[PHOTO] Me and an owl, April 2012

This is a workplace photo, if you can believe it.

[URBAN NOTE] "John Tory, councillors attend transgender flag-raising ceremony"

John Tory's attendance at an event of note to Toronto's GLBT communities, as reported by the Toronto Star's Jennifer Pagliaro, is a refreshing change from the Rob Ford era.

[F]acing biting winds on the podium roof of city hall, dozens including Mayor-elect John Tory gathered on Thursday afternoon to witness the raising of a flag in remembrance of transgender people lost to violence, suicide and who are still missing.

[. . .]

The significance of Tory’s attendance, despite not being the mayor quite yet, was not lost on organizers.

“I think it’s amazing that even before he’s had the privilege of being sworn in as the mayor of our city, that John Tory, the mayor-elect is here and we are so glad to see you,” said former MPP George Smitherman. “It’s a signal of better days ahead here in Toronto and at city hall.”

Pride and LGBTQ events have been contentious at city hall in recent years, with outgoing Mayor Rob Ford’s absence noted — including his refusal to march in the annual Pride parade — and his documented homophobic slurs criticized. Ford attended his first Pride Toronto event in June 2013, also a flag-raising. He had previously attended flag raisings against homophobia and transphobia.

“While I’m not yet the mayor of Toronto, I have been elected as the mayor of Toronto and I’m going to be the mayor of all the people,” Tory told reporters after the ceremony. “To me it is a pleasure and a privilege to be able to go to events like that.”

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• blogTO notes the erection of a new LCBO in a former funeral home on Queen Street West.


• The Dragon's Tales links to a study of Titan's magnetic field.


• Joe. My. God. notes a group of American pastors who are responding to civil same-sex marriage by refusing to enact civil marriages themselves.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the complicity of Firestone in Liberia with Charles Taylor's rebel army in the early 1990s.


• Marginal Revolution notes the numerous human-dolphin fishing cooperatives scattered across the world.


• The Planetary Society Blog's Casey Dreier notes the probability of an American mission to Europa has risen.


• The Russian Demographics Blog links to a statistical study of the Ukrainian election suggesting it was fair.


• Strange Maps notes Al Ahwaz, a former Arab-populated pseudo-state in Iran on the Persian Gulf coast.


• Torontoist notes a Toronto protest arguing refugee claimants should be allowed access to social assistance.


• Towleroad notes that the National Organization for Marriage is facing financial meltdown.


• Window on Eurasia notes the Crimean Tatars' demand for recognition as an indigenous people.

[URBAN NOTE] "7 restaurants to eat Hong Kong style Western food in the GTA"

blogTO's Darren "DKLo" Susilo describes an intriguing parallel to Canadian Chinese food: Hong Kong-style Western food. The idea sounds interesting, and I do note that there's one restaurant specializing in this cuisine downtown.

One of the most fascinating aspects of Hong Kong cuisine is the HK-style Western dishes. Found in small restaurants and coffee houses (otherwise known as cha chaan teng) this cuisine serves up interesting takes on various kinds of Western food items ranging from toast to macaroni. The term HK-style Western cuisine or Canto-Western (as Wikipedia puts it) is appropriate because the influences do not seem to come from just one country in the so-called Western hemisphere. After all, no other single country (as far as I know) combines toast, macaroni, and luncheon meat as breakfast items, but they all often harmoniously co-exist on the same table in these places. Hong Kong, you are truly a marvel.

So what wacky twists do the Hong Kong people put on these Western dishes anyway? Well have you seen steak that's been marinated with soy sauce and then served with a big spoonful of black pepper sauce? Or casseroles that are baked with fried rice? You haven't? Well then hurry down to these places and you'll be amazed. This is fusion cuisine before the terms "pan-Asian" or, well, "fusion" came into being.

Similar to my Cantonese Chinese list, there is no way this list can be comprehensive. The heavy immigration from Hong Kong that occurred in the 80's and 90's have contributed to a plethora of HK-style Western restaurants and cafes in the GTA. As such, I can only provide a smattering of places that I feel are good, solid locations to sample this unique delicacy. They are mostly simple places, and the good thing is that most are very modestly priced.

[LINK] "Maria Mourani, ex-Bloc MP, signs NDP membership card"

CBC reports on the defection of Maria Mourani, one-time Montréal Bloc Québécois MP, to the NDP. The apparent consolidation of the NDP in Québec is noteworthy, and one positive achievement for the NDP as its English Canadian presence continues its decline.

Former Bloc Québécois-turned-Independent MP Maria Mourani signed a NDP membership card this morning and now says she wants to run for the New Democrats in the next election.

However, she will not sit with the NDP caucus in the meantime.

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair reminded reporters that the NDP has a policy on floor-crossing that states that any MP who changes parties must first run in a byelection.

Mourani was first elected in 2006. Her riding, Ahuntsic, was held previously by the Liberals, who continued to fight hard for the seat in subsequent, close election races.

"Since one year, I'm independent, and I do my job, I vote, I do everything. So it doesn't change for me. The difference is I have a new family and this family, it's so important for me because I don't feel alone [anymore]," Mourani told reporters.

Mourani said she spoke with Dan Gagnier, a high-ranking Liberal Party official, about crossing the floor to sit with them, but that ultimately she decided against it.

[URBAN NOTE] "The Uncertain Future of the Finch LRT"

Torontoist's Sarah Sweet notes the continued controversy surrounding the Finch West light rail route. Toronto should build some mass transit, already!

The Finch West LRT will, if and when it is constructed, run between the Finch West subway station and Humber College—a distance of 11 km. An environmental assessment wrapped up in 2010, public consultations have been ongoing, millions of dollars have already been spent, and the project is scheduled for completion in 2020.

But the provincially funded, $1-billion project will soon be facing renewed political opposition: Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti (Ward 7, York West) recently told the Toronto Sun that at council’s first meeting next month, he intends to ask it to nix the plan. He claims that shelving the Finch LRT would provide Tory with roughly $1 billion that could be devoted to SmartTrack.

[. . .]

Tory himself has conceded that LRTs aren’t his primary focus. “Transit decisions in this city will be made, of course, by the city council working with the province and the federal government, and I’ve indicated my top two work priorities, which are the Scarborough subway and SmartTrack,” he said yesterday.

[LINK] "Italian ‘Invasion’ Has Swiss Fuming as Foreigner Vote Looms"

Bloomberg's Corinne Gretler reports on the labour migration of Italians to Switzerland--including to Italian-speaking areas like Ticino canton--and the political controversies it has awoken.

When Franco Agustoni stepped out on his balcony for a morning smoke in the Swiss border town of Bissone, he used to enjoy the view of Lake Lugano. All he sees now are rows of cars, motors humming as Italians cross into Switzerland for a day of work.

Just 10 months after voting to introduce immigration quotas, a Nov. 30 Ecopop ballot will decide whether to cap the annual net influx from abroad to 0.2 percent of Switzerland’s population. The daily inflow from Italy into the Helvetian nation’s Italian-speaking Ticino canton, which is not captured by the immigration debate, is only exacerbating the situation.

“There’s an invasion of the service sector here,” said Agustoni, 66, smoking Dunhill cigarettes with his espresso in front of Maru cafe on Corso San Gottardo in Switzerland’s Chiasso, just a few meters from the Italian border. “People, especially young people who have university degrees, rarely find jobs anymore because employers prefer to hire Italians who don’t cost as much.”

Ticino counts about 60,000 commuters, or “frontalieri,” who cross from Italy, making up roughly a third of its workforce. While 21 percent of Swiss citizens living in Ticino have foreign roots, the February vote to introduce unspecified quotas to “stop mass immigration” had the highest backing in the canton with 68.2 percent “yes” votes compared with just 50.3 percent for the country.

“The immigration problem is conceived very differently here in Ticino than in the rest of Switzerland,” said Ignazio Cassis, a member of parliament in Ticino. “The main worry here is the job market -- being substituted for cheaper frontalieri, not the loss of Swiss identity that Swiss-Germans are worried about, that doesn’t count for much here. For us, the situation is life-threatening.”

In Ticino, where one in four residents doesn’t have a Swiss passport, foreign workers and frontalieri primarily mean lower wages. The annual average gross wage in Switzerland was 71,600 euros ($89,650) last year, compared with just 29,700 euros in Italy, according to Eurostat data.

[LINK] "Japan Should Be More German"

William Pesek's Bloomberg View article caught my attention. I would note that the globalization and regionalism that has helped anchor Germany in a productive continental marketplace just hasn't been possible for Japan, for good reasons. Who is there to integrate with?

Plenty of economists are warning that Europe could soon look like stagnant Japan. In fact, Japan could stand to look a little more European -- or, to be more precise, more German.

Why has the "Made in Germany" brand thrived over the last 15 or so years, even as "Made in Japan" grinds toward irrelevance? All the more extraordinary, Germany has flourished in a savagely competitive global environment despite high labor costs, an overvalued euro and any number of regional financial crises. Its secret: adapting and innovating in ways Japan Inc. cannot even seem to contemplate.

[. . .]

Innovation is everything. Adjusted for gross domestic product ($3.6 trillion annually) and population (80 million), Germany could still be considered the world's No. 1 exporter. It trails China and the U.S., of course, but more than holds its own in autos, machinery, electronics, pharmaceutical products, optical goods, plastics and other sectors. Its success draws upon a mixture of design prowess, an intense focus on increasing productivity and moving upmarket, aggressive investments in research and development, and old-fashioned risk-taking. In order to exploit its comparative advantages, Germany has skillfully balanced the tensions between upping competitiveness and maximizing employment.

[. . .]

Small is big. The yen's 30 percent plunge in two years has tempered the urgency for change at Sony, Toyota, shipping giants like Mitsui O.S.K. and construction equipment goliaths like Komatsu. Instead, Tokyo should support companies like robotics innovator Fanuc, smartphone app creator Colopl, automation equipment maker Keyence and biopharmaceutical company PeptiDream -- the kind of businesses that make up Japan's "Mittelstand."

[. . .]

Think regionally. Germany trades plenty with America and China, which Daimler said today may become the biggest market for the Mercedes brand next year. But the evidence, Jen and Freire argue, "suggests that Germany’s rise as a global superpower in exports was due more to regionalization, or having unhindered access to the European Union, than to globalization, which Japan has relied on." While completing the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal with the U.S. and other nations would help to open up some of Japan's most ossified sectors, Abe should also be looking to mend fences in Asia and strike all the bilateral free-trade agreements he can, including with China.

[LINK] "Were Neanderthals a sub-species of modern humans? New research says no"

The Dragon's Tales linked to a EurekAlert press release relating to a new paper, "The Nasal Complex of Neanderthals: An Entry Portal to their Place in Human Ancestry". The authors argue that one element of Neanderthal morphology--their nasal passages--reveals that Neanderthals are not a mere subpopulation of Homo sapiens, but that they were a separate species.

In an extensive, multi-institution study led by SUNY Downstate Medical Center, researchers have identified new evidence supporting the growing belief that Neanderthals were a distinct species separate from modern humans (Homo sapiens), and not a subspecies of modern humans.

The study looked at the entire nasal complex of Neanderthals and involved researchers with diverse academic backgrounds. Supported by funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, the research also indicates that the Neanderthal nasal complex was not adaptively inferior to that of modern humans, and that the Neanderthals' extinction was likely due to competition from modern humans and not an inability of the Neanderthal nose to process a colder and drier climate.

Samuel Márquez, PhD, associate professor and co-discipline director of gross anatomy in SUNY Downstate's Department of Cell Biology, and his team of specialists published their findings on the Neanderthal nasal complex in the November issue of The Anatomical Record, which is part of a special issue on The Vertebrate Nose: Evolution, Structure, and Function (now online).

They argue that studies of the Neanderthal nose, which have spanned over a century and a half, have been approaching this anatomical enigma from the wrong perspective. Previous work has compared Neanderthal nasal dimensions to modern human populations such as the Inuit and modern Europeans, whose nasal complexes are adapted to cold and temperate climates.

However, the current study joins a growing body of evidence that the upper respiratory tracts of this extinct group functioned via a different set of rules as a result of a separate evolutionary history and overall cranial bauplan (bodyplan), resulting in a mosaic of features not found among any population of Homo sapiens. Thus Dr. Márquez and his team of paleoanthropologists, comparative anatomists, and an otolaryngologist have contributed to the understanding of two of the most controversial topics in paleoanthropology - were Neanderthals a different species from modern humans and which aspects of their cranial morphology evolved as adaptations to cold stress.

[LINK] Two Bloomberg links on the geopolitics of falling oil prices

First is "Oil Diplomacy Takes New Twist as Venezuela Seeks Non-OPEC Help", by Jake Rudnitsky and Jose Orozco.

Venezuela is seeking help from nations outside of OPEC to halt a collapse in global crude prices, adding a new twist to oil-market diplomacy with nine days to go until the group’s next meeting.

Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s president, told state television yesterday that he was coordinating with Russia to hold a meeting “very soon” with countries that aren’t members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, as well as those within the group, to defend the price of oil.

Venezuela and other Latin American countries have been among the hardest hit by plunging prices in part because the slump has been caused by surging supplies in North America. Combined output from the U.S. and Canada rose last year to the highest since at least 1965 as producers tapped stores locked in shale-rock formations and oil sands, according to BP Plc data.

“I don’t see anyone in non-OPEC volunteering to come to the rescue,” Olivier Jakob, managing director at Petromatrix GmbH in Zug, Switzerland, said by e-mail. “Venezuela is in a hot spot, as they have to fear the expected increase of Canadian crude oil to the U.S. Gulf.”

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Rafael Ramirez met with energy ministers from six producers this month as prices slumped, including the biggest non-OPEC oil exporter, Russia. Ramirez met Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak in Moscow yesterday, according to the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry.

The second is "Cheap-Oil Era Tilts Geopolitical Power to U.S.", by Rich Miller.

A new age of abundant and cheap energy supplies is redrawing the world’s geopolitical landscape, weakening and potentially threatening the legitimacy of some governments while enhancing the power of others.

Some changes already are evident. Surging U.S. oil production enabled America and its allies to impose tough sanctions on Iran without having to worry much about the loss of imports from the Middle Eastern nation. Russia, meanwhile, faces what President Vladimir Putin called a possibly “catastrophic” slump in prices for its oil as its economy is battered by U.S. and European sanctions over its role in Ukraine.

“A new era of lower prices is being ushered in” by the U.S. shale oil and gas revolution, Ed Morse, global head of commodities research for Citigroup Inc. in New York, said in an e-mail. “Undoubtedly some of the geopolitical changes will be momentous.”

They certainly were a quarter of a century ago. Plunging oil prices in the latter half of the 1980s helped pave the way for the breakup of the Soviet Union by robbing it of revenue it needed to survive. The depressed market also may have influenced Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s decision to invade fellow producer Kuwait in 1990, triggering the first Gulf War.

[. . .]

Russia again looks likely to suffer from the fallout in oil markets, along with Iran and Venezuela, while the U.S. and China come out ahead.