A Bit More Detail

• In a guest opinion at The Guardian, Stephen DeGrace makes the argument for PEI to vote for a mixed-member proportional electoral system at the end of April.


• 14 thousand voters, 13% of the electorate, cast votes in the advance polling on PEI. CBC PEI reports.


• CBC PEI reports that the Sikh holiday of Vaisakhi was widely celebrated by the Island's growing Sikh community.


• The Guardian notes the creation by Charlottetown of a registry of secondary and garden suites, the better to grapple with the housing crisis.


• Peter Rukavina links to Harry Holman's blog post explaining why there is a cannon lodged in the sidewalk at Queen and Grafton.

• D-Brief reports on the Amazon River's hidden reef and on the threat faced by gorillas.


• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper examining the age of terrestrial planets in the solar neighbourhood.


• The Dragon's Tales looks at Guatemala-Belize border tensions.


• The Everyday Sociology Blog notes shortages of affordable housing in the United States.


• Joe. My. God. reports that Cleveland police are represented by assholes.


• Marginal Revolution looks at technological innovation in China.


• The Planetary Society Blog reports from the latest drilling spot of Curiosity on Mars.


• The Speed River Journal's Van Waffle shares a photo of a recently excavated corduroy road, two centuries old, in downtown Waterloo.


• Torontoist reports on Khalsa Day in Toronto.

“We are subjects of the same Empire; we have fought, we have sacrificed. We have fought for the Empire, and we bear her medals; we have an interest in this country; we have bought about $2,006,000 of property in British Columbia; we have our church and pay our pastor, and we mean to stay in this country,” Dr. Sunder Singh said in a speech before Toronto’s Empire Club on January 25, 1912. One of the leaders of the South Asian community in British Columbia, Singh spent that winter in Toronto, campaigning for the easing of highly restrictive immigration regulations for South Asians. He continued: “To others you advance money to come here, and yet to us, British subjects, you refuse to let down the bars. All we are asking of you is justice and fair play.”

“Many people have been telling me that it is useless my trying to bring this question before the Canadian people,” the speaker concluded, “but I am firmly persuaded that, if the question is properly brought before right-minded Canadians, that they will say that the same rights should be given to the Sikh people as are given to any other British subjects.”

A reasoned argument persuasively delivered, Singh’s speech that day was interrupted by spontaneous applause no fewer than six times, an indication of the reception he received in Toronto initially. For a brief moment, it appeared that he might succeed in rousing Ontario’s Protestant and pro-Imperialist sentiment to the cause of loosening immigration restrictions. But ultimately, the justness of his argument couldn’t overcome the vociferous outcry from British Columbia or the personal attacks launched on his character.

Born near Amritsar, Punjab in 1882, Dr. Sunder Singh (also frequently spelled Sundar) was educated at Punjab University, then studied medicine in Glasgow, Scotland. After qualifying as a doctor before the license board in Britain, he worked as a ship’s medical officer on the mail line for two years, travelling between Liverpool, Brazil, and New York. Singh arrived in Canada at Halifax in March 1909, where immigration restrictions against South Asians were much less stringently enforced than on the West Coast.

• Bag News Notes comments on the attempts to link Tamerlan Tsarnaev to Canadian jihadi William Plotnikov.


• Centauri Dreams' Paul Gilster writes about the search for planets of brown dwarf stars.


• Daniel Drezner writes from Seoul about the challenges and questions facing Korea.


• Two recent noteworthy posts at Geocurrents include one mapping political divisions in Venezuela and another mapping income and growth in India.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money's SEK argues that the story of out NBA star Jason Collins will matter inasmuch as people will pour over his differences from his straight twin to try to support their beliefs about sexual orientation (mainly bad beliefs).


• Torontoist reported on the Saturday commemoration of the Battle of York in the War of 1812 and the more contemporary Khalsa Day parade of Sikhs in Toronto.


• The Volokh Conspiracy blogs about the changing demographics of Jews worldwide.


• Window on Eurasia quotes a Russian analysis placing the Tsarnaev brothers in the context of Chechen migrations across Eurasia in the 20th century.


• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell expands on the thesis expounded in the Guardian comparing the patterns of mistaken belief involved in the theory that vaccines cause autism with the support granted to austerity by economists now.

• The Japanese will be sending a walking humanoid robot probe to the moon.


• Centauri Dreams wonders about the implications of artificial intelligence for the human future, whether in self-regulating deep space probes or in post-singularity cultures.


• A Fistful of Euros' Douglas Muir doesn't think much of a Stratfor article that analyses Hungary's interest in giving passports in ethnic Hungarians in neighbouring countries as a way of acquiring strategy depth.


• Geocurrents has a couple of posts (1, 2) mapping Thailand's political conflicts on the conflicts between the centre and the ethnolinguistically distinct northeast.


• Noel Maurer doesn't like the idea of making Puerto Rico decide whether or not to be a state, on the grounds that its current status as a self-governing commonwealth works fine.


• The Search's Douglas Todd blogs about the support for Sikh nationalism and separatism, the Khalistan movement, in the Canadian Sikh diaspora.


• Slap Upside the Head writes about the latest anti-gay conservative to turn out to be in the closet, this one a founder of the Family Research Council who's been cavorting with a young prostitute.


• Understanding Society's Daniel Little writes about how British writers from opposite ends of the political spectrum in the 19th century saw much poverty as a product of immorality on the part of the lower classes, as opposed to unemployment and factors outside their control.