, that Donald J. Trump embodies “New York values” was a little startling.

From Cruz’s comment sprung a lively debate about what “New York” really stands for. The Texas senator had a ready answer: “socially liberal, pro-gay marriage, pro-abortion, focused on money and the media.” Trump, in what was undoubtedly his campaign’s finest (and maybe its only good) moment, shot back citing the city’s resilience following the 9/11 attacks. That came as a relief to those us of a certain age, for whom such a use of “New York” has long meant one thing: “Jew.” “The failure to get behind New York is anti-Semitism,” Woody Allen’s character famously said to a disbelieving Tony Roberts in Annie Hall. Fortunately, that thinking seems to be behind us now (though the way this year’s Republicans keep accusing each other of working “with Chuck Schumer of New York” as if they were signing a pact with Satan has made me wonder). Instead, it seems, we’re just liberal, amoral money-grubbers.

Cruz, it turns out, is hardly the first to level those charges. In fact, they have been leveled at New York for about 400 years.

Right from its beginnings, Americans have found this city to be, well, insufficiently American — too polyglot, too licentious and too willing to give up its principles, sacrifice genuine human interaction and let in just about anyone for the sake of making a buck. New York might be “the noonday glory of the Great Civilization,” in the words of Mark Twain, who visited the city regularly and always seemed to have a good time, but it was “a civilization which has destroyed the simplicity and repose of life; replaced its contentment, its poetry … with money fever.”

Over the years, that stereotype has often carried over into politics, offering fodder for insults and attacks. Barring a Trump triumph, only one native-born citizen of our nation’s greatest city, Teddy Roosevelt, will have ever made the White House, and only via an assassin’s bullet. He won reelection, but only against a fellow New Yorker, an obscure judge put forward by the city’s notorious political machine, Tammany Hall.

The truly interesting thing is not just that Americans have long suspected or hated their nation’s greatest city. The same can be said for many countries and their biggest metropolises the world over. It’s what America has most feared about itself — that, much as we continue to scorn the supposed depravity of this town, it continues to seduce us.

[LINK] "The first Indo-French Prehistorical Mission in Siwaliks and the discovery of anthropic activ

The Dragon's Tales linked to a remarkable paper that claims to have found stone tools 2.6 million years old in India.

This paper presents the first Indo-French Prehistorical Mission in the Himalayan foothills, northwestern India, and introduces the results of the multidisciplinary research program “Siwaliks” under the patronage of Professor Yves Coppens, from the Collège de France and Académie des Sciences, France. This program is dedicated to the discovery of cut marks on mineralized bovid bones collected among vertebrate fossils in a fluviatile formation named “Quranwala zone” in the Chandigarh anticline, near the village Masol, and located just below the Gauss–Matuyama polarity reversal (2.58 Ma). Artefacts (simple choppers, flakes) have been collected in and on the colluviums. This important discovery questions the origins of the hominins which made the marks.

As I understand it, this is very early.

[LINK] "Science Makes Room for Compassionate Rodents"

Bloomberg View's Faye Flam looks at the evidence for empathy elsewhere in the animal kingdom.

For all its apparent simplicity, a new experimental study showing that mouse-like rodents can be nice to each other now stands at the vanguard of a scientific revolution. The paper, published in the journal Science and promoted under the headline, “Empathy More Common in Animals than Thought,” could never have been published in the late 20th century, said University of Michigan psychologist Stephanie Preston. Not only would it have been rejected, she said, it would have been ridiculed.

The paper would have violated a longstanding prohibition against anthropomorphism – the attribution of human motives or feelings to animals. This taboo made some sense, in that scientists risked clouding their careful observations if they projected their own feelings or motives onto animals. But in recoiling from anthropomorphism, biology cozied up to an opposing assumption – that non-human animals had no emotions, no feelings and no inner lives.

Now, scientists are starting to question this longstanding belief.

The subject of the new experiment is the prairie vole, a social, monogamous creature native to the North American Midwest. Both sexes care for offspring. When researchers subjected one member of a mated pair to an electric shock, the unharmed vole groomed its distressed mate for as much as 10 minutes. Prairie voles primarily comforted family members this way – engaging less in consoling behavior toward strangers. The closely related but more promiscuous meadow vole showed no such comforting behavior at all.

It’s not the first time scientists have observed rodents showing kindness. A famous 2012 experiment suggested that even rats could be generous. Experimenters created a tiny enclosure – the size of a rat coffin – that another rat could learn to open from the outside. Though the enclosure took some effort to open, rats more often than not freed trapped companions – even if it meant delaying a treat of chocolate chips and then having to share it.

[LINK] "Inside Facebook’s Decision to Blow Up the Like Button"

Bloomberg's Sarah Frier has an interesting long-form article looking at the reasoning behind Facebook's impending shift from the one-note "Like" to the more complex "Reactions".

The most drastic change to Facebook in years was born a year ago during an off-site at the Four Seasons Silicon Valley, a 10-minute drive from headquarters. Chris Cox, the social network’s chief product officer, led the discussion, asking each of the six executives around the conference room to list the top three projects they were most eager to tackle in 2015. When it was Cox’s turn, he dropped a bomb: They needed to do something about the “like” button.

The like button is the engine of Facebook and its most recognized symbol. A giant version of it adorns the entrance to the company’s campus in Menlo Park, Calif. Facebook’s 1.6 billion users click on it more than 6 billion times a day—more frequently than people conduct searches on Google—which affects billions of advertising dollars each quarter. Brands, publishers, and individuals constantly, and strategically, share the things they think will get the most likes. It’s the driver of social activity. A married couple posts perfectly posed selfies, proving they’re in love; a news organization offers up what’s fun and entertaining, hoping the likes will spread its content. All those likes tell Facebook what’s popular and should be shown most often on the News Feed. But the button is also a blunt, clumsy tool. Someone announces her divorce on the site, and friends grit their teeth and “like” it. There’s a devastating earthquake in Nepal, and invariably a few overeager clickers give it the ol’ thumbs-up.

Changing the button is like Coca-Cola messing with its secret recipe. Cox had tried to battle the like button a few times before, but no idea was good enough to qualify for public testing. “This was a feature that was right in the heart of the way you use Facebook, so it needed to be executed really well in order to not detract and clutter up the experience,” he says. “All of the other attempts had failed.” The obvious alternative, a “dislike” button, had been rejected on the grounds that it would sow too much negativity.

Cox told the Four Seasons gathering that the time was finally right for a change, now that Facebook had successfully transitioned a majority of its business to smartphones. His top deputy, Adam Mosseri, took a deep breath. “Yes, I’m with you,” he said solemnly.

Later that week, Cox brought up the project with his boss and longtime friend. Mark Zuckerberg’s response showed just how much leeway Cox has to take risks with Facebook’s most important service. “He said something like, ‘Yes, do it.’ He was fully supportive,” Cox says. “Good luck,” he remembers Zuckerberg telling him. “That’s a hard one.”

The solution would eventually be named Reactions. It will arrive soon. And it will expand the range of Facebook-compatible human emotions from one to six.

[LINK] "Why a Russian-Saudi Deal on Oil Output Cut Remains Elusive"

Bloomberg's Javier Blas notes the many reasons behind the inability of Russia and Saudi Arabia to agree on boosting oil prices.

With oil trading near $30 a barrel, calls for orchestrated output cuts to quell global oversupply have intensified this week. Trouble is, none of the world’s largest producers, most notably Russia and Saudi Arabia, have shown they’re ready to make a move.

OPEC Secretary-General Abdalla El-Badri called on all countries, both inside and outside the group, to join efforts to revive oil prices. "It should be viewed as something OPEC and non-OPEC tackle together," he said on Monday.

Iraq’s oil minister said on Tuesday that Saudi Arabia and Russia, the world’s two largest exporters, might be ready to become “more flexible.”

Yet there’s little sign the countries themselves are ready to reach an agreement despite the economic damage wrought by the lowest prices since 2003. Long-standing obstacles remain -- Saudi Arabia’s desire to defend market share, Russia’s inability to cut production in winter months -- and analysts say talk of a deal probably reflects the hope of producers in pain rather than the expectation of concrete action.

The two countries’ opposing views on Syria, where Russia is President Bashar Al-Assad’s closest ally and Saudi Arabia wants him gone, present another significant diplomatic obstacle.

[LINK] "The poisoned diplomacy between Russia and the United Kingdom"

Leah McLaren in MacLean's notes how the recent British inquest into the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, which revealed Russian state involvement, has worsened bilateral relations.

“You may succeed in silencing one man but the howl of protest from around the world, Mr. Putin, will reverberate in your ears for the rest of your life.” These words, spoken by the Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko on his deathbed at University College Hospital in London nearly a decade ago, seem as prescient today as they were ominous then.

The story of Litvinenko’s dramatically foreshortened life is the stuff of spy novels. The subsequent public inquiry into his death by the British government, which concluded last week, does nothing to dispel the myth. Last week the retired High Court judge Sir Robert Owen concluded in a 327-page report that the murder of Litvinenko was, in his view, an act of state-sponsored terrorism by the Russian government and was, almost certainly, approved both by the head of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and Vladimir Putin.

Prime Minister David Cameron condemned the plot, calling it an “unacceptable breach of international law.” He said he would consider taking further steps against Russia but went on to concede that the U.K. must maintain “some sort of relationship” with Russia in order to bring an end to the crisis in Syria, a process he described himself approaching with “clear eyes and a cold heart.”

Cameron’s critics have urged him to do more in the wake of the inquiry. Observer columnist Will Hutton condemned Cameron’s reaction as “beneath feeble” and a threat to British law and order. Labour MP Ian Austin told the press, “Putin is an unreconstructed KGB thug and gangster who murders his opponents in Russia and, as we know, on the streets of London—and nothing announced today is going to make the blindest bit of difference.”

[URBAN NOTE] Two links on the need for change in the Toronto Community Housing Corporation

From Torontoist:

How do you fix North America’s second-largest social housing provider?

That’s the question the six-member TCHC task force appointed by John Tory tried to answer over the past year, and they presented their final report on the matter Tuesday morning. The 83-page report outlines 29 recommendations meant to address systemic problems that have long plagued TCHC, including the short supply of units, lack of funding, and poor living conditions for tenants.

Over the last few years, the city has tried fixing the myriad problems by instating new board members, new CEOs, and a TCHC working group to tackle the $2.6 billion repair backlog, but so far, progress has been slow and minute compared to what is left to do.

So how can TCHC retool—or reinvent itself—to meet the needs of some of the city’s most vulnerable residents?

“The model, as it stands, is not working, and it hasn’t been for some time. We have some deep-rooted historical problems that have a lot to do with structures and old habits,” the mayor said to the room full of media, council members and various stakeholders. “The issues faced by the TCHC are large, and they’re difficult, and they’ve been allowed to accumulate for a very long time.”

From the Toronto Star:

Joakina Fernandes remembers a time when ready help was nowhere near.

Surviving her fourth heart attack last year, the 69-year-old was deeply depressed and confined to the Toronto Community Housing highrise at the edge of Regent Park she calls home.

She credits a team of health and support workers — who have spent more than a year embedded in the building, trying to improve the quality of life there — with helping her recover.

“Since they’ve come here there’s a lot of improvement,” Fernandes said Tuesday. She’s beaming from her usual perch in the building’s community room during a now-weekly drop-in organized by the community agency, Cota. “I’m very good now. I don’t have so much problems.”

A report released Tuesday at city hall, suggesting reforms to how public housing is delivered, holds up Fernandes’ building, 220 Oak St., as a model for how to provide the direct help for vulnerable citizens that has been lacking for years. As the Star reported Tuesday, the sum of 29 recommendations contained the report, if implemented, would be the biggest change in governance since TCHC was formed in 2002.

More, obviously, at each link.

[URBAN NOTE] Two reviews of Long Winter at the Galleria Mall, Toronto

"Long Winter Galleria" (Watch on YouTube)

Toronto's two major blogs both reviewed Long Winter at the Galleria. Amy Carlberg's "Field Notes: Long Winter at the Galleria" was relatively text-heavy, albeit also including good photos by Josh Allsopp.

A long white hallway leads into the Galleria. It normally serves as the back entrance to Planet Fitness, the mall’s 24/7 gym and one of several recent attempts at more modern relevance to the community. Joggers can still be seen trudging on treadmills alongside a photo exhibit by Shari Kasman that categorizes the various shades of “Galleria green” into different Pantone paint chips.

The fluorescent lights that lend the local landmark that nauseating hue are all off now. Music fans load up on mall hot dogs and tuna fish sandwiches from Galleria’s iconic snack bar as bands scream their lungs out against the backdrop of the closed Dollarama. Anni Spadafora of New Fries stares dead ahead into the audience, her guitar strapped up high under her armpit, letting spastic chords and killer riffs squeal from the instrument. The white-suited, left-handed bassist shakes his shaggy hair along to wandering lines. A dancer in a green M&M costume and a mouse mask joins the band on stage, moving their arms and hands as if summoning a goddess or a demon.

One girl manages to crowd surf for maybe six awesome seconds. One area is marked by a banner emblazoned BUNZ SHOP GALLERIA 3000, an IRL manifestation of the Internet craze/Facebook group. A quick tour of the art exhibits includes a sort of pink glowing light sabre surrounded by sound machines, a blacklight tent filled with music and multi-coloured neon pebbles, and a giant pigeon’s head constructed from shredded plastic bags.

19+ cultural buffs expecting a beer at a concert were crammed into one of two claustrophobic abandoned storefronts from which almost none of the general art or music were visible. One of these was christened “Shoppers Dance Mart.” A few glassy-eyed knots of kids swing their heads about and bend their knees slightly, glancing around self-consciously. Most people are so exhausted by waiting in line to get in, for drink tickets, and then drinks, that with no seating they take up residence against the wall, peering into their phones while clutching one of their maximum four drinks.

blogTO's Amy Grief wrote the shorter "Toronto learns parties in malls can only be so much fun", featuring the photos of Andrew Williamson.

Only two rooms (both empty storefronts) were licensed. This made getting drinks ($5 each) a little tough. At one point, I waited more than 15 minutes just to hear that I'd have to stand in yet another line for beer and liquor.

Luckily, no one seemed to want red wine, so I hopped right on over to the Dionysus-inspired booth and grabbed a glass.

The "It's Not U It's Me Shoppers Dance Mart" took over another one of these empty storefronts. It featured music and video installations from local artists, as well as a bar. Unsurprisingly, this proved to be popular, with many people dancing under the pulsating strobe lights for hours.

Bands like S.H.I.T, TEENANGER, The Highest Order, VCR and New Fries played short sets in the atrium, and at midnight, a surreal runway show dominated this main space.

Art installations, such as a giant pigeon head made out of plastic bags by Andrew Lamb and performance pieces by Carolyn Tripp and Jeremy Bailey, were situated in alcoves and hallways along with a BUNZ swap shop, enabling anyone to make trades on site.

Vintage photo booths, video games and coin-operated kiddie rides - many of which are permanent Galleria fixtures - were also a big draw.

"It was kind of fun to embrace the weirdness of it," one young woman told me as we were leaving the mall at around 1 a.m., when the event seemed to be dying down.

[WRITING] "Impostor Syndrome, or Not"

Over at Whatever, John Scalzi had an interesting biographical essay taking a look at impostor syndrome, more specifically why Scalzi has not felt afflicted by this.

At ConFusion last week, I had a great many conversations with a great many folks on a large number of topics, but there was one topic that seemed to pop up more than usual: Impostor Syndrome.

Impostor Syndrome, briefly put, is the feeling that one’s achievements and status are a fluke, and that sooner or later one will be revealed as a fraud. Anecdotally speaking, it seems, Imposter Syndrome affects a lot of writers, editors and other folks in the publishing life. I think this is in part because the writing life is a precarious one, financially and otherwise, and also in part because people in publishing seem to be a generally neurotic lot anyway. Imposter Syndrome is just another log on that particular fire.

Imposter Syndrome is a real thing and it’s not something I’d want to make light of because I think it has harmful effects. I think it can make people cautious in the exercise of their art and their career when they could be (and want to be) taking chances, and I think it can make people vulnerable to being taken advantage of by people/organizations who intentionally or otherwise leverage those feelings for their own advantage.

It’s pernicious, basically, and it frustrates me that so many talented people who have earned their places in the field with their work battle with it. I think it’s good that people are talking about it, however. It means that they are aware that it’s a thing and that it’s a lie. Naming it and describing it and knowing of it goes a long way in fighting it.

The discussions over the weekend also made me reflect on the issue of Impostor Syndrome and me, and the fact that as far as I know I have never had it, particularly in regard to being a writer. This isn’t an accomplishment, mind you, or something to brag on. It’s just an observation; at no point in my writing career did I ever feel like I didn’t deserve to be where I was, doing what I was doing. I’ve always been, yup, this is who I am and what I do.

Which is nice for me, you know, but also prompted me to think about why it was that I felt that way. I mean, it could be the Dunning-Kruger effect, in which incompetent people don’t believe they’re incompetent. Certainly I have enough detractors who would be happy to suggest that this is exactly the case, when it comes to me. Which, okay, sure. Maybe. Why not.

But if it’s not that, and I’m pretty sure it’s not, then what explains my lack of Impostor Syndrome?

The answer, he presents to us as he goes step by step through his life, seems to be that he never thought he could not be a writer, that this was not presented to him as an goal impossible because of his own lack of talent or a lack of opportunity. I'm not sure how repeatable this is for others, but it is thought provoking.