[PHOTO] 94 Wellesley Eastbound, WorldPride edition

This was my only shot of the rainbow-decaled 94 Wellesley bus, here photographed travelling east of Church towards Castle Frank.

[URBAN NOTE] "Public Works: Libraries Lending Wi-Fi"

Torontoist's Peter Goffin reported that public libraries in New York City and Chicago are now lending WiFi hotspots to their clients. This has relevance for Toronto, of course.

Last week, the New York Public Library (NYPL) and Chicago Public Library (CPL) were among 19 winners of a grant competition seeking to fund projects that “strengthen the Internet for free expression and innovation.” Both received money for programs that allow library patrons to borrow Wi-Fi hotspot devices in the same way they borrow books—NYPL for its “Check out the Internet” project, which offers free internet services and media literacy education to low-income families; and CPL for “Internet to Go,” a similar program operating in six neighbourhoods where less than 50 per cent of the population has internet access.

NYPL has conducted a survey of people who take advantage of the free internet and computers in libraries around New York. It found that 55 per cent of them did not have internet access at home. And among library internet users whose household income fell below $25,000, 65 per cent were without the web.

So why does this matter? And why is it worth awarding a combined $900,000 to the NYPL and CPL?

Consider this: the internet is the world’s primary means of learning and communication, and a significant venue for social interaction. Several countries have declared internet access a human right, because it facilitates so many other rights, including to free expression, education, peaceful assembly, and access to healthcare. To be without the internet today—when everything from job applications, to apartment listings, to access to social services can be found online—is to ride a horse in the Daytona 500. Those who can’t afford access are doomed to fall behind.

As of 2012, 42 per cent of Canadian households with an income of $30,000 or less lack internet access, compared to 2 per cent of households with an income of at least $94,000. In Toronto, a whopping 80 per cent of public housing units are without a web connection, while just 20 per cent of homes province-wide lack access.

[URBAN NOTE] "Adam Vaughan trap"

NOW Toronto's Jonathan Goldsbie writes about the NDP reaction to the outcome of the 2014 by-election in Trinity-Spadina. This election saw Liberal Adam Vaughan take an absolute majority of votes cast, beating NDP candidate Joe Cressy by a sizable distance. Many prominent NDPs are now saying that Vaughan would have been a better fit for the Liberals, and that his allegedly NDP-ish aspirations won't be satisfied in the Liberal party.

Sour groups, I wonder?

As recently as two and a half months ago, when Cressy strode into the auditorium of the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre to accept his party’s uncontested nomination, it appeared he’d have the easiest route to Parliament of any NDPer in recent memory. Olivia Chow had held the Commons seat from 2006 until she stepped down to run for mayor in mid-March, and Cressy – who’d managed her very successful 2011 campaign – was understood to be the designated successor in the by-election she triggered.

But Chow’s succession plans failed once before: when she resigned from city council ahead of her 2006 federal run, she wanted her Ward 20 seat to go to Helen Kennedy, her NDP-backed former assistant. Yet the orange machine seemed caught off guard by the strength and popularity of then Citytv reporter Vaughan, who in November that year won handily with 52 per cent of the vote to Kennedy’s 35.

Vaughan’s name recognition, public profile and popularity in the area have only grown since, and were obviously the largest factors in his victory. But among those at Ryze, another theme emerges: that Vaughan could just as easily or should have run for the NDP instead.

In a brief address preceding his introduction of Cressy, leader Thomas Mulcair mocks what he perceives as a dissonance between Vaughan’s values and those of his chosen party. “Mr. Vaughan ran a very good campaign,” he says. “One of the interesting things was he had a lot of progressive ideas, but they were NDP ideas, not Liberal ideas!”

Mulcair continues the backhanded praise: “We’ll see how that goes for him when he finds out that Justin Trudeau actually is in favour of Line 9 and Justin Trudeau does want the Keystone pipelines – things that the NDP is standing up against.”

[LINK] "Moody's changes Ontario outlook to negative from stable"

This news is not good.

Moody's credit rating agency has changed Ontario's debt and issuer ratings to negative from stable, while at the same time reaffirming its Aa2 ratings.

Moody's Investors Services says the change reflects its assessment of the province's ability to meet its medium term fiscal targets, especially with weak growth and higher than anticipated deficits projected for the next two years.

The ratings agency didn't wait for the Liberals to introduce their budget July 14, but Premier Kathleen Wynne has said it will be identical to the May 1 budget that was rejected by the opposition parties, triggering the June 12 election.

Moody's vice president Michael Yake says the agency viewed the May budget as "credit negative" for the province.

[LINK] "Tim Hortons: The Canadian icon Canadians won’t work for"

MacLean's' Jason Kirby writes about why Tim Horton's favours the temporary foreign worker program: it needs to skimp on wages in order to finance a growth strategy that's starting to sputter. Canadians not working at Tim Horton's, demanding higher wages, works to Tim Horton's benefit.

It’s not just Timmies that’s having trouble finding domestic workers, of course. Across the country, restaurants complain they can’t fill openings. Much of the focus has rightly been on the question of whether restaurants should be paying more to attract Canadian workers. But at the core of the issue is a problem that’s been mostly overlooked: Many restaurant chains now rely on a business model based on blanketing the landscape with locations in order to generate growth. It’s a fundamentally flawed strategy, and Tim Hortons is only the most obvious example.

You can see this play out by looking at the chain’s same-stores sales figure, which reflects the performance of only those stores that have been open for at least 13 months. It’s a handy measure that lets investors peer through all that dust from new-store construction to gauge the underlying health of a chain. In the case of Tim Hortons, average same-store sales have been deteriorating for years. In its most recent quarter, Tim Hortons posted overall sales growth in Canada of five per cent. But same-store sales grew just 1.6 per cent. Were it not for the 160-odd new stores added over the previous 12 months, Tim Hortons sales and profits would likely have been considerably less.

Tim Hortons’ chief coffee slinger knows he has a problem. In February, while unveiling a new growth plan, Caira warned that opening more stores can’t be the company’s only path to growth. More product innovation is needed, he said, and he vowed that Tim Hortons’ long-struggling expansion into the U.S. would finally start to pay off, with profits rolling in by 2018.

Then, to no one’s surprise, Caira announced another massive round of expansion: 500 more stores in Canada over the next five years. (The chain already operates 3,600 locations here, almost all of them owned by franchisees, up by half from a decade ago.) The message was clear: The old growth strategy may be broke, but while we fix it, here’s another restaurant 500 m closer to wherever you happen to be right now.

[LINK] "Scientists Translate Chimpanzee and Bonobo Gestures That Resemble Human Language"

Wired's Brandon Keim reports on claims by scientists to have observed what might be proto-language among chimpanzees, one based on gestures.

It will be interesting to watch this develop. It is noteworthy that chimpanzees can't speak because they're physically unable to, and that other primates like the famous Koko the gorilla have mastered sign language. What was going on unnoticed in the wild?

Scientists have described the communications of chimpanzees and bonobos in new and unsurpassed detail, offering a lexicon for our closest living relatives and even a glimpse into the origins of human language.

The research, contained in two new studies published July 3 in Current Biology, focuses on physical gestures. These are the primary form of communication in bonobos and chimps, used more readily than vocalizations.

One study describes how a certain bonobo gesture conveys an informational complexity not previously observed in non-human great apes. The other study identifies the meanings of no fewer than 36 chimpanzee gestures.

“What we’ve shown is a very rich system of many different meanings,” said primatologist Richard Byrne of Scotland’s University of St. Andrews, co-author of the chimpanzee study. “We have the closest thing to human language that you can see in nature.”

Byrne’s co-author, fellow University of St. Andrews primatologist Catherine Hobaiter, spent 18 months observing a group of chimpanzees in the Budongo Forest Reserve in western Kenya. Hobaiter painstakingly documented more than 4,500 gestures in 3,400 incidents of chimp-to-chimp gesturing, noting both the motions used and the responses of nearby chimps.

Subsequent statistical analysis boiled those observations down to 36 established gestures and 15 clear-cut meanings. (Multiple gestures are sometimes used for the same purpose, perhaps conveying some not-yet-understood nuance.) Stomping two feet, for example, is used to initiate play. Reaching means, “I want that,” and an air-hug embrace is a request for contact.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Centauri Dreams notes that the Milky Way Galaxy, though vast, is actually quite dim. People positioned outside of it wouldn't see much.


• D-Brief notes the discovery of a planet orbiting one of two stars in a reasonably close binary system at an Earth-like distance. Good news for Alpha Centauri?


• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper on the exoplanet systems of subdwarf B stars.


• The Dragon's Tales links to a paper examining the methane reservoirs on Titan.


• Far Outliers notes recent commentary suggesting that Russia would prefer Ukraine not develop a capable modern state, since that could weaken Russian influence.


• Language Hat shares a list of 55 peculiarities of Canadian English.


• Language Log disproves the argument that Canadians are more apologetic than others.


• Marginal Revolution notes controversies over fracking in Australia.


• The Volokh Conspiracy notes the interesting results of a lawsuit lodged against a bar by a former employee claiming sexual and religious harassment.


• Window on Eurasia notes how modernization in Russia is threatening minority ethnic groups, and looks at Russian Orthodox-tinged militias in Ukraine.