[PHOTO] Tree at night, Dupont at Dovercourt

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• The Big Picture shares photos of a Shanghai neighbourhood that refuses to sell out to developers.

James Bow rates California rail.

• Centauri Dreams looks at the large dwarf planet 2007 OR10.


• Dangerous Minds notes a campaign by a 9/11 conspiracy theorist to raise funds to buy an airplane and a building.


• The Dragon's Gaze looks at the Kepler-223 system.


• Language Hat looks at an astonishingly thorough German-led effort to publish a dictionary of Latin.


• The NYRB Daily assesses the Iran nuclear deal.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer considers Brazil and argues that any treachery in Sykes-Picot was less in the deal and more in the assumptions behind it.


• Transit Toronto notes the return of GO Transit's seasonal trains to Niagara.


• Window on Eurasia notes Moscow's refusal to allow Circassians a memorial march.

[NEWS] Some Wednesday links

• Bloomberg notes Twitter will stop counting photos and links against its 140-character limit, reports on the challenges of the new Taiwanese president, and reports on Japan's efforts to boost its workforce.


• Bloomberg View argues European banks just aren't good at investment banking, suggests austerity worked for Latvia, and argues an IMF suggestion of a debt holiday for Greece is impolitic.


• CBC notes J.K. Rowling's defense of Donald Trump.


• Via The Dragon's Gaze, I found this Eurekalert post noting a search for Earth-like worlds around highly evolved stars, like the red giants that our sun will evolve into.


• Gizmodo reports on how Sweden is moving the city of Kiruna to safer ground, and describes Amazon's interest in opening more physical bookstores.


• The Inter Press Service wonders what will happen to Brazil now.


• The National Post notes the mysteries surrounding a secret American military spaceplane.


• Open Democracy looks at the human rights consequences of Mexico's long-running drug war.


• TVO considers the impact of a long NDP leadership campaign on the party.

[ISL] The Canadian Press on the erosion of Lennox Island

The Globe and Mail carries Kevin Bissett's Canadian Press article about the slow erosion of Lennox Island, just off the north coast of Prince Edward Island. What makes this all the more ironic is that Lennox Island is the main Mi'kMaq reserve in the island. If it goes, what next?

Back when he was in his 20s, Dave Haley often watched from his kitchen window as children played baseball in the field behind his home. But now at the age of 65, less than 20 feet of soil remains between his tidy green bungalow and the glistening waters of Malpeque Bay.

Lennox Island off the northwest coast of Prince Edward Island is in a battle with the sea, and the sea is winning.

“It’s devastating. This is our home,” Haley said.

Lennox Island - like the rest of Prince Edward Island - is vulnerable to coastal erosion because it’s made of sand and sandstone. There is no hard bedrock.

“Sea levels have been rising over the last 100 years and the land itself is lowering a little bit,” said Adam Fenech, director of the climate research lab at the University of Prince Edward Island.

[ISL] "The Tiny Cayman Island Holding $265 Billion in Treasuries"

News stories like Andrea Wong and Alexandra Scaggs' Bloomberg article leave me wondering about how long island jurisdictions can continue to be major financial players on this scale. If transparency is the watchword of the future, what future do these have?

A Caribbean financial center favored by hedge funds is now the third-biggest foreign owner of U.S. government debt.

The Cayman Islands, where more hedge funds are domiciled than anywhere else in the world, held $265 billion of Treasuries as of March, up 31 percent from a year earlier, according to data the U.S. Treasury Department released Monday. It was the first time that the U.S. released details of bond holdings among OPEC and Caribbean countries, and it came in response to a Freedom-of-Information Act request submitted by Bloomberg News.

The stockpile makes the British territory, an offshore tax haven with about 60,000 residents, the largest holder after China and Japan. Those nations, the world’s second- and third-biggest economies, each own more than $1 trillion of Treasuries.

The surge in ownership of U.S. debt for the Caribbean getaway shows that hedge funds are joining more traditional mutual fund managers in buying Treasuries amid lackluster returns in other assets, with many global stock indexes posting losses in 2016. Negative bond yields in Europe and Japan are also pushing asset managers into the $13.4 trillion Treasuries market, which is on pace to gain for a third consecutive year.

“Most hedge funds are using Treasuries as a way to park assets without taking a lot of risk,” said Donald Steinbrugge, managing partner of hedge-fund consulting firm Agecroft Partners in Richmond, Virginia.

[URBAN NOTE] "In Brampton, a return to Fennell-era dysfunction"

The Toronto Star's San Grewal looks at the continuing problems of Brampton.

Bill Davis walked onto the stage in a Brampton banquet hall to introduce the city’s new mayor, as wide-eyed supporters waited to hear their new leader’s vision to rehabilitate an aching city. Linda Jeffrey had just put an end to four painful years under Susan Fennell.

As they circled the dance floor to bhangra music and noshed on samosas, the euphoric crowd could not imagine the painful 18 months that were about to unfold.

It was election night, Oct. 27, 2014.

Her landslide victory over Fennell “sent a clear message that (voters) want a better Brampton . . . We needed real leadership,” Jeffrey said that night, as Davis, the revered former Ontario premier — who knows a thing or two about leadership — looked on.

Brampton had just experienced four years of scandal emanating from the mayor’s office. A series of Star investigations revealed a history of reckless spending by Fennell and her staff; that a private gala in her name raised hundreds of thousands of dollars annually without financial disclosure — including tens of thousands that came from city coffers without council’s knowledge; and that hundreds of city contracts awarded to a close friend of Fennell.

Things, it seems, have not improved.

[URBAN NOTE] "Toronto cannabis entrepreneurs vow to fight proposed fines"

The Globe and Mail's Craig Offman writes about the ongoing struggles of cannabis entrepreneurs and city regulators in Toronto. Clearly, clear laws and regulations of this new business are needed.

On Tuesday night, the Cannabis Friendly Business Association held an emergency meeeting at Toronto’s Hotbox Cafe. Entrepreneurs, consultants and lobbyists gathered to take on Mayor John Tory, who has vowed to fine unlicensed marijuana dispensaries as much as $50,000 a day. It was standing room only – and no one was taking the threat lying down.

All the tropes and trappings of the high life one might expect in the Kensington Market setting were in effect: berets, goatees, dreads, bongs and vapes, the air inexorably filled with suspicious wafts. But the fog wasn’t so thick that one couldn’t see that this energized group meant business.

There was little talk about the constitutional implications of the proposed clampdown. Instead, it was more about strategy. Amid the various speeches and calls to arms, there was an entreaty to lawyer up to challenge the legality of the fines, even though some of the vendors, such as Rick Vrecic, said they had already done so. “Even $25,000 a day would shut us down,” said Mr. Vrecic, who runs True Compassion Toronto, a west-side clinic that caters to those suffering from chronic pain.

Consultant Marko Ivancicevic called for attendees to inundate the city’s board of health with requests to speak at Thursday’s meeting, which will address a report from the city’s top doctor regarding the implications of legalizing cannabis. “We could filibuster it, so to speak,” he said.

[URBAN NOTE] "Why Are Wages for Toronto’s Early Childhood Educators So Low?"

Torontoist's Sarah Sahagian examines the reasons behind the poor wages of daycare workers in Toronto.

It's no secret that childcare costs have—and continue to—skyrocket in Toronto. These days, the median cost of childcare for an infant is now more than $1,700 per month, and that number seems to be growing steadily. In fact, Ontarians pay the most for childcare in the country.

But what of the people who provide the services? How much of that money gets passed onto them?

[. . .]

Early childhood educators, or ECEs, perform the work of childcare—from changing diapers to teaching toddlers how to share, and helping older children with their homework. The work can often be gruelling, with long hours and fussy kids to look after. And the wages of workers—who the Ontario Coalition for Better Childcare says are 97 per cent women—seldom make up for the amount of time, energy, and dedication they put into the job.

Both private and public sectors are rife with underpaid workers. Kristen Varley, a 2014 graduate of George Brown’s Early Childhood Development program, currently makes $18.50 an hour working at a public daycare facility. And Chanequa Cameron, who trained to become an ECE in 2006, makes just $16 at the private facility where she works.

Even worse, both Varley and Cameron are saddled with thousands of dollars of student debt from training to work in the childcare field. After completing undergraduate and graduate studies at Ryerson, Cameron’s debt load is approximately $70,000. Even though she has worked in the field for years, her earnings still cannot provide her with “a good quality of life.”

[WRITING] "How Italy Improved My English"

Tim Parks' essay at the New York Review of Books describes how, for him, living in a decidedly non-Anglophone Italy helped him perfect his command of the English language.

I left London in 1981 at twenty-five, in part because my wife, who was Italian and whom I had met in the States, wasn’t happy with England, and again because, having failed to secure a publisher for any of my first four novels, I needed to get away from friends and family who were pressing me to settle on a decent career before it was too late. I knew no Italian. I had no desire to leave England. Indeed, I was extremely anxious about losing touch with English. Two years previously, I had abandoned a Ph.D. at Harvard because I wanted to be in England to write about the English, not the Americans. So this new move felt a little like a failure. My hope was that I’d be back in a couple of years bringing a publishable novel with me. What changed my mind was learning Italian.

[. . .]

We had chosen to live in Verona because my wife’s brother was studying there. There was not a large English community in the city at the time, and anyway we did our best to avoid it so that I could learn Italian. For four or five years, aside from the language lessons I taught to make ends meet, I spoke little English and read even less, concentrating entirely on Italian fiction, Italian newspapers, Italian history books, checking every word I didn’t know in the dictionary. It was exhausting. There was no radio in English, no satellite TV, no Internet. I was immersed in Italian in a way that I think has become difficult today.

I say I was learning Italian, but in fact I was learning English too. Relearning it. Nothing makes you more aware of your own language, its structure and strategies, than the differences of a new one. And very soon I had my first major pay-off from all this effort. I had been reading the work of Natalia Ginzburg—È stato così; La strada che va in città; Caro Michele. I had chosen Ginzburg merely because friends advised that she was the easiest Italian writer for foreigners. But something in the laconic colloquial voice meshed with my own writing. Trying to imagine how that voice and downbeat storytelling style might work in English I wrote two short novels, Tongues of Flame and Loving Roger, in rapid succession. Oddly, though I had taken both voice and, to an extent, structure from Ginzburg, these would be the most English of all my novels, acts of pure memory of places and people: my family in the first book, an office where I had once worked in the second. Though both books were rejected dozens of times, I felt confident that I had got it right. Five years later both were published and won prizes.

[WRITING] On routines

Long-time readers of A Bit More Detail are probably aware that I follow routines fairly strictly. A photo post invariably comes in the morning, followed by bulk links posts (news items now as well as blogs), followed by individual links of interest to me, followed some later some nights by essays and the kind. The idea of a routine helps me write, gives me a much-needed structure for this blog and much else.

I'm thinking of imposing still more structure on A Bit More Detail and its ancillary blogs, of committing myself to more writing of long-format posts like essays. I like writing. I aspire to be a writer, of some kind and of some import. Why not now?