Entries by Jaan Pill

Workers, Warriors, and Weapons: Open House at Dixie Road and Lakeshore Road East, Saturday, September 29, 2012, 10:10 am – 4:00 pm

Meet them all right here … Workers, warriors, and weapons I happened to read this banner while riding my bicycle in the neighbourhood. Usually I ride along the Waterfront Trail from Long Branch to Port Credit or thereabouts and back. On a recent ride, I changed my route to have a look at the Small Arms Building. […]

Pankaj Mishra describes the arrival of modernity in South Asia

The arrival of modernity has occurred at different times in different places. Prior to postmodernity, as Burke (2005) has noted, modernity held the stage. Charles Taylor, in Malaise of modernity (1992), highlights the cultural origins of modernity. Theodore Rabb, in The last days of the Renaissance and the path to modernity (2006) also outlines the steps to modernity. With regard to […]

Public meeting on redevelopment of Humbertown Plaza will take place on September 11, 2012 at 7:00 pm, at Martingrove Collegiate Institute (Eglinton and Martingrove)

I’m pleased to share with you the following message from: The Kingsway Park Ratepayers Inc. Board and The Humber Valley Village Association Meeting is on September 11, 2012 at 7:00 pm at Martingrove C. I. The ONE AND ONLY public meeting on the redevelopment of Humbertown Plaza will be held on September 11th, at 7:00pm, […]

Communication power (2009) by Manuel Castells

Update: It may be added that the concept of a networked society is appealing but has limitations. [End of update]   I’ve borrowed a Toronto Public Library copy of Communication power (2009) by Manuel Castells. I borrowed it after reading Burke (2005). As noted in the latter link, Castells argues that networks constitute the new ‘social […]

Jane Jacobs “helped us see that roads and buildings and streetscapes encapsulated information”

I like Alice Munro’s comparison between her way of reading a short story, and the experience a person has when visiting somebody’s house. We all know how a house works, she remarks in the anthology entitled The art of the short story (2206), and “how it encloses space and makes connections between one enclosed space and another and […]

Linda Colley (2002) speaks of the life of the common British soldier in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

In Captives (2002; listed as 2003 at the Toronto Public Library website), Linda Colley discusses the use of the whip as a means to maintain discipline in British soldiery at the height of Britain’s colonial expansion. Sometimes flogging resulted in the deaths of soldiers in the British army. Colley, whose book is subtitled ‘The story […]

Macfie’s overview (2002) of orientalism highlights the forces of individualism

In Orientalism (2002), Alexander Lyon Macfie analyzes the ongoing debate regarding orientalism. This blog post will highlight Macfie’s definition of and his concluding comments regarding orientalism. His comments in the book’s concluding chapter highlight the role of individualism, a topic that appears to be of relevance in relation to the emergence of postmodernity and postmodernism. Definitions […]