[PHOTO] An archaicism

The payphones in subway stations, like this one in Dufferin, are the only payphones I can remember having seen anywhere in Toronto. Gone so thoroughly, they are.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• At A Fistful of Euros, Edward Hugh is resigned to ongoing instability in the Eurozone's economy this year.


• The immigration of Afrikaner farmers to Georgia, according to Eastern approaches, is actually occurring.


• At Lawyers, Guns and Money, Robert Farley is scathing towards an ill-judged editorial at The New Republic calling for an untenable very partial military intervention in Syria.


• Marginal Revolution wonders why more Americans aren't moving to booming western Canada.


• At The Naked Anthropologist, Laura Agustín reproduces a 2003 article arguing that rhwtoric on migration that assumes migrants' weakness is flawed.


• The Population Reference Bureau's blog notes that improvements in sex ratios at birth in Indian states have stagnated for the time being.


• Anatoly Karlin's post at Sublime Oblivion is extended examination (translated from another's post in Russian) describing how rising fertility, falling mortality, and net migration has helped Russian population growth return to positive territory.


• At Torontoist, Patrick Metzger points out that Ontario's upcoming budget isn't going to be politically fun for everyone. Either McGuinty angers the electorate with an austerity budget or he lets things slide and our economy collapses. (Or both?)

[LINK] "The Mounting Minuses at Google+"

Amir Efrati's Wall Street Journal article chronicling the massive problem Google is havng in getting people to use its Google+ social networking system rings personally true. Last night was the first time I'd visited my profile there for any length of time in two, even three months.

To hear Google Inc. Chief Executive Larry Page tell it, Google+ has become a robust competitor in the social networking space, with 90 million users registering since its June launch.

But those numbers mask what's really going on at Google+.

Google+ is a virtual ghost town compared with Facebook. PC users spent an average of about three minutes a month on Google+ between last September and January, versus six to seven hours on Facebook. Scott Austin has details on The News Hub. Photo: AP

It turns out Google+ is a virtual ghost town compared with the site of rival Facebook Inc., which is preparing for a massive initial public offering. New data from research firm comScore Inc. shows that Google+ users are signing up—but then not doing much there.

Visitors using personal computers spent an average of about three minutes a month on Google+ between September and January, versus six to seven hours on Facebook each month over the same period, according to comScore, which didn't have data on mobile usage.

[. . .]

When Google+ launched last year, the Internet search giant positioned it as a Facebook competitor where people can share comments, articles, photos and videos with specific groups of friends and contacts.

While Google+ has some original features—including "Hangouts," which lets people start a video conference with up to 10 people—analysts and some consumers say the distinction isn't enough to lure Facebook members away and persuade them to build a network of contacts from scratch on Google+.

"Nobody wants another social network right now," said Brian Solis, an analyst at social-media advisory firm Altimeter Group. For those who already use Facebook, "Google hasn't communicated what the value of Google+ is," he said.

Granted that I use Google+ more than I use LinkedIn--I visited my profile there for the first time in at least six months--I still don't have any clear idea as to what Google's social network does. The best I myself can say is that my friends at Google+ are disproportionately non-heterosexual, to whatever kind and degree, but that sampling effect is the only way Google+ stands out to me.

Ideas, people?

[LINK] "Robocalls phone number registered to 'Pierre Poutine'"

Don't you miss the days when people committng nefarious deeds would at least try to be sneaky? I miss that kind of respect.

A telephone number used to place automated calls directing voters to the wrong polling station in Guelph, Ont., in the last federal election was registered to a "Pierre Poutine" of Separatist Street, Joliette, Que., court documents reveal.

The documents also show a link between the national Conservative campaign to the call centre through which the automated calls were made.

The documents were sworn by an Elections Canada investigator and filed in Edmonton court to get a production order for Racknine, the call centre used to make the robocalls. A production order requires documents to be made available to law enforcement officials within a specified time.

The allegations contained in the document have not been tested in court.

The investigator is looking into allegations somebody claiming to be from Elections Canada telephoned people in Guelph and falsely told them their polling stations had moved.

Records obtained from Bell Canada "identified the phone 450-760-7746 subscriber as 'Pierre Poutine of Separatist Street, Joliette, Que.'," according to the sworn production order.

That number, which belongs to a disposable cellphone, appeared on the call display of voters who received the incorrect polling station information.

[. . .]

The documents show Elections Canada is investigating whether somebody wilfully prevented or tried to prevent electors from voting, or whether somebody tried to persuade voters not to vote for a particular candidate. Both are offences under the Elections Act.

Someone using phone numbers of Marty Burke's Conservative campaign in Guelph called Racknine 31 times between March 26 and May 5, 2011, indicating his campaign used the company's services, the documents say. But there is no expense listed for Racknine in the expenses filed by Burke's campaign team.

Burke filed $87,361.60 in expenses, investigator Allan Mathews notes.

"The return does list [two] other, Ontario-based service providers whose business includes voice-broadcasting services and other telephone work; Campaign Research at $6,215.00 and RMG [Responsive Marketing Group] at $15,000.00," Mathews says in the filing.

Payments to those companies are consistent with the number of people he interviewed who reported "repeated campaign and voter survey survey calls from the Burke campaign," Mathews notes.

[LNK] "Allegations unprecedented, ex-elections chief says"

Ths Ottawa Citizen article is, well. Thanks to james_nicoll for digging up the link.

Canada's former chief electoral officer says recent allegations of systematic voter-suppression phone calls are unprecedented in the country's electoral history.

"We have never seen anything like this alleged case in terms of this potential organization and impact in terms of numbers," says Jean-Pierre Kingsley, Canada's chief electoral officer from 1990 to 2007. "People vote twice, people destroy the signs, but this automated means and this use of call centres is the first time the allegations go as far as they are going. They're serious."

Last week's Postmedia News-Ottawa Citizen investigation revealed evidence of fraudulent pre-recorded phone calls made during the May federal election in the riding of Guelph through services provided by the Edmonton-based voice-broadcast company RackNine Inc. Further developments in the story suggest that harassing live phone calls were made by callers posing as Liberal candidates in swing ridings. The Toronto Star reported Feb. 27 that more live phone calls had been made in the Thunder Bay area, with callers phoning on behalf of the Conservative Party to alert voters of purported poll location changes.

Kingsley says all three cases deal with the same violation of the Canadian Elections Act. Section 482(b) of the act finds anyone who "induces a person to vote or refrain from voting or to vote or refrain from voting for a particular candidate at an election" guilty of intimidation of the electoral process.

Whether the calls were pre-recorded or live is irrelevant, argues Kingsley. He says the harassing phone calls are serious and violate the constitution.

"If someone is representing themselves to be Elections Canada, giving false information, changing the polls, and the purpose is to confuse electors to the extent that you're attempting to discourage them from voting, then that is against the statute, in my view," says Kingsley. "This is not small potatoes because what you are trying to do is interfere with the right of Canadians to vote and that is a constitutional right in Canada."

Regardless of whether they work independently, for a political party, or for voice-broadcasting company, anyone convicted under Section 482(b) faces, on a summary conviction, a maximum $2,000 fine, or a maximum of one year in prison, or both. On an indictment, individuals found guilty face a maximum of five years in prison, a maximum $5,000 fine, or both.

However, Jack Siegel, a Toronto-based lawyer who practises election and political law, says the chances of indictment are slim to none, assuming the file even reaches the courts.

"After 25 years of practising law I've seen two or three files hands on where choice was to be made and every case was summary," says Siegel.

Last November, the Conservative Fund was fined $52,000 by the Elections Act for breaking election laws. Siegel says the fact that the case took the summary route is probably a good indication that, if the allegations of the harassing phone calls went to court, they would follow a similar path. However, he also notes that the direction of the case is ultimately decided by the prosecutor.