[PHOTO] Three photos from the Palm House, Allan Gardens, Toronto

Allan Gardens' central Palm House is a warm tropical jungle, one with warm humid air that fills the antique dome and fogs up eyeglasses as soon as their wearers come in from the cold.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• blogTO notes that Conrad Black's mansion is up for sale, and looks inside the climbing gym that replaced Koreatown's Metro Theatre.


• Centauri Dreams notes a new telescope optimized for detecting, among other things, Kuiper Belt objects.


• Dangerous Minds shares a video of South African cyclists chased by an ostrich.


• Far Outliers notes the existence of a Second World War prisoner of war camp in Hawai'i that sought to detect dissidents among the Japanese prisoners.


• Joe. My. God. notes Caitlyn Jenner's dislike of Hillary.


• Language Hat and Language Log report on the crowdsource-legitimized Italian word "petaloso".


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the lasting effects of segregation in the South and a href="http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2016/03/why-are-our-cities-segregated">in cities.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer notes the unpopularity of Trump in Mexico has progressed to the point that the president made a statement criticizing the man.


• Torontoist has an essay about Toronto parks that features a photo of mine of Christie Pits.

[URBAN NOTE] "Toronto’s Art Deco legacy celebrated": On the architecture of Benjamin Brown

Spacing Toronto's Daniel Rotzstain writes about an early 20th century architect of note in Toronto.

Facing each other across Spadina Avenue just north of Adelaide, the Tower and Balfour Buildings frame a striking entryway into Toronto’s Fashion District.

Previously known as the Garment District, the neighbourhood was home to many of Toronto’s textile workers, who were predominantly Jewish immigrants.

Masterpieces of Art Deco architecture, the Balfour and Tower buildings were originally built to house those garment businesses and their showrooms, raising the prominence of the industry, and the city with it.

Designed by Benjamin Brown in the late 1920s, their towering elegance was symbolic of Toronto’s transformation into a modern metropolis — a financial, cultural and transportation hub with a swelling population over 200 000.

That elegance extended to several other Brown-designed buildings nearby including The Commodore on Adelaide, The New Textile Building on Richmond (now an OCADU building) and the Hermant Building at Yonge and Dundas Square.

[URBAN NOTE] "Why Vaughan should stay out of Toronto transportation planning"

In the Toronto Star, Edward Keenan argues that suburban Vaughan region's representatives should talk about the TTC only when they know what's going on.

Vaughan councillor Alan Shefman took it on himself last week to challenge Toronto’s “no-capacity mythology” when it comes to the Yonge subway line.

I thought at first that Shefman must be employing new slang. In the same way that today’s youth use “epic” and “legendary” to mean “amazing,” I thought perhaps Shefman meant to suggest that overcrowding on the Yonge subway was so legendarily epic as to have reached mythological proportions — as if to say the lack of capacity is such that stories of the crowds wedged into the trains near Wellesley station will be handed down through generations as a form of moral teaching. “The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly push his body into a Yonge subway train each morning…”

But no. It appears Shefman was actually trying to suggest that there is space for more passengers. A bunch of city officials from York Region have been pushing to have the Yonge line extended north into Richmond Hill (a neighbour city of Vaughan’s, up there in the northlands above Toronto), and as they make their pitch to the federal Liberals for funding, Shefman was suggesting that project could proceed before 416 transit priorities such as the downtown relief subway line.

There are two possibilities here. One is that Shefman is a clown. Anyone who has ever seen a famous clown-car routine, in which dozens of bozos will come parading out of a Volkswagon Beetle, will know that clowns have a different idea of transportation capacity than the rest of us. It could be that Shefman simply sees entertaining circus-style public transportation opportunities in having riders fold their bodies under seats and sit atop each other’s shoulders and whatnot.

The other possibility is that Shefman simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about. If you want to see if overcrowding on the Yonge subway is a myth or a reality, you could go to Yonge-Bloor station during the morning rush and try to wedge yourself onto a train. If you survive that experience, and you want to imagine what that same situation will look like down the road, you could consult the city’s recently released studies. They show that without any new construction, by 2031 ridership on the Yonge line at Bloor during rush hour is expected to be 39,600 — some 10 per cent higher than the capacity of the line. If an extension is built to Richmond Hill and the relief line and SmartTrack are not built, as Shefman and his 905 colleagues suggest, the projections show 41,600 passengers per hour — and that includes an 8.3 per cent drop in passengers transferring from the Bloor line because, the report says, “these passengers have been ‘driven away by overcrowding.’”

[LINK] "Is the fix for poverty as simple as a cheque in the mail?": Guaranteed minimum income in Ont

NOW Toronto's Malnoe Mullin writes about the upcoming trial of guaranteed minimum income in Toronto.

Buried under a whack of promises, the Ontario budget contains an unusual pledge. Kathleen Wynne and company are on the hunt for a guinea pig, a city willing to pay each of its residents hundreds of dollars a month, no matter their employment status or salary, in return for absolutely nothing.

The idea’s called “guaranteed basic income,” or “mincome,” and it’s being hailed as a possible answer to income inequality.

The single-city project is “still in its inception stage” and has yet to be designed, according to a Ministry of Finance spokesperson. But in theory, it’s a simple fix for poverty, underemployment, precarious work and the rising cost of living.

Of course, if you’re already raking in cash from a decent job, you’ll end up paying the windfall back and then some at tax time. But if you’re on sick leave, have lost your job or are going back to school, mincome ensures you won’t go hungry.

Mincome proposals have been bouncing around in various forms since the days of Thomas Paine, championed by economists and politicos of all stripes ever since and invariably discarded, like other unorthodox ideas, as a pipe dream – a potentially expensive one at that.

More details, including background, at the article.

[LINK] "Here To Stay: How Indian-Born Innkeepers Revolutionized America's Motels"

NPR's Alexandra Starr describes how the Gujarati diaspora in the United States helped kickstart the American motel industry. Did similar things happen in Canada, I wonder?

In midtown Manhattan, 48Lex towers over the crowded street at its feet. The high-rise, luxury hotel offers a singular experience — serving complimentary wine at happy hour — but it's just one of 52 hotels owned by Hersha Hospitality Trust.

The company, named for founder Hasu P. Shah's wife, grew from modest origins. At one of the family's first properties, the 23-room Red Rose Motel in rural Pennsylvania, Shah and his family lived behind the lobby.

"There were a lot of chores to do," remembers Jay H. Shah, Hasu's son and current CEO of the company. "There was a lot of grass to cut. We had to skim the pool every morning."

Now, the Shahs help comprise an impressive statistic: Indian immigrants and their children make up about 1 percent of the U.S. population, but they own roughly half of the motels in the country. And about 70 percent of those motel proprietors can trace their heritage to just one state in India: Gujarat.

In fact, the story of Hasu P. Shah — a former electrical engineer who reinvented himself as an entrepreneur — is common among the Gujarati community, according to Pawan Dhingra, chairman of the sociology department at Tufts University.

[LINK] "Toothless tigers: Can a film please China and the West?"

Al Jazeera's Phil Hoad describes the efforts of Hollywood to break into the Chinese market, successfully and otherwise.

The new Crouching Tiger has turned out to be toothless. When the sequel to the 2000 martial arts masterpiece was released in China two weeks ago, even the state media were blunt: "Sword of Destiny is out, but it'll only remind you that Ang Lee's original film was indeed a classic."

"It was extremely uncomfortable watching a group of ethnically Chinese performers speaking English and then being dubbed into Mandarin," said a programmer for Shanghai International Film Festival. "This kind of disharmony embodied the film's entire style; it was a complete and utter mess."

Filming in English, and overdubbing for Chinese audiences, was a quick fix to the most pressing question facing mainstream filmmakers today: how to please both the West and China. With the Chinese box office due to become the world's biggest next year, this is uncharted territory for everyone.

It is understandable that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny - reliant on Michelle Yeoh's bygone elegance to chaperone its flat-footed Ang Lee tribute act into this brave new world - opted for the easy route. It is essentially an old-school Hong Kong chop-socky flick with English dialogue (unsurprisingly, with its Western audience mostly on Netflix). But 15 years ago, Ang Lee made Yeoh and co-star Chow Yun-fat, both Cantonese speakers, recite Mandarin lines phonetically. That is just one sign of the commitment that made the original Crouching Tiger, Hollywood in origin, a pioneer in seeking out that elixir of 21st century cinema: combining East and West.

[LINK] "Rush for Irish passports brought on by Brexit fears"

The Guardian's Esther Addley reports about the Britons who are strategically rediscovering their Irish ancestries, the better to retain access to the European Union.

Last weekend, shortly before he sat down to watch Ireland play England in the rugby Six Nations championship, Kevin Warnes posted the application form to renew his Irish passport. Though Warnes was born and has always lived in England and considers himself “completely English”, his mother is originally from Ireland, which allowed him to obtain dual citizenship as a young man in the 1980s when he was doing a lot of travelling in Europe.

A teacher from Shipley in West Yorkshire, he had allowed his Irish passport to lapse. But the prospect of Britain potentially voting to leave the EU in June “propelled me into action”, he says.

“I have two children and I want them to retain their EU citizenship. I want them to be able to travel, live and work freely in a Europe of open borders, to explore their near world with as much liberty as possible.” As soon as he gets his own passport back, Warnes will apply for Irish citizenship for his teenage daughters as well. “I certainly wouldn’t have done that if it wasn’t for Brexit.”

Figures obtained by the Guardian suggest he is far from alone. According to Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs, the number of British-born people applying for Irish passports on the basis of their ancestry has risen sharply in the past year, just as the debate over the UK’s potential withdrawal from the EU has intensified before June’s referendum.

Between 2014 and 2015, the number of adults born in England, Scotland or Wales applying for their first Irish passport on the basis of having an Irish-born grandparent increased by more than 33%, from 379 to 507. Applications from those with one or more Irish parent rose by 11% in the same period, from 3,376 to 3,736. In the previous year, the total applying in both categories fell slightly.

[LINK] "Japan's nuclear refugees face bleak return five years after Fukushima"

Reuters' Minami Funakoshi reports on the apparently permanent depopulation of the hinterland of Fukushima's nuclear catastrophe.

Tokuo Hayakawa carries a dosimeter around with him at his 600-year-old temple in Naraha, the first town in the Fukushima "exclusion zone" to fully reopen since Japan's March 2011 catastrophe. Badges declaring "No to nuclear power" adorn his black Buddhist robe.

Hayakawa is one of the few residents to return to this agricultural town since it began welcoming back nuclear refugees five months ago.

The town, at the edge of a 20-km (12.5 mile) evacuation zone around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant, was supposed to be a model of reconstruction.

Five years ago, one of the biggest earthquakes in history shook the country's northeast. The 10-metre (33-foot) tsunami it spawned smashed into the power plant on the Fukushima coastline triggering a meltdown and forcing nearby towns to evacuate. The disaster killed over 19,000 people across Japan and caused an estimated 16.9 trillion yen ($150 billion) in damages.

Only 440 of Naraha's pre-disaster population 8,042 have returned - nearly 70 percent of them over 60.

"This region will definitely go extinct," said the 76-year-old Hayakawa.

[OBSCURA] Free Kesha, by Kris Anka (@kristaferanka)

Very talented comic artist Kris Anka (Marvel Wikia, Pinterest Tumblr) drew this beautiful image of Kesha in performance. It seemed apropos to share this on International Women's Day. Thanks to Anka, and may Kesha's travails soon end.

[DM] "On women and fertility, briefly"

I very briefly write about some of my background assumptions in looking at fertility-related demographic issues. Why do my explorations of motives concentrate on the motives of women, not men?