[PHOTO] Looking south at the University of Toronto, Bloor and Bedford

[PHOTO] Looking south down University Avenue at Province House, Charlottetown

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• blogTO identifies the ten most important buildings in Toronto.


• Centauri Dreams looks at evidence for plate tectonics in Europa's ice crust.


• The Dragon's Gaze notes the discovery of methane, carbon monoxide and ammonia in the atmospheres of some brown dwarfs and looks at implications of variability in brown dwarf atmospheres.


• The Dragon's Tales notes China's plans to launch a second space station into orbit.


• A Fistful of Euros' notes how Germany's Left Party is continuing its strong support from Russia.


• Joe. My. God. observes how Ted Cruz' support for Israel was unpopular at an event for Middle Eastern Christians, including many Palestinian Christians.


• Language Hat notes some signs of cultural cosmopolitanism in the Stalinist Soviet literacy scene.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes that global warming will devastate forests in the western United States.


• Otto Pohl notes the arbitrariness of race and geography in bounding Africa.


• Discover's Out There and the Planetary Society Blog's Emily Lakdawalla both note Rosetta's views of its target comet.


• The Speed River Journal's Van Waffle chronicles with photos the story of the vole he found eating his potatoes.


• Towleroad notes a mother in Alabama who is trying to cut her dead son's husband out of his estate.


• Why I Love Toronto celebrates Queen Street West.


• Window on Eurasia suggests that diasporas of Russian minorities should also be recognized as Russian, argues that Putin is cornered, and notes the significant differences between Estonians and Russophones in Estonia in beliefs about religious and the supernatural.


• The Financial Times' The World notes controversy over whether Ukraine should try to cut a deal with Russia.

[URBAN NOTE] On the foolishness of Rob Ford the day before, with Mike Tyson

While I feel sorry to learn that Rob Ford has been diagnosed with a large abdominal tumour--his father's fatal experience with colon cancer, and Ford's own previous issues, must be weighing on him--the day before his hospitalization Ford was soliciting support from a convicted rapist, Mike Tyson.

Mike Tyson declared Rob Ford the "best mayor in Toronto history" on Tuesday at an unexpected meeting at city hall.

The mayor and former boxing champion spoke to reporters, after a brief closed-door meeting, about their shared experience with scandal, personal problems and the media. "We're cut from the same cloth," said Ford.

Tyson said Ford's problems are no different from anyone else's, except that he is in the media's spotlight.

"He has a troubled past because he has 24-hour surveillance of the press," said Tyson of Ford. "Do you prefer him to be a guy who's clean-cut but behind the doors you never know what he's doing?"

Tyson said he prefers to know what the mayor's problems are, rather than have those problems hidden from the public eye.

[. . .]

Ford earlier said he "idolized" and "respected" Tyson.

Tyson later appeared on local television.

American boxing legend Mike Tyson cursed at CP24 reporter Nathan Downer during a live interview Wednesday afternoon after the reporter mentioned Tyson’s rape conviction.

When Downer asked the boxing star whether he thought his criminal record could damage the reputation of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, whom Tyson met with on Tuesday, the former undisputed heavyweight champion replied angrily.

Controversial former heavyweight champion boxer Mike Tyson is defending Rob Ford. Tyson met the mayor at Toronto City Hall Tuesday and said public figures deserve the same understanding for their troubles as anyone.

“It’s so interesting that you come across as a nice guy, but you’re really a piece of s---,” he said.

Tyson was convicted of rape in 1992 after an incident the year before in an Indianapolis hotel room with an 18-year-old winner of a scholarship pageant. He served three years in prison. In 1999 he was convicted of assault, and he pleaded guilty in 2007 to cocaine possession charges and driving under the influence.

He continued to curse at Downer as the interview drew to a close. Tyson has been working the media circuit in Toronto to promote his one-man show, Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth, which he is scheduled to perform at the Air Canada Centre Wednesday night.

[URBAN NOTE] Five links on the Doug Ford candidacy for mayor of Toronto

As reported by Global News' Anthony Robart, a Doug Ford candidacy might well be quite popular.

Doug Ford is starting off his late entry into Toronto’s mayoralty race in a strong second place, even surpassing previous support for his brother Rob Ford who quit his bid in the midst of a health crisis, a new poll suggests.

The poll from Forum Research Inc. conducted the day Rob Ford dropped out shows Doug Ford at 34 per cent with more than one third support, seven points behind front-runner John Tory who sits in the lead at 41 per cent. Third place contender Olivia Chow has 19 per cent support, the poll says.

On September 8, a similar poll put Rob Ford’s support at 28 per cent, compared to Tory’s 41 per cent.

The poll also says one-third of voters are part of “Ford Nation,” the titular title for Torontonians who support the family. Of those who approve of Rob Ford, 80 per cent support Doug, the polls says.

CBC considers the challenges for Doug as he tries to supplant Rob.

"In some ways, Doug Ford's best hope and best positioning is that he's like his brother in politics and personality, but without the scandal and without the unquestionably poor judgment of a man who hasn't been in control of his life," Daniel Tisch, president of the Toronto-based public relations firm Argyle Communications, told CBC News

"The challenge though, is that he really is not the same as Rob Ford. He hasn't shown the same populist instincts, certainly. He certainly comes across as a bit of a pit bull in the way he communicates and I think that's going to be a challenge."

Before his brother dropped out of the race to deal with an abdominal tumour, Doug Ford had sworn off municipal politics, having no intention to run as a councillor in this year's Toronto election. But now, with roughly six weeks left, Doug Ford is back in the ring, going for the top job against mayoral candidates John Tory and Olivia Chow.

In MacLean's, Ivor Tossell argues that the brothers are not interchangeable.

There’s been plenty of suspicion that this is all the result of some kind of cunning switch, in which the Fords have found a pretext to swap Doug into Rob’s flagging campaign, and carry the family to victory. Given the Fords’ inclination to lie about their private lives over the last four years, you’d be excused for your suspicions. But this kind of scenario doesn’t stand much scrutiny. Never mind that giving someone a grave illness isn’t really a viable campaign trick. Doug Ford isn’t Rob Ford, and he’s almost certainly not going to win this election.

Related posts:

Rob Ford quits mayoral race

Ford statement: ‘I’ve asked Doug to finish what we started’

What we know about Doug Ford

To those who suspect that Rob Ford was swapped out by Team Ford, it’s hard to imagine that he would back off except in dire circumstances. There persists to this day a misconception that Doug was the brains of the operation. It was never true. Rob Ford is the mayor who refused to resign when he was caught smoking crack, or when caught smoking crack again. He has pushed through being thrown out office by a judge, police investigations, global ridicule, addiction and rehabilitation. Too much baggage, you might say. But part of Rob Ford’s enduring appeal is that he endures. For his loyal base, his baggage is what keeps him afloat.

That, and his bizarre set of superpowers. Rob Ford was a singularity, a politician unlike any other. However he broke the law, sullied his office or abused the public trust, he emerged looking like a victim, a nice guy who just wants to help who’s been put upon by sundry demons. He seemed to enjoy nothing better than talking to citizens one-on-one, even if that never proved to be a good way to run a city.

Doug, on the other hand, has none of these gifts. He spoke well on Friday night, and is a focused worker, but he possesses none of Rob’s natural buoyancy. The joy that Rob took in using public office to speak with people one-on-one – on walkabouts, in endless phone calls, door-knocking in housing projects – is nowhere to be seen. (On one community housing visit alongside Rob, Doug was busy handing out $20 bills.) His default emotional tenor is grievance; his single driving thought that government should be more like the private sector.

Unlike Rob, who usually controlled his temper in public, Doug has a tendency to go on the attack at the slightest provocation, spinning ad-libbed conspiracy theories about people out to get him, be it Kathleen Wynne or the Toronto Police. This has landed him in endless trouble, having picked losing battles with everybody from Margaret Atwood (remember that?) to Police Chief Bill Blair, repeatedly crippling his brother’s agenda. Doug Ford has spent the last four years waging a permanent war on everything, and losing. None of this bodes well for a high-profile campaign.

But the basic problem with Doug Ford’s candidacy is that it assumes that the Fords are a political party, when really they are a cult of personality. The Ford brand might have started with Rob and Doug’s father, but it reached its greatest heights on the strength of Rob’s compelling personality, with its strange brew of belligerence and pathos. His support might not be fully transferrable in the first place.

Spacing Toronto's John Lorinc is appalled by the Ford family's political strategies.

For voters across Toronto, as well as those living on the steppes of Ward 2, the apparent promise at the centre of the Ford family’s dramatic and arrogant switcheroo operation is the notion that any one of them is just like the others.

Doug Sr., Rob, Doug Jr., Michael — it doesn’t matter who holds office. What’s important is that the values they claim to espouse — small government, low taxes, private sector service delivery — are basically interchangeable. The given name is unimportant. The brand promise lies in that surname: Ford.

If the idea seems vaguely familiar, that’s because it’s the operating principle behind the fast food industry. What the chains have told consumers for decades is this: no matter where you are in the world, that Big Mac is going to taste the same.

I suspect the Fords, to the extent that they think about such things, probably do see themselves in this way, what with being business people who know they must deliver a highly standardized, manufactured product.

But the real and far more disturbing subtext behind yesterday’s remarkable maneuver is that this family — for all its populist, working-class posturing — evidently regards northern Etobicoke, and even the city itself, in feudal categories. The message in that three-way swap was this: their political authority is inherited, as opposed to earned, and their ancestral turf must be defended at all costs. The very definition of political elite-ness.

The National Post's Christie Blatchford compares the Ford dynasty to North Korea's Kim dynasty.

[E]ven as Doug was being registered at the clerk’s office downtown, so was their nephew, Michael Ford, withdrawing as a candidate for the Ward 2 seat to make room for the mayor, and instead throwing his hat into the ring for school trustee in neighbouring Ward 1.

It was as though it was inconceivable that Toronto, like Pyongyang, should manage without a Ford for every citizen. As Kim Jong-un took over as Supreme Leader upon the death of his father, Kim Jong-il, the Eternal General, in 2011, who himself took over the reins of power from his old man, Kim Il-sung, the Great Leader, when he died in 1994, so were the Fords digging deep into their gene pool.

[. . .]

Who are these people, that faced with the serious illness of one of their own they rally, apparently within hours, to plot and plan and connive? How does that conversation go, I wonder – “Rotten break for you Rob, but now, what will we do about the Ford dynasty?”

And what the heck is this dynasty nonsense anyway? What Ford legacy?

The late Douglas B. Ford, the father of the old mayor and the wannabe new mayor, was a one-term backbench Tory MPP in the long-ago and controversial Progressive Conservative government of Mike Harris. Mr. Ford, Sr., was not blessing Toronto with future leaders when he gave the world his three sons and a daughter; what he was doing, with Dear Mother of course, was having kids, period.

[FORUM] How much sympathy do you feel for Rob Ford et al?

By this point, almost everyone reading this blog will have been apprised of the news that Toronto mayor Rob Ford has been hospitalized for a large abdominal tumour. Given his father's death from colon cancer, and Ford's own history of hospitalizations, the news is not good.

How do you feel about this? Do you feel much sympathy for the man? He is a human being suffering what might well be a terminal illness (ignoring steadily-growing pain for three months is a bad idea), a husband and a father and a man loved by many in his community. He is also, as is abundantly documented, a frequently crude and multi-faceted bigot who has brought shame to Toronto with his numerous ill-judged behaviours.

What do you think of it all?