[PHOTO] Backyard blossoms

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Centauri Dreams reports on an ingenious proposal for a sample-return mission to Jupiter's moons of Europa and Io.


• Crooked Timber is critical of George Packer's criticism of Wikileaks et al.


• The Dragon's Gaze reports on the discovery of giant planets orbiting non-main sequence giant stars.


• The Dragon's Tales links to a news report of a symposium on the Russian economy. Can state banks substitute for foreign investors, and should they?


• Amitai Etzioni comes out in favour of exploration and colonization of the oceans.


• Far Outliers recounts a Japanese massacre of civilians in Papua New Guinea in the Second World War.


• The Financial Times' The World blog doesn't think the European Parliament's candidate for that body's presidency should be accepted.


• The point is made at Lawyers, Guns and Money that "friendzone" is terrible not least because it reduces all relationships with women to sex.


• Torontoist notes that if the Liberals won the Ontario election they'd give lots of nice things to Toronto, but can the province afford it?

[LINK] Bruce Carson on the rage of Stephen Harper

Bruce Carson, a former aide to Prime Minister Stephen Harper who resigned following a 2011 scandal, is promoting a new book, 14 Days: Making the Conservative Movement in Canada. (It can be pre-ordered on Amazon.) He has much to say about politics during his tenure as advisor, to the CBC for instance.

Carson went from a well-liked backroom adviser to headline news during the 2011 federal election when an APTN news story alleged he lobbied officials at the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada about a water purification system.

Reporters soon discovered Carson had a history of financial problems and was convicted of five counts of fraud going back to the 1980s and 1990s before he was hired as an adviser to Harper.

[. . .]

"We knew about problems in Mr. Carson's very distant past. We didn't know about more recent things. If I had known that we would not have hired him. I am obviously very disappointed to find out these things now," Harper said in April 2011.

[. . .]

Some people, he said, are of the opinion that "everybody's entitled to a second and perhaps a third chance. And when I worked for the prime minister in opposition and in government, my past was known to him [Harper] and certainly to Ian Brodie, and I thought we accomplished really good things."

"Regardless of the negative stuff, nobody's attacked what I've been able to do or the kind of work I did as an adviser either to Ian or to the prime minister," Carson said.

"The time I spent with him, it was the best job I ever had, and I really enjoyed it."

The National Post/Postmedia article, by Jason Fekete, is called "Stephen Harper prone to fits of rage and growing increasingly isolated, former aide Bruce Carson says".

A former senior aide to Stephen Harper says the prime minister is prone to fits of anger, that his public dispute with the Supreme Court’s chief justice is ill-advised and that Harper is the kind of leader who would want to have known details of the $90,000 payment to Sen. Mike Duffy.

Bruce Carson, a former senior aide to Harper from 2004 to 2009, also said Tuesday in an interview with CBC News that the prime minister “has always been isolated” and is becoming increasingly so partly because he does not have a regular group of advisers across the country to whom he reaches out for advice.

[. . .]

He said he believes Harper when the prime minister says he didn’t know about the payment. Carson said that had he been in the PMO during the Senate expenses scandal, the prime minister “absolutely” would have known about the payment.

Carson also said Harper has a temper and is prone to fits of anger. Asked if the prime minister would dress down people and swear at them, Carson said, “Oh yeah.”

“You couldn’t run a country or take the position that the prime minister has without emotional outbursts, without displaying temper. And certainly it was there,” he said.

Carson, a convicted fraudster, has been in the news because of his new book, 14 Days. He is also expected to be in court early next month for a pre-trial preliminary inquiry into charges of influence-peddling, which he intends to fight.

[LINK] On the math and jobs issues of Tim Hudak and the Ontario PCs

Tim Hudak, leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives, has promised while campaigning to create one million jobs over the next eight years. The CBC highlighted his opposition's criticism of the math involved.

Tim Hudak was forced to defend his "Million Jobs Plan" Wednesday as a growing number of economists questioned the math behind the Ontario Progressive Conservative leader's promise, which is the centrepiece of his election platform.

Despite being hammered repeatedly on the issue, Hudak was adamant that the PC figures were right.

"I stand behind our numbers," he said at a furnace-making facility in Niagara Falls, Ont. "I simply believe that permanent tax reductions on job creators, more affordable energy is going to create jobs."

Hudak has promised a PC government would bring a million jobs to Ontario over the next eight years, although about half of those would be created through normal economic growth, regardless of which party is in government.

First the Liberals, and then a number of prominent economists, including a former federal associate deputy minister of finance, have poked holes in Hudak's numbers. They focus, in particular, on the possibility that the Tories misinterpreted information from a Conference Board of Canada report commissioned by the PCs.

"A number of highly respected independent economists have gone through Tim Hudak's plan. They have said that it is riddled with errors," Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne said. "I think it's pretty clear that Tim Hudak and his team got it flat wrong.

rabble.ca's Jim Stanford took the plan apart.

Ontarians can and should have a serious policy debate over whether Hudak's proposals would have any stimulative effect on employment at all (let alone creating a million new positions). However, those substantive policy debates may be swamped by an enormous arithmetic mistake which can be deduced by comparing the numbers in the PC technical backgrounder, with the supposedly supporting evidence contained in the two consultant's reports. Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa has critiqued this error. Here are the details as I read them. In essence, the two consultants generated estimates of the number of cumulative jobs that would be created from the simulated policies over several years. But the PCs have assumed that those jobs would be created in each year of the 8-year plan. They have thus exaggerated the number of jobs by several times (as many as eight-fold).

Let's start with the Conference Board report on the employment effects of a one-percentage-point corporate income tax cut. Their results are reported in their Table 5. That table (as it notes) shows the "level difference" of each variable versus the base case scenario: that is, it shows the running impact of the one-time policy change. In the lower half of that table is a line titled "Employment." That shows how much the level of employment is higher in each year of the 10-year simulation, compared to what it would be without the one-point corporate tax cut. There are 2,071 extra jobs in the first year, and the difference (compared to the base case) grows gradually over time (on the assumption that corporations respond to the lower tax rate with more investment spending over time -- even though in practice that has not happened with past CIT cuts). By the 10th year there are 5,869 extra jobs. In the eighth year (which is 2020 in their scenario, assuming the tax cut was implemented in 2013), there are 5,323 extra jobs. If you believed the Conference Board report, therefore, you should claim that a one-point CIT cut should create 5,323 jobs by the eighth year after its implementation.

The Conservatives are promising a 3.5-point cut, so we should multiply that number by 3.5, giving a total of 18,631 new jobs. This assumes the full 3.5-point reduction is implemented in the first year (whereas the PCs have said it will be phased in over time), so in reality even that number is too high.

Now, the PC backgrounder claims (referring to the Conference Board study for evidence) that the CIT cut will in fact produce 119,808 jobs over 8 years. Where did that number come from? A little forensic accounting can answer the question. The last column of the Conference Board Table 5 reports something called "Cumulative Total." The cumulative total for the employment line (as explained in the text of the Conference Board report at the bottom of p. 9) represents the total additional person-years of employment created over all 10 years by the one-point tax cut. Over the 10 years combined, there were 42,788 additional person-years of employment thanks to the tax cut. There were only 5,869 new jobs by the 10th year, but counting each year for each worker provides the number of person-years.

The PCs took the 10-year cumulative increase in person years, divided it by 10 (to get an "average annual increase in person-years," a very odd concept), and then multiplied it by 3.5. That equals 14,976 -- the number listed in the PC technical backgrounder. Then they assumed that many jobs would be created each year! Multiplied by 8, that equals 119,808. That is a gross and obvious mis-reading of the Conference Board's own results.

So did MacLean's Mike Moffat.

My initial reaction when I saw Jim Stanford’s piece on how the Tory plan confused jobs with person-years of employment was disbelief. I thought it could not be possible that the Tories would make such an elementary error. In fact, at first I did not believe it. I have a network of economists I call when I need an opinion or a second set of eyes to look at something. I spent about two days on the phone, and kept hearing the same thing over and over: “Jim is right.” One of those economists, my Ivey colleague Paul Boothe, wrote a detailed piece outlining the Tory math error.

Here is a short primer on the mistake the Tories made. In the first line of their million jobs plan, they have 523,200 jobs from “baseline growth.” This number should be interpreted as saying the number of persons in the province with a job eight years from now will be 523,000 higher than it is today. However, when they claim that reducing the regulatory burden will create 84,800 jobs, this is based on the 10,600 job-creation estimate in the Zycher report (which the party commissioned) and multiplying it by eight to give 84,800 person-years of employment. But only 10,600 actual people (not 84,800) will have a job eight years from now who do not today. The Tories are adding baseline growth “jobs” to regulatory burden “person-years” to get their million-job estimate—despite the fact the two are in completely different units[.]

This error is not limited to the line item for reducing regulatory burden: the Tories made the same mistake for every item they adopted from the Zycher and Conference Board of Canada reports.

While the policies of the million jobs plan may be economically beneficial, the Tory job numbers are an absolute disaster. The entire plan needs to be redrafted, as the party made an inexcusable and elementary mistake in mathematics. I have serious concerns on what this episode will do for political discourse in the province. If the lesson that politicians draw from this lesson is not “check your math” but rather “don’t release details,” then we are all made worse off.

[URBAN NOTE] On the condo country Fort York library

Yesterday on my Facebook feed, Toronto Life's Informer noted the imminent library of the latest branch of the Toronto Public Library, the new Fort York Branch opening opposite Fort York on the bottom of Bathurst Street, in condo country. The new branch will actually anchor the Library District Condos, a complex built by developers who offered to pay the costs of the branch's construction. The whole thing is described by the National Post's Alex Jivov.

Opening this Thursday at 190 Fort York Boulevard, Toronto’s 99th Public Library Branch will contain unique features such as 3D printers, digital innovation hubs, and DJing equipment, all available for public consumption.

The 16,000 square foot glass structure will contain 35,000 books at opening. A computer centre will allow visitors to access the entirety of the Toronto Public Library’s electronic catalogue, totaling over ten million e-books, movies, magazines, and music albums.

Five full time staffers will provide assistance to those wishing to navigate and use the new facilities.

Designed by KPMB Architects, the Fort York Branch has partnered with developer Context Development to create a community built around the new library. “Everyone can agree libraries are wonderful things to have,” said Toronto Public Library Board Chairman Michael Foderick. “They have been and will continue to be a cornerstone for every successful community in this city. We’re just laying a new cornerstone right here in Fort York.”

The partnership has allowed the library’s $9.1 million cost to be completely funded without any cost to the taxpayer, according to Foderick.

The new location will have, among other things, DJ-ing equipment and a 3-D printer.

There's certainly need for this location, in a neighbourhood that has literally sprung up out of nothing over the past decade. When I walked down there a decade ago soon after moving to Toronto, there was nothing but empty lots. By the same measure, I'm not sure that allowing the Library District Condos' builders to build a taller building in exchange for doing something nice for the city is the best policy. What are the parameters for these offers? Where will it stop?

(Still, beautiful library.)

[URBAN NOTE] On the move of Sonic Boom to Spadina

blogTO's Aubrey Jax reported today that Sonic Boom--a Toronto record shop of note, one I've known from its locations in The Annex at Bloor and Bathurst--is set to make a big move. It will be closing up its two existing locations, neatly vacating the Bloor/Bathurst location before Honest Ed's closes at the end of 2016, and moving to the Robertson Building at 215 Spadina Avenue, on the east side of the street between Dundas and Queen West. Exclaim!'s Alex Hudson has more.

Currently, long-running Toronto record retailer Sonic Boom operates two stores, one in Honest Ed's and another in Kensington Market. This fall, the two locations will merge into one store in downtown Toronto.

As of October 2014, Sonic Boom will take over a 12,000-square-foot street-level industrial space in the Robertson Building at 215 Spadina Ave. The building is already home to the Centre for Social Innovation and Dark Horse Espresso Bar.

[. . .]

This is a preemptive move in anticipation of Honest Ed's shutting down at the end of 2016. By moving to Spadina, it joins an area that's already a hub for Toronto music thanks to the nearby Horseshoe Tavern and MuchMusic building.

This is true, and yet I think of This Ain't the Rosedale Library, a wonderful bookstore on Church Street that escaped rising rents there to a new location in Kensington Market only to close up in 2010. Will the new Sonic Boom survive?

[BRIEF NOTE] On Livejournal being made into Medium, or Tumblr with text

James Nicoll linked to a Techcrunch article describing how the new CEO of Livejournal wants to position this blogging platform as a kind of Medium, as a place for long-form writing.

LiveJournal is hanging out the “under new management” banner yet again. Last month, the company announced a new CEO, Katya Akudovich, who previously worked at Google, Box and Microsoft. Akudovich was confirmed in a unanimous vote by the board of directors, who believe her international experience at these major tech companies will help her make LiveJournal a top social media platform yet again.

“My Box experience, where I started the Deal Desk department, gave me unique insights into how a company turbo-charged an amazing product,” she tells us. “At Google, it was about bringing the right content in the right form to brand new Google Play markets. And this is exactly what we’re planning to do at LJ,” Akudovich says.

In addition to the new services Akudovich teases, LiveJournal is also rolling out new iOS and Android applications next month, designed to appeal to both writers and readers. And the company is hopping on the ‘anonymity’ bandwagon, now in vogue thanks to services like Whisper, Yik Yak and Secret, noting that LiveJournal “will remain anonymous and will never ask its users to identify themselves.”

[. . .]LJ’s new strategy for 2014 and beyond is one where it hopes to promote itself as a platform for longer-form content and self-expression in an era when users can’t seem bothered to post status updates, preferring Instagram selfies, looping Vine clips, GIFs and texts over longer articles, lengthy videos, and the like.

But that, thinks LiveJournal, is the opportunity.

“There’s a big market for this that really only we and Medium are filling – and with significantly more personalization, while still being easy to use,” says Akudovich. “Our users generate an amazing amount of deep content - half a million long-form posts a day – these are not tweets, these are real long-form posts where people write some very interesting things. We have amazing communities too,” she says.

Hmm.

This proposal certainly does seem to reflect the way Livejournal is now used. Of the people active on my friends list, most of them are people who write long-form entries. Many of them are, in fact, published authors. Rejigging the non-Cyrillic functions of Livejournal to service this demographic does work.

And yet. Is this an innovative effort to position Livejournal as a platform of choice for long-range writing, perhaps even social journalism, or is this trying to take some advantage of the fact that the users who have remained are too locked to their journals and communities to move? I've migrated already: this text is being entered into a window at Dreamwidth, which then automatically posts to Livejournal, and will be cut-and-pasted over to WordPress. Making Livejournal an active hub for me again, as opposed to a second-order backup with a friends page I visit, will take some doing.

There's also the non-trivial question of whether or not Livejournal can make these changes without alienating its user base. Not a week ago, I was perturbed to find out that Livejournal had switched the user interface entirely. I couldn't locate my aforementioned friends page. It was only when I found out, via a LJ friend's post, how to switch the user interface back to a usable format. I fear that Livejournal may yet change it back. I had no idea this particularly was coming, but the idea that Livejournal's administrators would unilaterally change something critical of the site without letting its users know is sadly not a surprise. The commenters at Techcrunch shared their own stories of how the site has let them down. Navigating a revamp of the site without angering frequently disappointed long-time users is going to be an issue.

I hope Livejournal can survive in some form, but I will need to be convinced. We'll see what will happen.