Spacing's Jake Tobin Garrett has an interview with Jay Pitter looking at how parks can be critical bits of public space, especially in a multicultural community.

Jake Tobin Garrett: The vision of the organization you work for, the Inspirit Foundation, is to create a more inclusive and pluralist Canada where differences are valued and engaged. How ( Read more... )

• blogTO shares some photos of Toronto in colour from the 1950s.
• Centauri Dreams talks about SETI in the light of the Anthropocene era.
• Dangerous Minds notes that there is now a hipster nativity scene available for purchase.
• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper suggesting that tidal heating could explain the difference between super-Earths and mini- ( Read more... )

This news item from Global News highlights how the US-Canadian border, a thin line even on the map, is in reality wholly imaginary. Counting on the border alone as a defense is a poor idea.

Toronto police have launched an investigation after residents in the city’s east-end found “ultra right wing” posters that urged white people “tired of ( Read more... )

Spacing Toronto's Fatima Syed looks at how a spat involving online racism and Mississauga's mayor illustrates failings in that city's multiculturalism/

Earlier this month, Mississauga mayor Bonnie Crombie was lauded for standing up against racism for the second time in a year. On Sunday Oct. 9, she filed a hate hate-crime complaint with Peel ( Read more... )

• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper noting how Tau Ceti's debris disk is not like our solar system's.
• Language Hat talks about writers who want anonymity.
• Joe. My. God. notes the return of homophobic protesters in France.
• The Map Room Blog shares hazard maps of various Yukon communities.
• Marginal Revolution notes that India's biometric smartcards work, ( Read more... )

CBC reports on one southwest Ontario mayor determined to oppose monarchy to multiculturalism. The irony of the photo that CBC used to illustrate the monarchs--William and Kate participating in a First Nations drum ceremony--is likely beyond him.

As the royal tour makes its way through Canada, one southwest Ontario mayor is calling on Canada to ( Read more... )

On a bright warm day like today, why not talk about sports?


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• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper considering rates of water loss in a moist greenhouse world's atmosphere.
• The Dragon's Tales notes that leftists in Catalonia blocked separatists from forming the government.
• Far Outliers notes Persian cultural influence in the South Caucasus, among Christian and Muslim cultures alike.
• Joe. My. God. notes that the ( Read more... )

The Toronto Star's Peter Edwards reports on patterns in Google searches in Toronto. I would suggest that another explanation might be that users of Chinese languages use search engines other than Google, Baidu for instance.

Toronto has a large Chinese community, but there’s not much Chinese-language Googling out of the GTA. But Toronto has a far ( Read more... )

CBC News notes the decline of some prominent non-English television programs in Canada. Is this a marker of the decline of television generally, and the shift to online sources?

Rogers Media has cancelled multicultural news programs in Ontario and B.C. and will replace them with new current affairs programming targeting the same audience ( Read more... )