rfmcdonald | Entries tagged with ireland

Montréal may yet get a new park to commemorate victims of the Irish famine of the 1840s. CTV reports.

CityLab reports on the new spectacular Hudson Yards development in Manhattan.

The nightclubs of Atlanta in the 1990s played a critical role in that decade's hip-hop. VICE reports.

CityLab reports that, dealing with a housing crisis, city authorities in Barcelona have taken to finding the owners of empty buildings.

Guardian Cities reports on how civic authorities in Copenhagen hope to create an offshore archipelago, a sort of floating Silicon Valley.

CBC reports on a Toronto couple who found a better life in a small town in Newfoundland, Twillingate.

The Irish Times reports on the difficulties, perceived and otherwise, surrounding the first application of Ireland to join the EEC in 1963.

The Guardian reports on how the Russian Arctic islands of Novaya Zemlya have been facing an influx of hungry polar bears.

This account at the NYR Daily of Oceania, an exhibit of art from the Pacific islands at the Royal Academy, makes me wish I could have seen it.

The Inter Press Service reports on the victory of Mauritius over the United Kingdom at the International Court of Justice, ordering Britain to retreat from Diego Garcia and to allow the Chagossians to return to their archipelagic home.

CBC Ottawa reports on the impressive scope of the new light rail mass transit planned for the wider city of Ottawa.

Richard Florida, writing at CityLab, notes a study tracing the second of two clusters of skyscrapers in Manhattan, in Midtown, to a late 19th century specialty in shopping.

The Tyee notes how activist Yuly Chan helped mobilize people to protect Chinatown in Vancouver from gentrification.

JSTOR Daily looks at the history of the free people of colour of New Orleans, a group established under the French period but who faced increasing pressures following Americanization.

At Open Democracy, Christophe Solioz considers what is to be done to help protect the peace in Derry, second city of Northern Ireland, in the era of Brexit.

Is the culture of the Canadian navy that much of an obstacle to the retention of personnel? Global News reports.

That Chemi Lhamo, a Tibetan-Canadian student who was elected student president of the University of Toronto's Scarborough campus, has come under attacks coordinated through Chinese social media on account of her heritage is disturbing. CBC reports.

A successful Nova Scotia chocolatier founded by Syrian refugees is set to take on new refugee hires. The National Post reports.

Pankaj Mishra writing at The New York Times is, perhaps unkind but not wrong, in suggesting that the bad habits of Britain's imperial elites are finally rebounding on Britain in this mismanaged Brexit.

Andrew Gallagher writes at Slugger O'Toole about the impossibility of Ireland ever having good boundaries through any imaginable partition.

Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares a lovely photo of the Earth peeking out from behind the far side of the Moon.

At the Broadside Blog, Caitlin Kelly shares lovely photos of delicate ice and water taken on a winter's walk.

Centauri Dreams looks</> at the study by Chinese astronomers who, looking at the distribution of Cepheids, figured out that our galaxy's disk is an S-shaped warp.

D-Brief notes new evidence that melting of the Greenland ice sheet will disrupt the Gulf Stream.

L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing takes issue with the uncritical idealization of the present, as opposed to the critical examination of whatever time period we are engaging with.

Gizmodo notes that an intensive series of brain scans is coming closer to highlighting the areas of the human brain responsible for consciousness.

Mark Graham links to new work of his, done in collaboration, looking at ways to make the sharing economy work more fairly in low- and middle-income countries.

JSTOR Daily notes how the mystic Catholicism of the African kingdom of Kongo may have gone on to inspire slave-led revolutions in 18th century North America and Haiti.

Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at an exhibition examining the ambitious architecture of Yugoslavia.

The Map Room Blog links to a cartographer's argument about the continuing importance of paper maps.

Marginal Revolution shares one commenter's perception of causes or the real estate boom in New Zealand.

Neuroskeptic considers the role of the mysterious silent neurons in the human brain.

At NYR Daily, Guadeloupe writer Maryse Condé talks about her career as a writer and the challenges of identity for her native island.

Roads and Kingdoms shares a list of ten dishes reflecting the history of the city of Lisbon.

Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel takes a look at the promise of likely mini-Neptune Barnard's Star b as a target for observation, perhaps even life.

Window on Eurasia shares the perfectly plausible argument that, just as the shift of the Irish to the English language did not end Irish identity and nationalism, so might a shift to Russian among Tatars not end Tatar identity.

Anthrodendum reviews the book Fistula Politics, the latest from the field of medical anthropology.

Architectuul takes a look at post-war architecture in Germany, a country where the devastation of the war left clean slates for ambitious new designers and architects.

Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at newly discovered Kuiper Belt object 2008 VG 18.

Laura Agustín at Border Thinking takes a look at the figure of the migrant sex worker.

Centauri Dreams features an essay by Al Jackson celebrating the Apollo 8 moon mission.

D-Brief notes how physicists manufactured a quark soup in a collider to study the early universe.

Dangerous Minds shares some photos of a young David Bowie.

Angelique Harris at the Everyday Sociology Blog takes a look at what the social sciences have to say about sexuality and dating among millennial Americans.

Gizmodo notes the odd apparent smoothness of Ultima Thule, target of a very close flyby by New Horizons on New Year's Day.

Hornet Stories notes the censorship-challenging art by Slava Mogutin available from the Tom of Finland store.

Imageo shares orbital imagery of the eruption of Anak Krakatau in Indonesia, trigger of a devastating volcanic tsunami.

Nick Stewart at The Island Review writes beautifully about his experience crossing the Irish Sea on a ferry, from Liverpool to Belfast.

Lyman Stone at In A State of Migration shares the story, with photos, of his recent whirlwind trip to Vietnam.

JSTOR Daily considers whether or not fan fiction might be a useful tool to promote student literacy.

Language Hat notes a contentious reconstruction of the sound system of obscure but fascinating Tocharian, an extinct Indo-European language from modern XInjiang.

Dan Nexon at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the irreversible damage being caused by the Trump Administration to the United States' foreign policy.

Marginal Revolution notes a paper suggesting users of Facebook would need a payment of at least one thousand dollars to abandon Facebook.

Lisa Nandy at the NYR Daily argues that the citizens of the United Kingdom need desperately to engage with Brexit, to take back control, in order to escape catastrophic consequences from ill-thought policies.

Marc Rayman at the Planetary Society Blog celebrates the life and achievements of the Dawn probe.

The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer notes that so many Venezuelans are fleeing their country because food is literally unavailable, what with a collapsing agricultural sector.

The Russian Demographics Blog breaks down polling of nostalgia for the Soviet Union among Russians.

Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes that simply finding oxygen in the atmosphere of an exoplanet is not by itself proof of life.

Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy reports on how the United States is making progress towards ending exclusionary zoning.

Whatever's John Scalzi shares an interview with the lawyer of Santa Claus.

Window on Eurasia reports on a fascinating paper, examining how some Russian immigrants in Germany use Udmurt as a family language.

Arnold Zwicky takes a look at the lives of two notable members of the Swiss diaspora in Paris' Montmartre.

VICE's Motherboard suggests that the crackdown on anything NSFW on Tumblr can be blamed on the expanding power of the Apple Store, one element of its indiscriminate sanitization of the Internet.

Garrett Carr at 1843 Magazine takes a look at Lough Foyle, the northern Irish bay that will become part of a hard border come Brexit.

Giant African snails, Sarah Laskow suggests at Atlas Obscura, have spread so widely in recent centuries thanks to humanity that the presence of their shells might well be a noticeable marker of the Anthropocene.

At Toronto Life, sculptor Gillian Genser tells the heartbreaking story of how she was poisoned by the heavy metals contained in the mussel shells that she used as raw materials for a sculpture.

Evan Gough at Universe Today reports the claim of some archaeologists that, 3700 years ago, the city of Tell el-Hammam was destroyed by a meteor that exploded above it with the force of a large nuclear warhead. Inspiration for Sodom and Gomorrah?

Kyle Cicerella at the Canadian Press reports on the close link in Oshawa between GM workers and their local OHL hockey team, the Oshawa Generals. The Global News hosts the article.

This long feature at Global News about the impact of the fentanyl epidemic in Simcoe County is heart-rending.

VICE reports on how the May Wah SRO hotel, an affordable haven for elderly Chinese-Canadians in downtown Toronto, managed to survive the threat of gentrification.

Guardian Cities reports on how Dublin is facing a serious homelessness crisis despite there being more than thirty thousand empty homes, held by landlord investors.

The English-language Dubrovnik Times reports that, apparently on the basis of thriving tourism, Dubrovnik stands out in Croatia as a place that has seen population growth.

Bad Astronomer notes Apep, a brilliant trinary eight thousand light-years away with at least one Wolf-Rayet star that might explode in a gamma-ray burst.

Centauri Dreams notes that AAVSO, the American Association of Variable Star Observers, has created a public exoplanet archive.

The Crux considers/u> different strategies for intercepting asteroids bound to impact with Earth.

D-Brief notes the discovery of a solar twin, a star that might have been born in the same nursery as our sun, HD 186302 184 light-years away.

The Dragon's Tales notes that although NASA's Gateway station to support lunar traffic is facing criticism, Russia and China are planning to build similar outposts.

JSTOR Daily notes the research of Katie Sutton into the pioneering gender-rights movement of Weimar Germany.

Lawyers, Guns and Money celebrates the successful clean-up of the Cuyahoga River in Ohio, once famously depicted on fire.

The Map Room Blog links to maps showing Apple Maps and Google Maps will be recording images next for their online databases.

Jamieson Webster at the NYR Daily takes a critical, even defensible, look at the widespread use psychopharmacological drugs in contemporary society.

Roads and Kingdoms carries a transcript of an interview with chefs in Ireland, considering the culinary possibilities overlooked and otherwise of the island's natural bounty.

Rocky Planet considers the real, overlooked, possibility of earthquakes in the relatively geologically stable east of the United States.

The Russian Demographics Blog notes how, in the transatlantic wine trade, American interest in European wines is surely not reciprocated.

Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes how Einsteinian relativity, specifically relating to gravitational lensing, was used to predict the reappearance of the distant Refsdal Supernova one year after its 2014 appearance.

Earther shares a world map produced by a group predicting where political conflicts over water scarcity will be likely to develop.

Ozy notes that the fastest-growing cities in the world will be in Africa.

This Project Syndicate essay suggests that the economy of Japan is actually doing a better job than some metrics suggest, at least on per capita measures. Is Japan pointing a way towards a better future in the high-income world?

The Irish Times visits the Poland-Ukraine borders to see how well, or not, traffic there flows. Of special note to the Irish readers is the fact that, despite everything else, Ukraine is trying to get closer to the EU, not further away as with the Brexit UK.

This essay at The Atlantic looks at how the Pakistan of Imran Khan is negotiating multiple spheres of influence, the West and China and the Middle East, all at once.

This r/unresolvedmysteries thread asks the question of where the Armenian language, a unique Indo-European language, came from.

This Ragnar Jónasson article in The Guardian asks the question of how long the Icelandic language, with relatively few speakers and facing a tidal wave of influence from English, can outlast this competition.

The Irish Times notes that the Irish language was heard in the British House of Commons for the first time in a century, spoken by a Plaid Cymru MP asking why this language has so little institutional support in Northern Ireland.

Over at the BBC, Susanna Zaraysky takes a look at the Ladino language--a Spanish variant--traditionally used by the Sephardic Jews of Bosnia, and how this language is declining here as elsewhere among the Sephardim.

Atlas Obscura takes a look at the Scots language, a distinctive Germanic language that was never quite broken away from English, and how this language persists despite everything.

This sad SCMP article takes a look at the struggles of North Korean defectors on arriving in South Korea, a competitive society with its own values alien to them.

This Open Democracy book review asks what went wrong in eastern Europe, that illiberalism became so popular. (Of note, I think, is the suggestion that Western definitions have changed substantially since the 1990s.)

The rise, in the person of Bolsonario, of fascism in Brazil is the subject of this stirring Open Democracy feature.

This New York Times opinion piece by an Irish woman living in England touches upon the ways in which Brexiteers' blithe dismissal of Ireland and Irish needs are starting to make many 21st century Irish angry with their eastern neighbour, again.

MacLean's notes how the legalization of marijuana in Canada came about as a consequence of the recognition by Justin Trudeau of the unfairness of the old regime.

Centauri Dreams takes a look at how new technology makes access to deep-sky astronomical images easier than ever, allowing for the recovery of more data.

The Crux considers the factors that make humans so inclined to believe in the existence of god and the supernatural, including our pattern-recognition skills.

D-Brief sharesa the latest research into the origins of the atmospheric haze of Titan.

Todd Schoepflin at the Everyday Sociology Blog has an intriguing post performing ethnography on the fans of the Buffalo Bills.

At A Fistful of Euros, Alexander Harrowell notes one thing to take from the elections in Bavaria is the remarkable strength of the Greens, nearing the CDU/CSU nationally.

io9 shares the delightful Alien-themed maternity photos of a British Columbia couple.

JSTOR Daily looks at contesting visions of motherhood among American feminists in the 1960s and 1970s.

Language Hat reports on "The Midnight Court", a poem written in the 19th century in a now-extinct dialect of Irish.

Lawyers, Guns and Money notes one astounding possible defense of Saudi Arabia faced with Jamal Khashoggi, that his death was accidental.

Christine Gordon Manley shares with her readers her words and her photos of Newfoundland's dramatic Signal Hill.

The NYR Daily shares the witness of Käthe Kollwitz to the end of the First World War and the German Empire in 1918-1919.

Casey Dreier at the Planetary Society Blog criticizes First Man for not showing the excitement of Armstrong and the other Apollo astronauts.

Roads and Kingdoms reports on one woman's search for the Korean cornbread remembered by her mother as a Korean War refugee.

Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel shares images of some of the most distant objects in the universe images by us so far.

Strange Company expands upon the interesting life of early modern English travel writer Thomas Coryat, who indeed does deserve more attention.

Window on Eurasia wonders where protests in Ingushetia regarding border changes with Chechnya are going.

Arnold Zwicky explores the fable of the forest that identified too closely with the wooden handle of an ax.

JSTOR Daily notes how severe drought in Ireland is revealing, to aerial and other observers, the outlines of ancient ruins.

D-Brief examines how the export from Norse Greenland to Europe of walrus ivory played a key role in these lost settlements' economy.

The people of Rapa Nui, Easter Island, have demanded a return of one of their moai statues from the British Museum, taken at their historical nadir.

Asylum-seekers being held in detention by Australia on the island of Nauru have beseeched Canada, asking for refuge here. CBC reports.

New York Magazine suggests that San Juan, capital of Puerto Rico, is despite recent horrors a good destination for tourists.

Tory MEP Charles Tannock notes how Brexiteers' disregards for the special interests of Northern Ireland threaten to un-do the United Kingdom. He writes in the New Statesman.

Can Malta become a world centre for blockchain production? CBB reports.

Anti-tourism protests in the Balearic island of Mallorca are gaining strength. Condé Nast reports

The conditions facing refugees detained by the Australian government on the island of Nauru are horrific. The Guardian reports.

Yemeni refugees residing on the South Korean island of Jeju, known for its tourist industry, are encountering mixed reactions. The South China Morning Post reports.

blogTO shares ten facts about the Toronto Islands.

Roads and Kingdoms reports on the experience of eating Cape Verdean cachupa in Lisbon.

The SBS reports on the facts making Iceland arguably the best country on the Earth in which to be a woman.

This extended Politico Europe article examining the consequences of a united Ireland, and the lack of preparation for such a now imaginable possibility, is still worth reading.

Is Hainan emerging as a test-bed for more liberal policies for China? QZ reports.

Malta, it seems from this New Statesman take, is facing serious problems of corruption through its role in international finance.
The establishment of a new maritime border between Australia and East Timor threatens Australia's borders with adjacent Indonesia. ABC reports.

Ireland has established a scholarship program for Choctaw students as a sign of thanks for Choctaw aid during the Irish Potato Famine. The Irish Post reports.

This Slugger O'Toole article suggests that the disparity in living standards and income between the Republic and Northern Ireland is not nearly so vast as GDP would suggest.

The Map Room Blog shared this Ordinance Survey's April Fool's Day joke, of a fake but realistic island.

Hornet Stories notes how All in the Family was path-breaking with its depiction of a gay character on TV back in 1971, here.

Making more LGBTQ-friendly hair salons is a worthy goal. The Globe and Mail reports.

Northern Ireland may yet achieve marriage equality in the near future. Hornet Stories reports.

Strange Maps' Frank Jacobs shares this useful map depicting which countries are, and are not, safe for LGBTQ tourists, here.

The representation of out bisexual DC character John Constantine on Legends of Tomorrow is interesting, and hopeful. The Atlantic looks at this.

Anthropology.net's Kambiz Kamrani notes evidence that environmental change in Kenya may have driven creativity in early human populations there.

Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shows how astronomers use stellar occultations to investigate the thin atmosphere of Neptune's moon Triton.

Centauri Dreams notes how melting ice creates landscape change on Ceres.

D-Brief suggests
Dangerous Minds shares Paul Bowles' recipe for a Moroccan love charm.

The Everyday Sociology Blog investigates the transformation of shopping malls and in the era of Amazon Prime.

At In Medias Res, Russell Arben Fox engages with Left Behind and that book's portrayal of rural populations in the United States which feel left behind.

JSTOR Daily looks at how Roman Catholic nuns on the 19th century American frontier challenged gender norms.

Lawyers, Guns and Money is critical of Tex-Mex cuisine, calling it an uncreative re-presentation of Mexican cuisine for white people in high-calorie quantities.

The NYR Daily shared this thought-provoking article noting how Irish America, because of falling immigration from Ireland and growing liberalism on that island, is diverging from its ancestral homeland.

Drew Rowsome reviews The Monument, a powerful play currently on in Toronto that engages with the missing and murdered native women.

Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes, in a photo-heavy post, how galaxies die (or at least, how they stop forming stars).

Towleroad shares a delightful interview with Adam Rippon conducted over a plate of hot wings.

Window on Eurasia shares an alternate history article imagining what would have become of Russia had Muscovy not conquered Novgorod.

Worthwhile Canadian Initiative notes the very sharp rise in public debt held by the province of Ontario, something that accelerated in recent years.

Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell suggests, in the era of Cambridge Analytica and fake news, that many journalists seem not to take their profession seriously enough.

At Anthrodendum, Elizabeth Marino takes issue with what she identifies as the naively and fiercely neoliberal elements of Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now.

Anthropology.net's Kambiz Kamrani takes a look at an innovative study of the Surinamese creole of Sranan Tongo that uncovers that language's linguistic origins in remarkably fine detail.

Architectuul examines the architecture of Communist-era Hungarian architect István Szábo.

Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the nearly naked black hole at the heart of galaxy ZwCl 8193, 2.2 billion light-years away.

The Big Picture shares photos from the 2018 Paralympics in South Korea.

Gerry Canavan has an interesting critical take on Star Trek: Discovery. Is it really doing new things, or is its newness just superficial?

Centauri Dreams considers the impact the spectra of red dwarfs would have on biosignatures from their worlds.

Russell Darnley takes a look at Australia's Darling River, a critical watercourse threatened by extensive water withdrawals.

Inkfish notes that patterns of wear on the tusks of elephants indicate most are right-handed.

Joe. My. God. links to a study suggesting a relationship between Trump rallies and violent assaults.

JSTOR Daily links to a paper examining why people drink Guinness on St. Patrick's Day.

Language Hat takes a look at the use of Xhosa as the language of Wakanda.

Lawyers, Guns and Money mourns Alfred Crosby, the historian whose work examined the epidemiological and ecological changes wrought by contact with the Americas.

The Map Room Blog links to a map showing indigenous placenames in Canada.

Marginal Revolution suggests AI will never be able to centrally plan an economy because the complexity of the economy will always escape it.

In the aftermath of the death of Stephen Hawking, Out There had a lovely idea: what nearby major stars emitted life than arrive at the moment of his birth? Hawking's star is Regulus, and mine was (nearly) Arcturus.

Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel examines Stephen Hawking's contribution to the study of black holes.

Supernova Condensate shares a list of moons, fictional and otherwise, from Endor on down.

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[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Montréal, New York City, Atlanta, Barcelona, Copenhagen
[ISL] Five #islands links: Newfoundland, Ireland, Novaya Zemlya, Pacific Islands, Diego Garcia
[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Ottawa, Manhattan, Vancouver, New Orleans, Derry
[NEWS] Five politics links: Canadian navy, Chemi Lhamo, refugee chocolate, Brexit, Ireland
[BLOG] Some Thursday links
[BLOG] Some Wednesday links
[NEWS] Five links: Tumblr, Lough Foyle, giant snails, Gillian Genser, Tell el-Hammam
[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Oshawa, Simcoe County, Vancouver, Dublin, Dubrovnik
[BLOG] Some Tuesday links
{NEWS] Five links on the future: water wars, cities of Africa, Japan, EU borders, Pakistan
[NEWS] Five language links: Armenian, Icelandic, Irish, Ladino, Scots
[NEWS] Some international links: Koreas, eastern Europe, Brazil, Ireland and England, Canada
[BLOG] Some Tuesday links
[ISL] Five island links: Ireland, Norse Greenland, Rapa Nui/Easter Island, Nauru, Puerto Rico
[ISL] Five island links: Northern Ireland, Malta, Mallorca, Nauru, Jeju
[ISL] Five islands links: Toronto Islands, Cape Verde, Iceland, Ireland, Hainan
[ISL] Five islands links: Malta, East Timor, Choctaw, Ireland, April Fool's Day
[NEWS] Five LGBTQ links: All in the Family, hair salon, Northern Ireland, tourism, John Constantine
[BLOG] Some Tuesday links
[BLOG] Some Monday links

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A Bit More Detail

Assorted Personal Notations, Essays, and Other Jottings

Entries tagged with ireland

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Montréal, New York City, Atlanta, Barcelona, Copenhagen

[ISL] Five #islands links: Newfoundland, Ireland, Novaya Zemlya, Pacific Islands, Diego Garcia

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Ottawa, Manhattan, Vancouver, New Orleans, Derry

[NEWS] Five politics links: Canadian navy, Chemi Lhamo, refugee chocolate, Brexit, Ireland

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

[NEWS] Five links: Tumblr, Lough Foyle, giant snails, Gillian Genser, Tell el-Hammam

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Oshawa, Simcoe County, Vancouver, Dublin, Dubrovnik

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

{NEWS] Five links on the future: water wars, cities of Africa, Japan, EU borders, Pakistan

[NEWS] Five language links: Armenian, Icelandic, Irish, Ladino, Scots

[NEWS] Some international links: Koreas, eastern Europe, Brazil, Ireland and England, Canada

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

[ISL] Five island links: Ireland, Norse Greenland, Rapa Nui/Easter Island, Nauru, Puerto Rico

[ISL] Five island links: Northern Ireland, Malta, Mallorca, Nauru, Jeju

[ISL] Five islands links: Toronto Islands, Cape Verde, Iceland, Ireland, Hainan

[ISL] Five islands links: Malta, East Timor, Choctaw, Ireland, April Fool's Day

[NEWS] Five LGBTQ links: All in the Family, hair salon, Northern Ireland, tourism, John Constantine

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

[BLOG] Some Monday links

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February 2021

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