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Dec. 29th, 2016
[BLOG] Some Thursday links
Dec. 29th, 2016 10:16 am- Anthropology.net describes an effort to digitize tapes recording Navajo oral history.
- Centauri Dreams remembers Vera Rubin.
- D-Brief looks
- Dangerous Minds shares a 1984 TV clip featuring George Michael and Morrissey talking about Joy Division.
- The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper suggesting a gas giant exoplanet might be indicated by a protoplanetary disk.
- Language Log reports on how Chinese netizens are criticizing pollution through the mockery of official slogans.
- Language Hat looks at the question of how the word "pecan" is pronounced.
- Lawyers, Guns and Money argues political science is not a science at all, like economics.
- The NYRB Daily notes that the shared inability of Trump and Putin to plan things and account for unexpected consequences does not lend itself to optimism.
- Window on Euruasia looks at Tatarstan's issues with regional transfer funding in Russia and shares an apocalyptic account of what will happen to Ukraine in the Russian sphere of influence.
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The Globe and Mail carries Michelle McQuigge's Canadian Press article looking at the efforts of non-believing United Church minister Gretta Vosper to set up a branch of a secular community movement in Toronto. I think this makes sense; I think she would be better off doing this than she would be in occupying a leadership role in a religious movement she is fundamentally opposed to.
A minister deemed unsuitable by the United Church for declaring herself an atheist is now at the heart of an effort to establish a type of church-style, secular community in Canada.
Gretta Vosper is one of about 10 founding members of Toronto’s Oasis Network, believed to be the first of its kind in Canada and due to launch in February.
Oasis communities, which have sprung up in several locations across the United States, are non-faith-based groups that try to draw people together based on five broad-based principles.
Among them are notions that reality is best understood through reason rather than religious insight, and that the world’s problems are best addressed by people rather than divine intervention.
Vosper sees setting up the community in Toronto as a natural extension of the work she’s already doing at one of the city’s churches.
The United Church criticized Vosper for declaring herself an atheist and will hold an ecclesiastical hearing in late 2017 to determine whether or not she will be defrocked as a minister.
The Toronto Star's Fakiha Baig reports on the challenge facing the Daily Bread Food Bank this holiday season.
The Daily Bread Food Bank is behind on its food collection goal for the holidays by about 900,000 pounds as more people are choosing to donate money over food, according to executive director Gail Nyberg.
With only a few days left on the holiday drive, the food bank has collected approximately 600,000 pounds of food donations — 900,000 pounds short of its goal of 1.5 million pounds.
“However, food (donated at) firehalls and stores has not yet been picked up so it’s hard to know exactly how far behind we are,” Nyberg said Tuesday.
She added that the food bank is also short of its cash goal of $1.5 million by half a million dollars, but it should not be difficult to reach by Dec. 31 when the holiday drive comes to a wrap.
“Yes, it is a trend we are seeing that more people are choosing to donate money over food, but we have no preference on what you donate as long as you do.”
CBC News' Laura DaSilva reports on ice swimming in Toronto. This actually might have some appeal for me.
While most people in Toronto are bundling up in parkas, trying to keep warm, others are stripping down to Speedos and jumping into Lake Ontario.
Ice swimming, also known as winter swimming, is an extreme sport gaining popularity across the GTA and around the world.
And we're not talking quick dips. It involves distance swimming in water 5 C or colder.
Why?
"It's invigorating," said Hamilton-based ice swimmer Loren King. "It makes you feel alive."
King, who also teaches political science at Wilfrid Laurier University, started diving into frigid Lake Ontario a few years ago to prepare for a swim across the English Channel. "I wanted to make sure I was prepared for the changes in temperature."
Then he was hooked.
The Toronto Star's Vanessa Lu describes a corner store in Toronto's East York that I hope will set a valuable trend for retail, if perhaps an exhausting one.
Zahra Dhanani never imagined she would become the owner of a convenience store.
She’s been a lawyer, social justice advocate, community activist — and even a DJ, organizing monthly Funk Asia nights.
But since last year, she and Mariko Nguyen-Dhanani, partners in love, life and business, have become the proprietors of a little corner store in East York.
Working 16-hour days for more than 400 days (they’ve just recently hired some part-time staff), the two women have a vision of turning their business at the corner of Lumsden and Westlake Aves., into a community gathering place.
Regulars are already coming in for daily lattes, along with cigarettes, bread and milk, but also unique gifts, local produce in warm weather and handmade goods featuring iconic images of Toronto.
What hope does the Québec minng town of Asbestos have after the end of asbestos? The Toronto Star's Allan Woods takes a look.
For more than a century, the story of the Quebec town of Asbestos was the story of the riches locked beneath its soil.
It used to be a worthless rocky hill. But when they started cutting into the rock in 1879 to get at the tough, fibrous and fire-resistant substance used in brake pads, pipes and building insulation, that hill turned into a stunning scar that grew ever wider and deeper.
The open pit Jeffrey Mine marked the city with its toxic name, but it also ate the city on its way to becoming one of the biggest such sites in the world. With every expansion, the mine swallowed streets, houses, businesses, churches, schools and hospitals.
Each time it was a small sacrifice for the mine’s owners and its well-paid workers to get at the wealth — right up until those sickened by asbestos started to turn against a wonder product sought and used around the world.
As studies funded by the Canadian Cancer Society found asbestos exposure kills more than 2,000 people in Canada each year, the shift in public opinion was brutal.
And there was neither celebration nor desolation in this town of 7,000 as the federal government announced last week it would ban all asbestos use in Canada by 2018.
The National Post carried Gordon Rayner's article in The Telegraph looking at Robert De Niro's controversial development plans for the Caribbean island of Barbuda.
Once it was a favourite holiday destination of Diana, Princess of Wales, where she would take the young Princes William and Harry for carefree winter breaks.
Today, passing cruise ships swing by so that passengers can take pictures of Princess Diana Beach.
But since the Princess’s death, the K Club on the Caribbean island of Barbuda has suffered a reversal of fortunes, closing 12 years ago. Now the once luxurious resort is at the centre of an extraordinary legal battle involving Hollywood legend Robert De Niro and some of the island’s tiny population.
De Niro, together with his business partner James Packer, has bought the remainder of the lease on the land from its previous owner and has been granted planning permission to revamp, re-open and extend the K Club.
However, more than 300 of the island’s 1,500 residents have signed a petition objecting to the development, which they say is excessive and illegal.
Vice hosts Jonathan Parks-Ramage's article looking at the desire and apparent ability of Grindr to move beyond being a hookup app to being a broader social networking tool, a brand even.
To most gay men, Grindr is known as the world's premiere dick pic delivery service. But lately, the company's executives, programmers, and PR soldiers have been hard at work to shift the app's image from "hookup helper" to "lifestyle brand." When I visited the startup's new Los Angeles headquarters, an 18,000-square-foot workspace located on the 14th floor of the Pacific Design Center Red Building, change was all anyone could talk about. The panoramic view of Los Angeles provided by floor-to-ceiling windows was inescapable. A diverse and attractive staff buzzed throughout the workplace, coding at large computers or lounging on modernist furniture. Morale was high, and conversations hummed with possibility. One thing was certain: This is far more than just the dick pic Death Star. This is the nerve center of a global tech company, and thanks to a recent majority investment by a Chinese gaming company, Beijing Kunlun Tech, it's one that's poised for major expansion.
The investment, which was announced in January, put Grindr's valuation at $155 million. But though Beijing Kunlun has acquired 60 percent of the company, the investor allowed Grindr to keep its current operating team and structure. In short, Grindr has an influx of cash and a significant degree of autonomy to guide plans for global proliferation.
A motivating factor behind Beijing Kunlun's investment was likely Grindr's rapidly growing user base. A little over a year after CEO Joel Simkhai launched the app in 2009, Grindr had racked up more than one million users. The app now boasts more than seven million, with the highest concentration of members in the US. Users are also highly engaged: More than two million people use Grindr daily, and spend an average of 54 minutes on the app. Simply put: Grindr has the gay community by the balls. It wants to take this massive, highly attentive audience and, per press materials, "become the preeminent global gay lifestyle brand."
The company has a variety of plans to achieve this. Some of the app's initial rebranding plays include Slumbr, a celebrity-studded Pride party hosted at The Standard hotel in New York this year; Grindr Varsity, a clothing line benefiting Athlete Ally, a nonprofit fighting homophobia in sports; and Grindr For Equality, a gay rights advocacy initiative. Leaders in the company also hope to expand the functions of the app in coming years, to transform Grindr into something closer to a "gay social network."
Jeremy Willard's Daily Xtra article from early this month about Ottawa's Stonewall Wilde's gives me some hope this reconfigured LGBT shop can survive. I certainly think they're doing the sort of thing they need to do for this niche business to survive, in a manner not unlike Toronto's Glad Day.
As of Oct 1, 2016, the book and art store After Stonewall and the sex shop Wilde’s are now one business — Stonewall Wilde’s.
Following a crowdfunding campaign, the former Wilde’s, which was owned by Trevor Prevost was moved into the unoccupied space beneath Michael Deyell’s After Stonewall at 370 Bank St so that the two businesses can collaborate more easily, introduce new products and reduce their overhead costs.
“We are now able to start expanding on products and open up the space for more events,” Prevost says. “I think that connecting with the community more [through events] will increase traffic.”
They also intend to expand stock on both levels. The upper and lower levels have retained much of the character of the businesses on which they are based — upstairs is art, books and gift ideas and downstairs is all things sex. Some of the new stock on the lower level will be leather sex toys and gear (beginning January 2017) and artistic nude shots of men.
Christine Leadman, executive director of the Bank Street Business Improvement Area (BIA), says that with the economy being shaky and folks doing more of their shopping online, businesses in the Village — particularly small and queer-owned ones — are suffering a lot. She hopes Stonewall Wilde’s succeeds and thinks the merger was probably a good move.