[PHOTO] Sir Isaac Brock Bridge, Bathurst Street, April 2012

The bridge that connects the section of Bathurst Street south of Fort York to the section north of the railway was renamed in 2007 after War of 1812 hero Sir Isaac Brock.

It's architecturally unadventurous, and in 2009--as Spacing Toronto and Torontoist document--there was some push to build something more adventurous. Nothing has come of this push recently, though, and so the old bridge remains.

[LINK] "New insect species identified through Flickr"

No species discovered via my Flickr account yet, alas.

In May last year, photographer Guek Hock Ping took photos of a lacewing in Malaysia and posted them on photo-sharing site Flickr. Entomologist Shaun Winterton stumbled upon the gallery, and didn't recognize the distinct blue and black markings found on the insect's wings. After sending the link to colleagues, who were also unable to identify the insect, Winterton became convinced that the photographed specimen was from a species unknown to science. Winterton reached out to Guek but was dismayed to discover that the photographer had no more information on the species — he'd simply shot the photographs and allowed the insect to fly away.

A year later, Guek contacted Winterton — after returning to the same area where the original images were shot, he'd managed to find the elusive creature again and had captured one, which sat in a container in his kitchen. Winterton arranged for the insect to be sent to Steve Brooks, an entomologist from the Natural History Museum in London, who confirmed that it belonged to a new species. Brooks also found a matching specimen in the museum's collection that had remained unclassified for decades. The species was named 'Semachrysa jade,' after Winterton's daughter, and the discovery was featured in scientific journal ZooKeys this month. Fittingly, the paper detailing the 'online' discovery was co-authored remotely via GoogleDocs by Winterton, Guek, and Brooks.

Semachrysta jade
is a handsome insect.

[LINK] "Facebook page calls for American-only hours at U.S. Costco"

CBC British Columbia's report about the unhappiness of some Americans in the border city of Bellingham with Canadian shoppers taking over their Costco is thought provoking.

It's a bit difficult for me to imagine the "ugly Canadian", but that's clearly a failure on my part.

Many Canadians are taking advantage of the high Canadian dollar by shopping across the border — with cheap milk and gas being two of the big draws — but some Americans are fed up with the cross-border crowd.

Some Bellingham, Wash., residents started a Facebook page calling for American-only hours at the local Costco.

On the Facebook page "Bellingham Costco needs a special time just for Americans," residents write they have seen flats of milk stripped away in seconds.

Some write they have to wait in long lines at the Costco gas station as Canadians fill up first their cars, and then their gas cans.

Some Bellingham, Wa., residents are fed up with British Columbians that are crowding the local Costco, and parking badly in the store's lot.

Others have posted photos of cars with B.C. licence plates that take up more than one parking space.

Some just complain about Canadians being rude.

Ken Oplinger, president of the Bellingham/Whatcom Chamber of Commerce, is urging locals to have patience for their Canadian visitors. Without them, he says, the living situation in the city and county would be quite different.

"In the last two years, our sales tax generation has doubled or tripled the pace in the rest of the state, and it's almost entirely because of the Canadians coming south," he said.

The administrator of the Facebook page, which had over 2,000 "Likes" as of Sunday, posted a message earlier this week telling Canadians they are not being blamed.

"To our Canadian friends on here that think we hate you: You have to look at the root of the problem. Bellingham has laws that keep big box companies from expanding. The overcrowding in this small, slow paced town has agitated people," the note said.

[DM] "On demographics as only one starting point"

I've a post up at Demography Matters that tries to make the point that while a given polity's demographics do play a very significant role in its economic future, demographics are far from being the only factor involved and certainly aren't the determinative ones.

[LINK] suitablyemoname on how to draw (badly or otherwise) elec

Inspired by the upcoming redistricting of federal electoral ridings based on the results of the last census, suitablyemoname has a nice post explaining how not to create electoral districts which fairly represent a given population. Wonderful maps play a role.



In successive maps, he shows the results of packing (concentrating voters for one party in a single district), cracking (scattering said voters throughout multiple districts), and plain old gerrymandering. These don't form good districts; electoral maps looking like this harm democracy.

How do you form good districts? suitablyemoname has a shortlist of characteristics.

A good district has three characteristics.

It is compact. The smaller and neater a district is, the less likely it has been gerrymandered or cracked. As districts get more twisted and elongated, it becomes more and more likely that they have been tailor-made to crack, pack or favour one party's chances.

It is competitive. We want as many voters as possible to have as much of a say as possible about who represents them. If every district is regularly won by a large majority of the vote, then voters don't have any meaningful choices: if you're opposed to the incumbent party, too bad. Your vote is basically meaningless. When districts are more competitive, voters have much more power over their representatives, and representatives are more accountable to voters.

It is sensible. The district borders run along obvious geographic features: a major highway, a river bed, a county or municipal border, etc. By relying upon these geographic features, it becomes much more difficult to crack, or gerrymander the districts.