[CAT] Shakespeare, against brown and blue

[PHOTO] Three photos from arrival in Manhattan

When the Lincoln Tunnel threaded onto West 36th Street just west of Ninth Avenue, I was ready.



The intersection of West 27th Street and Seventh Avenue, where the Megabus came to a stop, was likewise photo-worthy.



When I finally disembarked just outside of the Fashion Institute of Technology, it was time to take a selfie. I made it.

[PHOTO] Crossing Yonge and Eglinton

I am a strong supporter of the construction of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT line. This route, part of the TTC network when it opens in 2021, will play an essential role in providing high-speed mass transit across midtown, from Mount Dennis station in York in the west to a new connection with Kennedy station in Scarborough in the east. This is the sort of transit route, in high-density areas with potential for further growth, that Toronto needs if it is to continue to thrive.



If only the intersection of Yonge and Eglinton was not blocked off substantially to pedestrian traffic! The southwest corner, where the main exit of Eglinton Station is located, is entirely impassable. Anyone wanting to leave the station has to proceed east through the tunnel beneath Yonge Street to the complex on the southeast corner of Yonge and Eglinton and then exit. If you want to get to the northwest corner of Yonge and Eglinton, first you have to disembark from the southeast corner, go north across Eglinton, and then go west across Yonge.

This should take only a few months. Eventually, things will be passable. Eventually, we will have a fully functional Eglinton Crosstown LRT. Until then, this is just what we will have to put up with.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• The Big Picture shares adorable photos of baby animals.


• Multi-planet system K2-138 is one of the systems found via crowdsourcing, Centauri Dreams notes.


• I did not know that David Bowie and Brian Eno visited the Gugging mental health clinic in Austria in 1994. Dangerous Minds has the photos.


• Hornet Stories notes that Mike Pence has tried to defend himself from Adam Rippon's criticisms by lying about his past.


• Information is Beautiful shares an infographic depicting the edit wars last year on Wikipedia.


• Joe. My. God. notes that Northern Ireland may get a referendum on marriage equality, giving it a chance to catch up to the Republic of Ireland and to the rest of the United Kingdom.


• JSTOR Daily links to a vintage article noting that trying to apply the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, which could unseat a sitting president if the president was disabled, could cause a constitutional crisis.


• Language Hat notes a study suggesting that, as humans become more sedentary, linguistic evidence suggests smell becomes less important.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money wonders: how many films, how many novels, have been about _women_, not men, who are difficult geniuses? Where is the female equivalent of House?


• The NYR Daily examines the Afro-futurism of 20th century novelist George Schuyler and his Black No More.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel considers what someone would see as they descended into a black hole.


• At Towleroad, Steven Petrow tells how HIV/AIDS doctor Mathilde Krim saved his life.


• Window on Eurasia notes one, militant, response in the Donbas republics to the breakdown of the Minsk Accords with Ukraine.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: home dioramas, public space, Perth-Dupont library, Pacific Mall, GO

• I am amused by these dioramas of tiny homes put together by Toronto artist Anita Bonfini. blogTO shares them.


• This Torontoist article by Erin Davis examining the threads uniting the Bentway underneath the Gardiner with the Stackt warehouse at Front and Bathurst and King Street is exciting.


• blogTO reports on the much-needed upgrade and expansion of the Perth-Dupont library to the west of my home, from narrow storefront to something larger and condo-based.


• Victoria Gibson reports on the denials of York Region police that they overlook the sale of counterfeit goods at the Pacific Mall, over at the Toronto Star.


• Ben Spurr notes the desire of Transportation Minister Kathryn McGarry to boost GO Transit use in her Cambridge riding, even though there are low rates of use there, over at the Toronto Star.

[URBAN NOTE] Five notes about cities: HQ2, subnational ties, mid-sized cities, rent, Trumpism

• MacLean's notes that the bidding of so many cities for Amazon's HQ2 had less to do with the actual bid and more with the optics of being able to make a bid.


• Global News notes Trudeau's touring of different American cities, like Los Angeles and Chicago, to emphasize Canadian ties with these cities. Canada, it seems, is working its subnational ties as well as the state-to-state ones.


• Jennifer Keesmaat notes at MacLean's that, with growing unaffordability in major Canadian centers like Toronto and Vancouver, mid-sized cities like Halifax and Winnipeg can take advantage if they implement the right policies.


• Noah Smith notes a study by economists suggesting that rent control has only limited positive effects and worse negative ones, over at Bloomberg View.


• Michael Adams and Doug Norris argue at The Globe and Mail that Canada, because of the concentration of such a greater share of our population in relatively few cities than the United States, is resistant to Trump-style populism.