• blogTO notes that the TTC plans on raising fares for next year.
• Centauri Dreams notes the evidence for an ocean on Pluto.
• City of Brass' Aziz Poonawalla argues against Muslims voluntarily registering in an American listing of Muslims.
• Dangerous Minds notes the sadness of Abbie Hoffman at Janis Joplin's use of IV drugs.
• Joe. My. God. notes that ( Read more... )

• blogTO notes the 1970s, when Yonge around Queen was under reconstruction.
• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly talks about her writing life in New York City.
• The Crux considers: Neandertal or Neanderthal?
• Dangerous Minds notes the new Laibach app.
• The Dragon's Gaze looks at evaporating hot Jupiter HD 209458b.

At Al Jazeera, Lamis Andoni describes from her perspective how the Arab world is splintering into fragments defined by sect, geography and the like, how it is disintegrating.

[A] sectarian anti-Shia language was not dominant in the Arab collective psyche which was more shaped by the legacy of the anti-colonialist struggle and commitment to the ( Read more... )

As someone with a Master's degree in English, Robyn Creswell and Bernard Haykel's article in The New Yorker, "Battle Lines", tells an unsettling tale about the successful appropriation by Daesh of some of the key features of Middle Eastern popular culture.

On October 11, 2014, according to Islamic State-affiliated Twitter accounts a woman going by ( Read more... )

Sarah Nasr of Al-Monitor looks at the opening of Istanbul's first Arabic-language bookstore.

Turkey has become the biggest host of refugees in the world. Syrians make up 45% of the total number of refugees in the country. As the number of Syrians in Turkey, especially Istanbul, increases, a group of Syrian intellectuals has sought to revive the ( Read more... )

The United Arab Emirates' The National features an essay by one M Lynx Qualey noting the problems with translated Arabic-language literature. What, exactly, is the consumer of the translated product consuming? Is it a good sample, or a representative sample? Lots of interesting questions.

In some ways, reading all this Arabic literature in English ( Read more... )

CBC's Kathleen Harris notes the growing popularity of the word "Daesh" to represent ISIS. I agree with the arguments from language, actually.

Sources tell CBC News Network's Power and Politics host Evan Solomon that the U.S. is moving away from calling the militant group ISIL, in favour of the more pejorative Arabic acronym Daesh ( Read more... )

Maged Mandour's Open Democracy essay arguing that pan-Arab identities are declining in importance as national and sectarian identities surpass it in relevance looks convincing, at least.

The signs of the erosion of Arab identity are visible across the region. In Iraq, sectarianism is on the rise. The Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish communities are ( Read more... )

• Centauri Dreams looks at the exocomets of Beta Pictoris.
• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper on the luminosity of cold brown dwarfs.
• The Dragon's Tales links to one paper suggesting that Polynesian migration up to the 14th century depended on a pleasant global climate and links to another describing the discovery of a Polynesian canoe from 1400 CE in ( Read more... )

• James Bow celebrates his fourth published novel.
• blogTO celebrates WiFi in Bay station and shares old pictures of the Junction.
• Speed River Journal's Van Waffle examines the question of what caused new pollution in Lake Erie.
• Spacing Toronto examines again the controversy over a billboard apparently unauthorized at Bathuest and Davenport.
• Torontoist ( Read more... )