[PHOTO] Looking up, Galleria Italia, Art Gallery of Ontario

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• James Bow writes about his recent life changes.


• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper examining what the distribution of the Neptunian Trojans means about the movements of that ice dwarf.


• Languages of the World's Asya Perelstvaig summarizes, in two parts, a mid-19th century study of the Crimean Tatars.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money does not like the politicization of the California judiciary.


• Marginal Revolution looks at a study into street harassment in Mexico City.


• The Planetary Society Blog features a post by Marc Rayman looking at some of the propulsion-related problems of the Dawn probe.


• Torontoist's Historicist feature looks at the Toronto towers of Estonian-Canadian architect Uno Prii.


• Towleroad looks at the life of a pair of gay cowboys in Australia.


• Window on Eurasia notes the growing Chinese presence in Central Asia, looks at the decline of rural Russia, and notes Ukrainian alienation from Russia.

[LINK] "Jian Ghomeshi’s Implosion Was Overdue"

Vice's Patrick McGuire writes a remarkable essay starting by noting the quiet collaboration of Canadian journalists in keeping Jian Ghomeshi's alleged abuse under wraps, then noting his own publication's participation in that same process.

[A]s the calamity of exposing Ghomeshi continues to unfold, we've learned that there was a woman working for Q who alleges Ghomeshi told her he wanted to "hatefuck" her. We also learned abo​ut an allegat​ion today, on Jesse Brown's Canadaland podcast, from a former Q producer who claims Ghomeshi grabbed a woman from behind and "[dry] humped her... four or five times... with a big smile on his face" in the workplace. That same producer also alleges that he was told a rumour from an executive producer at Q pertaining to Ghomeshi choking a woman.

Beyond that, Western University had been warning their students not to take internships at Q because of Ghomeshi'​s lecherous and abusive reputation. A lecturer from UWO told the Star the ban on Q internships arose after Ghomeshi "prey(ed) on a young grad who wanted to work (at Q)."

If these rumours had drifted over to London, Ontario, and were credible enough to stop students from pursuing internships at Q, the questions becomes: why did it take so long for all of this to surface? What's wrong with the CBC that they weren't able to put two and two together and discipline their rising star in the face of alleged complaints? Or at the very least, launch an investigation into the veracity of these claims. An executive producer at CBC claims that Brown's reporting on a Q staffer complaining to her bosses is not t​rue, but Brown maintains he has evidence to the contrary.

[. . .]

Even though the amount of allegations has rapidly increased over the past week, and the Toronto Police are now involved, it has not yet been proven that Ghomeshi has done any of the things he is being accused of. Flawed as it may be, we have no other choice but to let the criminal justice system handle these allegations as they come. Especially now that Ghomeshi's career has been shattered.

We at VICE Canada had to confront the problem of handling anonymous sources, who had allegations about Jian Ghomeshi, head-on in September. Back then, we were approached by Jesse Brown, a freelance reporter who is now widely known for exposing the allegations about Jian Ghomeshi along with the Toronto Star. During our meeting, Brown brought VICE Canada a set of graphic and disturbing accounts that he was looking to publish--in the form of interview transcripts and audio recordings. Brown had approached us because (at that time) his story was put on ice by the Toronto Star. He was looking for a new media partner.

[. . .]

At the time, while these allegations were believable and credible despite coming from anonymous sources, they were not substantial enough to responsibly publish a story.

[LINK] "Lessons from the Jian Ghomeshi case: ‘There is nowhere to hide’"

Employment lawyer Howard Levitt writes in the Financial Post about eight lessons to take from the Jian Ghomeshi affair. The man's challenges to the CBC seem quite doomed, honestly.

1. Pierre Trudeau was wrong. There is nowhere to hide, no respite removed from your employer’s potential scrutiny. Not even the nation’s bedrooms. Off-duty, on-duty, at work, at a friend’s, anywhere. If your conduct significantly damages your employer’s brand, it is cause for your discharge without compensation. This is generally more true for CEOs or anchors than of anonymous administrative clerks.

But they too are not immune. When Philip Kelly, a materials manager at Linamar, was charged (but not convicted) of possession of child pornography in his home, Linamar decided that that presented a risk to its reputation and promptly fired him for cause. He sued for wrongful dismissal, claiming that this had nothing to do with his employment. He lost, ending up not only without compensation but paying his employer’s lawyer’s fees, in addition to his own.

The lesson: Canadian employees should assume, at all times, that their conduct anywhere might become fodder for their employer and conduct themselves accordingly.

I have always advised not to post anything on social media, at whatever age, that you would not like seen by a future employer. The cautionary tale of Ghomeshi is that that this caution must extend beyond what you post, extending to everything that you do which can be related by others or surreptitiously recorded.

[LINK] "Lack of global knowledge cost BlackBerry Indonesia"

Writing for The Globe and Mail, Iain Marlow describes how Canada's staggering Blackberry managed to lose the very promising Indonesian market.

On an upper floor of central Jakarta’s bustling Ambassador mall, Steven Chandra stands behind a white counter with displays for gleaming new smartphones from Samsung, Lenovo and HTC. A few years ago, such brands would have been highly unfashionable in Indonesia, where BlackBerry was the only device that mattered.

[. . .]

In 2011, BlackBerry accounted for 43 per cent of new smartphones shipped to Indonesia, according to global research firm IDC. That market share has now crumbled: In the first half of 2014, BlackBerry had just 3 per cent of the market.

[. . .]

“BlackBerry became more and more boring, we didn’t see any innovation,” says Gupta Sitoru, who works in communications for a robotics company in Jakarta and traded his BlackBerry for an iPhone. “Then again, we don’t care. People are moving on from BlackBerry.”

In a detailed interview in Jakarta, BlackBerry’s former country head Andy Cobham, a veteran of Indonesian telecom who also managed Motorola’s business here for nearly a decade, said BlackBerry had fantastic technology and grew its business here to remarkable levels before things began to fall apart. Some of the missteps, he said, came from having to route everything he did through Waterloo. A prime example of this, he said, was the company wanting to push ahead with a widely advertised promotion for a 50-per-cent discount for the first 1,000 customers to show up for a BlackBerry launch. Local leadership advised against doing this because it might lead to a stampede – which is exactly what happened. The subsequent launch turned chaotic, leading to dozens of injuries.

“BlackBerry was a world-class product, Waterloo just mismanaged it,” said Mr. Cobham over coffee at a luxury mall in Jakarta, where he now works for a business consultancy. “They were not global players. They were small town.”

[LINK] "In South Dakota’s Indian Country, getting to polls is half the struggle"

Al Jazeera America's Naureen Khan has an interesting article describing efforts to mobilize the indigenous vote in South Dakota.

For [Rose] Cordier, a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe who has been registering voters on the reservation every election cycle for 20 years, the process of getting Native voters in her community to the polls is often a hit-or-miss, labor-intensive effort. Weeks before the voter-registration deadline, Cordier and a small team of volunteers from the tribe fanned out across Rosebud’s 20 communities, spanning 2,000 square miles, knocking on doors and encouraging participation.

“This year, there hasn’t been that much interest,” Cordier said. “Most people here, they don’t have cars and people that do have cars don’t have the money to buy gasoline. Even if people here are registered to vote, they don’t find it important enough.”

Sometimes Cordier works with a candidate or a voting organization. This year, she said the midterms have flown so far underneath the radar that she did not think to apply for funding and has mostly spearheaded a small grassroots effort. On Election Day, she’ll be out in her van again, giving rides to anyone who asks to go to a polling station.

Despite the challenges to access, Native voters have proved that they can be a critical voting bloc in South Dakota, where they constitute about 9 percent of the population, according to Census Bureau Statistics. In 2002, a strong showing among the tribes helped Sen. Tim Johnson, a Democrat who is retiring, eke out a slim 524-vote victory over his opponent, with ballots from neighboring Shannon County, where the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is located, giving him his narrow margin of victory.

“He went to bed down a few hundred votes, and when he woke up, he had won by 524,” said Zach Crago, executive director of the South Dakota Democratic Party. “Folks understand what kind of impact [Native Americans] can have in Senate elections.”

[LINK] "N.B. women seek abortions in U.S. after clinic closure: staff"

MacLean's hosts Alison Auld's Canadian Press article describing how, after the closure of New Brunswick's only private abortion clinic, women in that province looking for an abortion are going far outside the province.

Pregnant women from New Brunswick are travelling to Maine and Montreal to obtain abortions after the province’s only private abortion clinic shut down last summer, angering pro-choice advocates who say the government is moving too slowly in removing barriers to the service.

Staff at abortion clinics in Augusta and Bangor in Maine said they have seen a spike in the number of telephone inquiries and visits from women from New Brunswick since the summer when the Morgentaler clinic in Fredericton closed, citing a lack of government funding.

Ruth Lockhart of the Mabel Wadsworth Women’s Health Centre in Bangor said the independent clinic used to see one or two women from the province over six months. There are now women from New Brunswick at every weekly clinic, sometimes with five or six at a time, she said.

“My concern is with the women who can’t do that — who can’t get time off from work, who can’t find childcare, who can’t afford the fees or don’t have a passport,” she said in an interview.

“To have to leave your country? I don’t know, that doesn’t seem right to me. None of that is fair to women.”

[LINK] "Stephen Poloz to jobless youth: Move out and work for free"

Sometimes, the news is beyond parody.

I suppose we should be glad he didn't suggest selling that extra kidney?

The Bank of Canada governor is recommending jobless young people seek unpaid work as they wait for the economy to recover.

Stephen Poloz says young Canadians struggling to find work should add more experience to their CVs by volunteering in their area of expertise.

Speaking to a House of Commons committee, he predicted it will take up to two years for hiring to catch up with the already improving economy.

Poloz’s remarks come a day after he said in a speech that 200,000 young Canadians are out of work, underemployed or back in school trying to improve their job prospects.

In Monday’s address, Poloz said he bet almost everyone in the room knew at least one family with adult children living in the basement.

Poloz says recent graduates who have not been able to enter the workforce will have to compete for jobs against the fresh crop of new grads that arrive after them.

Liberal MP Scott Brison asked Poloz whether he thought unpaid internships were more of a benefit for wealthier youth because young people from a lower-income background can’t afford to work for free.

[LINK] "Jian Ghomeshi, Rob Ford and the cost of Canadian politeness"

Twitter pointed me towards Madeline Ashby's opinion piece in the Ottawa Citizen, one noting the ways in which famed Canadian politeness actually manifests more like indifference where the fate of women is concerned.

As the stories about Jian Ghomeshi grow in number and deepen in depravity, Canadians have asked themselves painful questions about how and why his alleged behaviour went ignored for so long. But if the history of Rob Ford is any indication, Torontonians are experts at not asking questions about a charismatic man’s treatment of women. And while the allegations against both Ford and Ghomeshi have not been proven in court, this reluctance to even talk about it suggests the famous Canadian politeness might give men cover for how they treat women.

It may seem strange to compare Ghomeshi with Ford. On the surface, they appear to be polar opposites. While Ghomeshi gleefully exploited his hipster cred among left-voting CBC listeners, Ford gorged himself on their frustration. But beneath their brands, the stories about them are disturbingly similar.

While Ghomeshi was allegedly busy intimidating his co-workers, assaulting his dates, and playing with his teddy bear, Ford was welcoming Toronto police officers into his home to deal with domestic disturbance complaints. In 2008, Rob Ford was arrested for assault and allegedly making a death threat against his wife. The charges were later dropped, because the Crown found his wife Renata Ford’s account to have “credibility issues.” In 2011, Ford’s mother-in-law called 911 to tell them Ford was taking his two children out of the country without their mother’s consent. The Ford family said the police had it all wrong, that everything was fine, that “a lot of people you know have problems behind closed doors.” But those problems continued: in 2012, police found Renata Ford with bruises and contusions on her face and body. When asked about the possibility of abuse, she refused to cooperate.

[. . .]

As the stories about alcohol and drugs and secret videos mounted, Renata Ford’s story slipped through the cracks. It’s not that it the public didn’t know there had been interactions with authorities — journalists at multiple Toronto newspapers knew and some even published stories about it. It’s that the public simply did not care. A mayor who smoked crack was a tragedy. The woman who lived with him was just a statistic.