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May. 15th, 2019
My walk home last evening north up Bartlett Avenue was wonderful, with so many bright spring flowers out. Magnolias and tulips and narcissus predominated in my site, but they were hardly alone on that glorious spring evening.
[BLOG] Some Wednesday links
May. 15th, 2019 03:34 pm- D-Brief notes that, in the United States, obesity rates are rising most quickly in rural populations.
- Bruce Dorminey notes that the NASA plan to put people on the Moon by 2024 will draw heavily on commercial space.
- Joe. My. God. notes that San Francisco has banned its police from using facial recognition technology.
- JSTOR Daily examines the myths of the brief life of Thomas Chatterton, the 18th century poet who became an icon to the Romantics.
- Language Log considers reconstructions of the Chinese name of the ancient Silk Road city of Loulan.
- Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money suggests that criminalizing people who give border migrants a car ride indicates a particular harshness to US immigration policy.
- The NYR Daily interviews Chinese professor and critic Che Hongguo, founder of the Zhiwuzhi reading room movement.
- Casey Dreier at the Planetary Society Blog is not very impressed with the funding provisions for the NASA Artemis Moon program.
- Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains why simple differences in chemical composition, starting with an excess of sulfur relative to carbon on Mars, explain why Mars now is a barren world.
- Nick Rowe at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative cautions people not to mistake accounting identities for realities.
I went this afternoon to the Olga Korper Gallery, in a long-converted industrial space on Morrow Avenue in Roncesvalles just off Dundas Street West, to catch "The Outsiders", an exhibit of several dozen photographic works of Robert Mapplethorpe selected from the perspective of exploring Mapplethorpe's take on gender. The selection was acute; my friend and I had a great time talking about the perspectives Mapplethorpe represented in his works, the gazes that were exchanged or not and the items selected. The space, too, is gorgeous, a wonderful sort of post-industrial temple to the arts. I definitely recommend going to see this show while it is running, up to the 2nd of June.
- Leo Mantha, the last man executed in British Columbia in 1959, was executing for killing his estranged lover. Was homophobia the cause of what was, even then, a unique lack of mercy? Global News considers.
- Brian D. Johnson at MacLean's, reviewing Killing Patient Zero, notes how the openness of Gaëtan Dugas about his sexual past was one feature that led him to be unfairly branded Patient Zero, cause of the HIV/AIDS crisis.
- This invaluable Justin Ling AMA at reddit's unresolvedmysteries about the Church-Wellesley serial killings, besides exposing the accidents that led police not following up on reports, highlights a historic worldwide pattern of rage-filled killing sprees against queer people.
- Shaun Brodie at NOW Toronto pays tribute to the late, great writer Wayson Choy.
- CTV News reports that the Québec National Assembly has extended official recognition of the historic importance of the Village gay of Montréal.
- Phys.org links to a study suggesting that countries which extend civil rights to LGBTQ people experience higher economic growth as a result.
- Peter Mendelsohn at Daily Xtra looks at homophobia in Canadian hockey, a factor that deters many queer people from playing the sport. Can it be easily dealt with?
- Erica Lenti at Daily Xtra has a fantastic article looking at how gay-straight alliances at schools help young people learn how to be queer in a safe environment, providing them with the socialization they do not get elsewhere.
- This lovely essay by wedding photographer Dana Koster at them explores, in general and in a specific example, the miracle and joys of legal same-sex marriage.
- Elio Iannacci at Daily Xtra writes, in the wake of the Met gala, about the specifically queer nature of camp.