mouldings--fragment

fragment of stone moulding. convex thumb-torus above the concave scotia above the plane fascia of the base.

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pigeon of the week

waiting for the mail.

 

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accidental townscape--set piece

 

in the nineteen fifties the editors of the architectural review serialised a collection of articles on something about urban planning they termed townscape. the authors of these articles asked why so much of the scientific town planning of the post-war years seemed inferior to planning of earlier centuries. their goal was to discover if the earlier examples of urban planning held some overlooked principles of design and what could be changed about recent inferior design by studying the earlier examples.

some of the articles went further, asking why and how those towns specifically italian seemed especially attractive and more humane places to use. they argued that while the romantic image of italy and sometimes accidental effects of older town plans may contribute to the sucess of italian civilia, but also wondered if the effects were intended and built into the townscape by the designers. and more importantly if the secrets were rediscovered the rules could be utilized to design more livable modern cities. some of the research from the italian themed articles was later reworked by ivor dewolfe and represented in a book titled "the italian townscape".

one of the design ideas listed in the book as making a more liveable and interesting townscape was the side or service-mens entrance. this is a minor entrance which stands out because it is as visible as the main entrance of a building. an example of this piece of townscape can be seen at the east end of yorkville avenue where the side entrance in the west wall of the building on the east side of yonge street terminates the end of the view.

 

 

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geneology record

i recently rediscovered this recording while looking for geneological information on my great grandfather wellington thompson. our grandmother had a copy of it and played her fathers recitation of of the hungry fox two or three times for my sister and me. for family interested in the entire one minute piece it is available at the itunes store.

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cantilever--accidental

example of a cantilever made of brick at intersection of queen and sherbourne streets.

 

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lurking three letter agencies

is torontos public library system being used as a spy post by a surveillance agency to gather private research information on the people who use it? that is the question asked by pius nesapius the author of a pamphlet titled "conspiracy in the big smoke, the three-letter-agencies of toronto". the pamphlet went unnoticed by most when it was published in 2011and seemed to be destined for the abyss of forgotten books, it is now of renewed interest since edward snowden began whistling his leaky tune, though it predates that event by more than a year.

in his phamplet nesapius makes two related claims. one that the tpl (toronto public libraries), the ttc (toronto transit corporation), and tch (toronto community housing) are someway used by an unknown surveillance agency to spy on the people who use them. the other claim being that the canadian government and these canadian tax funded public services and some of their employes know of and cooperate with the espionage.

he begins the phamplet with some background, writing that from 1990 to the present he has been watching strange events pass, strange anomolies in the operation of library computers, witnessing bizarre doubled incidents on the subway and properties of the tch. these events which make up his evidence came to a climax during torontos hosting of the g20 meeting in 2010 but continue to operate as of 2011.

his evidence is, most of it, anecdotal accounts other people have told him of unusual incidents that happened to them when they used these public services which he then retells with some additional information. an example is this quote from the chapter on the toronto reference library.

"for example when using the computer catalog to search and request for books some people have noticed strange coincidents with their requests. to request books and other material from the closed shelves of the library a person enters thit's library card and pin number then library staff go to get the books from the storage area and put them on what are termed the retrieval shelves, these are a set of book shelves on each floor with alphabetized sections. the books requested are placed under the first letter of the persons last name. one woman i interviewed told me how she found the arabian cook book she requested on the shelf bearing the initial letter of her last name and on the surrounding shelfs above, below, to the left and right were other books on arabian cooking she had looked at while on the computer catalog but did not request. all those other books on the same type of cooking, all requested by other people, all showing up at the same time i requested one book, maybe it was a coincident but it seemed strange".

another interview he made was with a man who told him,

" i was using the internet to find information on a polish artist and had requested books the library has on his life and work, about a week later i was talking to a tenant in the building i live in and he asked me if i wanted a poster of the actor leonardo dicaprio. i thought it was strange the way the other tenant gave me a guy-fawkes-mask smile when i told him i had read some books on an artist last week and leonardo dicaprio and his father were friends of the artist and wrote the forward to one of the books. a few weeks later i had been looking up information on torontos lake shore and the oldest part of the city on front street. the next day while i was talking to another tenant he told me he had spent the previous day down on front street looking around torontos olde town with some friends who were visiting. he then gave me the same strange smile the other tenant had. i began to wonder if somebody was monitoring my computer use and telling these other tenants to mention something about it and to watch my reaction, or was it a coincidence? and if not was it a practical joke or something more sinister.".

all of that and more occurred in the reference library and other library locations before 2011 when the phamplet was published. so who is doing this and why? from 2004 to 2006 he thought it was other library users with some hacking skills and that it was being done for amusement, why would someone doing surveillance work draw attention to it by requesting books in the way described?. another possibility he tested for was i-t personnel the library has on staff and he has some things to say about them but could not find any direct connection to the events. it was only after 2007 he began to think the book requests and other computer and internet anomalies were coming from beyond the library, possibly the tpl's outside security, spyders-inc, or the nsa, the united states national security agency. he had inside information from someone only named the dot-com-roache who let slip that there was a group working for the nsa on the hawaiian islands or continental west coast of the united states who regularly practiced this type of information gathering and subtle-harassment of computer users at the tpl with the canadian governments permission. what is interesting here is that the hawaiian archipelago was where edward snowden last worked and collected evidence of undiscriminating intelligence gathering by his employer boozallenhamilton for the nsa. as some of the documents leaked by snowden do seem to reveal that the government of canada was permitting the nsa to spy on foreign politicians and other people during the g20 meeting, the suspicions of nesapius that the government of canada is behind the surveillance in toronto public services over the last two decades perhaps deserve a closer look at this time. especially his thoughts on the possibility the information is being used to implicate these people in false flag events.

it was the snowden computer surveillance news that reminded me of reading this pamphlet so i won't bother with reviewing the chapters on the ttc and tch except to say they cover other types of surveillance events happening in those public properties though they have less or nothing to do with to do with computerized surveillance, but seem from nesapius descriptions more along the type of thing termed organized stalking.

the rumour-mill phamplet is more of a book than a phamplet at twenty five pages of small print text. the hardcover binding has as usual the publishers motif for this series of books, a millstone with truth and lies being poured in the top of the millstone and their mixture, rumour coming out at the bottom. i think it is sold out and out of print at this time. the title seems to be an humorous allusion to the american federal-government agencies that use the three initial letters from their full name as an abbreviation, the cia, fbi, nsa and others, thus the tpl, ttc, and tch, torontos three letter agencies.

 

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moulding--shadow

autumn sun making autumn shadows on base of pilaster at king and sherbourne street.

 

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