[CAT] Shakespeare, in close-up

[OBSCURA] On the deserted hotels of the Sinai

I read Bethan Staton's Quartz article as a followup to last month's post looking at abandoned hotels in Egypt. That post, based on a 2006 book, looked at Egyptian hotels in the desert which never went back past initial construction. Staton looks at the state of the Sinai's hotels now, after the collapse of the tourist industry under the pressure of (among other things) the Sinai insurgency and the destabilization of Egypt generally.

From the canopies and huts of his beach camp, Msallam Faraj can stroll to the ruins of several resorts like the Seagull—places with signs like “Dessole” or “Gulf Paradise,” where naked intersections of floors and walls expose the usually hidden geometry of floor plans.

But Faraj has built his shaded hammocks to face away from the hotels, toward the Gulf. “For me they destroy the beautiful view,” he says, gesturing toward the latticed shade of the ruins. “They took the land, which is mine, but they don’t use it.”

Many Bedouin like Faraj would have preferred to see the Sinai developed as an ecotourism hub. Before the hotel building rush began, the coastline was flooded with tourists and backpackers paying $10 a night to sleep on the beach. Many of these ad-hoc beach camps were run by local Bedouin whose families had lived in the Sinai for centuries. In the 1990s, Faraj had built a previous beach camp, “Bedouin Dream,” the culmination of a lifetime’s ambition to use his ecological knowledge to create a backpacker’s paradise.

Lured by the Bedouins’ success, investors started building hotels. But they rarely included the Bedouin in their work. Instead they built on land the tribes claimed as their own, while competing with existing businesses. Between 1992 and 2007, for example, all the plots of land in Sharm el Sheikh–a former Bedouin village that became a sprawling, loud resort town—were allocated to Egyptian and foreign investors, while the Bedouin were relegated to the desert.

Land disputes between new investors and locals sometimes turned nasty, and many developers found themselves paying protection money or employing members of local tribes as security. But the money Bedouin made from these arrangements didn’t make up for the marginalization they felt.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Antipope's Charlie Stross considers the question of how to build durable space colonies.


• blogTO notes that the musical Hamilton might be coming to Toronto.


• The Dragon's Tales notes that European populations are descended from Anatolian farmers, not local hunter0-gatherers.


• Far Outliers notes the plight of Czech and Slovak migrants in Russia following the outbreak of the First World War.


• Language Log looks at new programs to promote the learning of Cantonese, outside of China proper.


• Towleroad notes the sad story of a Belgian man who wants euthanasia because he's ashamed of being gay.


• The Financial Times' The World worries about the possible spread of illiberal democracy to Croatia.

[NEWS] Some Saturday links

• Bloomberg looks at what Gawker's bankruptcy means.


• Bloomberg View notes that Saudi Arabia's reform plans are too timid.

The Inter Press Service looks at misogynistic dress codes in Somaliland.

• Open Democracy compares the Greek and British referenda on Europe.


• Transitions Online looks at impending Russian parliamentary elections.


• Universe Today reports on confirmation that the Antikythera Mechanism was an astronomical computer.


• Wired looks at one police force that welcomes body cams.

[URBAN NOTE] "Toronto's renegade capybaras: folk heroes for the social media age"

Eric Andrew-Gee's article in The Globe and Mail looks at the import of the escaped capybaras of High Park.

[A]s the hunt settled into a waiting game, the capybaras themselves erupted into the city’s collective consciousness. Newspapers breathlessly reported every sighting. TV news trucks became a fixture around High Park. Social media went wild.

Soon, there were not one but two capybara Twitter accounts. Clever designers pasted their image everywhere. A bar on Queen Street West changed its WiFi password to “Capybara.” And one Twitter user implored High Park’s annual Shakespeare production to put The Taming of the Capybara on the program.

Even before the Toronto escape, capybaras were pseudo-stars of the Internet, beloved and endlessly memed for their surreal physical hybridity and Eeyore-ish countenance.

This was different. Early on, the capybaras were cast as heroic rebels. The nicknames didn’t take long: Bonnie and Clyde. When one local wag placed them in a photo of Steve McQueen’s motorcycle from The Great Escape, the transformation was complete.

Their lionization may have reflected a growing cultural unease with animal captivity, crystallized recently by the shooting of Harambe the gorilla after a child found his way into the ape’s enclosure. Or it may be the idea of once-tame animals fending for themselves in the wilds of High Park, which seems to have a special hold on the Canadian imagination: Last year’s Giller Prize-winning novel, Fifteen Dogs by André Alexis, is about a pack of dogs with human minds set loose in the same park.

[URBAN NOTE] "Glad Day Bookstore needs to make a move"

NOW Toronto's Susan G. Cole looks at the rationale for Glad Day's move.

Business experts will tell you that it’s a bad idea to let people know your enterprise is in financial trouble. Suppliers tend to flee, and customers have a habit of staying away.

But Michael Erickson, a member of the group operating the store, isn’t fazed. He says it’s making its pitch from a position of strength.

“Our book sales have increased 30 per cent over the past four years,” he says on the phone from the shop’s location on Yonge. “And in that period alone, we’ve hosted over 700 author appearances.”

So the problem isn’t the queer community’s lack of interest in books – or even competition from the dreaded Amazon. It’s that the sale of books alone isn’t profitable enough. Heather Reisman knows that; look what she’s selling at Indigo.

That’s why Glad Day is planning to move to a new, bigger location – to facilitate those author events and to make room to sell other consumables in a café. The idea is to create a multi-purpose venue, bookstore and café by day, event space by night.

IndieGogo has more on Glad Day's plans.

[URBAN NOTE] "Proposed Ward Changes Call for Splitting Church-Wellesley Village"

I do not like the proposal, as described by Torontoist's Tannara Yelland, to partition Church and Wellesley into two separate wards at all.

Civic-minded residents of downtown Toronto may have been chagrined (though not entirely surprised) to learn, upon the release of information about the proposed restructuring of the regions represented by city councillors, that the three downtown wards each have thousands more people than the average ward population. Toronto’s population has exploded since the wards were redrawn in 2000, with much of that growth in the city’s downtown core—and more is expected in the coming years. For now, people living in wards 20 (Trinity-Spadina) and 27 (Toronto Centre-Rosedale) have significantly less representation than residents of other, less populous wards.

It’s for those reasons that the proposed changes to ward boundaries, presented to City Council in May, include splitting downtown into six wards rather than three, dramatically reshaping the political landscape of the area. But in trying to accommodate population changes and adhere to “natural and physical boundaries” and area history, the group in charge of redrawing the city split up some of Toronto’s most distinct neighbourhoods.

One of those areas is the beating heart of the city’s LGBTQ community, Church-Wellesley Village. Currently housed in Ward 27 and represented by Kristyn Wong-Tam, members of the Village have expressed concern at the thought of forming a smaller portion of two different wards. The proposal calls for a boundary to run along Church Street, the main artery of the Village.

“We understand the need for boundaries to change in terms of making sure that everybody in Toronto is fairly represented by the wards,” says Village BIA Chair Francis Gaudreault, “but we’re not a big fan of the idea of the Village being split in two to form those boundaries.”

[URBAN NOTE] "Council approves next step towards landlord licensing"

The Toronto Star's Jennifer Pagliaro reports.

In what’s being hailed a major win for tenants, city council has approved the next step towards licensing landlords. It’s a move advocates say will lead to better adherence to building standards and improve the quality of life of the half of Toronto’s residents who live in apartments.

Despite earlier pushback to the idea said to be emanating from the mayor’s office, a large majority of councillors agreed to go ahead with public consultations, as staff had recommended.

The vote was 33-6, with Councillors John Campbell, Christin Carmichael Greb, Stephen Holyday, Giorgio Mammoliti, Denzil Minnan-Wong and James Pasternak voting against.

“It’s a big relief that we’re in a position to continue working on this,” said Natalie Hundt, a spokesperson for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). “Right now I’m just really grateful that we have the opportunity, after 12 long years of work, to move forward on this, finally.”

City staff have proposed that licensing would apply to 3,300 apartment buildings that are three storeys or higher, with 10 units or more. Information would be made available to prospective and existing tenants as part of a proactive approach to ensuring that building standards are maintained, including requiring landlords to develop maintenance plans.

[ISL] "UPEI, Holland College should merge, NDP says"

This NDP proposal, as reported by the CBC News' Shane Ross, does not appeal to me. Universities and colleges are different kinds of institutions, after all, to say nothing of my loyalties to UPEI.

The NDP in P.E.I. has asked the province to examine the possibility of merging UPEI and Holland College into one one post-secondary institution.

"We are a small province of a population a little over 145,000 people, we cannot continue funding both institutions at the rate we are," said NDP Leader Mike Redmond in a written release Friday.

Because UPEI and Holland College are exempt from Freedom of Information Legislation, Redmond said, the public doesn't see where their tax dollars go. The institutions have been "political patronage dumping grounds" for decades, he said.

"It is unacceptable for both these institutions to continue to go hat-in-hand to government for more money every year, just as it is unethical that our provincial government uses post secondary institutions to hire friends and families of their respective political parties," he said.

[ISL] "China Island Next To Macau Looks Too Big To Fail, But No Help Yet To Needy Neighbor"

Forbes' Muhammad Cohen writes about what might be a big real estate bust--gambling-related, literally--in Macau.

As reported in Inside Asian Gaming, even before Las Vegas Sands LVS -2.16% opened Venetian Macao in 2007 and transformed the Cotai landfill between Macau’s outer islands of Taipa and Coloane into the centerpiece of the world’s most lucrative casino destination, LVS Chairman Sheldon Adelson cast an eye on Hengqin. The 41 square mile (106.5 square kilometer) island, then with perhaps 7,000 inhabitants, linked to Cotai via Lotus Bridge could serve as the backyard for land scarce Macau, with hotel rooms and other non-gaming facilities to supplement and support the kind of broad based tourism industry that thrives in Las Vegas. LVS wanted to lease the island, but mainland authorities, perhaps prompted by the interest from LVS, cooked up their own plans.

In late 2008, China’s State Council approved Hengqin as an experimental New Area, aiming to increase foreign trade and investment, plus “strengthen the cooperation with Hong Kong and Macau in service industry and high and new technology.” On a visit weeks later, then-Vice President Xi Jinping announced Hengqin’s development aims would include Macau’s “diversified economic growth.” Xi ‘s December 2012 visit to Hengqin was his first trip outside greater Beijing as China Communist Party Secretary, the precursor to becoming China’s president, emphasizing commitment to the project at the very highest level.

[. . .]

For Hengqin to diversify Macau’s leisure and entertainment product in ways that aren’t possible for Macau alone, there needs to be greater connectivity across the border. Mainland China visitors to Hengqin still need a visa to enter Macau – and if they have it, they can only use it once – and foreigners in Macau need a China visa to enter Hengqin. The University of Macau campus on Hengqin has an open border with Macau but is sealed off from the rest of Hengqin. The authorities need to find creative ways to allow two way traffic of visitors between Hengqin and Macau to nurture the world center of leisure and tourism that officials always say they want Macau to be. US$12 billion certainly shows a desire to make Hengqin succeed, and the tourism component is a key plank, but Macau operators have repeatedly demonstrated it’s far easier to spend money than to take effective steps to broaden tourist appeal.

[REVIEW] X-Men: Apocalypse

I finally caught X-Men: Apocalypse Wednesday, sitting down in the VIP theatre at the Yonge-Dundas Cineplex Cinemas for more than two and a half hours with a pint and plenty of expectation.

How was it? Broadly, I agree with Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men called when they call X-Men: Apocalypse as a a "heartily enjoyable train wreck". I liked Apocalypse and his horsemen, but I found the threat from Apocalypse depersonalized and unsatisfying. The heart and energy of the film lies in the characters, in Jean Grey and Cyclops and Nightcrawler and Storm and even Jubilee. (This last deserved more coverage.) We see how these young people end up coming to terms with their mutantcy and coming together as a team.

Plus, Quicksilver's requisite of high-speed wackiness is great. Props to Singer for including "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)"!

"X-Men Apocalypse Quicksilver Sweet Dreams scene [HQ]" (Watch on YouTube)

One thing I especially liked was the emphasis on Jean Grey's agency. For too long, in the comics and even in the movies, Jean Grey is depicted as a victim of her powers, as someone who needs to have her powers controlled by others. No spoilers, but in X-Men: Apocalypse we see her embracing her powers, not being left to be made a victim of them as other characters (men, mainly) watch. This is refreshing.