A Bit More Detail

• D-Brief shares the news that scientists think that Saturn's moon Enceladus has a subsurface ocean in its southern polar region.


• The Dragon's Gaze links to a remarkable paper claiming that red dwarf stars are exceptionally likely to have a planet in their circumstellar habitable zones.


• The Dragon's Tales links to an other paper on Mars suggesting that world was never very hot, even in its youth.


• Eastern Approaches suggests that Poland is approaching the point of relative energy-independence from Russia.


• The Financial Times The World blog reports on the failure of a US-subsidized Cuban social networking system.


• The Frailest Thing's Michael Sacasas links to an account of an 1895 conversation between Paul Valéry and a Chinese friend suggesting that Chinese may have had different perspectives on technology than Westerners.


• Geocurrents' Martin Lewis notes Ukrainian regionalism, observing that the Europe-leaning west/centre region has inside it a strongly nationalist Galicia and a regionalist Ruthene-leaning Transcarpathia.


• Joe. My. God. points to the story of a Floridian sex offender who tried to burn down the home of a lesbian couple and their eight children just because.


• Personal Reflection's Jim Belshaw explores the origin of the word "bogey" in Australian English to mean swimming hole.


• The Planetary Society Blog's Bruce Betts reports on the progress made in the search for planets at Alpha Centauri. (So far, no evidence for Alpha Centauri Bb, but then the technology isn't sensitive enough to confirm that world's existence.)


• Towleroad reports on the controversy surrounding the recent resignation of former Mozilla Brandon Eich, Andrew Sullivan aligning with left-wingers and Michael Signorile making the point that Eich's donations to people like Pat Buchanan tipped things over.


• Window on Eurasia comments on the successful program of the Kazakhstani government to settle ethnic Kazakhs in the once-Russian-majority north of the country so as to prevent a secession.

St. Mary’s location is no accident - it serves a sizable Slavic community in the East Village alongside the Carpatho-Russian Orthodox parishes of St. Nicholas (10th/Avenue A) and St. Mary’s (7th/Avenue A), the Ukrainian Catholic Church of St. George (7th/3rd), the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of All Saints (11th/3rd), the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of Holy Virgin Protection (2nd/2nd) and the Polish Roman Catholic Church of St. Stanislaus (7th/1st).

St. Mary’s parish dates to 1912, the heyday of Carpatho-Rusyn immigration to the United States. The parish first used a former Welsh Presbyterian church building at 255 East 13th Street. The present building was designed in 1959, by the Rev. Cajetan J.B. Baumann, who was a Franciscan friar in addition to being an architect. He designed a range of religious buildings both in New York and elsewhere.

According to the New York Times, this was the first all-glass church in the country, with a design that “emulates temples of early Christianity in Greece.” The estimated cost in 1958 was nearly a million dollars.

David W. Dunlop’s From Abyssinia to Zion: A Guide to Manhattan’s Places of Worship describes St. Mary’s as “[t]he most startling of the four houses of worship around Stuyvesant Square” and “a Modernist jewel box,” noting the “tower of glistening metal strands that reach up flame-like, whipped and wrapped around the bell.” The tower is a 50-feet tall stainless steel Modernist impression of a bell tower, which contains the bell from the parish’s original 13th Street home.

The discrepancies cannot be missed: Visible signs of massive poverty exist even in the eastern regions of Hungary, yet behind the border crossing the situation is even worse. The state of most of the houses and the clothes people wear lead one to guess that the average income often does not exceed 70, sometimes 120 and seldomly 150 Euros. And that presumably only for those who have managed to secure work at the (as yet?) meagre Maquiladora (3): At the Skoda/VW factory directly behind the border at Chop or at the Japanese-US car supplier Yazaki, a few kilometres further towards Ushgorod. These workbench extensions are branches of the car industry that has extended to Eastern Europe (4) over the last years.

Here in Transcarpatia, not far behind the EU border, a few global players hope for a long-term low wage paradise, where without a doubt the following saying applies: "It's terrible to be exploited by a transnational corporation, but it's (often) worse not to be".

This is because people in this region have few alternatives: back when the Soviet Union still existed there was already little industry, the agricultural possibilities are limited by the Carpathians and tourism is as yet not well developed. Many have no other choice but to eke out a living with small trading opportunities or petrol smuggling (5). Or, they can emigrate: to the Czech Republic or to Russia, to Portugal or the USA (6), be it as seasonal labourers, as au-pairs for a few months, as construction workers or as domestic helpers for a few years. And many don't come back at all, at best for a visit on important family holidays.

Because a significant percentage of the world’s migrants either come from or pass through Ukraine, mostly to Slovakia, this border, nestled in the arch-shaped Carpathian mountain range that stretches from Slovakia through Ukraine and into Romania, will become the last passport check for the thousands of illegals who choose this route into Europe.

The International Organization for Migration estimates that Ukraine is home to the world’s fourth-largest number of migrants, at 6.8 million. Few are there to stay, said Natalia Leshchenko from economic forecasters Global Insight.

"Large numbers of migrants come on transit from eastern and Central Asia and the Caucasus on the way to Western Europe, and especially the UK. Ukraine is on the transit route for illegal migration, and so most people do not stay unless they cannot leave."