[PHOTO] Chinese lanterns, Physalia alkekengi, on Dovercourt

[PHOTO] Some of the Inns on Great George

These are not on Great George Street proper, but rather on a side street. They're nice examples of idealized vernacular architecture.

[URBAN NOTE] "Ailing Rob Ford says residents want him to run for Ward 2 council seat"

The article by the Toronto Star's Daniel Dale about Rob Ford's interest in running for Ward 2, currently represented by his brother, is as critical of this ill-judged decision as one would expect.

His voice quiet and raspy, Mayor Rob Ford (open Rob Ford's policard) said Thursday that he has been told he has a “50-50” chance of surviving his rare cancer.

Ford said he is not sure if he will feel well enough to participate in any all-candidates’ debates in Ward 2 (Etobicoke North), where he is now a candidate for his old council seat. But he shrugged off criticism from residents who question his decision to run for office while undergoing chemotherapy.

“Some people are saying that, but a lot more people are saying ‘I want your name on the ballot.’ And we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.There’s other candidates. If they don’t think I’m up to it, then vote for someone else,” he said outside his city hall office. “I think there’s about 12 or 15 people in my ward, I don’t know exactly how many. This came together relatively quick. I was doing great, I was doing fantastic.”

Ford has 13 opponents. One of them, business professional Andray Domise, initially declined to comment for fear of sounding “harsh and insensitive,” then changed his mind minutes later and called Ford’s decision “highly irresponsible.”

“My problem is: he’s put his name on the ballot, and asked to be treated as a serious candidate, so the least that I can do is respect that wish. Which also means holding him accountable,” Domise said.

“So if your name is on the ballot but you’re not showing up for debates, you haven’t released a platform, you haven’t talked about what it is you’re going to do for Ward 2, you’re not canvassing, you’re not knocking on doors, you’re not putting down lawn signs, essentially you’re taking the neighbourhood for granted. You expect to be allowed back into city hall, as a seriously ill person, with no ideas for what we’re going to do for this ward going forward.”

[LINK] "Merkel Challenged on Russia by Ex-Chancellor Putin Friend"

Bloomberg's Arne Delfs reports on former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, a critic of German sanctions on Russia over Ukraine. His connections and motivations, at least, are obvious.

Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder urged an end to sanctions on Russia, clashing with his successor Angela Merkel over relaxing penalties imposed in the conflict over Ukraine.

As Schroeder evoked German-Russian friendship today at a conference co-sponsored by Russian gas exporter OAO Gazprom (GAZP), an official familiar with German policy making warned that the sanctions, aimed at extracting Russian cooperation to end fighting in eastern Ukraine, could be further tightened.

Schroeder, a Social Democrat who led Germany from 1998 to 2005 and friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, symbolizes the forces pulling at Merkel as she seeks to keep German industry and public opinion behind sanctions. While Schroeder is retired from politics, his party is Merkel’s junior coalition partner.

“The mutual sanctions are causing immense damage to both sides,” Schroeder said in a speech in the Baltic port of Rostock, which lies in Germany’s formerly communist east. “Politicians in Russia and Europe must find a way out of the spiral of ever tougher sanctions.”

Schroeder makes no secret of his Russian ties. He chairs the shareholder committee of Nord Stream AG, the Russian-German natural-gas pipeline company that’s 51 percent owned by Gazprom. He celebrated his 70th birthday this year with Putin in St. Petersburg, and he and his wife, Doris, adopted two children from Russia.

[LINK] "Former Top Official Says Kim Jong-un Is No Longer in Control of North Korea"

Vice's Keegan Hamilton reports on statements by defectors from North Korea that there has recently been a coup against the nominal government. I have no way to judge this, given the extreme opacity of the North Korean government. I only hope things will get better.

An elite group of exiles from North Korea gathered in September in the Netherlands to discuss the state of the regime they used to serve. The conference included top diplomats, an ex-senior official of the Ministry of Security, and a high-ranking military officer, but the keynote address was given by Jang Jin-sung, formerly a key member of Kim Jong-il's propaganda machine. Included in Jang's speech was a surprising assertion: North Korea is in the midst of a civil war.

According to Jang — a former counterintelligence official and poet laureate under Kim Jong-il — members of the government's Organization and Guidance Department (OGD), a powerful group of officials that once reported only to Kim Jong-il, have stopped taking orders from his son, Kim Jong-un. The OGD, Jang says, has effectively taken control of the country, and a conflict is simmering between factions that want to maintain absolute control over the economy and others seeking to gain wealth through foreign trade and a slightly more open market.

"On one hand, it's people who want to maintain a regime monopoly," Jang told VICE News through a translator in an interview Thursday. "On the other hand, it's not like people are fighting against the regime, but in a policy sense they want to take advantage to get influence. It's not actually consciously civil war, but there are these two incompatible forces at play."

Jang's statements come during a moment of peak curiosity about the hermit kingdom. Kim Jong-un — the portly 31-year-old who assumed the title of Supreme Leader after his father's death in 2011 — has been absent from public view for nearly a month. He was last seen walking with a pronounced limp during a July ceremony commemorating the death of his grandfather, Kim Il-sung. He typically presides over the Supreme People's Assembly, a rubber-stamp parliament, but missed the meeting in early September, and was replaced by a propaganda video that again showed him limping. "Despite some discomfort, our Marshal continues to come out and lead the people," the film's narrator said.

[LINK] "Rochester Focuses On A New Picture Of American Manufacturing"

NPR's David Greene describes how manufacturing is taking off again in the upstate New York city of Rochester, just across Lake Ontario from Toronto. The catch? The new manufacturing industries are not nearly labour-intensive enough to absorb the unemployed and underemployed blue-collar workers who worked in the manufacturing industries of old.

For decades Rochester was Kodak.

At its peak in the 1980s, Kodak employed 60,000 people in the city. Today, it's just 2,300. It's been a painful collapse. And once again, in 2014, Rochester is trying to use its fertile soil to grow something new.

"Nobody ever wants to let go, obviously, not of something like Kodak that not only was so dominant, but had such a quality brand name. But, recognizing that we have to, we've moved on and created new things — new prospects for the future, building on what we had in the past," [historian Carolyn] Vacca says.

There are former Kodak employees at work in new places — like Exelis, which makes parts that may be in the Thirty Meter Telescope, one of the largest. When complete, it will peer out beyond the Milky Way, to the edge of the observable universe — 13 billion light-years away.

Mike Ognenovski, who is now with Exelis, worked at Kodak for 27 years, and sees parallels between the two companies. For example, Exelis uses polishers on its glass to make lenses, machines similar to ones used at Kodak on its camera lenses.

"The tradition is there. It just has another name. Now we're called Exelis," Ognenovski says. "The Kodak heritage technology that was there, that is essentially in the bedrock of what Kodak stood for back when George Eastman built it, is still there."

[LINK] "FireChat 'off-the-grid' messaging app: What you need to know"

A CBC feature describes FireChat, a Bluetooth-based phone app that lets users chat without resorting to cell networks or the Internet, coming to note globally with the Hong Kong protests.

FireChat, an app that lets users chat without a cellular or internet connection, has been downloaded more than 100,000 times in Hong Kong amid mass pro-democracy protests. Here's what you need to know about it.

What is FireChat?

FireChat is an iOS and Android app that lets smartphone and tablet users chat even without a cellular or internet connection. That's why it bills itself as "off-the-grid."

However, it can also be used to chat over the internet, via its "everyone" mode.

The app was developed by a San Francisco-based company called Open Garden.

How does it work without an internet connection?

In "nearby" mode, the app uses Bluetooth to connect to nearby phones that also have the app installed. If lots of people have the app, they form a "distributed" or "decentralized" network. A message can be passed from phone to phone in a daisy-chain-like fashion, connecting users who are farther away from one another. The company describes it as "crowdsourcing the connectivity of those around you."

[LINK] "Fashion Collides With Syrian War in Milan Central Station"

Bloomberg's Mario Bertacche describes the plight and the stories of Syrian refugees in Italy, looking at an ersatz community in a Milan train station.

On the mezzanine of Milan’s main railway station, a Syrian family of six sits among hundreds of refugees as Claudia Schiffer, dressed as a medieval princess, smiles at them from a Dolce & Gabbana poster.

“For the moment, we’re stuck here,” Ahmed, 42, a house decorator from Daraa in southern Syria, said as volunteers handed out sandwiches with chocolate spread. “We don’t know what do to. We are worn out.”

The grandiose terminus, replete with bas relief sculptures depicting Roman history and signs of the zodiac, has turned Italy’s fashion and business capital into an unlikely crossroads for thousands of people fleeing the Syrian civil war. Between platforms handling at least 600 trains a day and the polished white marble concourse, two worlds collide.

Ahmed, worried about being identified by his full name because of his illegal status, and his family are among the 28,000 Syrians who ended up in the station, Milano Centrale, over the past 12 months.

Rescued by the Italian navy after traffickers abandoned them in crammed dinghies in the Mediterranean Sea, they find themselves stranded en route to other countries as they struggle to navigate European Union asylum rules.

[URBAN NOTE] Looking ahead to Nuit Blanche 2014

Nuit Blanche will be starting up again in Toronto on Saturday evening, full of road closures and all-night TTC service and 20 bars with last call at 4 am, and, of course, all kinds of public art. I know at least two people who aren't looking to the all-night madness, but I anticipate the adventure eagerly.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• blogTO notes an organic tea shop and cafe opening in Regent Park.


• Centauri Dreams looks at the mysteries behind Titan's polar weather.


• Crooked Timber discusses the uses of the military in an epidemic like Ebola.


• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper concerned with suggesting how worlds can become super-Earths not gas giants.


• The Dragon's Tales links to an archeological study describing methods for distinguishing between human artifacts and simple rocks.


• The Everyday Sociology Blog examines ways people shame others who use too much water in drought-affected areas like California.


• Joe. My. God. notes the recent study suggesting HIV's origins as a pandemic can be traced to Kinshasa in the 1920s.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money discusses Kissinger's 1976 proposal to invade Cuba in retaliation for Cuban intervention in Angola against South Africa.


• Peter Rukavina describes how he beat a rental car charge for a toll bridge by using his personal geolocation archive to show he was never there.


• Spacing Toronto discusses the lost canopy of the St. Lawrence Market.


• Towleroad notes controversy around the screening of a documentary on gay teen life in Russia in St. Petersburg.


• Window on Eurasia notes refugee inflows into Crimea and refers to an article by a Russian historian describing how Crimea is not historically exclusively Russian.