We show that it is consistent with ZF that there is a dense-in-itself compact metric space which has the countable chain condition (ccc), but is neither separable nor second countable. It is also shown that has an open dense subspace which is not paracompact and that in ZF the Principle of Dependent Choice, DC, does not imply the disjoint union of metrizable spaces is normal.
Utilizing the discrete homotopy methods developed for uniform spaces by Berestovskii-Plaut, we define the critical spectrum Cr(X) of a metric space, generalizing to the non-geodesic case the covering spectrum defined by Sormani-Wei and the homotopy critical spectrum defined by Plaut-Wilkins. If X is geodesic, Cr(X) is the same as the homotopy critical spectrum, which differs from the covering spectrum by a factor of 3/2. The latter two spectra are known to be discrete for compact geodesic spaces,...