[PHOTO] Mural, Cabbagetown Corner Convenience, Parliament Street

I love this cheerful mural covering one whole side of a convenience store's building on Parliament.

[PHOTO] Five photos of the scenes to see before you enter Green Gables

The line to enter Green Gables House is long, but happily there are things to see while you wait.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares stunning deep-field pictures of intergalactic space.


• Centauri Dreams shares the second part of Larry Klaes' analysis of Forbidden Planet.


• D-Brief suggests that controlled kangaroo hunting may be necessary for the ecological health of Australia.


• Bruce Dorminey notes a new radio telescope in British Columbia that may help solve the mystery of fast radio burst.


• The Dragon's Gaze notes that quasars can irradiate a noteworthy fraction of potentially Earth-like planets.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money comes out against the idea of giving Amazon massive tax breaks for HQ2.


• The LRB Blog bids a fond farewell to Saturn probe Cassini.


• Marginal Revolution links to a paper suggesting new ideas--hence, new sources of economic growth--are harder to come by.


• Maximos62 recounts a quietly chilling trip to East Timor where he discovers a landscape marked by genocide.


• The New APPS Blog is quite unsurprised by news that Russians may have used Facebook to manipulate the US election.


• At Out of Ambit, Diane Duane bids a fond farewell to colleague Len Wein.


• Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw does not think Australia is committed enough to affordable housing to solve homelessness Finland-style.


• Roads and Kingdoms reports from the Suwalki Gap, the thin corridor joining the Baltic States to Poland.


• Peter Rukavina looks at how a storied land rover was recovered from St. Helena.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel lists the top six discoveries of Cassini at Saturn.


• Towleroad notes fundamentally misaimed criticism of new AI that determines sexual orientation from facepics.


• Window on Eurasia looks at contemporary Russian fears about the power of rising China in Russia's Asian territories.

[URBAN NOTE] Four notes about politics and mass transit in Toronto

• I am decidedly unimpressed by the marijuana dispensary owners who set their employees up for criminal charges.


• Is the Ontario proposal for a licensed provincial marijuana retailer going to be economically viable? Maybe not. CBC reports.


• Steve Munro looks at the new 509 Harboufront streetcars with their pantograph power collection units.


• Edward Keenan makes a well-meaning call to Torontonians to stop speculating about the winner of the 2018 election. (Won't happen, alas.)

[URBAN NOTE] Four notes about culture in Toronto: photos, CNE and Charles Pachter, theatre, LMM

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• The National Observer notes an exciting new exhibition at the Ryerson Image Centre of vintage NYT photos of Canada.


• The Star notes how Canadian artist Charles Pachter first gained fame as a child star in a film about the Exhibition.


• NOW Toronto's Glenn Sumi praises the hard-core theatre fans of Toronto for their dedication to the local art.


• At Spacing, Adam Bunch notes the tragic last days of Lucy Maud Montgomery in Swansea, depressed and despairing.

[NEWS] Three links from eastern Europe: Bulgaria and Macedonia, Moldova, Georgia and Abkhazia

• Bulgaria and Macedonia have at last signed a treaty trying to put their contentious past behind them. Greece next?


• The legacies of Stalinist deportations in Moldova continue to trouble this poor country.


• The plight of the ethnic Georgians apparently permanently displaced from Georgia has been only muted by time.