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- Marginal Revolution features a critical if friendly review of the new Emmanuel Todd book, Lineages of Modernity.
- Marginal Revolution considers the problems of excessive consumer activism, here.
- Marginal Revolution notes a new book looking at natural gas economics in Europe, here.
- Marginal Revolution notes new evidence that YouTube algorithms do not tend to radicalize users, here.
- Marginal Revolution notes the few countries where the average person was richer in 2009 than in 2019, notably Greece and Venezuela.
[NEWS] Twenty news links
Dec. 23rd, 2019 09:43 pm- NOW Toronto looks at the Pickering nuclear plant and its role in providing fuel for space travel.
- In some places like California, traffic is so bad that airlines actually play a role for high-end commuters. CBC reports.
- Goldfish released into the wild are a major issue for the environment in Québec, too. CTV News reports.
- China's investments in Jamaica have good sides and bad sides. CBC reports.
- A potato museum in Peru might help solve world hunger. The Guardian reports.
- Is the Alberta-Saskatchewan alliance going to be a lasting one? Maclean's considers.
- Is the fossil fuel industry collapsing? The Tyee makes the case.
- Should Japan and Europe co-finance a EUrasia trade initiative to rival China's? Bloomberg argues.
- Should websites receive protection as historically significant? VICE reports.
- Food tourism in the Maritimes is a very good idea. Global News reports.
- Atlantic Canada lobster exports to China thrive as New England gets hit by the trade war. CBC reports.
- The Bloc Québécois experienced its revival by drawing on the same demographics as the provincial CAQ. Maclean's reports.
- Population density is a factor that, in Canada, determines political issues, splitting urban and rural voters. The National Observer observes.
- US border policies aimed against migration from Mexico have been harming businesses on the border with Canada. The National Post reports.
- The warming of the ocean is changing the relationship of coastal communities with their seas. The Conversation looks.
- Archival research in the digital age differs from what occurred in previous eras. The Conversation explains.
- The Persian-language Wikipedia is an actively contested space. Open Democracy reports.
- Vox notes how the US labour shortage has been driven partly by workers quitting the labour force, here.
- Laurie Penny at WIRED has a stirring essay about hope, about the belief in some sort of future.
Tags:
- agriculture,
- alberta,
- atlantic canada,
- borders,
- california,
- canada,
- caribbean,
- china,
- democracy,
- demographics,
- economics,
- environment,
- european union,
- federalism,
- fish,
- food,
- futurology,
- geopolitics,
- global warming,
- globalization,
- goldfish,
- history,
- internet,
- iran,
- jamaica,
- japan,
- libraries,
- links,
- lobsters,
- mass transit,
- mexico,
- new england,
- news,
- north america,
- nuclear energy,
- oceans,
- oil,
- ontario,
- peru,
- philosophy,
- politics,
- québec,
- saskatchewan,
- south america,
- space travel,
- technology,
- united states,
- wikipedia
[NEWS] Ten #cdnpoli links
Nov. 6th, 2019 11:54 pm- CBC looks at the internal splits within British Columbia, between the Liberal-leaning coast and the Alberta-leaning interior, here.
- The legal departure of oil company EnCana from its Alberta headquarters is the cause of great upset. CBC reports.
- Will Andrew Scheer survive as leader of the Conservative Party, with challengers like Peter MacKay? The National Observer reports.
- People in Lloydminister, on the Alberta-Saskatchewan border, reflect the frustrations of the populations of the two provinces. CBC reports.
- Philippe Fournier at MacLean's writes about the sharp rural-urban political split in Canada.
- Green Party Fredericton MP Jenica Atwin is interviewed by the National Observer about her goals, here.
- The Treaty 8 chiefs have united in opposition to the separation of Alberta and Saskatchewan. Global News reports.
- CBC reported on the multiple MP candidates who, genealogist Darryl Leroux found, falsely claimed indigenous ancestry.
- Jessica Deer reported for CBC about the near-universal boycott by the Haudenosaunee of #elxn43, and the reasons for this boycott.
- Scott Gilmore recently a href="https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/the-u-s-is-sinking-maybe-its-time-for-canada-to-jump-ship/">suggested at MacLean's that, noting American instability, Canada might do well to secure itself and promote its multilateralism by seeking to join the EU.
- This MacLean's feature examines how, twenty years after the formation of Nunavut, some Inuit are considering new ways to make governance work in their interests.
- This National Observer article looks at how one Haisla band government sees hope in the construction of a pipeline, one that would provide the community with needed revenue.
- This Toronto Life feature by Michael Lista looks at the struggle by Six Nations-based businessman Ken Hill to avoid paying child support, using Indigenous sovereignty as a barrier.
- This National Observer article looks at the successful campaign, led by student Tomas Jirousek, to get McGill University to drop the name McGill Redmen for their sports team.
- CBC Montreal looks at the efforts to improve Indigenous representation on school curricula in the Gaspésie community of New Richmond.
- Edward Keenan notes at the Toronto Star, drawing from an analysis of TTC budgets by Steve Munro, that things are not likely to get better for riders on the Bloor-Danforth line for at least another decade.
- blogTO notes a protest of vegans outside of Queen Street West butcher shop Cumbrae's, the protesters pretending to sell dog meat.
- Gilbert Ngabo writes at the Toronto Star about the mystery regarding the ownership of two Parkdale restaurants which loudly claim not to be part of the unpopular Vegandale.
- Priyanka Vittal writes at NOW Toronto about how it might make sense for Toronto to sue oil companies for the costs of global warming-related environmental disasters.
- Toronto Life notes the hyperrealistic city scenes of oil painter Peter Harris.
Tags:
- CBC reports on childcare costs across Canada, noting how exceptionally low and affordable they are in Québec.
- If China withdraws its students studying in Canadian universities from the country in the way Saudi Arabia did its students, the financial impact on many centres of higher education would be significant. Global News reports.
- NOW Toronto notes how Doug Ford, surprisingly, has managed to make a mess of the nascent legal cannabis sector of retail.
- VICE explains how Europe has largely managed to avoid a fentanyl crisis--Europe's drug dealers have much more of a vested interest in the survival of their clients.
- This Open Democracy essay notes how, in the light of the breakdown of Venezuela, this central alliance of China in Latin America is looking increasingly problematic.
- This essay at Open Democracy by an anonymous anti-Brexit activist from northern England notes that, in the end, an already vulnerable North is going to have to take responsibility for the Brexit it voted for when catastrophe hits.
- DW reports the results of Finland's guaranteed minimum income experiment: Although well-being was improved, recipients did not increase their participation in the labour market.
Tags:
- Ai Weiwei is reported as noting at NOW Toronto the role of Western governments in enabling the rise of the People's Republic of China.
- Business Insider argues that, in terms of numbers, technology, and strategy, the nuclear arsenal of China is the best thought-out of any of the nine nuclear weapons states.
- SCMP notes how the naval ambitions of Britain in the Pacific make little military sense but perhaps some economic sense.
- Foreign Policy looks at how oil, in Venezuela, did not guarantee that country's indefinite prosperity.
- Open Democracy hosts an article suggests that monarchism, in the form of the Shah's son and heir Reza Pahlavi, actually has a chance of opposing the Islamic Republic.
- Andray Domise at MacLean's makes the obvious point that wearing a MAGA hat is a conscious choice to wear a symbol of hate.
- The cancellation of Ontario's guaranteed minimum income project is now up before the supreme court, which seems unconvinced that the province did not make a legal commitment three years long to provide the funding needed. The Toronto Star reports.
- Don Pittis at CBC makes the point that the economic problems of Venezuela, much too dependent on oil, are far too severe to be overcome by the end of the Maduro regime.
- The appointment of long-time Liberal politician John MacCallum as the ambassador of China to Canada has turned out to have been a historic mistake. CBC reports.
- Ian Dunt at Politics.co.uk, looking at the consequences of a hard Brexit on the food supply alone, exposes what a catastrophe this would be at every level.
Tags:
[BLOG] Some Tuesday links
Jan. 29th, 2019 02:37 pm- Centauri Dreams considers the possible roles and threats posed by artificial intelligence for interstellar missions.
- John Quiggin at Crooked Timber makes the point that blaming Facebook for the propagation of fake news misses entirely the motives of the people who spread these rumours, online or otherwise.
- The Crux looks at the factors which led to the human species' diversity of skin colours.
- Dangerous Minds reports on a new collection of early North American electronica.
- Far Outliers reports on the salt extraction industry of Sichuan.
- JSTOR Daily notes how inbreeding can be a threat to endangered populations, like gorillas.
- Language Log examines the connection of the Thai word for soul with Old Sinitic.
- Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at divisions on the American left, including pro-Trump left radicals.
- Caitlin Chandler at the NYR Daily reports on the plight of undocumented immigrants in Rome, forced from their squats under the pressure of the new populist government of Italy.
- Spacing takes a look at the work of Acton Ostry Architects.
- Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel looks at the ten largest non-planetary bodies in the solar system.
- Strange Company looks at the very strange 1997 disappearance of Judy Smith from Philadelphia and her latest discovery in the North Carolina wilderness. What happened to her?
- Strange Maps looks at the worrisome polarization globally between supporters and opponents of the current government in Venezuela. Is this a 1914 moment?
- Window on Eurasia suggests that Russia and Venezuela share a common oil-fueled authoritarian fragility.
- Arnold Zwicky looks at the camelids of Peru, stuffed toys and llamas and more.
Tags:
- architecture,
- artificial intelligence,
- astronomy,
- biology,
- blogs,
- canada,
- china,
- chinese language,
- clash of ideologies,
- conspiracies,
- demographics,
- economics,
- evolution,
- facebook,
- geopolitics,
- globalization,
- history,
- human beings,
- italy,
- latin america,
- links,
- migration,
- oddities,
- oil,
- peru,
- popular culture,
- popular music,
- primates,
- rome,
- russia,
- social networking,
- solar system,
- south america,
- space science,
- space travel,
- thailand,
- venezuela
- The question of how to develop, or redevelop, the Georgian Bay resort town of Wasaga Beach is ever-pressing. Global News reports.
- Le Devoir enters the discussion over the Royalmount development, arguing that the city of Montréal needs to fight urban sprawl.
- Guardian Cities reports on the efforts of Barcelona to keep its street kiosks, home to a thriving culture, alive in the digital age.
- The New York Times reports on how the government of Estonia is trying to use pop culture to help bind the Russophone-majority city of Narva into the country.
- This Guardian Cities photo essay takes a look at how the Angolan capital of Luanda, after a long economic boom driven by oil, is rich but terribly unequal.
Tags:
- CBC reports on the discovery of a substantial store of quinoa seeds in an Indigenous archeological site in Brantford, showing the existence of vast trade networks connecting the Andes to Canada.
- Oil exploration in the Gaspé peninsula, La Presse reports, upsets the Mi'gmag of the Listuguj there.
- National Observer reports on how the Dzawada'enuxw of British Columbia have filed suit against Canada over fish farm development.
- Angela DeMontigny is the first Indigenous fashion designer in residence at Ryerson University, CBC reports.
- Global News reports on how Sharon McIvor, founder of the first healing lodge in the Canadian correction system, says government interference has undermined its nearly completely.
Tags:
- CityLab looks at the fight to resist the low-density urban sprawl of Québec City into surrounding farmland at Beauport.
- CityLab looks at the vanished history of African-American tourism in Atlantic City.
- The population of the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo in northern Alberta, around Fort McMurray, has fallen by 11% in the past few years. Global News reports.
- Guardian Cities looks at how placemaking, the creation of innovation clusters attracting attention, is undermining social housing in London.
- CityLab looks at the challenges faced by Copenhagen, with a questionable model of urban redevelopment set to climax in the production of artificial islands.
Tags:
- Guardian Cities looks at prosperous Long Island City and hard-pressed Blissville, two neighbourhoods of Queens that will be transformed by Amazon moving in.
- CBC notes how, for Fort McMurray five years after the oil boom's end, the bust is the new normal.
- CityLab reports on how the Art Deco Les Abbattoirs complex in Casablanca, once an emerging artist hub, has been emptied by the city government.
- This Middle East Eye feature looks at the relief and loss felt by returning survivors in Aleppo.
- Guardian Cities looks at how Baghdad, fragmented and impoverished by war, is fumbling towards some sort of livability.
Tags:
- The scale of the cuts by the Ontario government to the Ontario Arts Council, including those directed towards Indigenous artists, is appalling. Global News reports.
- The provinces of Alberta and Québec are feuding over the latter province's opposition to new pipeline construction, Albertans trying to lead a boycott. CTV News reports.
- Quartz notes, with reference to Brexit, that if the Oui had won the 1995 referendum on Québec independence Jean Chrétien would have held a second referendum to confirm the result.
- CBC hosts an opinion piece by Monte Solberg talking about western Canadian alienation.
- China-based social app WeChat has been limiting the articles its Canadian users can access on the Huawei crisis. The Toronto Star reports.
Tags:
- The Strand bookstore in New York City is seeking to avoid being granted heritage status, in order to avoid the complications which could drive it out of business. The Guardian reports.
- The City of Edmonton, post-2014, will not regain previous levels of per capita wealth until the 2030s. The Edmonton Journal reports.
- Henry Wismayer has a heart-felt essay at Medium talking about how a London plunged into the heart of a turbo-charged capitalism is becoming increasingly inhospitable for the non-rich. Grenfell Tower beckons on the horizon.
- Guardian Cities shares photos of the homes taken over by squatters in Rio de Janeiro.
- The National, from the UAE, praises the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa as not just a regional hub but as a worthy tourist destination in its own right.
Tags:
[BLOG] Some Saturday links
Dec. 1st, 2018 02:54 pm- Centauri Dreams considers the magnetic fields of super-Earths, and the impact of these on potential life.
- D-Brief reports on the corporate partners selected to accompany NASA on its return to the Moon.
- Bruce Dorminey reports on the claim of astronomers to have identified four extrasolar objects already in the solar system.
- The Everyday Sociology Blog pays tribute to long-time contributor Peter Kaufman, now departed.
- JSTOR Daily asks why Americans, and others, eat three meals a day.
- The LRB Blog reports on the underlying factors behind the gilets jaunes protests in France against higher fuel taxes.
- Language Hat links to a fascinating essay about the persistence of individuals' first languages.
- Neuroskeptic takes a look at possible hacks to the human mind, in the light of a recent announcement of human genetic engineering. What will become possible? What will be done?
- Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes that Triton, not Pluto or Eris, is the largest world of the Kuiper Belt.
- Daniel Little at Understanding Society ruminates on the thought of Scott Page regarding social modeling.
- Window on Eurasia looks at the history of the letter "Ё" in the Russian language.
- Arnold Zwicky starts from the idea of green flowers to take a look at unusual greenery generally.
[BLOG] Some Tuesday links
Nov. 27th, 2018 11:58 am- Ryan Anderson at Anthrodendum takes a look at how the threat posed to coastal properties by sea level rise reveals much about how human beings assign value.
- A BCer in Toronto's Jeff Jedras writes about the food at a Newfoundlander party in Ottawa.
- D-Brief considers how past ice ages might have been caused by the shifting poles.
- Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog takes a look at the work of Michelle Pannor Silver, looking at how retirement can influence the identities of individuals.
- Far Outliers notes that, in its first major wars, Japan treated prisoners of war well.
- JSTOR Daily examines a paper that takes a look at how the X-Men have achieved such resonance in pop culture, such power as symbols of minorities' persecution and survival.
- Lawyers, Guns and Money is critical of the effusive press coverage of Mitt Romney, new Republican senator.
- Geoffrey Pullum at Lingua Franca shares, for other English speakers, a lexicon of specialized words from the United Kingdom regarding Brexit.
- At the LRB Blog, Hyo Yoon Kang takes a look at a series of legal hearings investigating the possibility of assigning legal responsibility for global warming to "carbon majors" like big oil.
- Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution shares his argument that the history of the 21st century United States might look like that of the 19th century, with progress despite political disarray.
- The NYR Daily shares the arguments of scholar of populism, Jan-Werner Müller, looking at what Cold War liberalism has to say now.
- Peter Rukavina shares the story of his two visits to relatives around the Croatian city of Kutina, with photos.
- Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel looks at how astronomers solved the mystery of the "Zone of Avoidance", the portions of space blotted out by the dense plane of our galaxy.
- Window on Eurasia reports from a conference on minority languages where speakers complain about Russian government pressures against their languages.
- Arnold Zwicky takes a look at tea, starting with tea-time aphorisms and going further afield.
Tags:
- anthropology,
- astronomy,
- blogs,
- canada,
- clash of ideologies,
- cold war,
- comics,
- crime,
- croatia,
- earth,
- economics,
- english language,
- environment,
- ethnic conflict,
- european union,
- food,
- former yugoslavia,
- futurology,
- global warming,
- history,
- japan,
- language,
- links,
- newfoundland,
- oceans,
- oil,
- photos,
- politics,
- russia,
- separatism,
- social sciences,
- sociology,
- space science,
- tourism,
- travel,
- united kingdom,
- united states,
- war
- The Inter Press Service notes that the vulnerable islands of the Caribbean can survive only a modest increase in temperatures.
- La Presse reports that the new premier of Québec, François Legault, says he has no plans to open up Anticosti island, in the Guilf of St. Lawrence, to exploration for oil.
- VICE interviews some workers on a Greek party island to see what their lives are like. (Rarely does it feel like a vacation.)
- The recent Hurricane Walaka has done terrible damage to some of the most remote islands of Hawai'i, destroying low-lying East Island entirely. Global News reports.
- CNN notes that although the more remote islands of the Federated States of Micronesia might seem idyllic to tourists, local populations are emigrating from these isolated locations in large numbers.
Tags:
[BLOG] Some Thursday links
Aug. 23rd, 2018 11:23 am- Bad Astronomer Phil Plait confirms the discovery of water ice on the Moon.
- Centauri Dreams reports on the latest discoveries regarding Beta Pictoris b, notably new evidence that it is a superjovian massing between 9 and 13 Jupiters.
- D-Brief notes how oil rigs can support coral reefs.
- Far Outliers takes a grim look at the Chinese market in servants and serfs and slaves.
- Hornet Stories looks at opinion polling on minorities in Germany. (Gay people do much better than Muslims.)
- JSTOR Daily looks at how makeup, at the start of the 20th century highly stigmatized, ended up going mainstream.
- Geoffrey Pullum at Lingua Franca considers if Crazy Rich Asians, and other like pop culture successes, might get more Westerners to learn Chinese.
- The Map Room Blog shares pictures from space of the smoke produced by the British Columbia wildfires.
- The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer takes a look at the way, in federal Mexico, state-level political machines continue to work.
- Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel looks at how, in the very early universe, the first elements formed.
- Window on Eurasia notes that in Bashkortostan, two-thirds of students opted for Russian-medium education, a proportion considerably above the proportion of ethnic Russians in that republic.
Tags:
- astronomy,
- blogs,
- british columbia,
- canada,
- china,
- chinese language,
- democracy,
- disasters,
- education,
- elections,
- environment,
- fashion,
- federalism,
- germany,
- glbt issues,
- globalization,
- history,
- islam,
- latin america,
- links,
- mexico,
- moon,
- north america,
- oceans,
- oil,
- physics,
- popular culture,
- russia,
- russian language,
- slavery,
- solar system,
- space science
[BLOG] Some Sunday links
Jul. 29th, 2018 11:59 amTags:
- africa,
- blogs,
- comics,
- computers,
- crime,
- english language,
- environment,
- espionage,
- european union,
- geopolitics,
- glbt issues,
- globalization,
- graphic novels,
- journalism,
- libya,
- links,
- mass media,
- migration,
- military,
- oceans,
- oil,
- physics,
- popular literature,
- public art,
- technology,
- united kingdom,
- united states
