[CAT] Shakespeare, at night, by books

[PHOTO] Rail crossing at night. Bartlett north of Dupont

[URBAN NOTE] "Metrolinx blames you": Jonathan Goldsbie on Metrolinx confusion over the UP Express

Jonathan Goldsbie at NOW Toronto describes a positively infuriating press conference held by Metrolinx, at which the regional transit authority blames--among other things--the general public for not understanding the pricing structure.

Metrolinx president and CEO Bruce McCuaig, board chair Robert Prichard, and UPX president Kathy Haley took questions from reporters seated opposite them at the boardroom table. It was actually a brilliant media strategy, keeping the scrum from getting more heated than it otherwise might have.

"Since we launched our service about nine months ago, we’ve learned a great deal," said Kathy Haley, beginning the most awkward presentation of her life. The president of the Union Pearson Express (UPX) had been called to Tuesday's special meeting of the Metrolinx board to answer for her project's failure to attract riders.

[. . .]

[Haley] cited four primary "impediments" to ridership: low awareness of the service; deeply entrenched travel habits that are difficult to change; people having trouble locating the stations; and finally, grudgingly, "perceptions about our price."

None of this was new or surprising. But from the meeting and the media availability that followed, we did learn some spectacular things about the way Metrolinx thinks:

• It's not that the price was too high but that the public was too clueless to get that it wasn't. Haley: "I think there’s a lack of awareness about the price. We did find out that people were not aware of our Presto price discounts, of our concession discounts. There just seemed to be, in all of the research, there seemed to be a lack of awareness about what the price was. For the business community and the people that use it, they were very aware of it. They did not view it as expensive. But some of the local public did. And people that weren’t aware of the service had perceptions from other sources, for some reason, that it was higher than what it really was."

[LINK] "For French speakers, an unwelcome grammatical hat trick"

MacLean's Martin Patriquin notes the controversy around the recent French language reforms, taking a look at controversy in Québec as well as in France.

For over 380 years, l’Académie française has been the protector and arbiter of all things having to do with the French language. From its offices in the Institut de France, an imposing, beaux arts-style half moon overlooking the Seine, l’Académie essentially dictates the rules governing the language for the roughly 220 million French speakers in the world. Its members wear filigreed blazers. Edicts, in the form of dictionaries, are issued.

It is therefore telling that the Académie distanced itself from the most recent réforme de l’orthographe, or orthography reform, which includes the partial elimination of the accent circonflexe, the hat-like accent that adorns the vowels of certain French words. “L’Académie française would like to remind people that it is not behind what has been designated the ‘orthography reform,’ which has been in the press recently, and which is to be applied in school programs at the beginning of the next academic year.” The changes actually came from the Conseil supérieur de la langue français, the French government’s advisory council, assured l’Académie.

[. . .]

In Quebec, grammatically based outrage can be as frothy as its French brethren—though it’s worth noting that the current Quebec government has yet to take an official position on the reforms. Nonetheless, the changes to the language will be implemented here as they are in France, according to a communiqué from l’Office québécois de la langue française.

Quebec polemicist Mathieu Bock-Côté called the reforms the work of “pseudo-linguists who practise an extreme form of relativism and tell us that it’s really not a big deal and that we have nothing to worry about.”

According to Quebec writer Denise Bombardier, the changes are a reflection of how “written [French] has deteriorated and will continue its steep decline, and no one but a few purists will be saddened.”

[LINK] "Can Things Get Any Worse for Russia? You’re About to Find Out"

Bloomberg's Ksenia Galouchko and Henry Meyer note how the Russian economy is set to worsen.

For a decade, Dmitri Barinov has been following the volatile economy of his homeland from the safe distance of Union Investment’s offices in Frankfurt. Last year, as other money managers were steering clear of Russia’s broken economy, the Moscow-born Barinov pulled off something of a coup: He persuaded his bosses to take the plunge and buy Russian government bonds. It was a narrow bet, but he ended up winning because the central bank—after implementing the biggest interest rate hike since the Russian financial crisis in 1998 to prop up the collapsing ruble—changed course and aggressively backtracked. In the first 10 months of 2015, ruble-denominated government bonds handed investors such as Barinov a 25 percent return in dollar terms, the biggest gain for local bonds anywhere.

This year not even Barinov can spot an escape from the rubble of an economy mired in its longest recession in two decades, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its forthcoming issue. Sanctions imposed by the U.S. and the European Union to punish President Vladimir Putin for meddling in Ukraine remain a drag on growth. And oil’s decline to a 13-year low has been catastrophic for Russia, where almost 50 percent of government revenue comes from crude and natural gas. “With oil, you rely on a very volatile factor,” says Barinov, who oversees about $2.6 billion in assets. So as far as he’s concerned, “all bets are off.”

A persistent glut in crude supply could push prices to as low as $16 a barrel this year, according to former Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin. Kudrin won plaudits overseas for his stewardship of Russia’s finances during Putin’s first decade in power. As the current crisis deepened, Bloomberg News reported in December, he was in discussions about a possible return to government. (He declined to comment on that.) A Putin ally, Kudrin remains negative about Russia’s prospects. “Over the next year to 18 months,” he says, “Russia will suffer major economic difficulties.”

[. . .]

With the 2015 budget based on $50 a barrel, says former Deputy Economy Minister Mikhail Dmitriev, “even $40 a barrel is a dangerous scenario for Russia.” The country holds parliamentary polls in September and a presidential election in 2018, when Putin is expected to run again. The election cycle puts pressure on the government to spend beyond its means, says Dmitriev, who five years ago accurately foresaw the street demonstrations over allegations of vote rigging in legislative elections that turned into the biggest protests of Putin’s rule. “If social dissatisfaction boils over,” he says, “Russia will adopt a populist economic policy for an extended time.”

That kind of spending could exhaust Russia’s National Wellbeing and Reserve funds—currently totaling about $120 billion—within a year or two, says former Russian government adviser Sergei Guriev, who takes over as chief economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in mid-2016. “After that,” he says, “they will have to increase taxes on businesses, which will undermine incentives to invest, resulting in continuing capital outflow and a further decline in GDP.”

[LINK] "Why Russia Stopped at Crimea"

Bloomberg View's Leonid Bershidsky notes why Ukrainian leaders in early 2014 chose not to respond militarily to the Russian invasion of Crimea, and why Russia did what it did.

The news site Pravda.com.ua has published the transcript of a meeting of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council that took place Feb. 28, 2014. The previous day, Russian troops without identifying insignia helped pro-Moscow activists take over Crimea's parliament and government. The following day, the Russian parliament authorized Putin to start military operations in Ukraine.

The meeting's attendees, officials swept into power by Ukraine's "Revolution of Dignity," vainly sought to prevent the loss of Crimea to Russia, but effectively decided to give up the peninsula, believing the alternative would be worse.

Oleksandr Turchynov, the acting president and parliament speaker, raised the possibility of fighting back. Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk -- who still is in office, unlike many others who came to power directly after the February 2014 revolution -- opposed a counteroffensive.

"We're talking about declaring war on Russia," he said, according to the transcript. "Right after we do this, there will be a Russian statement 'On defending Russian citizens and Russian speakers who have ethnic ties with Russia.' That is the script the Russians have written, and we're playing to that script."

Yatsenyuk pointed out that the Finance Ministry's bank account was empty and that, according to the Defense Ministry, Ukraine had no military resources to defend Kiev if Russia invaded. Besides, Yatsenyuk said that there would be "an acute ethnic conflict" in Crimea and that the Ukrainian government would be blamed for failing to prevent it. He called for political negotiations through foreign intermediaries to grant Crimea more autonomy and in the meantime to try to rebuild the military.

Other attendees who spoke up against fighting back were acting National Bank Chairman Stepan Kubiv and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who had been freed from prison in the final days of the revolution. Tymoshenko argued that Putin wanted to play out the same scenario that unfolded during the 2008 Russian-Georgian war: Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili attacked pro-Russian forces that held the rebellious region of South Ossetia, but Russia intervened and steamrolled the Georgian army[.]

[LINK] "Kobo CEO faces uphill e-book battle against Apple, Amazon"

The Globe and Mail's Shane Dingman wrote about the issues of Canadian-originating e-book retailer Kobo.

Michael Tamblyn finds himself in an unenviable position. He has a great job – he’s the new CEO of Rakuten Kobo Inc. – but the easy days of e-book sales seem to be over, and industry estimates suggest 2015 was a flat year for e-book purchases in North America.

That said, Kobo has 26 million users and a library of 4.7 million e-books and magazines in 190 countries, and it appears to be making strides. “January was Kobo’s best e-book sales month ever,” says Tamblyn, who estimates e-books make up 18 per cent of Canadian book purchasing. Kobo’s most dedicated customers buy an average of one e-book a month and 16 print books a year. And while industry-wide numbers can be tough to precisely pin down, Kobo is regarded as the No. 3 retailer in e-books worldwide, behind Amazon and Apple.

On Feb. 12, though, Rakuten, Kobo’s Tokyo-based parent company, announced a goodwill writedown that wiped out close to $95-million of the Canadian division’s value, thanks to missed financial targets.

Tamblyn “represents a company that’s clearly an underdog,” says Thad McIlroy, a publishing analyst and author of the Future of Publishing blog. “They have managed to innovate in the quality of the hardware, and are only a step or two behind Amazon.”

Kobo, once one of Canada’s hottest tech startups, became the country’s champion in the e-reading space until it was sold. Now, although still based in Toronto, it’s a division in a much larger Japanese e-commerce company with many competing interests. And with limited resources, Kobo will have to perform sales and technology miracles in order to keep pace in the e-reading market and provide a meaningful third option to Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc., behemoths that offer customers far more than just digital books.

[LINK] "An Unloved Light Bulb Shows Signs of Burning Out"

Christina Nunez's National Geographic report notes something unfortunate. I've liked these bulbs, actually.

Many consumers spent the last two decades swapping out their old incandescent light bulbs for CFLs in the name of greater efficiency. The spiral tubes used less energy, saved money, lasted longer—and people hated them.

Now CFLs, or compact fluorescent lamps, are slowly disappearing from stores. Home retailer IKEA stopped selling them in all its locations last year, and now manufacturer GE has penned a cheeky Dear John letter to the technology, saying it will stop making the bulbs in the United States.

“I can see clearly now that LED is my future,” the letter says, referring to the light-emitting diodes that have gained sales as their prices drop. The latest U.S. numbers show CFL shipments down 28 percent from last year, while LEDs are up a whopping 237 percent, according to the National Electrical Manufacturers Association. And under new U.S. standards proposed Friday, current CFLs won't even be efficient enough to make the cut.

[. . .]

Introduced in the mid-1980s, CFLs progressively got cheaper and more efficient, using 75 percent less energy than a regular incandescent bulb. But they never quite overcame the problems that made them unlovable: They needed time to light up fully, the light often felt harsh, and the glass tubes contained toxic mercury, prompting an unsettling cleanup checklist for any poor soul who happens to shatter one.

[LINK] "Being Bilingual Changes the Architecture of Your Brain"

Lizzie Wade's Wired article notes the particular kinds of work associated with bilingualism. As someone who still has decent French, I can testify that this work is very real.

I’d been back from studying abroad in Mexico City for a couple of days when I asked my dad, “Can I use the lavadora?”

“The what?” He didn’t speak Spanish. I knew that, of course. I didn’t even really speak Spanish. I had barely been able to hold a conversation for most of the six months I had just spent in Mexico. So why when I needed to do laundry, the only word that came into my head was in Spanish?

“You know, the…umm…the thing that washes your clothes?” What is happening to me? I thought. How could I be forgetting English? I thought I was great at English!

“You mean the washing machine?”

“Yes, that!” I said, relieved to recognize a noun I had known and used for over 20 years. This momentary aphasia freaked me out when it first happened. But in the almost 10 years since this conversation—during which time I moved back to Mexico City as a grad student and then as a journalist—I’ve gotten used to it. I forget some English word or another at least once a day. I’m fluent in Spanish now, and I’m proud of that. But has speaking a second language somehow made me less fluent in my native language?

Judith Kroll thinks so. She’s a psychologist who studies bilingualism and its cognitive consequences at Pennsylvania State University. “A bilingual’s two languages sometimes converge, but often they compete,” she said this weekend during a presentation at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Washington, DC. When I speak Spanish, it’s not an effortless cognitive switch. My brain needs to actively choose Spanish every time I say a word or construct a sentence. Even after years and years of speaking Spanish every day, I can often feel that work happening. It’s tiring, and switching to English can be a relief.

[WRITING] "The Retro Freewrite May Just Be the Ultimate Word Processor"

Wired's Tim Moynihan described an interesting-sounding word processor, the Freewrite, designed to lack web access so as to prevent writers from surfing. It sounds interesting, but the quoted cost of 500 dollars US limits the market appeal.

35 years after the birth of the laptop computer and 25 years after Wi-Fi was invented, someone finally may have built the ultimate word processor.

The Freewrite, which was called the Hemingwrite when it was introduced to the world in a very successful Kickstarter campaign back in 2014, is a portable mechanical keyboard with a small e-ink display on it. You can save your documents directly to Freewrite’s onboard storage, but it also has Wi-Fi connectivity that allows you to save to the cloud. Dropbox, Evernote, and Google Drive are supported at launch, with iCloud coming soon.

The thing you can’t do is browse the web, and that’s by design. It’s just you, the Freewrite, and a blank piece of e-paper.

The thing you can't do is browse the web, and that's by design.

At a time when our gadgets are supposed to do everything, the Freewrite may seem like a technological step backward. For most people, the prospect of spending hundreds of dollars on a throwback device seems foolish. But if you’re a writer, you probably get it. Writers are a sensitive lot; it’s why they move to remote cabins. With all the distractions on the Internet, sometimes it’s hard to exercise self-control. Exhibit A? All those open browser tabs. They make writing on a web-connected laptop as easy as trying to meditate in a casino.

“We are quickly seeing people becoming more disenchanted than ever with the nag of constant consumption,” explains Adam Leeb, cofounder of Freewrite manufacturer Astrohaus. “Everyone, particularly the millennial generation, understands that we now have to fight for our own attention from the outside world. Instead of allowing it to be a general purpose computer, we focused on one purpose, making the best possible writing experience.”

The experience starts with a full-size mechanical keyboard, one built on top of wonderfully clacky Cherry MX Brown switches. Right above it, a smartphone-size e-ink display. It’s a durable machine, with an aluminum body and an honest-to-goodness handle that flips out from under the display. You don’t need to upload to the cloud; you can also save “over one million pages” of documents in plain text format to the Freewrite’s internal drive.

[WRITING] "Burnout, creativity, and the tyranny of production schedules"

io9 highlighted Elizabeth Bear's brave essay, posted at Charlie Stross' Antipope, explaining why she's taking a year-long break from writing.

Between life stress and overwork, I hit a wall at the end of last year. I've been struggling with actually accomplishing my job for a while--hating to sit down at the computer, being avoidant, generally feeling not so much blocked as if every word was being taken off my hide with a potato peeler. I started feeling this way back in about 2007, a situation which I think is linked both to a bad reaction to an OTC medication that made me profoundly depressed for about four months, before I figured out what the problem was, and also my internalization of some criticism at a peer workshop I attended. (The workshop was great, and I got a Hugo-winning story and a major uptick in skill out of it. But it also turned me into the proverbial centipede who gets asked how she manages to run, and, well, I started tripping over my own feet left right and center.)

Because I had contracts and writing is how I make my living, I told myself that I had to write anyway, and I did, though I was late on a novel (CHILL, now published in the UK as SANCTION).

Somewhere in the process, though, writing went from being something fun--the job I'd always wanted--to a real misery, a thing I avoided and dreaded. I became hypercritical of my own work, and nothing I did was ever good enough. I'd gotten into the habit, in other words, of kicking myself over basically every element of my work and holding it to impossible standards. I figured if I just kept writing I would get through the stuck, and everything would be fine again.

Nine years later, I realized that Things Were Not Going So Well, and were in fact getting worse. I've been producing good work--my critical record speaks for itself--but I was incapable of identifying it as good work.I was disappointed in all of it, and no matter how hard I worked or how much I produced it never quite felt like enough. I started having clinical anxiety symptoms, and when a bunch of real-life stress including family illnesses showed up, I didn't have the spoons to cope with work and family and various other issues.

Anyway, the good news is, I got help. And I'm taking a year off from my production schedule and rejigging my deadlines into something more manageable. And I'm learning to say no. No, no, no, no.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Dangerous Minds shares one video club of David Bowie in London in 1967, and another of the controversies around the Cocteau Twins in 1985 Ohio.


• The Dragon's Gaze notes a study of the winds of hot Jupiter HD 189733b.


• The Dragon's Tales looks at the evolution of Titan's atmosphere from an early date.


• Joe. My. God. and Towleroad each note the failure of PrEP to protect a Toronto man against infection.


• Language Hat links to a study looking at the spread of Austronesian languages.


• Marginal Revolution writes on the economics, and the culture, of used book sales.


• The NYRB Daily notes the problems with staging Wagner.


• Savage Minds shares a list of new ethnographic texts.


• Torontoist examines how Ontario's cap and trade and other green initiatives could impact Toronto.


• Towleroad and Joe. My. God. note the Australian government's belated apology for the repression of gay demonstrators in Sydney in 1978, during the first Mardi Gras.


• Window on Eurasia writes about the reasons for the support of diasporic Russian Jews for Putin's Russia and notes the Russian government's hostility towards open regionalism on its borders.


• Arnold Zwicky shares and dissects a Japanese-style poem of his.

[DM] "On the demographic limits to future economic growth"

At Demography Matters I reflect on a recent article noting that labour shortages, linked to dire demographics, will determine the future of the world economy.