[CAT] Shakespeare, by the bookcase

[PHOTO] Looking at the Dominion Building, Charlottetown

The brutalist Dominion Building stands in downtown Charlottetown, diagonally opposite the Confederation Centre of the Arts at Queen and Richmond.

[PHOTO] Sixteen photos of the R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plant, Toronto

This time, I approached the R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plant from the east, scrambling down from the end of Queen Street East to the shoreline and then scrambling part of the way back up to the grassy lawn of the planet.

This whole complex, poised on the hillside on what had been southwesternmost Scarborough overlooking a Lake Ontario stretching out past the horizon, evokes for me Los Angeles' Griffiths Observatory. It's a place in the city but not of the city, with 1930s architecture providing a base for people to sit and contemplate eternity. It's beautiful.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at Wolf-Lundmark-Melotte, loneliest galaxy in the Local Group.


• Centauri Dreams examines the recent detailed view of the star Antares, and notes Antares' mysteries.


• False Steps' Paul Drye notes Project Adam, a Sputnik-era proposal for a manned American suborbital flight.


• Far Outliers recounts a 1945 encounter between an American general and the Sultan of Sulu, impoverished by the war.


• Language Log notes the Sino-Indian propaganda video war over their border dispute in the Himalayas.


• The LRB Blog looks at the messy process of the demobilization of FARC in Colombia.


• Marginal Revolution looks at how Virginia has managed to become a multicultural success story.


• The NYR Daily looks at the photos of India taken by Cartier-Bresson.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer wonders how, despite the drug war, Mexico City continues to feel (even be) so peaceful. Can it last?


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel goes through the many reasons why it makes no sense to fear first contact with aliens.


• Strange Company tells of Bunkie Dodge, pool-playing cat of early 20th century New England.


• Unicorn Booty notes that the new Taylor Swift song is inspired by Right Said Fred's "I'm So Sexy."


• Window on Eurasia shares an argument that an essentially post-colonial Russophone cultural community cannot coexist with a Russian empire.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: DuEast, Main Square, Sherway Gardens, Pam McConnell, rare books

• blogTO notes the new name of Toronto's Regent Park, "DuEast", after Dundas Street East.


• In the Toronto Star, Shawn Micallef argues a recent festival shows the potential of east-end high-rise neighbourhood Main Square.


• Also in the Star, Francine Kopun looks at the half-billion dollars put into renovating Sherway Gardens.


• Ainslie Cruickshank reports on how the many who care for late councilor Pam McConnell are mourning her.


• In The Globe and Mail, Miriam Katawazi reports on finds from remarkable, long-delayed inventory of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library.

[NEWS] Four science links warming Maritime waters, BC forests, gravitational lens, Voyager data

• The waters off the Maritimes, it seems, have enjoyed unusually warm temperatures this year. The Globe and Mail reports.


• What will become of the forest of British Columbia if locals do not protect it from over-logging? National Observer considers.


• What, exactly, is this mysteriously invisible high-mass body acting as a gravitational lens in intergalactic space? VICE describes the mystery.


• The Planetary Society Blog, in commemoration of the Voyagers, shares its archived materials on the probes' discoveries, right here.