[PHOTO] Royal Bank Plaza, looking up

The gold-impregnated windows of the Royal Bank Plaza's showpiece tower at Front and Bay stand out.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Dan Hirschman, at A (Budding) Sociologist's Commonplace Blog, wonders about sociological studies of dying fields and institutions. He raises the example of the card game bridge.


• Far Outliers has a variety of links--1, 2, 3--describing how the Black Sea city of Odessa, in southern Ukraine, was in the 19th century a booming metropolis comparable in many ways to America's Chicago.


• Language Hat tackles the possible impending breakthroughs surrounding the decryption of proto-Elamite cuneiform.


• At Lawyers, Guns and Money, Robert Farley has no truck with The Nation's argument that Middle Eastern dictatorships depended critically on American support. Many didn't; many of the ones being threatened opposed the United States strongly. Cf Libya.
  
• Not Rocket Science's Ed Yong reflects on newly-published studies of old recordings demonstrating that a beluga whale held in captivity was actively trying to mimic human speech.


• Itching for Eestimaa's Guistino reflects on the Estonian-Finnish relationship, close but with undercurrents of conflict.


• Marginal Revolution's Alex Tabarrok links to a Slate article noting how an unlikely mutation to let humans metabolize milk became wide-spread. The commenters suggest that mutations which allow people to metabolize milk helps maximize the caloric value of cows, at least compared to slaughtering them outright.


• Normblog links to an article by Iranian expatriate Roya Hoyakian noting how Iran's revolution quickly led to institutionalized misogyny, and warning that there are signs of this also occurring in the countries changed by the Arab Spring's revolution.


• Torontoist's Steve Kupferman wonders about the effectiveness and utility of The Globe and Mail's new paywall, soon to be adopted by the other major Toronto dailies.


• The Volokh Conspiracy's David Kopel makes a fair point in pointing out that Syria is Iran's access to the sea--the Mediterranean Sea, at least.


• Zero Geography determines the dominant language used for Wikipedia articles for different countries. English is globally dominant, unsurprisingly, but French, Russian, and surprisingly German also do above-average.

[URBAN NOTE] "The Telegram Sets, The Sun Rises"

In one of his invaluable Toronto history posts, Torontoist's Jamie Bradburn explains why the Toronto Sun exists: a broadsheet conservative paper, the Toronto Telegram, failed in 1971.

While the paper’s 1,200 employees looked for new jobs, a handful revisited a recurring idea to improve the paper’s advertising and circulation numbers, which had declined against evening rival the Star for years. Around 1966, Creighton and Johnny Bassett had discussed a companion morning tabloid which would be physically easier for commuters to handle, and offer a livelier alternative to the city’s only a.m. paper at the time, the staid Globe and Mail. This idea was refined by former Telegram managing editor Andy McFarlane in 1967, who supervised mockups designed by artist Andy Donato of a multi-edition paper called “The Sun.” McFarlane pictured a paper which was light on hard news and heavy on columnists, features, and sports. Publisher Bassett rejected the idea, feeling that it would compete with the Telegram instead of complement it. He wasn’t comfortable with the tabloid format due to its association with past sleazy Toronto rags like Flash and Hush. Creighton and McFarlane tinkered with other tabloid formats, including a national paper inspired by the New York Post, but all received thumbs down.

As prospects of saving the Telegram dimmed, a group which coalesced around Creighton, Telegram Syndicate manager Don Hunt, and foreign correspondent Peter Worthington planned a new weekday morning tabloid. There was little time to develop the proposed publication, as Creighton and Hunt felt it needed to hit the presses within 24 hours of the Telegram’s final edition. Remembering Bassett’s qualms about the tabloid format, the paper was dubbed the Toronto Sun because it sounded like a traditional newspaper name.

[. . .]

Nailing down financial backing wasn’t easy. Lawyer Eddie Hyde was the initial financial point man, but a deal he built collapsed. Another lawyer, Progressive Conservative fundraiser and advisor Eddie Goodman, rounded up $700,000 worth of promised support (half of which was actually collected). With those funds in place, the Sun’s existence was publicly announced on October 14, 1971. Negotiations with [Telegram editor John] Bassett allowed the paper to claim the Telegram’s paper boxes and news archive, as well as the Telegram Syndicate. Major media figures like Roy Thomson and the management of Southam Press gave the Sun little to no chance of survival in an age where long-running papers like the Telegram were folding.

[ISL] "Efforts being made to make Prince Edward Island tourism more gay-friendly"

Kevin Bissett's Canadian Press article describes how Prince Edward Island tourism marketing authorities and tourist businesses are making a concerted effort to reach out to the potential GLBT market. Interesting stuff.

Prince Edward Island is already considered an attractive tourist destination with its spectacular scenery, sandy beaches, challenging golf courses and friendly people. But tourism operators on "the gentle island" are also making an effort to get the message out that P.E.I. is gay-friendly.

"What we're trying to do is let travellers know that Prince Edward Island is gay welcoming and we have a lot of the things that the research indicates that gay travellers are seeking," said Bill Kendrick, chairman of the P.E.I. Gay Tourism Association.

He said gay travellers are looking for the same features in a destination as anyone else, plus a bit more.

"Gay travellers are looking to assure themselves that where they're going they'll feel comfortable, they're going to feel safe, and they're not going to feel uncomfortable when they book accommodations as a same-sex couple."

Kendrick said that can be as simple as not asking a same-sex couple if they want separate beds or separate rooms.

Vicki Francis, owner of the Cranford Inn in Charlottetown, said it's simply a matter of listing the room options as you would with any guest, and not making any assumptions.

"If you ask for the King suite, you don't want a staffer saying 'but that's just one bed'," said Francis. "You have to build that awareness.

"Even having pictures in the tourism guide that shows two men or two women builds awareness."

[URBAN NOTE] "What a relief! TTC endorses downtown line"

Transit Toronto's Robert McKenzie shares the good news: the Downtown Relief Line has been prioritized by the TTC!

The TTC proposes building a new subway line southward from Pape Station beneath Pape Avenue, then westward beneath Queen and King Streets to St. Andrew Station. The goal is to provide an alternative rapid transit route for passengers traveling downtown from Scarborough and east-end Toronto. More important, perhaps, the line would reduce pressure on Toronto’s main subway junction at Bloor - Yonge Station, and, as a result, increase the capacity of the 1 Yonge - University - Spadina subway to carry passengers from North York and other points further north.

The TTC staff report recommending that the commissioner prioritize the DRT was (rightly) full of gloom and doom about the future or rapid transit in Toronto, if the City and the TTC do not build such a line. Since Metrolinx and York Region hope to extend the Yonge branch of the subway line northward to Richmond Hill, the line will have reached and exceeded its capacity before 2031.

Although the actual route of the proposal line may differ widely when it finally opens, the authors of the TTC staff report envision stations at Pape Avenue and Gerrard Street East, Pape and Queen Street East, Queen and River Street / Bayview Avenue, King and Sherbourne Street, at the present King Station at King and Yonge Streets and at St. Andrew Station at King and University Avenue in the first phase of the line. Later phases of the line extend the subway under King West and Roncesvalles Avenues to Dundas West Station and under Pape Avenue, Overlea Boulevard and Don Mills Road to Eglinton Avenue, where passengers could connect with the future Eglinton - Scarborough Crosstown light rail transit line.

If the City and TTC build all three phases, the project could cost as much as $8.3 billion. Building the line only between Pape and St. Andrew Stations would cost $3.2 billion. Extending to Dundas West would cost $6.2 billion. Extending north to Eglinton and Don Mills would cost $5.5 billion.

[BRIEF NOTE] On the death spiral of Canadian Gaelic

There's been a minor political scandal precipitated by the impolitic statements of Jason Kenney, the Canadian federal Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, on Canadian Gaelic, the branch of Scots Gaelic that was transplanted across the Atlantic Ocean to Atlantic Canada--particularly Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Island, but also to the remainder of that province as well as my own Prince Edward Island.

Gaelic speaking Nova Scotians are not happy with federal minister Jason Kenney.

Kenney has weighed in on the merits of the language and the government's role in preserving it. Kenney said federal government money should not be used to promote languages that are fighting for survival.

"I think we should focus on the common languages that unite us in our diversity, English and French," said Kenney. "I encourage communities to maintain their heritage languages, be they Gaelic or Punjabi or Mandarin, but that they do so with their own funds."

In the Cape Breton community of Mabou, those words are not going over well. In Mabou, you'll find street and road signs that show you the Gaelic language is alive and well.

Former Nova Scotia Premier and now CEO of the Gaelic College, Rodney MacDonald, said the Gaelic language is the cultural fabric of the Celtic community.

"I think the minister should apologize to the Gaelic community of Nova Scotia. He should apologize for the remarks. They were inappropriate. Like they say in politics, it's never too late to do the right thing."

For the last six years, the Nova Scotia government has had an Office of Gaelic Affairs. This year's budget is a little more than $500,000.

At the local grocery store in the heart of the community, people were saying the Gaelic language is important.

"It's a cultural thing and it's as important as Mi'kmaq and French is to the culture of the country," said Janice Langille. "It's all part and parcel of our heritage and should be preserved."

"Well there's a lot of things in French is that a waste of money," said Maureen Hart.

For a greater taste of popular sentiment, see the multiple angry comments at the website of the Halifax Chronicle-Herald.

An opinion piece published in that same paper written by one Jerry White argues that Gaelic can still be saved.

Nova Scotia Gaelic is facing its “Yiddish moment.” Yiddish was, for generations, the language of the shtetl, the small Jewish communities of central and eastern Europe whose culture was dealt its final blow by the Holocaust, just as Gaelic was once the language of the Highlands and was dealt its near-death blow by the Highland Clearances.

Both Yiddish and Gaelic made it over to the New World and, for a while, did fairly well; Yiddish was once very strong indeed in New York (where the Yiddish edition of the newspaper The Forward is still published) and Montreal, just as Gaelic was once an inescapable part of the life of Cape Breton. And both languages have declined very sharply.

Both have some fluent speakers left, but with Yiddish as with Gaelic, most are elderly. Younger people who consider either language part of their identity rarely (not never, but rarely) know enough to hold down a conversation. It’s more typical for them to know snatches: songs, little sayings, a few words and phrases. Nobody who spends any time getting to know either Gaelic or Yiddish can avoid seeing that reality.

It does not have to be that way. Gaelic speakers have rights, and they could start to assert those rights more forcefully. Nova Scotia’s Office of Gaelic Affairs offers a model of how that could be done. Anyone who has visited their website knows that every-thing they do is available in Gaelic. Everyone who has been to an event where they are present has seen their indefatigable chief Lewis MacKinnon speaking mellifluous Gaelic; whenever he says anything in public, he says it in Gaelic first, and then repeats it in English. The office is fully capable of doing the everyday and sometimes tedious work of government in Gaelic.

Rodney MacDonald is working to move St. Ann’s Colaisde na Gàidhlig, formerly known as the Gaelic College, in the same direction. Institutions like these are pointing those of us who care about Gaelic’s future as a living language away from the realm of the folkloric and sentimental, and towards the reality of the world we live in.

They are pointing us towards Romansh. Romansh is, along with German, French and Italian, one of Switzerland’s four “national languages.” But unlike the other three, it’s not an “official language.” The Swiss government doesn’t use it more than it has to, and you don’t encounter it much outside of small mountain communities, where it has always had to struggle against German for survival. But Romansh speakers have made a lot of progress over the last years.

Advocates of Nova Scotia Gaelic have worked hard to get the language in more schools, and that’s a struggle in Romansh communities as well. Nova Scotians who drive towards Cape Breton start to notice bilingual signage as the approach the causeway, and signage is an area where Romansh communities have actually done quite well. You can get your phone bill in Romansh, if you ask for it.

The thing is, Canadian Gaelic is in a far, far worse position than the people who compare it to Romansh or Yiddish, never mind French, seem to realize. Canadian French is spoken by a solid bloc of seven million people, about half of whom can only speak Canadian French, who live concentrated in a single province where Francophones form the majority population, one branch of a worldwide Francophone community where regular speakers number in excess of a hundred million people. Yiddish is the traditional language of the Ashkenazic Jews, at its pre-Holocaust peak spoken by millions of people around the world and widely used in all fields of public and private life, still spoken regularly despite everything by substantial numbers? Romansh? That language, as I noted in 2009, is spoken by tens of thousands of people but is arguably doomed by, among other things, the division of a small language community into smaller factions as each tries to promote its own dialect.

Canadian Gaelic, at last count, is nearly moribund, with just over two thousand people in all of Canada speaking it as their mother tongue as of the 2011 census. Even if they all lived in Nova Scotia, that would still amount to a third of a percent of that province's population.

Canadian Gaelic shouldn't be compared with Punjabi or Mandarin, I agree: those two languages are much more widely spoken within Canada and have more promising futures. If the current support lent to Gaelic by Nova Scotia's government had been given a century ago, perhaps the language would have a brighter future. As things stand, I actually tend to agree with Kenney on the grounds that spending federal funds promoting a moribund language that no one cared much for until very recently is a waste of federal funds.

[BRIEF NOTE] Whedon and Drezner on zombies in American politics

I'm certainly not the only person to have come across Joss Whedon's video supporting Mitt Romney on the grounds that he'll trigger the zombie apocalypse.

Wired:

In the midst of what has become a very internet-influenced election year, self-identified liberal Whedon released a video over the weekend calling the Republican presidential candidate the “one with the vision and determination to cut through business-as-usual politics and finally put this country back on the path to the zombie apocalypse.”

The clip, which has gotten more than 1.1 million views on YouTube since Sunday, details how the policies proposed by Romney would create just the right environment for the walking dead to take over. Whedon also advises that the new “one percent” will be those who can run fast or know parkour.

“Romney’s ready to make the deep roll-backs in health care, education, social services, reproductive rights that will guarantee poverty, unemployment, overpopulation, disease, rioting — all crucial elements in creating a nightmare zombie wasteland,” the Avengers director says in the video (above). “But it’s his commitment to ungoverned corporate privilege that will nose-dive this economy into true insolvency and chaos — the kind of chaos you can’t buy back. Money is only so much paper to the undead.”

[. . .]

“Mitt’s ready,” Whedon says. “He’s not afraid to face a ravening, grasping horde of subhumans, because that’s how he sees poor people already.”

The video had 1,814,549 views as of my most recent viewing.

Daniel Drezner, a political scientist and blogger who has made his name as an expert on zombies, was quick to provide commentary on Whedon's argument in his post "What policies would best promote the zombie apocalypse?".

Now, as much as I've dissected both candidates' foreign policies and foreign policy statements, I hadn't really thought about which one of them would be more likely to trigger the zombie apocalypse.

[. . .]

Whedon is onto something different and altogether more interesting in his video.  Are there domestic policies that would increase the likelihood of a true zombie apocalypse?  He lists serious cuts in health care and social services, as well as Romney's commitment to "ungoverned corporate privilege" that would foment the undead apocalypse.

Now I give Whedon points for acknowledging that we don't know which kind of undead are coming -- "no one knows for sure if they'll be the superfast 28 Days Later zombies or the old school shambling kind."  But is Whedon's hypothesis actually true?  One could posit that he's got it backwards.  After all, the key to preventing the spread of the zombie apocalypse is to slow down the infection rate and spread of the undead contagoion.  Cuts to public services might actually discourage the 47% from congregating in public places, thereby making it that much harder for the initial cluster of the undead to be able to spread their pestilence and hunger for human flesh to others.  Similarly, it is likely true that giving corporations a freer hand might incentivize one of them to take the Umbrella path to global domination, Romney's tough stands on immigration will likely restrict the H1-B visas necessary to hire the Eurotrash that always seems to be a the top of the corporate ladder when Things Go Wrong.

Stepping back, if you think about it, the relationship between economic inequality and the zombie apocalypse is kinda complicated.  On the one hand, consistent with Acemoglu and Robinson, more politically and economically egalitarian societies are likely to invest in the public goods necessary to mitigate the spread of the deadites.  On the other hand, unequal societies are likely to have elites invest in worst-case scenarios -- mountaintop redoubts, vast underground laboratories, panic rooms, evil volcano lairs -- that guarantee a minmax outcome in which the human species will continue to exist in some form.  Of course, on the third, undead, dismembered, delicious hand, those last redoubt solutions never seem to work out as planned.

Glorious, all of it.

[DM] On how playing with the census creates problems with the data, cf Canada 2011

I've a post up on Demography Matters taking a note at how the abolition of the Canadian long-form census by the Conservative government has managed to create serious problems with census data, as everyone knew ahead of time.

Go, read. (It's short.)