[PHOTO] Fourteen photos of Ripley's Aquarium

I visited Ripley's Aquarium last months with my parents. It was one of the few major tourist sights in the downtown that I had not seen, and my parents were curious, so off we went!

I can't say that Ripley's Aquarium has much scientific value, but I can attest to the fact that it does an excellent job of displaying the vast diversity of marine life, piscine and otherwise. I enjoyed seeing these creatures, well-adapted to their differing aquatic environments, on display in something like their native habitats. I only hope they felt likewise.

These photos are less than half of the photos I've just posted on Flickr and Instagram, which in turn constitute half of the photos I will be posting. More there now, and there will be more--the rest, I think--tomorrow.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Andrew Barton quite approves of the Helsinki Metro.


• Anthropology.net notes the complexity of the peopling of Eurasia, over hundreds of thousands of years and with multiple human populations.


• Daily JSTOR has an insightful take on the fiction of the free market, looking back to Peter Drucker.


• Far Outliers notes that the role missionaries played in the development of area studies.


• At A Fistful of Euros, Alex Harrowell takes a look at the complexities of the latest Brexit negotiations, concentrating on the DUP and Ireland.


• At The Frailest Thing, Michael Sacasas notes the addition of a Paypal option alongside Patreon and asks for feedback.


• Hornet Stories notes that the Gengoroh Tagame manga My Brother's Husband is set for a television adaptation.


• Language Log takes a look at the complexities surrounding a piece of Maoist rhetoric. Did Mao actually say that the Chinese people stood up at Tiannamen in 1949?


• Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the rhetoric surrounding parkland in Utah. Who is it being protected for, and what do these people have to gain from the despoliation?


• Marginal Revolution looks at a study of Switzerland suggesting that clear boundaries have helped maintain communal peace there.


• At the NYR Daily, Tim Parks has a lovely essay exploring the importance of the translator as a sort of secondary creator.


• Window on Eurasia looks at Tatarstan, and argues post-Soviet governments there made a mistake by concentrating on parallel Tatar and Russian cultures, as opposed to propagating Tatar language and culture for all.


• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell suggests that, in British political life, there are two working cultures, politicians who derive authority from merit and politicians who derive authority from brilliance. Guess who fares worse?

[URBAN NOTE] Three Toronto links: TTC streetcars, Queens Quay, Cheesecake Factory

• Steve Munro shares some photos of the first of the Canadian Light Rail Vehicles, TTC streetcars, from 1978.


• NOW Toronto points out that Queens Quay, a popular pedestrian and biking area, does not do that good job of separating these two streams of traffic.


• This Toronto Star review of the Cheesecake Factory, newly present in Toronto at Yorkdale, was fun to read. A dessert there might be worth trying.

[NEWS] Three links on frontiers: Liberland, Catalonia, West Bank maps

• GQ has a terribly unflattering article about the motivations and personalities behind the establishment of Liberland, a libertarian microstate on an island at the frontiers of Serbia and Croatia.


• This extended examination of the issue of Catalonian separatism in Spain, taking a look at both sides of the conflicts, suggests this conflict may be intractable. The Atlantic has it.


• Miriam Berger at Wired notes how the profound insufficiency of maps of the Palestinian-occupied areas of the West Bank forces Palestinians to turn to newcomer maps.me.

[NEWS] Seven population links: Germany, climate, Brexit, overpopulation, Amazon, whales, parrots

• DW reports on the profound and apparently irreversible depopulation of rural areas of the former East Germany.


• Stephen Leahy at VICE's Motherboard notes that pronounced global cooling may be responsible for the emigration of Donald Trump's grandfather to the United States, that he was a climate refugee.


• Christian Odendahl at politico.eu suggests that Brexit, by encouraging skilled immigrants (and others) to leave the United Kingdom, might work to the benefit of a Germany experiencing labour shortages.


• David Roberts at Vox talks about the many reasons why, as an environmental journalist, he does not talk about overpopulation as a problem.


• National Geographic reports on another massacre of indigenous peoples in the Brazilian Amazon by goldminers.


• Phys.org warns that, at the current rate of deaths, the right whales of the North Atlantic might face extinction. Gack. (Sometimes I think we deserve a visit from the whale probe.)


• This heartbreaking story co-authored by Ted Chiang takes the Arecibo radio telescope and the Puerto Rican parrot, the iguaca, and does something terribly beautiful and sad with the confluence of the two. Go, read.

[URBAN NOTE] Four notes on three Church and Wellesley dead: Tess Richey, Larry Arnold, Harley Walker

Security cameras have picked up an image of the murdered Tess Richey with an unknown male. Recognize him? Global News has it.

• CBC reports on the murder in the village of Larry Arnold in 1994. Has Toronto police learned anything in the intervening two decades?


• Back in 2007, James Dubro wrote in Daily Xtra about the conviction of the murderer of Cabbagetown resident Harley Walker. I'd met Walker before; he was a nice guy, with neat stories from his CBC years. Certainly he deserved much better.


• In the page of now-defunct fab magazine, Paul Bellini remembered his long-time friend Harley Walker.