Protected: [NON BLOG] Drugging Myself

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[LINK] You need to be religious to be powerful, do you?

Marcus at Hurry Up Harry notes that, contrary to the dogmas enunciated by American conservatives, religious faith in the Bible Belt fashion isn’t a prerequisite for Great Power status. Just look at Japan.

[LINK] Singularity News

james_nicoll describes a singularity, a not so familiar singularity.

[LINK] Another language found

leex reports that a Belgian linguist has discovered speakers of the Cappadocian language, once thought extinct.

Protected: [NON BLOG] Some Small Reward

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[BRIEF NOTE] Immigration and Identity

I don’t think of myself as an Ontarian. Ontario is too abstract an entity for me to really identify with. I lived for one year in Kingston, I’ve lived for another in Toronto, and I’ve visited Hamilton and Ottawa. I’m more likely to go to Montréal or even New York City than I am to visit Barrie or Penetanguishene. The idea of being an Ontarian–or worse yet, an Upper Canadian–does make any sense to me. After almost two years away from the Island, I still associate “Ontario” with “one province that gives us money.” I do think of myself as a Torontonian. No matter that I haven’t explored every neighbourhood in the city, not nearly. I still have an extensive store of experience with and appreciation for this metropolis where I live, acquired through first-hand experience. Toronto is a reality for me; Ontario, a mere geographical expression.

With some amount of stretching, my personal situation can be likened to that of immigrants generally. I wonder if first- and second-generation immigrant communities relate in a similar way to the social and political units that they live in, attaching themselves to those units they have direct experience of and feeling unattached to those units which are effectively irrelevant to them. Since I don’t have access to scholarly databases with details on the socioklogy of immigration I can’t answer this question, but there seem to be cetain signs of that in recent immigration history, with such things as the new Francophone immigrant community of Montréal identifying itself as Montréalais before Québécois and the strong attachment of New York City’s Jewish and Hispanic populations to that metropolis.

[BRIEF NOTE] On Viewing Season 1 Buffy

I’ve just returned from watching selected Season 1 episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with schizmatic, dark_age_gal and some others: “Welcome to the Hellmouth”, “The Harvest”, “The Witch”, “The Pack”, “Angel”. It was fun to revisit the very beginnings of the Buffyverse, not only because of nostalgia but because it’s rather wonderful to see Whedon lay the foundations for his vast sprawling universe, again. One does wonder how Willow and Xander got over Jesse so quickly, though.

[URBAN NOTE] The Heat

By now it shouldn’t have surprised me to read, on a LCD screen mounted by the Miles Nadal community centre at Spadina and Bloor, that at a quarter past midnight the ambient temperature was 28 degrees Celsius. It did. That’s the difference between a pleasantly cool maritime climate like Prince Edward Island’s and Upper Canada’s continental climate.

[META] Blogroll Addition

I’ve added Transcontatlantic Relations, to which jhubert contributes, to the blogroll. And no, I can’t say that five times fast.

[LINK] Foreign Dispatches on Greenpeace

The 21st century, if it is to be an environmentalist century, will also have to be a nuclear century. A pity that Greenpeace doesn’t get it.