[PHOTO] Store, Hallam and Concord

Store, Hallam and Concord
Originally uploaded by randyfmcdonald

One of my New Year's Day shots in my neighbourhood, this store at Hallam and Concord looks abandoned, with its grated dirty windows and its tattered and stained awning. The grunge is palpable.

(And on an entirely unrelated note, yes, I know that I made a typo in my previous point. It's all better now; you can go back.)

[META] Blogroll update

Three new blogs for the blogroll for the New Year!

• Francesca Elston's self-titled blog is an interesting one, where she writes "about how systems of people work". (Thanks for the link, nwhyte.) One good post is one where she reveals herself to be profoundly skeptical of Twitter's contributions to informed dialogue.


• io9 is a group blog concerned with all matters science and science-fictional and geekdom. Paul Gilster's post wondering if a near-extinction event with an asteroid would spur space travel and colonization is good.


• Flickr's Jen Tse has a photoblog, pencilprism. She does good stuff, like her photo of a Spadina Avenue Chinatown butcher's shop and how she reacts to Chinese food's omnivorousness generally.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Beyond the Beyond's Bruce Sterling argues that Japanese industry's tendency to keep all manufacturing in-house, instead of outsourcing it out to competitive sub-manufacturers, might help quality but is also going to be a palpable problem for Japanese industry's long-term viability.


• The Burgh Diaspora catalogues the efforts of New Zealand and Ohio to reverse long-standing patterns of outmigration, arguing that promoting migration is better than trying to keep people locked up.


• Daniel Drezner wonders if Japan, given its demographic reality and future, is aiming for a sort of voluntary human extinction future.


• Rob Pitingolo at Extraordinary Observations points out that it's good when people complain about mass transit, or at least better than when they give up on it entirely.


• At GNXP, Razib Khan goes into detail about theories that the Sahara was much more pleasant than at present and a possible route for human migration.


• There's a nice Lawyers, Guns and Money review of the book Small Wars, both a good book of fiction and a nice examination of the dynamics of low-level conflict.


• At Normblog, Norman Geras shows that people in British-derived parliamentary systems have problems with the legitimacy of coalition governments, in the United Kingdom as in Canada.


• Savage Minds' Kerrin argues that the separation between science and humanist paradigms is splitting, and that a rigourous holistic approach is emerging.


• Anatoly Karlin at Sublime Oblivion has a review of the past year where he highlights some of the most notable trends, form the emergence of notable regional and global powers like Turkey and Brazil, China's impending hegemony, the collapse of neo-liberalism in Europe and its replacement by state-directed capitalisms, and the importance of WikiLeaks.


• In Barcelona, there are plans afoot to build a memorial to persecuted queers, possibly outside the famous Sagrada Familia church of Gaudi.
  
• Understanding Society's Daniel Little has an interesting analysis of the success (partial, perhaps) of the Communist Party in governing the state of West Bengal, and the model's non-portability.


• Windows on Eurasia wonders if the Ukrainian government is trying to suppress the autonomous Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which operates outside of Moscow's control.

[H&F] "In Defense of Vacation"

My History and Futility co-blogger The Oberamtmann has a worthwhile post about the importance of vacations, wondering why more Americans don't take advantage of them.

Year after year I see magazine articles, newspaper editorials, and so on exclaiming about how Americans do not work to live but live to work. Yet it does not improve; if anything, it only gets worse. The reason we should have vacations, including at least one two-week vacation a year with days off throughout the rest, is because we are human. I want to enjoy my life, and so do you. This is not a paean to idleness. It is a reminder that while American workers contribute to the economic majesty that is the modern United States economy, horribly disfigured warts and all, they do not get to enjoy as much of it as you would think because they are in their cubicles. Americans may make more, on average, than their European, vacationed counterparts, but a) that is a misnomer as it ignores the wider earnings disparity in America and b) is likely largely lost in the extra time spent at work. Money does not buy happiness. If it did, it would not matter. You’re never home to enjoy your 3D-TV anyway.

There are national benefits to vacations beyond productivity which may or may not be improved through vacations. Vacations lower stress. How much lower would American health care costs be if workers took vacations? Better blood pressures, fewer heart attacks, etc. Has anyone examined how much money Americans would save on health costs if they all took just five to ten more days of vacation per year? Call it the margarita effect.

But why do we have to justify vacations and other benefits to workers through economic benefits? We could simply say “vacations make people happier” but instead we propose it as “encouraging vacations make employees more loyal.” This only perpetuates the idea that everything must have an economic basis. Social, too. Vacations mean more time spent with families. Might more unbroken American families, which currently usually have two overworked parents, remain together if not for the stress of conflicting schedules? Long-term planning and compromise function best when there is time to sit and think. “Family” political candidates should think about the benefits children would receive from the additional parental attention.

Go, read.

[LINK] "Everything's Better and Nobody's Happy"

absinthe_dot_ca recommended an interesting video, part of an exchange that American comedian Louis C.K. had with Conan O'Brien. He points out something noteworthy, something I've been talking about: our world is full of miracles, but we're not satisfied with it.

Watch on YouTube

[URBAN NOTE] Two Toronto Public Library notes

Two articles on Toronto's excellent--famed, even--public library system appeared. Each undermined the other.

Torontoist's Hamutal Dotan observed that the system will be facing severe cuts indeed. Not only the Urban Affairs branch at Metro Hall downtown will be closed, depriving neighbourhood residents of a convenient place to pick up books, but acquisitions are going to be hit. The only hope is that the city government won't approve these cuts.

The acquisitions budget—which is what pays for new book, periodical, and other item purchases each year—will not see an "economic" (i.e. inflationary) increase, meaning that the library will be able to purchase eighteen thousand fewer items this year than last, since books will cost more this year than last due to annual increases. An additional reduction has been requested by City staff, which would further reduce book purchases by another twenty-three thousand volumes. TPL staff is recommending that the library board accept the inflationary freeze but not the additional cut; their report to the library board states that "[t]his would result in longer wait times for popular materials, lower customer satisfaction, and may result in 305,000 fewer books borrowed."

Meanwhile, at the Toronto Star Vanessa Lu's article "Toronto's library system adapting to modern needs made the point that the system was a roaring success, as a source and as a public place where Torontonians can meet.

While Rob Ford is considering cutting the library budget and even closing one branch, Toronto’s libraries are experiencing a renaissance. Branches are not only bridging the digital divide, but are adapting to become more welcoming spaces, which staffers like to describe as “the city’s living room.”

Gone are the days of librarians shushing people. Now people can drink and eat in the branch. Comfy chairs are a must. Some branches even feature fireplaces; outdoor reading areas are being added to others.

In renovated branches, desks have lots of electrical outlets to accommodate laptops. Televisions are cropping up so people can watch everything from World Cup soccer games to the latest breaking news.

The library is no longer just a place to borrow books. People get audio books, DVDs and downloadable e-books. Gaming programs to lure youth into branches are also being considered.

[. . .]

City librarian Jane Pyper says people like to be around other people.

“People want to be alone together. They come to the library,” she said. “They are actually seeking out in an individual pursuit, but they still want to be in a room with other people, where they can look up and be distracted on occasion.”

Plus Pyper believes increasingly there is less space in Toronto, “whether that’s at home or the workplace or in other public spaces

[URBAN NOTE] Why light rail, even without the romance of subways, is the way to go for Toronto

There's a science fiction short story, "The Return of William Proxmire" by Larry Niven, that has a time traveller making a future that's the opposite of what he wanted. In the story, the Wisconsin senator of the title went back in time to cure Robert Heinlein of his tuberculosis, keep him in the military and away from science fiction, reducing support for space exploration, and thus eliminate a major source of wasteful spending. Unintended consequences occur--other writers take Heinlein's place and are even more successful, Proxmire's own career is marginalized, and this world is one where space travel and colonization is far more advanced in our own history.

(Let me just note that I think this story is considerably unfair to Proxmire, by all accounts a popular and competent representative of his state whose priorities just didn't match up with others.')

Right now, theTransit City program whereby mass transit within Toronto and with the suburbs will be improved particularly via the construction of light rail routes integrated with existing networks, is strongly opposed by mayor Rob Ford. He doesn't like the streetcars which are present throughout the downtown, and he--like others, to be fair--assimilate light rail routes to streetcars. His solution? Building subways. eye weekly's Edward Keenan is quite unimpressed with Ford's plan for multiple reasons.

As policy, the mayor’s actions have been almost crazy. Alternatives for transit building have been considered by our best minds over the past decade. The consensus—at city hall, at the TTC, at the province’s Metrolinx agency, in the halls of academia—is that light rail is the best way to serve the most people, given the money at hand. The mayor’s subway-building scheme would serve a small area of Scarborough and cost vastly more than the entire Transit City network, which would span the whole city. For a moment, forget capital costs and consider only the year-over-year expense of running Ford’s proposed Sheppard subway. According to the back of my napkin, it would create a shortfall of at least $50 million a year for the next two to three decades.

“People prefer subways,” the mayor says, a phrase that acts as the introduction, thesis, proof and conclusion of his policy argument. Which is fine: I prefer to eat at Canoe, the famously luxurious restaurant atop the TD Centre. But if I pursued a policy of only eating at Canoe, my family would starve.

Still, even if money were not a factor, the mayor simply does not have the authority to dictate transit policy. Building subways, or streetcar lines, is a complicated business, and one that is the primary responsibility of the Toronto Transit Commission, Metrolinx (the regional transit coordination body), and the provincial government.

Of course, it isn’t just the transit players involved. The mayor has no authority to accomplish anything, really, by proclamation. If he wants to set transit policy (or even appoint the transit commissioners who set policy), he needs the approval of city council, which he may or may not get. Ford claims he didn’t get a vote on Transit City in the first place, so he sees no need to hold a vote on killing it. But the Toronto Transit Commission certainly formulated Transit City, and council records show that on July 16, 2007, Rob Ford joined the rest of city council in unanimously approving the initiation of it. He voted for light rail. Now that he’s changed his mind, he’ll need to put that to a vote, too.

The thing is, there are significant differences. For instance, this author notes that a key difference is that light rail routes have right-of-way over traffic and that, outside of downtowns, they've fewer stop than streetcar routes. In another article, NOW Toronto suggested that light rail occupies a middle ground between buses and subways. transporting more people for proportionally the same cost as for buses more efficiently per-kilometre and per-million dollars than somewhat higher-capacity subways. Yet, the distinction's not made. Andrew Barton wondered in an amusing post that, if Rob Ford went back in time to abort a pro-streetcar movement in the 1960s and get them off the streets by 1980, the distinction would be made, that Transit City wouldn't face nearly the same amount of opposition, and that light rail would be ubiquitous.

I actually share Ford's strong preference for subways. For me, the romance of the subway is undeniable, my first trips making me think of a wormhole nexus in space, compressing distances between points and letting a community form that much more easily. More subways, increasing density along their routes and helping to knit together a worryingly fragmented city--remember the "Three Torontos" paradigm--would be wonderful. But still, Toronto's not going to see that amount of densification, with even the Sheppard line in northern Toronto carrying--well--about as many people as a light rail network. Outside perhaps the exception of the Downtown Relief Line, light rail is probably the best system for Toronto, a system allowing for relatively little spending and fairly high returns notwithstanding its lack of romance. Will Ford succeed in changing plans? Maybe, although maybe more likely wrecking the project entirely than shifting systems. Argh.