[PHOTO] Shelters at Broadview

Shelters at Broadview
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

Something about the arches of the shelters of the streetcar platforms at Broadview station looks beautiful to me.

[DM] "More on Canadian regional demographics"

I've a post up at Demography Matters highlighting population trends among different Canadian provinces. Western Canada's experiencing especially strong growth. Go, read.

[BRIEF NOTE] My last post on Westerwelle, I promise

In my final post on Guido Westerwelle, the out leader of Germany's successful Free Democratic Party (1, 2), I'd like to note James Kirchick's suggestion in Newsweek that Westerwelle, if he becomes Foreign Minister as per German political tradition, could help normalize of homosexuality in any number of homophobic countries by his very presence.

Westerwelle is about to become the face that Germany presents overseas—which might be a problem for the nations where the denial of homosexuality and the imprisonment, torture, and murder of gay people are official state policies. That's why, after he takes the helm of the Foreign Ministry, Westerwelle ought to kick off his tenure with a tour of the world's most homophobic nations, speaking about the horrific ways in which these regimes treat their gay citizens. Unfortunately, he might be on the road for a while.

Westerwelle could begin his journey in Iran, which depends heavily on Germany as its No. 1 European trading partner. In his infamous address two years ago at Columbia University, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denied the very existence of homosexuality in his country—an absurd claim. Three years ago, the case of two Iranian teenagers hanged for homosexuality drew worldwide condemnation.

After Iran, it'd be on to nearby Saudi Arabia, which, despite a burgeoning gay underworld, beheads gay people. Then he could fly down to Zimbabwe, where President Robert Mugabe refers to gays as "perverts" who are "lower than dogs and pigs." It was probably inevitable that a crude strongman like Hugo Chávez would turn to prejudices like anti-Semitism and homophobia in order to find scapegoats for his ruinous policies; who better than Westerwelle—as the foreign minister of a country that overcame its own murderous encounters with these two hatreds—to confront Chávez about targeting such vulnerable populations? How could these assorted dictators respond to the foreign minister from the fourth-biggest economy with anything other than bluster?

While it's unfortunately true that many homophobic regimes channel popular homophobic opinion in their countries, it's also true that individuals are more likely to support equal rights for homosexuals if they interact with them. For the vast majority of the people in nations Westerwelle visits, he will be just a distant figure, someone whose face they will see on the front page of newspapers and on television. But his being in the room during high-level talks with the likes of Ahmadinejad and Vladimir Putin may alter their attitudes about homosexuality, if only a little.

There is, of course, the question of whether or not someone's personal identity should be used to make someone do something. There's also the question of whether or not he will actually become Finance Minister, if only for the sake of a coherent foreign policy firmly under the control over the governing party.

[I]ncoherence in foreign policy mattered little before reunification, when Germany's low-key foreign policy mainly consisted of supporting European integration and the transatlantic alliance. But today, Germany claims international leadership and is expected to adopt regional and global responsibilities. Today, German foreign policy should not be a matter of coalition squabbles. Therefore, the foreign minister should come from Merkel's own party.

Westerwelle should move into the finance ministry instead. While the foreign policy part of the FDP's manifesto is weak, it has strong positions on economic policy: it advocates open markets, less stringent hiring and firing rules, an effective competition policy, help for small enterprises and, most importantly, lower and simpler taxes. Westerwelle insists that he will not sign a coalition agreement that does not contain tax reform. But he also knows that with €1.6 trillion in public debt and a new law mandating a zero deficit by 2016, there is not much room for fiscal manoeuvre.

Why am I excited by all this? It's just nice to have a high-profile political figure who's out, and Canada doesn't have such a figure apart from a certain someone who really isn't gay, no, really. Iceland's Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, and Britain's Peter Mandelson. (Britons can tell me whether the last is a good role model; I've read a broad spectrum of opinions.) It's just, well, it makes me happy.

[BRIEF NOTE] On Mississauga

Whenever I spent any time in Mississauga, Toronto's western neighbour and a city that, with a population of almost seven hundred thousand people, is Canada's sixth municipality by population, I felt like there was no there there. It's a collection of three or four relatively dense urban centres surrounded by vast tracts of suburbia, all developed in the age of the automobile without any serious investment in public infrastructure. Andrew Barton, for one, doesn't like this model.

Since 1978, Mississauga has been under the rule of "Hurricane" Hazel McCallion, who had better be some kind of robot or Highlander because if she ever dies, the city is going to spiral into chaos because no one will know what to do. Under her authority, Mississauga has remained free of debt, which is frequently bandied about in Mississauga vs. Toronto flame wars as evidence of Mississauga's superiority.

Personally, I ask, what use is it having no debt if this if you have to build a place like Mississauga in order to achieve it? The reason I ribbed my Mississaugan friend the way I did is because Mississauga does not feel like a city - it feels like Barrie, with five hundred thousand more people crammed in. It's a massive suburb that has sprawled and sprawled until it can sprawl no more.

Yilmaz Alimoglu, a Mississauga resident, wrote critically about this last year.

[I]t bothered me that Mississauga did not have a single downtown. It had several downtowns, each begun and not really finished – Streetsville, Port Credit and the junction of Eglinton and Hurontario.

What I realized was that Mississauga accidentally had become a city by massive and rapid population growth but it was conceived of as a suburb. So what does that make it now?

Officially, Mississauga is the sixth-largest city in Canada. But to people in Toronto, it is just a suburb.

Allow me to clarify: Mississauga is a city. Ask Hazel McCallion, the most loved and respected mayor in Canada. Why do we love her? Because of the financial books – we're a debt-free municipality.

But we don't live on paper. We live on streets and sidewalks and in coffee shops and malls. And Mississauga is not working right now. Rapid growth and non-stop development have overcome my ability to cope.

The nice things about Toronto were being able to go for walks in the evening, going for coffee and meeting lots of friends. But Mississauga feels very isolated – residents have little contact with each other. I am lucky that we have a coffee shop at the corner of Hurontario and Eglinton. It's where I have met most of my friends who've come to Mississauga from all corners of the globe.

In Toronto, there are many city-sponsored programs that any person can enjoy. But in Mississauga, we have to pay for everything. Is Mississauga only for the well-off?

I cannot find many books that I want to read at Mississauga's libraries and have to ask my wife to bring them from the Toronto library system.

We have to drive everywhere. If you're a resident of Mississauga and do not own a car, life is hard. The public transportation system is one of the least developed in North America.

Much of the blame for this has been placed Hazel McCallion, Mississauga's amazingly popular mayor who has reigned since 1978 on a platform of low taxes. This has spurred rapid growth, with many corporations choosing to place their headquarters in Mississauga instead of Toronto, but it has also led to sustained underinvestment in crucial elements of Mississauga's infrastructures like roads, say. (New tax levies, amazingly, are still quite unpopular among many Mississaugans.) Even with an ongoing conflict of interest investigation, McCallion's popularity ratings seem to be doing just fine.

I find it difficult to disagree with the Toronto Star's urban affairs columnist Christopher Hume when he wrote yesterday that Mississauga might need turnover but isn't likely to get it.

Of course, only a quarter of Mississaugans bothered to vote in the last civic elections, one of the lowest turnouts in any jurisdiction. Some might say that the reason for such a turnout is the excellence of McCallion's leadership. Others argue it is a result of a level of indifference so profound no one cares anymore.

And what exactly do Mississaugans have to show for her decades in power. Low taxes, supporters might say, and lower civic debt.

Let's hope that's enough, because beyond that they have little to feel good about. The fact is that they have bought into a city so unprepared and ill-equipped for the 21st century it could serve as a poster community of how not to build a city.

Indeed, by McCallion's own account, Mississauga planners and politicians have made every mistake in the book, allowing the construction of one car-dependent subdivision after another, each more isolated and wasteful than the next. Postwar planning, based as it was on cheap oil, single-use zoning and endless highways, is writ large here.

[. . .]

Mississaugans must have been thrilled when McCallion announced recently that she would seek yet another term in 2010. It will be her 12th run, and unless voters suddenly come to their senses – or bother to vote – she will prevail.

Generations of leadership have been bypassed; the fresh ideas and new approaches they would have brought will remain untried. Instead, the community will settle for the same old, same old.

[CAT] "Tiger at Calgary zoo that mauled intruder did nothing wrong: Keeper"

Poor kitty.

A Siberian tiger that brutally mauled a man Monday morning was only doing what comes naturally, say Calgary zoo officials.

"Vitali did nothing wrong. It's his natural behaviour. They broke into his home," said zookeeper Tim Sinclair-Smith later in the day.

Just after 1 a.m. local time Monday, a pair of 27-year-old men scaled the zoo's 2.4-metre-high fence near the west public gate.

Inside, they hopped another one-metre-high fence designed to keep the public at a safe distance from the Siberian tiger enclosure.

While the man was standing in front of a second fence that keeps the cats secure, a two-year-old male tiger named Vitali caught his arm through the wires, biting and swiping at him. The man's friend managed to free him and the pair scrambled to safety.

"I think it's fair to say that, if anybody puts their mind to it, they can breach any kind of security — and that certainly seems to be the case here," said the zoo's director, Grahame Newton.

[. . .]

Zookeepers say the tiger, "one of our most laid-back cats," was likely spooked by the intruders.

The cat, who showed signs of being stressed after the break-in, suffered no injuries to his paws or mouth and eventually calmed down.

"He's perfectly fine. A tiger is a carnivore, so they're going to behave naturally, and that's his natural reaction," said Sinclair-Smith.

The tiger was either acting out of aggression or protecting himself, said Dr. Sandie Black, the zoo's head vet.

"(The tiger) has a fairly significant armament at his disposal: very sharp claws. My guess would be that the gentleman was hooked by a claw and his arm dragged in and continued to be attacked from that point."

[LINK] "A hostile takeover of Zionism"

Can anyone tell me if Patrick Martin's Globe and Mail essay is anywhere close to being right?

No longer are they the inward-looking anti-Zionists who only cared that the government provide them with money for their separate schools, welfare and exemptions from military service. These days, many of the Haredim – the word means “those who tremble” in awe of God” – have joined with right-wing religious Zionists to become a powerful political force.

They now are equipped to redefine the country's politics and to set a new agenda.

Two decades ago, they were confined mostly to a few neighbourhoods in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Today, they have spread throughout the country, in substantial numbers in several major communities, as well as building completely new towns only for their followers.

One Haredi leader who almost won Jerusalem's mayoralty race last fall, boasts that, within 20 years, the ultra-Orthodox will control the municipal government of every city in the country. And why not? Of the Jewish Israeli children entering primary school for the first time this month, more than 25 per cent are Haredi, and that proportion will keep growing. There are between 600,000 and 700,000 Haredim in Israel, and they average 8.8 children a family.

A decade ago, there were almost no Haredim in the West Bank settlements. Today, the two largest settlements are entirely ultra-Orthodox, and the Haredim are about a third of the almost 300,000 settlers.

Now that they have tightened the rules on who can be a Jew and have forced the public bus company to provide gender-segregated buses in many communities, a discouraged secular community is starting to emigrate.

Nehemia Shtrasler, a business and political columnist for the Haaretz newspaper, wrote this summer that the country is risking destruction. “We will survive the conflict with the Palestinians and even the nuclear threats from Iran,” he wrote. “But the increasing rupture between the secular and ultra-Orthodox communities in Israel will be the end of us.” Mr. Shtrasler said: “It's a struggle between two contradictory worldviews that cannot exist side by side.

[. . .]

Violence has become so widespread that there are Haredi communities where the police won't go. This summer, a police car was torched and several officers injured when attacked by a rock-throwing mob, when the police responded to a call for help.

It's upsetting to many Israelis, such as the columnist Nehemia Shtrasler, but when Haredi neighbourhoods become no-go zones for authorities, and when people must think twice before opening a private business on the Sabbath, the violence is having its desired effect.

And, as the Haredi community expands and finds government funding harder to come by, growing numbers of Haredi women and men will be compelled to enter the work force. The impact of that, says Prof. Ben Yehuda, is that businesses and workplaces will be forced to comply with the religious demands of their new workers.

Already, he said, in high-tech workplaces, where many Haredim work, the offices are segregated and cafeteria food is kosher.

Even in the Israel Defence Forces, the Haredim are having an effect. An exclusive Haredi battalion has been created, to accommodate a growing number of ultra-Orthodox who want to serve.

In other battalions, religious Zionists have refused to ride in military vehicles driven by women. Their demands have reportedly been met.

With the demographic shift in favour of the Haredim only going up, those in the private sector, government and the military who decline to accommodate Haredi demands will become fewer and fewer.

And with growing numbers of Haredim in West Bank settlements, Israel's conflict with the Palestinians takes on an increasingly religious fervour.

The reason that I ask is that this sounds all too much like the rhetoric behind Eurabia, but the demographics described do sound very much like the actual facts so I'm perplexed. Thoughts?

[LINK] "Nobel Prize in Physics Goes to 'Masters of Light'"

As an avid photographer, I'm especially pleased that a Canadian, Willard Boyle, along with his American partner George E. Smith, has won the Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention of the charge-coupled device.

Willard Boyle and George E. Smith, researchers at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, will each receive a quarter of the ten-million-Swedish-kronor (1.4-million-U.S. dollar) 2009 Nobel Prize in physics.

Canada-born Boyle and Smith, a U.S. native, invented a sensor for capturing digital images

[. . .]

Boyle and Smith say they invented the CCD in a flash of insight on October 19, 1969, sketching out the basic design quickly during a brainstorming session.

A CCD uses semiconductors—the same kind of materials as computer chips—to capture light and turn it into an electric signal.

This phenomenon, called the photoelectric effect, was first theorized by Albert Einstein, earning him the 1921 Nobel Prize in physics.

"We are the ones, I guess, who started this whole profusion of little cameras all over the world," Boyle said in a live online video this morning—a technology his Nobel Prize-winning physics discoveries helped make possible.

"They were actually trying to invent a new kind of [electronic] memory," said Joseph Nordgren, chairman of the Nobel Committee for physics, also in a live online video this morning.

"But in doing that, they soon realized that they had an image sensor that worked perfectly well."

I could blog about how Boyle left Canada in order to fulfill his promise and wonder about the health of Canada's indigenous science sector, but that's a discussion for another day.