[PHOTO] Phone reading

The old FASA manuals can be fun.

[URBAN NOTE] "No jail for Toronto police officer convicted of G20 assault"

From the Toronto Star.

A judge has upheld a Toronto police officer’s conviction for assaulting a man with his baton during the G20 summit protests but ruled that he will not serve jail time.

Superior Court Justice Brian O’Marra overturned the 45-day jail sentence and instead ordered Const. Babak Andalib-Goortani, 34, to serve a year of probation and perform 75 hours of community service.

[. . .]

Andalib-Goortani expects to return to work as a police officer shortly, court heard. He will be expected to perform at least 10 hours of community service per month.

Both Andalib-Goortani and his lawyer Melanie Webb said they had no comment.

In September 2013, Andalib-Goortani was convicted of using excessive force in arresting Adam Nobody as he protested on the lawn of Queen’s Park in June 2010.

[. . .]

“Well the conviction stays, that’s a great thing because now we have two judges saying he’s guilty,” said Adam Nobody outside the courthouse. “The probation, I would have hoped for more, I would have hoped to see him in jail. I think he deserves jail time.

He added that it would be an “absolute shame” for Andalib-Goortani to continue as a police officer.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• blogTO notes a project aimed at crowdsourcing money to buy sleeping bags for Toronto's homeless.


• Gerry Canavan despairs at the corporatization of the University of Wisconsin.


• Centauri Dreams takes another look at Kepler-444.


• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper suggesting no correlation between the sizes of Kuiper belts and exoplanets.


• The Dragon's Tales notes the crash of an armed Chinese drone in Nigeria.


• Joe. My. God. and Towleroad both note Andrew Sullivan's retirement from blogging.


• The Planetary Society Blog argues rivalries between private space companies is all good for the future of space travel.


• Livejournaler pollotenchegg tracks Ukrainian military deaths over the past year.


• Registan is not worried by Russia's new military doctrine.


• The Volokh Conspiracy reports on an Islamic civil law tribunal in Texas.


• Window on Eurasia has different reports on Putin, one claiming he's not a rational actor, the other suggesting that Western governments should try to undermine him.

[LINK] "What the %@&*! Happened to Free Speech?"

Torontoist's Mark Mann reports on Art Spiegelman's recent lecture here in Toronto on cartoons and freedom of speech.

Art Spiegelman’s reputation doesn’t do him justice. Most people will recognize his name from his Pulitzer Prize–winning graphic novel Maus, a devastating, multi-layered account of the Holocaust. But Spiegelman produced iconic work before and after that work was published—though many people won’t have made the connections. He’s a shape-shifter, comfortable in many different styles and formats, so it’s easy to overlook the range of his accomplishments.

The retrospective of Spiegelman’s work now on at the AGO does a fine job of showcasing all the varied parts of his career, from his invention of the Garbage Pail Kids as a young graphic artist to his many memorable covers for the New Yorker later in life. But Spiegelman’s lecture “What the %@&*! Happened to Comics,” hosted by the Koffler Center of the Arts at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema on January 26, dealt with an equally relevant aspect of his life’s work: namely, his advocacy for free speech in an age when cartoonists are being gunned down at their desks.

The talk began with a short introduction to the essence of the comic-book style, exemplified by the redacted expletive in the title: little abstract symbols that take on meaning because we invest them with meaning. Spiegelman asserts that comics are a “co-mix” of art and commerce—which seems like a coded way of saying that comics aren’t as pretentious as fine art (what art isn’t mixed with commerce?). The AGO exhibit is preoccupied with this aspect of his work, and the way he uses comics to blend high and low art.

But the most important thing about comics, in Spiegelman’s formulation, is that they get straight into the brain, moving faster than we can think about them. Comics are so condensed that we can understand them instantly, the way a baby recognizes the symbol of a smiley face before it can distinguish even its own mother’s face. And therein lies their power—and their threat.

Woven in with his broader history of the medium was Spiegelman’s story of his own love affair with comics. He described how he taught himself to read while trying to figure out if Batman was good or bad (“Maybe if I understand these words, I’ll find out,” he said), how he learned about sex from contemplating Betty and Veronica, and how he discovered philosophy from Peanuts. Most important to his development, though, was Mad Magazine, which he says taught him about ethics, aesthetics, and everything else.

[LINK] "Landscape and Austen"

jsburbidge has a nice post about the role of landscape in Jane Austen's novels.

Somewhere back near the beginning of time (it sometimes feels like) I took a graduate seminar on Landscape and Literature, with a focus mainly on the 18th Century (although the 19th and 20th centuries did get a look in). It was not as interesting as it might have been -- the professor, Leo Braudy, was not noted for the excitement he generated -- but it did have its points.

I thought of that course again on re-watching the 2005 movie of Price and Prejudice (the one with Keira Knightly). I did so because it seemed to me that at many cases where Austen set a scene indoors, the movie gratuitously set it outdoors (sometimes jettisoning a good line in the process: there was no space for Mr. Bennett's "I have two small favours to request. First, that you will allow me the free use of my understanding on the present occasion; and secondly, of my room. I shall be glad to have the library to myself as soon as may be", as Elizabeth had stormed out of the house to a duckpond). Occasionally a scene which Austen set outside (Darcy delivering his letter to Elizabeth, Lady Catherine delivering her interdiction to Elizabeth) was set inside, for no obvious reason I could see. Sometimes the landscape seemed to invade the indoors: the Bennetts' house seemed to have pigs in the background unpredictably.

These weren't the only arbitrary changes which seemed to be aimed principally at foregrounding the picturesque. Why did the Gardiners go to the Peak District rather than having their planned tour to the Lake District cut short[1]? Why was Darcy's set of miniatures by the fireplace (restrained, in good taste) changed into a sculpture gallery? For that matter, how did Darcy know that by wandering out at the crack of dawn he would find Elizabeth outdoors the morning after Lady Catherine had visited? (In the novel he is in London at the time, but I do not begrudge the simplification to the director of his being at Netherfield and coming over; but as a reasonable man he would have ridden over no earlier than mid-morning, on any reasonable expectation of getting access to Elizabeth. Indeed, he shows as much restraint and decorum in the book as one might expect, coming over with Bingley in the afternoon after his arrival back down from London.)

Given the generally positive critical response to the film, It's beside the point to note that I wasn't impressed. What is more interesting is to consider why such an extensive amount of swapping of locales took place, and why it might have an impact on what is designed into the book.

[LINK] "Independent Catalonia Would Have Investment Grade: Study"

Bloomberg's Esteban Duarte reports on a study claiming that an independent Catalonia would be quite financially sound, at least so long as it stayed in the Eurozone.

Catalonia would recover its investment-grade credit rating if it reached an agreement on independence from Spain, according to study to be presented today by an economists’ group from the region.

The region’s government would merit an A+ rating, Standard & Poor’s fifth-highest grade, if it was released from its obligations to the rest of Spain, according to the study carried out by Joan Elias Boada, a former economist at La Caixa, Spain’s third-largest lender, and Joan Maria Mateu, a former finance director for southern Europe at German industrial company Weidmuller GmbH & Co. KG. That’s seven steps higher than the region’s current junk rating of BB, and would put it on a par with Israel and Korea.

“The credit rating of an independent Catalonia, consolidated as a new European state and a member of the European Union, would be logically even better,” Elias Boada and Mateu wrote in the study for the Col·legi d’Economistes de Catalunya.

Catalan President Artur Mas this month called regional elections for Sept. 27 as he seeks a mandate to negotiate a split from Spain. The region transfers about 8.5 billion euros ($9.7 billion), or 4.35 percent of its gross domestic product, per year to the rest of Spain, as tax collection exceeds the public-sector expenditure, according to a July study for the Spanish Budget Ministry.

[LINK] "Mars had its own mini, Iron Theia"

I prefer the title of The Dragon's Tales' link post to EurekAlert!'s "The 2 faces of Mars". The suggestion that the topographical differences between Mars' two hemispheres can be explained in terms of a southern hemisphere impact is new, and apparently plausible. As the EurekAlert! report on the paper concludes, the environment created by this impact would have been very hostile to young life.

The two hemispheres of Mars are more different from any other planet in our solar system. Non-volcanic, flat lowlands characterise the northern hemisphere, while highlands punctuated by countless volcanoes extend across the southern hemisphere. Although theories and assumptions about the origin of this so-called and often-discussed Mars dichotomy abound, there are very few definitive answers. ETH Zurich geophysicists with Giovanni Leone are now providing a new explanation. Leone is the lead author of a paper recently published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Using a computer model, the scientists have concluded that a large celestial object must have smashed into the Martian south pole in the early history of the Solar System. Their simulation shows that this impact generated so much energy that it created a magma ocean, which would have extended across what is today's southern hemisphere. The celestial body that struck Mars must have been at least one-tenth the mass of Mars to be able to unleash enough energy to create this magma ocean. The molten rock eventually solidified into the mountainous highlands that today comprise the southern hemisphere of Mars.

In their simulation, the researchers assumed that the celestial body consisted to a large degree of iron, had a radius of at least 1,600 kilometres, and crashed into Mars at a speed of five kilometres per second. The event is estimated to have occurred around 4 to 15 million years after the Red Planet was formed. Mars' crust must have been very thin at that time, like the hard, caramelised surface of a crème brûlée. And, just like the popular dessert, hiding beneath the surface was a liquid interior.

When the celestial object impacted, it added more mass to Mars, particularly iron. But the simulation also found that it triggered strong volcanic activity. Around the equator in particular, numerous mantle plumes were generated as a consequence of the impact, which migrated to the south pole where they ended. Mantle plumes are magma columns that transport liquid material from the mantle to the surface.

[. . .]

It has become increasingly clear to Giovanni Leone that Mars has always been an extremely hostile planet, and he considers it almost impossible that it ever had oceans or even rivers of water. "Before becoming the cold and dry desert of today, this planet was characterised by intense heat and volcanic activity, which would have evaporated any possible water and made the emergence of life highly unlikely," asserts the planet researcher.

[LINK] "How Oily Is Canada's Housing Bubble?"

Bloomberg's Megan McArdle suggested that the bursting of Alberta's oil boom is not likely to lead to a general collapse in the Canadian housing market. I'm skeptical of her assumptions that Alberta's shock won't be transmitted elsewhere in Canada, and not only on account of the dependence of economies and labour markets elsewhere in Canada on Albertan prosperity. You?

If you watch any amount of HGTV -- which is to say, if you are a middle-aged married person -- then you've probably noticed something funny: A lot of the people on shows such as "Property Brothers" seem to have Canadian accents. And you've probably noticed something else a bit funny: Those people are paying a heck of a lot for claustrophobic rowhouses on so-so streets.

Canada is one of the few Western nations that survived the financial crisis nearly unscathed. My working theory has long been that this is because the Canadian banking system is run by Canadians, a very sensible people. But it's reasonable to ask whether Canada's relative stability might not have something to do with the price of oil, because Canada is sitting on a large supply of "nontraditional" (read: "expensive to extract") petroleum, mostly in Alberta. And as David Parkinson, economics reporter at the Globe and Mail, has written, their economic growth has been substantially goosed by those deposits[.]

How much does Alberta matter? Well, as with any good native Albertan (full disclosure – born and raised), my knee-jerk tendency is to say “way more than the rest of you bastards combined.” But in the current Canadian economy, that’s alarmingly close to accurate. Alberta contributed one-third of Canada’s economic growth last year, and is by far the fastest-growing province in the country again this year. Since the beginning of 2013, nearly half the jobs created in the country were in Alberta. . . .

The oil sector has not only been leading the way in Canada’s export recovery, it has also been the big driver in business capital investment in the country. That means the sector has been leading the way in the two key areas that the Bank of Canada has repeatedly identified as critical to sustaining Canada’s recovery. Lower prices could stifle energy’s contribution on both fronts; they are not only an automatic drag on the value of exports, they are also a notorious capital-spending killer.

Canadians have been worrying more and more about a housing bubble. In that context, it's worth examining whether the fall in oil prices will be what finally causes the bubble to burst.

[DM] "Damage from cancelled census as bad as feared, researchers say"

On the front page of today's issue of Toronto's The Globe and Mail was Tavia Grant's article reporting that the scrapping of the long-form census once collected by Statistics Canada, ordered by the Canadian federal government for inscrutable reasons of its own, has really caused a lot of damage.

The cancellation of the mandatory long-form census has damaged research in key areas, from how immigrants are doing in the labour market to how the middle class is faring, while making it more difficult for cities to ensure taxpayer dollars are being spent wisely, planners and researchers say.



Statistics Canada developed a voluntary survey after Ottawa cancelled the long-form census in 2010. Many had warned that the switch would mean lower response rates and policies based on an eroded understanding of important trends. Now researchers – from city planners to public health units – say they have sifted through the 2011 data and found it lacking.



Their comments come as a private member’s bill to reinstate the mandatory long-form census will be debated in the House of Commons Thursday. The bill, expected to be voted on next week, has slim odds of passing, given the Conservative majority. But it is drawing attention to the impact of the switch, which has created difficulties in determining income-inequality trends, housing needs and whether low-income families are getting adequate services.



The impact isn’t just on researchers. Cities, such as Toronto, say it’s become more expensive and requires more staffing to obtain data that’s of lower quality. The key areas of concern are tracking long-term shifts and understanding what’s going on at the neighbourhood level.



The last census in 2011 cost a total of $652-million, including an extra $22-million due to the change to the voluntary National Household Survey. The total budget for the 2016 census won’t be decided until February or March, Statscan has said. But the current plan is to hold another voluntary survey. All told, 35,000 people will be hired for this effort.

The article goes on to describe groups and cities and provinces and economic classes with specific needs which can't be met by the low-quality data collected in place of the long-form census. I quite like the observation made in the final paragraph of Grant's article.

Sara Mayo, social planner at the Social Planning and Research Council of Hamilton, says the result of the census changes has been less data for more money. “In terms of fiscal prudence, this made no sense. Why would any government want to pay more for worse-quality data?”

Originally posted here.