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description=10 posts published by Randy McDonald during December 2016;

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link, urban, note, of, the, to, for, 2016, what, do, you, in, on, and, toronto, losing, is, honest, ed, bit, more, detail, archive, december, forum, hope, 2017, fear, dm, max, roser, history, global, living, conditions, charts, future, george, michael, me, this, researcher, wants, initiate, contact, with, proxima, centauri, things, can, only, get, better, short, sighted, city, planning, continues, cost, year, music, died, why, mirvish, village, like, piece, kate, fane, torontoist, last, day, saturday, we, just, came, say, goodbye, pages, search, blogroll, archives, categories, meta,

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global living conditions in 5 charts and the future over at demography matters i have a post up meditating on the significance of the largely positive global trends identified by max roser in his essay a history of global living conditions in 5 charts at the our world in data project why can we be unduly pessimistic roser suggests it s a failure of perspective written by randy mcdonald december 31 2016 at 11 00 pm posted in demographics economics popular culture social sciences tagged with demographics demography matters futurology globalization links link george michael and me rajeev balasubramanyam s short piece at the lrb blog looking at the importance of wham including george michael for him as a british schoolboy of south asian background growing up in northern england in the early 1980s is superb this is how important pop music can be i used to listen to wham in secret it was 1984 and i was nine my school was in a white and mostly working class village in lancashire i knew only one other wham fan and though it s been thirty years since we last met he was the first person i contacted after i heard george michael had died he once claimed to have reached the singer on a secret number he found in a magazine and had a hilarious conversation with him i still wonder if this might have been true we used to listen to the albums over and over at one another s houses but at school we kept our adoration to ourselves it was normal for boys to like duran duran they said wham were poofs george michael was loved by older girls teenagers but in my class the girls hated him too they liked madonna he loves himself they said he looks at himself in shiny floors when he s dancing i didn t understand the appeal of duran duran with their pale sullen look the sallow understated maleness of english post punk it felt so far away from the black american singers i also used to listen to in secret michael jackson prince and so far away from wham in contrast to the dull rainy post industrial landscape around me they always looked as if they were having the time of their lives they were young beautiful tanned and made spectacular pop music their first two albums were called fantastic and make it big after their first number one single george michael performed on top of the pops in a t shirt with number 1 embroidered in gold on it in the video he wore one with choose life printed on it in bold black letters in gloomy northern cold racist england this was what i wanted to hear i wanted hope i wanted fun written by randy mcdonald december 31 2016 at 9 00 pm posted in history popular culture tagged with george michael in memoriam links popular culture popular music united kingdom link this researcher wants to initiate contact with proxima centauri b astronomy s john wenz reports on a proposal to try to initiate contact with a hypothetical civilization on proxima centauri b that does not necessarily leave me cold or worried a hypothetical proximan civilization only a decade more advanced in observational astronomy that us might well be aware of the existence of earth could conceivably even be aware of our technological civilization s existence a proximan civilization capable of travelling to us would certainly know this that said the critics argument that this is the sort of thing that really should be handled by a broad based coalition also makes sense if we are going to send out messages let s try to come up with some standards at least douglas vakoch the former director of interstellar message composition at the seti institute is launching the meti initiative with one planet in mind the recently discovered planet around proxima centauri the closest star to earth and thus the closest exoplanet vakoch says that meti has more than a few targets in mind there are a few advantages to proxima centauri b first it s close to our solar system keeping the time for a roundtrip exchange as short as possible vakoch says second some have suggested that this exoplanet is potentially habitable to be intelligible any message to extraterrestrials needs to be written in a universal language and that won t be english or swahili vakoch says we begin with mathematics because it seems likely that scientists on any world will need to know at least the essentials of math then there s the question of why which vakoch paraphrases seti research ronald bracewell in saying that humanity should join the galactic club even bigger though is the question of why should we broadcast that we re here in case we you know get invaded of the many many things that stephen hawking has said publicly in recent years the dangers of alien contact has come up again and again some in the seti community say a cautious approach should be taken with a consortium saying we know nothing of eti s intentions and capabilities and it is impossible to predict whether eti will be benign or hostile written by randy mcdonald december 31 2016 at 8 15 pm posted in popular culture science tagged with alpha centauri astronomy extraterrestrial intelligence futurology links proxima centauri proxima centauri b search for extraterrestrial intelligence space science link things can only get better over his blog antipope charlie stross has a future timeline so far up to two parts imagining what it would be like for 2017 to turn out worse than 2016 so far the timeline s pretty grim giving us an idea of what perhaps we should work to avoid written by randy mcdonald december 31 2016 at 7 45 pm posted in popular culture tagged with futurology links popular culture science fiction urban note short sighted city planning continues to cost toronto if toronto was to make and keep a new year s resolution i wish it would be to overcome the negative patterns identified this friday by marcus gee in the globe and mail of terribly short sighted urban planning in toronto when city leaders built an enormous bridge over the don valley linking bloor street east to danforth avenue in the 1910s they decided after some debate to include a deck underneath the roadway to carry subway trains should toronto ever get them that saved great trouble and expense when the city finally got around to building the bloor danforth subway line in the 1960s the commuters who ride the subway today enjoying the view as they sail underneath the bloor viaduct can be thankful for their foresight this famous decision was exceptional in the truest sense what makes it stand out is that in toronto it is so unusual foresight in this town is the exception to the rule far more often city leaders fail to think ahead sometimes it seems we have learned nothing from the tale of the viaduct just look around left and right you can find examples of staggering short sightedness this year mayor john tory caught the city s interest when he proposed to create a splendid new urban park by decking over the railway lands west of union station in effect building the park on a huge roof over the tracks great idea but it could cost something like a billion dollars imagine how much cheaper it would have been if 20 or 30 years ago before the waterfront construction boom the city had set aside a swath of land for parkland built on actual terra firma the rail deck idea came along because no one had the sense to foresee how dense and crowded the area around union would become even though it was a natural target for development now that the area is chock full of office and condo towers there just isn t any empty land left the tens of thousands of people who are moving there to live and work have no place to walk the dog or read on a park bench riding the new airport express train offers another glimpse of blinkered planning years ago when authorities were expanding toronto pearson international airport they failed to put in a rail link or even leave space for one so when it came time to build the union pearson express connecting the airport to downtown they couldn t just lay track to the airport from a nearby rail line they had to build a long twisting overpass carried on tall pillars that dodges around roadways and hydro lines to reach the terminal it s functioning now and it works fine but what a job it was and what an expense written by randy mcdonald december 31 2016 at 7 15 pm posted in politics popular culture toronto urban note tagged with cities politics toronto urban note link 2016 the year the music died ben rayner wrote earlier this week in the toronto star about how 2016 s toll of notable rockers is set to only grow in 2017 as in the future the stars of old are aging and as age approaches death inevitably comes in behind if 2016 taught us anything it s that even pop s most seemingly immortal figures are in fact quite mortal and destined for the grave just like the rest of us it was an annus horribilis that began on a low note with the death of david bowie just three days after the release of his blackly magical 27th albumblackstar on jan 8 and basically stayed down there in the depths for the next 12 months the pop deaths just kept coming prince felled at 57 on april 21 by something as impossibly prosaic as an opiate overdose the eagles glenn frey merle haggard prince buster phife dawg of a tribe called quest maurice white of earth wind fire suicide s alan vega sharon jones keith emerson and greg lake whose twin departures from this plane rendered emerson lake palmer a solo act within the space of just nine months canadian icon leonard cohen too of course who predicted his own looming demise in bowie esque fashion with an album length goodbye of his own you want it darker released just a couple of weeks before his very private death on nov 7 at 82 years of age george michael announced on christmas day scarcely a week would pass without the mention of another drummer here or another guitarist there of a certain age quietly saying goodbye forever and this after the shock of the sudden death of whiskey swillin metal survivor motorhead s lemmy kilmister at 70 just three days before the end of 2015 the canada stunning announcement in may that gord downie of the tragically hip was fighting to survive against terminal brain cancer didn t help matters much either even if the hip s triumphant farewell tour in the summer and the subsequent release of his noble secret path solo album in the fall proved inspirational rather than sad in any case 2016 was not the happiest time to be a music fan as the georgia straight put it about the only good thing that happened in 2016 was that keith richards didn t die unfortunately at some point keith richards who just turned 73 is going to die along with the rest of the rolling stones who have played the poster boys for rock longevity for 50 years now but simply can t keep it up forever time is on no one s side not even the rolling stones written by randy mcdonald december 31 2016 at 7 00 pm posted in demographics popular culture tagged with david bowie demographics george michael globalization in memoriam links popular culture popular music prince urban note why losing mirvish village is like losing a piece of toronto cbc news amanda margison writes about how the end of honest ed s far from being limited to the store itself will also end the adjacent mirvish village neighbourhood honest ed s had created an maintained this unique neighbourhood for decades the disappearance of honest ed s and of mirvish village will leave these creators and businesspeople bereft a tree lined side street so unique to toronto that it became known as a village will empty out next month with long term tenants bemoaning a loss of an important part of the city s history mirvish village the stretch of markham street located in the shadow of the iconic honest ed s building has been home to art studios and one of a kind shops tucked into brightly painted century homes for decades but by the end of january approximately 70 tenants including those who have worked on the block since the 1970s will be evicted the magic of walking a few meters from bloor where the car traffic is heavy and noisy and finding a village it was only a block long but it really was a village said darrel dorsk one of the residents who has received an eviction notice mirvish village is part of the 1 8 hectare parcel of land at bathurst and bloor streets that westbank development corporation bought from the mirvish family in 2013 westbank plans to build a new condo and retail project in the area in an effort to breathe new life into this unique neighbourhood those plans however have not been approved by the city and may not be until the spring westbank spokesperson anne o hagan said the plan is to preserve many of the heritage houses on markham street while interspersing townhouses and slim towers that could be up to 29 storeys tall written by randy mcdonald december 31 2016 at 4 30 pm posted in economics popular culture toronto urban note tagged with honest ed s mirvish village neighbourhoods popular culture toronto urban note urban note kate fane of torontoist on honest ed s i quite like kate fane s brief tribute to honest ed s everyone in toronto has an honest ed s story maybe yours begins when you were 19 new to the city and wandering bloor street on a tuesday night you found yourself blinded by 23 000 lights swirling across a bizarrely anachronistic marquee you were mesmerized later you d take your first girlfriend inside on a rainy sunday afternoon you keep the virgin mary candle and the corny romance novel she bought you in a shoebox in your closet maybe you raised three children in an annex apartment and relied on the store for the essentials if your friday night shift had ended early enough and you got a decent sleep you d line up at 6 a m on saturday morning to claim the door crasher special whatever it was you never checked you d return home weighed down with cotton briefs vienna sausages a 50 cent mop and feel relieved that for today the immediate needs were covered written by randy mcdonald december 31 2016 at 3 45 pm posted in economics popular culture toronto urban note tagged with honest ed s popular culture shopping toronto urban note urban note honest ed s last day is saturday we just came to say goodbye yesterday the toronto star s laura beeston reported from honest ed s in its final days in its last retail gasp honest ed s finally showed its age before closing for good saturday what was left of the once great titan of the retailing industry in the final week was literally the bottom of the bin 10 cent dish sponges so old they were turning to dust in their packaging garish 99 cent tableware off brand children s toothpaste for 77 cents toronto s iconic bargain department store which held court on the corner of bathurst st and bloor ave w for the past 68 years was scant barren even the west building with its memorable welcome to yesterday mirror was off limits to the public in the east white display cases and shelves once overflowing with thrifty household items sat mostly empty on the...