[PHOTO] Blue sky over Toronto

Yesterday was a glorious day.

[DM] "The "Hot Labour" Phenomenon"

Co-blogger Edward Hugh has posted a translation of a German-language interview where he talks about "hot labour", large surge of muigration fueling boom/bust cycles.

Strong growth. Rising real estate prices. Rapid job creation. Surging immigration. This list sums up the Switzerland of 2014 down to a tee. However, it also sounds like a description of what things were like in Spain in 2007 - shortly before the country's economy fell off a cliff. What follows is a conversation between financial journalist Detlef Gürtler and economist and crisis expert Edward Hugh about possible parallels and differences between the two booms, and the role of a new phenomenon which Hugh describes as "Hot Labour".

Hugh argues that this is a new phenomenon, and on the increase as a result of central bank bubble inducing activity. While immigration is a vital tool aiding economies to manage the population ageing process, it is important that economic activities be balanced. Immigration fueling boom/bust cycles is far from innocuous, and harm a country just as much as a sudden stop in capital flows if the immigration is followed by emigration.

Detlef Gürtler: Well Edward, you personally lived through one of the most important real estate booms in European history - the recent Spanish one. Is the real estate boom we are witnessing in Switzerland in any way comparable?

Edward Hugh: Before I start, I think it's worth pointing out that it goes without saying the Swiss are quite different from the Spaniards; and the Swiss economy is completely different from the Spanish one. In this sense every boom or crisis is in its own way different from anything before. That said, such "trivia" doesn't normally stop economists like me from trying to draw comparisons, even if in this case I have to be extremely careful, since while I know quite a lot about Spain I know much less about Switzerland. So perhaps you will help me.

Detlef Gürtler: Yes, economists do make comparisons, and you were even so bold as to draw one between the German 1990s housing boom and the one which took place in Spain after the start of the century.

Edward Hugh: Well this comparison isn't so strange as it may seem. Many talk today about Spain becoming the new Germany - in the sense of an export powerhouse - and while this idea may have a rather dubious basis in reality the shift from domestic consumption to exports is quite striking.

In both cases the subsequent "regeneration" was preceded by a significant consumer boom, in both cases there was a strong increase in real estate prices including a construction boom, in both cases there was an increase in household indebtedness, in both cases the current account deficit deteriorated. And then in both cases there was a rude awakening. The only real difference was one of scale, and in this case scale is important. Spain had what was at the end of the day the mother of all housing bubbles.

[URBAN NOTE] "Giorgio Mammoliti calls Parkdale Toronto’s ‘pedophile district’"

Canada.com's William Wolfe-Wylie notes the latest stupid thing that Toronto city councillor Giorgio Mammoliti has done. The Toronto neighbourhood of Parkdale, it seems, is Toronto's pedophile district.

In a stunning addition to a city debate on all-ages dance parties, [Toronto City Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti] called an entire neighourhood the “pedophile district” and used that as a reason to shut down electronic music dance parties (the commoners call them “raves,” but we’re using city hall speak here).

In context: City Hall in Toronto has been debating for several weeks whether all-ages electronic dance parties should be hosted on the grounds of the Canadian National Exhibition. Concerns have included illicit drug use, alcohol consumption, access to emergency services and the control of access to alcohol for minors. The debate falls to city council as the building is owned by the city.

But rather than having a mature conversation about the issues, one city councillor decided to call the entire neighbourhood that sits adjacent to the exhibition grounds the “pedophile district.”

“Given the many issues surrounding children relating to these events, there should be great concern over the fact that the neighbouring Parkdale area is home to one of the highest concentrations of registered sex offenders, including pedophiles, living in the City of Toronto. With ‘all-ages’ parties being held next to a pedophile district we are simply encouraging the continued abuse of our children.”

The data for where registered sex offenders live comes from a Global News investigation by investigative reporter Patrick Cain. That data shows that of the 35,320 people who live in the area, 56 are registered sex offenders. The data simply does not list whether they are pedophiles.

Gord Perks, the city councillor responsible for Parkdale-High Park, said the “slur” is highly unfortunate.

“You may have heard the awful slur one of my colleagues has made against our wonderful neighbourhood,” he wrote on his website. “I want to say how saddened I am that Parkdale has been attacked this way.”

[LINK] "How to Quit Amazon and Shop in an Actual Bookstore"

Blogging at Esquire, Stephen Marche makes a four-point argument in favour of buying books not online but in bookstores.

The movement to boycott Amazon has been picking up speed for several weeks now. In the wake of strong-arm tactics in its negotiations with Hachette publishing, Amazon has managed to offend the actual writers whose books Hachette publishes, including Malcolm Gladwell, James Patterson, and JK Rowling. That wouldn't matter so much if one of them wasn't Stephen Colbert. He has promoted stickers that viewers can download from his website, which read, I DIDN'T BUY IT ON AMAZON. Amazon has responded by telling customers that anybody inconvenienced by the battle with Hachette should buy books elsewhere.

Until publishers decide to start a competitor website selling books, which eventually they are going to have to do, anyone wanting to follow Colbert's or Amazon's advice ought to venture into actual physical bookstores. Unfortunately, by now, purchasing print books in a brick-and-mortar building is something of a lost art, like taking snuff or drinking brandy after dinner. Which is not to say that it's not worth doing. Quite the opposite. Buying books in a bookstore is one of life's great, quiet pleasures. It leads to the purchase of better books. It leads to a deeper relationship to reading. It is a joy in and of itself.

[. . .]

A good bookstore isn't just a place to buy books. The really good ones are bespoke tailoring for your narrative impulse. And that experience, it's worth pointing out, is available in every town, and it's free. The real problem with Amazon isn't that it's strong-arming Hachette; it's that it leads readers to buy books that they've already heard about. When you pick out a summer novel for yourself online, you're going to pick the book that everybody else is reading, almost automatically. But the book that you want probably isn't Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. It probably isn't another James Patterson. A good seller in a bookstore is infinitely superior in every way to a personalization algorithm. Even by entering a bookstore, you're faced with literally a thousand choices that you've never been faced with before. Somewhere in there is something that's entirely fresh to you, and will reward your soul by exposure. That's what good books do, and good bookstores, too. They let you step out of your algorithm.

[LINK] "Clever crows beaten by babies in causality test"

Via io9 I came across an article by Wired's Kadhim Shubber summarizing a study on the intelligence of the famously bright New Caledonian crow, "Of babies and birds: complex tool behaviours are not sufficient for the evolution of the ability to create a novel causal intervention".

If you observed a brick falling onto a button that dispensed food, you would quickly realise that you didn't need the brick to get the food. You could just push the button yourself.

You have observed a sequence of cause and effect, and although you haven't directly experienced it, you can figure out what's going on and get the food.

Caledonian crows, according to a new study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, aren't able to do this.

"The crows are great at solving certain types of problems but, as our new study shows, struggle at others," lead author Alex Taylor told Wired.co.uk via email. "Discovering the limits of their cognition allows us to get a better understanding of how intelligence evolves, and which aspects our our cognition are particularly special."

Taylor and his colleagues have studied Caledonian crows for years, and have been the source of numerous papers on their intelligence, including a March paper that replicated Aesop's Fable of a thirsty crow using stones to raise the water level in a half-filled container.

Indeed a 2009 study showed that the crows are able to understand cause and effect quite well. Crows that received food as an effect of pushing a platform with their beak then learned to use other tools, like stones, to move the platform if it was out of reach.

The crucial difference, said Taylor, is that this required a direct experience. The crows had previously pushed the platform themselves.

"Animals are very good at learning from their own experience, or via observing the effects of others (social learning)," he said. "But so far only humans appear to be able to simply observe an effect in the world, and, without reference to their own behaviour or another humans, then create a novel behaviour to cause the effect."

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Centauri Dreams features an essay by Andreas Hein arguing that interstellar travel will be quite easy after the singularity hits, when our minds can be copied onto physical substrates.


• The Dragon's Tales notes that the dispute between Vietnam and China over their maritime boundaries runs the risk of intensifying.


• Far Outliers chronicles the Australian creation of the Ferdinand radio network in the 1930s, a network of civilian radio broadcasters in northern Australia and Papua New Guinea charged with reporting on border security.


• Joe. My. God. notes controversy in Israel over a harmless music video by trans pop star Dana International.


• Language Hat notes one Russian writer's suggestion on how Russian-language writers can avoid Russian state censorship: write in officially recognized variants of the Russian language (Ukrainian Russian, Latvian Russian, et cetera).


• Language Log examines "patchwriting", a subtle variant of plagiarism.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money is just one blog noting the insanity of George F. Will's claim that being a rape victim on a university campus is a coveted status.


• The Map Room's Jonathan Crowe links to OpenGeoFiction, an online collaborative map-creation fiction.


• Marginal Revolution notes that, before Hitler, the Biblical pharoah was the figure used as the embodiment of evil.


• The New APPS Blog takes issue with the claim that photographs sully our memories. Arguably they supplement it instead.


• Personal Reflection's Jim Belshaw notes, following Australia's recent budget cuts, how young people lacking connections can find it very difficult to get ahead.


• Window on Eurasia notes that ethnic minorities and secessionist groups in Moldova are being mobilized as that country moves towards the European Union, and observes the maritime sanctions placed against Crimean ports.


• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell is very skeptical of UKIP founder Alan Sked's statements that the party was founded free of bigotry.

[LINK] "What’s Next for Ontario Politics (We Hope)"

I rather liked Christopher Bird and Hamutal Dotan's Torontoist essay advising the three major political parties--the Liberals with their majority, the Progressive Conservatives after their weakening, and the NDP left remarkably intact--what they can do to reenergize themselves and democracy here in Ontario.

Ontario has elected, in defiance of most predictions, a Liberal majority. We will have four years of stable government, and Kathleen Wynne will have the chance to show us the kind of premier she really wants to be—as opposed to the cagier kind many think she has been until now, fighting to keep her minority government alive. If Wynne has been holding back—if, as many progressives and urbanists hope, she has been restraining herself on some issues (ranging from Toronto transit to sex-ed policy)—now she will have the chance to pursue those issues more aggressively.

The outcome is useful, in this way, for the NDP and the Progressive Conservatives as well: they each have the opportunity to define themselves more clearly. Free of the hedging that comes with minority governments, the Liberals can define themselves by their governance; the NDP and Tories can do so by the nature of their opposition, and in their approach to rebuilding their respective parties.