The rise of 'cat men', as they've been dubbed, can mostly be observed on social media, where countless pages exist to document the relationship men of all ages and backgrounds have with their cats.
"For too long, there's been a stereotype about cat guys. Unmanly. More soft than rugged. More feminine than masculine," reads the 'about' section of the It's Okay to be a Cat Guy Facebook page.
"It's time to show the world that it's OK to be a cat guy."
It's also where many celebrities — including comedian and radio host Hamish Blake, singer Ed Sheeran, Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld and comedian and actor Russell Brand — post sweet photographs and doting captions of their feline friends.
But while some might dismiss men's pussy PDAs as frivolous, experts say it represents a shift towards a more positive, inclusive masculinity — one which is sorely needed, especially given the impact a more aggressive masculinity — evident in, for example, violence against women — is having on society.
Others might be surprised to learn how common the cat man actually is. Indeed, recent Roy Morgan research shows there are 2.3 million 'cat people' — those who have cats but not dogs — in Australia, one million of whom are men.
The report also found Aussie cat men earn more, on average, than non-cat men; are 29 per cent less likely than the average man to believe 'homosexuality is immoral'; and — contrary to popular misconceptions that cat owners are sad singletons — almost 70 per cent are married or in de facto relationships.
And yet the 'cat men' phenomenon has not been extensively explored in scholarly research — until now.
Monkeys known as macaques possess the vocal anatomy to produce "clearly intelligible" human speech but lack the brain circuitry to do so, according to new research.
The findings -- which could apply to other African and Asian primates known as Old World monkeys -- suggest that human speech stems mainly from the unique evolution and construction of our brains, and is not linked to vocalization-related anatomical differences between humans and primates, the researchers reported Dec. 9 in the journal Science Advances.
Co-corresponding author Asif Ghazanfar, a Princeton University professor of psychology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, said that scientists across many disciplines have long debated if -- and to what extent -- differences between the human and primate vocal anatomy allow people to speak but not monkeys and apes.
"Now nobody can say that it's something about the vocal anatomy that keeps monkeys from being able to speak -- it has to be something in the brain. Even if this finding only applies to macaque monkeys, it would still debunk the idea that it's the anatomy that limits speech in nonhumans," Ghazanfar said. "Now, the interesting question is, what is it in the human brain that makes it special?"
It was a swinging place that attracted the rich and famous, as well as the average Torontonian.
The Inn on the Park, which opened in May 1963, featured what it said to be Canada’s first disco, Café Discotheque. “Killer Joe” Piro, a famous dance instructor, was brought up from Manhattan to teach guests to do the frug and Watusi when the disco opened in 1964. The discotheque promised “indigo mood music and pulsating rhythms” for its patrons.
The $4 million Inn on the Park resort rose up at the northeast corner of Leslie and Eglinton Ave. E., in what was then considered a suburban wasteland.
It was the start of the trend toward staycations, where the middle class could travel 15-minutes from downtown to an oasis for some R & R. The Inn on the Park, surrounded by parkland and set on a small hill, offered tennis, 6-hole golf course, heliport, shuffleboard, two swimming pools and skating in winter. There was also something new known as a “health club” called The Fitness Institute, headed up by Canadian fitness expert Lloyd Percival.
When the Inn on the Park closed its doors in 2004, staff recalled who had passed through the Inn — and not just the average Joe who wanted a taste of the good life.
Paintbox Bistro is a typical modern restaurant: high ceilings, framed art and hand-built wooden tables, serving everything from snacks to wraps to flank steak by a chef who did time in trendy Toronto eateries. It’s a description that could apply to many of the restaurants that regularly pop up (and back down) throughout Canada’s foodie capital. Except Paintbox Bistro has a twist: it is located in what used to be the city’s roughest neighbourhood, Regent Park.
A 69-acre housing project known for bedbugs and crime, Regent Park became especially notorious in 2005, when a member of the Point Blank Soulijahs gang – an offshoot of the Regent Park Crew – shot dead a 15-year-old bystander near the Eaton Centre, the biggest mall in the downtown core. The killing shocked Toronto; several years later, in 2012, fighting between the gang’s descendants, the Sic Thugz, led to another weekend shootout.
Visit now, however, and the area is unrecognisable: a $1bn revitalisation project has transformed it into a mix of subsidised housing, condominium apartments, retail shops and community amenities. Paintbox itself, a certified social enterprise, trains and employs local people who face barriers to employment, many of whom live at or below the poverty line.
“It took us five years to refine the model,” says Chris Klugman from Paintbox Bistro. “Now we have about half our staff who fit our mission, working alongside experienced professionals attracted to Paintbox because they share our social conscience.”
Indeed, as Regent Park attempts to shrug off its violent reputation by integrating upmarket living with public housing, it has attracted global attention as a kind of socio-economic experiment in public-private gentrification. For better or worse, this one-time crime haven in Toronto has become a test: can you regenerate social housing without resorting to social cleansing?
Why do Toronto’s busiest streets and highways sometimes feel like combat zones?
There are many theories on why people become angry behind the wheel of a car, says Christine Wickens, a scientist with CAMH’s Institute for Mental Health Policy Research, who has studied driver aggression.
“Most people who are generally hostile are going to be generally hostile on the roadway as well,” Wickens says citing one widely accepted theory.
Human beings are also territorial by nature, so “there’s this personal space around your vehicle, and you don’t want it to be invaded.”
Another theory is that the anonymity of driving fuels bad behaviour. “If someone cuts you off on the highway, chances are they can’t see you. You’ll probably never come across them again,” she says.
“But if it happens in your driveway, and you and your neighbour pulled out at the same time, and nearly hit each other, would you be just as likely to get out and scream and yell and rant and rave? Probably not.”
Quick. Can you name the Canadian toy company that's growing faster than Mattel, Hasbro and Lego?
No need to worry if you can't. But ask any child between three and nine years old and they probably can.
Toronto-based Spin Master is the maker of this year's impossible-to-find Christmas toy, "Hatchimals," a furry little robot that hatches from an egg and responds to its owner's cues.
"We have an advance concept team, and they had the idea that wouldn't it be amazing if you could actually do an unboxing like you see on YouTube, but in real life?" explains co-founder and co-CEO Ronnen Harary. "And what would be more magical than a character that actually comes out of an egg and comes to life?"
As it turns out, the product and its popularity can be linked to YouTube. Amateur reviews of the toy uploaded to the video-sharing website boosted demand worldwide, says Harary. Now parents from London, England, to Fayetteville, Ga., to Corner Brook, N.L., are scouring stores, desperate to find one.
At the end of the 19th century, cities in Europe and the United States were growing wildly. They were dirty, noisy, and cramped, and most of the people who lived in their tight quarters had no way to escape, even for the weekend.
Ebenezer Howard's Garden City was meant to solve those problems. Instead of cities expanding like ooze over the Earth, he imagined planned cities that grew in organized buds. They would be large enough to support industry, small enough so that access to work, school, play, and nature would be easy, and all interconnected by a network of roads and rails.
Howard was inspired by the utopian vision in Edward Bellamy's 1888 sci-fi novel Looking Backward, in which the United States has transformed over time into a working socialist system. Though his plan fell far short of Bellamy's vision, Howard imagined that the land of his Garden Cities would be cooperatively owned and rents could stay low. The most striking feature of his plan, though, was how each city would provide everything its citizens might need.
Howard laid out his Garden City in concentric circles. Each city, he imagined, would take up 6,000 acres of land and house 32,000 people. The city itself would take up one-sixth of that space; the surrounding land would be dedicated to farms and certain civic institutions, including retirement homes.
At the center of the city there would be a vast park, ringed by a Crystal Palace containing shops and a winter garde, and edged by the city's museum, hospital, and other institutions. Past the center, houses would line six radiating boulevards and a series of circular avenues. The residential areas of the city would be divided into the two main bands. In between, a a ring park would add green space and host the city's schools and playgrounds. The outer ring of the city would be devoted to industry, with the railroad running right along the edge.
While touring the United States in 1849, English Shakespearean William Charles Macready suffered a string of attacks. Known for his title role in Macbeth, Macready received considerable support from cultural luminaries, among them Herman Melville and Washington Irving, urging him to continue undeterred by the nightly ne’er-do-wells. Scheduled to perform at the posh Astor Place Opera House on the night of May 10, Macready was interrupted by a crowd led by Bowery ruffians and encouraged by Tammany Hall notables. Thousands of working-class New Yorkers rose up against the paragon of foreign refinery, preferring instead the American Shakespearean Edwin Forrest, a longstanding rival of Macready’s who was also playing Macbeth at the Broadway Theater. The feud had ballooned into something nationalistic and rooted in class sensibilities around the politics of artistic tastes and public spaces. Forrest’s Five Points supporters wanted an American at the top of the playbill rather than an Englishman. This night was particularly violent, with protesters overrunning the streets. The National Guard intervened and by the night’s end at least 22 people were killed and dozens more injured.
Just as the Astor Place riot is emblematic of class divergences taking place in Jacksonian Democracy, so too will the 2016 election be seen as a referendum on neoliberalism and the class politics of American whiteness. In Forrest and Macready’s day, the upper echelons of New York society were leery of the European revolutions of 1848, and while Astor Place was a local matter, it was also symptomatic of broader changes taking place nationally on the issue of class. Astor Place proved that class was something much more than wealth. Tastes, values, aesthetics, and language were cultural variables that also comprised one’s social standing. This was evident in the changing theater decorum of the day. For a long time, working-class audience members had been able to make their presence known in the stage pit, where they could interact with the actors on stage by voicing their opinions in raucous ways. But Astor Place was built with privilege in mind, following new protocols and conventions in arts appreciation. Those who previously could attend performances and participate in the collective banter would no longer be able to do so at Astor Place, which adopted a dress code (men had to wear white gloves) and higher ticket prices.
Today we stand witness to new class divisions that are holding tight to cultural attachments ensconced in whiteness and heterosexual masculinity. But often the class portions of these dynamics remain invisible. America’s minimization of class struggle entered a new phase after World War II, when the ideal American now belonged to a middle class that was to be a tireless purchaser of consumer goods. Since the 1950s, America’s culture of abundance has relied on the notion that most Americans are part of, or have access to, the middle class. Year after year, polls have confirmed that most Americans have identified with some form of middle class (including upper- and lower-middle classes). In doing so, Americans have been able to cling to the myth of classlessness. If we’re all some part of the middle, we’re all the same.
Just as the Astor Place riot is emblematic of class divergences taking place in Jacksonian Democracy, so too will the 2016 election be seen as a referendum on neoliberalism and the class politics of American whiteness
In six decades of civil rights movements, Americans by and large have not confronted inequality along class lines as vigorously as they have along race, gender, and even more recently sexuality. Class is still allowed to structure inequality in ways race and gender are not. It is why in New York City there can be differential treatment of tenants based on the rent they pay in mixed-income or rent-stabilized dwellings. In some buildings, tenants who do not pay market-rate rents must enter through different doors or are prevented from some building amenities like courtyards or gyms. If these same buildings were to make African Americans or Jews use a different entrance or prohibit women from using a gym, Americans far and wide would cry foul. Such classism has spread across America’s stratified income landscape.
In this way, the October visit of the Dalai Lama – who was the main star of the 20th edition of the Forum 2000 conference, founded by late President Vaclav Havel – was also a test of Havel’s legacy in the former Czechoslovakia. That humanitarian approach is today confined to almost hidden corners of the local political scene, only revived from time to time by small groups, usually consisting of NGO activists, and lately by Kiska. In mainstream politics, it gets almost completely forgotten.
Lastly, the episode illustrates in broader strokes the emerging relationship between Central Europe and China. For the last couple of years, China has crafted its policy toward Europe, and the weak and often Eurosceptic Central European governments have seemed an ideal gateway for Chinese money and political influence. China could thereby reach the wider European Union, which, due to the refugee crisis and Brexit, looks weaker than ever in the last 20 years.
The job, however, isn’t easy for Chinese diplomats in Prague, Bratislava, or Warsaw (the Dalai Lama also briefly visited Wroclaw, without meeting any government official there). They have to exert maximum effort, show off their supposed powers to influence investment, and gain leverage over local politicians. But the real work in leaning on the locals is done by the businessmen who have cultivated business and political ties in China as relations have warmed. That’s not so tough when the United States, a traditional ally, seems so far off, the EU looks to be in disarray, and Russia plays old, familiar Soviet power games.
“When your family has been ruling for hundreds of years, people still call you by the title of Nawab,” says Nawab Reza Khan, tenth Nawab of Sachin as he traces his family’s regal history. Reza Khan currently works as a lawyer and lives in the city of Sachin in Gujarat. He says his ancestors came from Abyssinia (present day Ethiopia in East Africa) as part of the forces of Babur. Eventually, they conquered the fort at Janjira and later occupied Sachin and ruled over their own kingdoms.
The Nawab of Sachin is a personified remnant of a glorious African past in India. Africans have, for centuries been a part of Indian society. While the slave trade from Africa to America and Europe is well documented, the eastward movement of African slaves to India has been left unexplored.
The systematic transportation of African slaves to India started with the Arabs and Ottomans and later by the Portuguese and the Dutch in the sixteenth -seventeenth centuries. Concrete evidence of African slavery is available from the twelfth-thrirteenth centuries, when a significant portion of the Indian subcontinent was being ruled by Muslims.
There is, however, a major difference between African slavery in America and Europe and that in India. There was far greater social mobility for Africans in India. In India, they rose along the social ladder to become nobles, rulers or merchants in their own capacities. “In Europe and America, Africans were brought in as slaves for plantation and industry labour. In India on the other hand, African slaves were brought in to serve as military power,” says Dr Suresh Kumar, Professor of African studies in Delhi University.
These were elite military slaves, who served purely political tasks for their owners. They were expensive slaves, valued for their physical strength. The elite status of the African slaves in India ensured that a number of them had access to political authority and secrets which they could make use of to become rulers in their own right, reigning over parts of India. They came to be known by the name of Siddis or Habshis (Ethiopians or Abyssinians). The term ‘Siddi’ is derived from North Africa, where it was used as a term of respect.
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