[PHOTO] Me in October

Me in October
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

It was time.

[LINK] Some Friday links

• Far Outliers takes a look at the syncretism that marked the Jews of Ottoman-era Salonica.
  
• Lawyers, Guns and Money's Dave Brockington is perplexed by the British Conservatives' erratic and unproductive policies on Europe, and also makes the point that Democratic defeats in recent elections and referenda in the United States have to do with key components of Obama's coalition like the young and minorities not turning out.


• Noel Maurer writes about the long-term impact of financial crises on trend economic growth.


• J. Otto Pohl blogs about the man responsible for the creation of Kyrgyzstan back in the 1920s.


• Passing Strangeness explores the mystery of what, exactly, the early 16th century infectious English Sweate actually was.


• Slap Upside the Head lets us know that children's publisher Scholastic censored a book featuring lesbian parents, and reports on the happy enws that the United States now allows HIV-positive visitors within its borders.


• Will Baird at the Dragon's Tales reports on a new initiative on Guamanian statehood.


• The Voloh Conspiracy's Ilya Somin makes the obvious point that Leon Trotsky was an evil, evil man.


• Window on Eurasia blogs about the transformation of identities among Daghestani migrants in Russian cities and the prevalence of nationalism ahead of religion as an anti-Russian force in the North Caucasus.

[LINK] "How to defend Michael Bryant"

In the Globe and Mail, veteran crime reporter Kirk Makin examines the likely defense strategies of Michael Bryant, charged in a bizarre Bloor Street West incident wherein an attacking cyclist died.

Will fingerprints or blood spatter found in Mr. Bryant's car crack the case wide open? Will a judge or jury subconsciously favour a charismatic politician over a grubby bike courier? Will psychiatric experts testify what was in Mr. Bryant's mind – murderous rage or sheer panic – when he tore across Bloor Street with Mr. Sheppard allegedly cleaving to the side of his Saab?

Based on the available evidence, many believe that the scales of justice tilt in Mr. Bryant's favour.

“It is going to come down to one or two key pieces of fact – probably things that nobody could see before – that will jump out and become the turning point,” said criminal lawyer Robert Rotenberg.

“I suspect the key thing is going to be what the cyclist said or did in those first few seconds,” said Mr. Rotenberg, also the author of the crime novel Old City Hall . “If he said or did something that could justify what happened … then I think Bryant is almost home free.”

One thing is sure. With a top B.C. lawyer – Richard Peck – running the prosecution, and a young star, Marie Henein, anchoring the defence team, the legal community expects nothing less than tactical brilliance. The Crown needs to prove that Mr. Bryant displayed “disproportionate force and extreme road rage,” Toronto defence counsel Steven Skurka said. “But the risk is being seen as needlessly prosecuting an innocent man.”

Mr. Skurka reasoned that the defence has the upper hand, since it need only show that Mr. Bryant was in mortal fear for his life: “For the defence, the daunting pressure is to lose a monumental case that surely deserved to be won,” he said.

Eyewitnesses who saw the tragedy unfold will likely play a modest role in the trial, since perceptions are often unreliable and memories are inherently faulty. Civilian witnesses are notoriously bad on things like speed, time and distance, many lawyers believe.

Forensic evidence, on the other hand, is the evidentiary gold standard. Accident reconstruction experts, for example, can use skid marks and vehicle impressions left on the mailbox and tree to show the speed and path of Mr. Bryant's car. Their findings may shed valuable light on whether or not Mr. Bryant was in control of the vehicle.

Most important, fingerprint experts will try to pinpoint every place Mr. Sheppard touched on the car. Should it turn out that he gripped the steering wheel – whether in panic or in fury – the defence stands a strong chance of persuading a jury that Mr. Sheppard inadvertently steered himself to his own death.

“The closer you get prints on the inside of the car, the more the pendulum of self-defence swings in Michael Bryant's favour,” Mr. Skurka said.

[DM] "A brief note on the problems facing the Canadian guest worker program" and something else

I've two posts up at Demography Matters, the first on the problems facing Canada's guest worker system and its problems, the second linking to a report on the problems facing the Atlantic Canadian economy with its aging and shrinking workforce.

[LINK] Some Yorkshire Ranter links

I've neglected this perennially insightful and provocative blog shamefully. Let me make up for it.

• Libertarianism is criticized on the grounds that its basic principles are mistaken: the state is not completely illegitimate, but actually can be quite functional and legitimate.


• He doesn't like geoengineering on the grounds that it introduces more variable into an already erratic global climate system.


• Are many Republicans driven by the fear of external disapproval?


• Ever want to engage in social networking while you're isolated? Like in an isolation tank?

[LINK] "Spanish company plans hotel in space but cost will be astronomical"

As if the trembling Spanish economy wasn't already catastrophically overdependent on real estate, a Spanish company now wants to build a hotel in Earth orbit.

The new breed of tourists will see the Sun rise 80 times during their stay, the Spanish tour operator says, but it admits that the bill for the journey of a lifetime will be an astronomical £2.7 million.

According to Galactic Suite Space Resort, would-be stargazers are already queuing up to don their spacesuits, with more than 200 people having expressed an interest and 43 made reservations.

If the project has something of a Trekkie fantasy about it, it is because it started life as a hobby for Xavier Claramunt, a space enthusiast and chief operating officer of Galactic Suite. A former aerospace engineer, Mr Claramunt says that his company is at the forefront of the emerging industry of space tourism. “It is normal to think that your children, perhaps within 15 years, could spend a week in space,” he insists.

To beat the awkward effects of weightlessness, Galactic Suite plans to dress its guests in Velcro suits, allowing them to stick to the spacecraft walls. A single pod, accommodating four paying guests and two astronauts, will be in orbit 280 miles above the Earth, circling the planet at 30,000km (19,000mph) an hour.

It will take a day-and-a-half to reach the space pod, Mr Claramunt said. “When the passengers arrive in the rocket, [the astronauts] will join it for three days, rocket and capsule. With this we create in the tourist a confidence that he hasn’t been abandoned,” he said.

Mr Claramunt says that a mystery billionaire has financed the €3 billion (£2.5 billion) project. An insider at the Spanish Technical Centre for the Aeronautical and Space Industry, said that the company had underestimated the cost of the project, with a suborbital shuttle alone costing €1 billion.

[BRIEF NOTE] On republicanism in Australia and Canada

Mart Regg Cohn, a deputy editor for the Toronto Star, blames the Australians for the likelihood that Canada will retain the British monarchy, more specifically on the failure of the 1999 referendum in that country on establishing a republic.

Two-thirds of Australians told pollsters they wanted to bid adieu to Her Majesty. They just couldn't agree on how to do it – and got bogged down in a bitter, self-defeating fight over what would replace the monarchy.

Too bad, because if Australia had seen the light, New Zealand would surely have followed. And Canada might one day have joined them.

But Australians blew it. And any Canadian republican movement would almost certainly implode, falling victim to the same loaded question:

How would we choose Canada's next head of state?

In Australia, mainstream republicans wisely opted to avoid any drastic constitutional surgery. Under their existing rules (and ours), the governor general is appointed by the Queen on the recommendation of the prime minister; the republicans merely tweaked that tradition by proposing any future head of state be elected by a two-thirds vote of Parliament.

But dissident republicans – aided and abetted by the monarchists – cried foul, insisting that a future head of state be elected directly by the people, much like an American or French president. That has an obvious populist appeal, but would radically alter the constitutional balance of power – for once a president has a direct mandate from the people, he will never content himself with being a figurehead. And that's a recipe for gridlock.

Australia's monarchists seized on these internal divisions to split the anti-monarchist vote, shrewdly pressing the buttons of republican populists. Rather than defend Queen Elizabeth, or rebut the rhetoric that made Prince Charles the butt of popular jokes, the monarchists attacked the mainstream republicans as elitists who wanted to appoint "one of their own" political hacks as president.

"If you want to vote for the president ... Vote No to the Politicians' Republic," proclaimed the hardball advertisements that played on public antipathy toward MPs. "The president won't be one of us, but one of them – a politician."

Much like the defeat of the Charlottetown accord in Canada, the Australian referendum unravelled thanks to an unlikely coalition of "antis" – elitist monarchists and republican populists.

Although Australian republicanism seems to be marked by Catholic-Protestant divides, the Catholics originally of Irish descent supporting the republic and the Protestants retaining their loyalty to the Crown, and urban areas tending to favour republicanism in contrast to rural ones, those divisions in a fairly homogeneous Australian federation are nothing compared to Canada's own internal divides, with the language division alone complicated by geography and the very separate histories--and interpretations of those histories--of the different federal units. In Canada, I'll additionally note, the idea of wide-ranging constitutional reform--because you know that such a big chance would act as a trigger--is decidedly unpopular, as ambivalent as Québec might be towards the monarchy. Would powers be disiirbuted in the same way as before? and what might the provinces and parties try to grab? As important as Canadian national identity might be, would it be worth so much fuss for what would at first seem like little change, the exchange of the Governor-General for a President? Let alone other burning political issues of the day.

The Sydney Morning Herald recently came out with an editorial supporting an Australian republic, in the wake of a proposal by Australia's Green Party. Moderate, considered, to me it points the way to Australia's transition to a republic of one sort or another.

Australian republicanism is not an act of disloyalty to the monarch, though many clearly see it that way. The Queen and her successors will still be head of the Commonwealth, of which Australia is a member.

Nor should a referendum or plebiscite be a popularity context by proxy for her or others in the royal family. Whether Charles is an able head of state - as he may well be - is a matter for Britain, not Australia. For Australians, the question is - as it has always been - should an Australian be Australia's head of state? The answer, clearly, is yes.

It is time to end the present anomaly of a foreign head of state, and the enforced national immaturity it symbolises. It is time to start on the groundwork towards a republic. The Greens' proposal for a plebiscite on the issue at the next federal election deserves support.

But Canada? As attractive-sounding as "Republic of Canada" and "République du Canada" sound, the confusion and disarray evidenced in Australia's case a decade ago would only be magnified in the case of its North American Commonwealth counterpart. We might have to wait for the United Kingdom itself to junk the institution.