• Apostrophen's 'Nathan Smith tells the story of how he and his husband got the latest ornament for their tree.
• blogTO looks at Toronto Instagram star Aimee Hernandez.
• Language Hat parses the language of Wallace Stegner's fiction.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the worrying spread of smears and lies.
• Marginal Revolution looks at a musical highway in New ( Read more... )

The Toronto Star's Hina Alam reports on Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch's call to take apart the CBC entirely, going one better on Maxine Bernier's call to defund and reorganize the broadcaster.

Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch is proposing to sell the CBC, saying she doesn’t believe the broadcaster should be “ ( Read more... )

• blogTO notes that retail space on Bloor Street in Yorkville is not only the priciest in Canada, but among the priciest in the world.
• Centauri Dreams notes how fast radio bursts, a natural phenomenon, can be used to understand the universe.
• Dangerous Minds looks at a Kate Bush music performance on Dutch television in 1978.
• The Dragon's Gaze links to an ( Read more... )

blogTO's Ed Conroy engages with the history of MuchMusic. Myself, it's difficult for me to underestimate the importance of MuchMusic in helping to form my sense of Toronto, even the wider Canadian cultural landscape.

Whatever happened to MuchMusic? At a time when Toronto once again finds itself at the axis of the music universe, with ( Read more... )

• blogTO notes how expensive Toronto's rental market is.
• Centauri Dreams looks at the TRAPPIST-1 exoplanet system.
• Crooked Timber engages with the complexities of racism.
• The Crux shares some oral history about the detection of the first gravitational wave.
• The Dragon's Gaze reports about the difficulties involved with detecting exoplanets around red ( Read more... )

The 50th anniversary of Star Trek has gotten no small amount of resonance in the blogosphere. In my corner alone, see Russell Arben Fox's recounting of five classic moments of the original series, or Paul Campos' open discussion thread at Lawyers, Guns and Money. For me, Charlie Janes Anders' "What if Star Trek Had Never Existed?", published at ( Read more... )

Friday night, I watched Star Trek: Beyond with my friend Jonathan and was pleased. This film, third in the reboot series, easily felt the Trekkiest of the three, and the most fun of the three. The plot works (compliments to star and co-writer Simon Pegg), all the major characters got development, canon was referenced without overpowering the plot, ( Read more... )

• Antipope considers the question of who would win in a battle to the end, Cthulhu or Warhammer 40K's Emperor of Mankind?
• blogTO shares history and photos of Humber Bay Shores and the Scarborough Bluffs.
• Joe. My. God. notes Donald Trump's attack on the Japanese-American alliance.
• Language Hat reports on how speakers of the Aboriginal language of ( Read more... )

• blogTO looks at 1970s representations of Toronto on television and in film.
• Centauri Dreams looks at the genesis of antimatter propulsion.
• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper asking if we might be one of the first intelligent civilizations to arise.
• Joe. My. God. notes the questioned future of Orlando's Pulse nightclub.
• Language Log reports on a ( Read more... )

CBC News' Sara Fraser describes how the people behind the web series Just Passing Through have started Kickstarter campaign to fund a related project, the satiric soap Pogey Beach.

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Pogey Beach is already two things: first, it's the actual beach at Tracadie, P.E.I., so called by some because it borders P.E.I. National Park and is just as scenic ( Read more... )