[PHOTO] Charlottetown Theatre, Summer 2016 season

The advertisements on this post on Queen Street at Kent in Charlottetown give a fair sense of the sorts of shows put on in the Charlottetown theatre in high season.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Centauri Dreams considers Juno's photos of Jupiter's poles.


• The Dragon's Gaze notes the discovery of another star that behaves much like mysterious Tabby's Star.


• Far Outliers reports on the good reputation of the Chinese forces at Shanghai in 1937.


• Joe. My. God. notes a Christian site that claims gay sex is not sex.


• Language Hat reports on the problems of translating Elena Ferrante.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money and Noel Maurer are unimpressed by Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson.


• The New APPS Blog writes against faculty lock-outs.


• Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw describes the Parers, a Catalan-Australian family.


• Window on Eurasia notes Ukraine's recognition of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, reports on how Russians resent Ukrainian refugees, and suggests the Russian economic crisis is finally hitting Moscow and St. Petersburg.

[URBAN NOTE] "Common Cents: The Impact of Income on Cycling"

Emma Heffernan's Spacing Toronto article looks at how cost can discourage people from biking.

The line of middle aged men, balancing on bright green, step-through bikes, reach out their arms to the right. In turn, they each look over their right shoulder to check their blind spot. They then make the right turn. It is the parking lot of the Birchmount Bluffs Neighbourhood Centre in Scarborough, and these men have just received the bikes that they will use all summer. Free of charge.

“Let’s stop here!” The group leader is in his mid-20s with hair to his shoulders. He gestures towards the post and ring racks that stand in a straight line on the edge of the parking lot. The men each curl their arm in a square shape, their hands pointing down to the ground, to signal the stop. The group leader gets off his bike and pulls out his lock. “This is the safest way to lock your bike,” he explains, as he loops the lock through the metal frame and the bike wheel. “Always try to use the middle metal pole, because some thieves can cut through the sides.”

The four men pull out their locks, and begin locking their bikes to the posts. “Like this?” One asks. The group leader nods. One does not correctly loop his lock through the frame; he has mistakenly only locked his back wheel. This is a mistake that could cost him his bike in Toronto.

Unfortunately, I am not being dramatic – according to the Toronto Star over 18,000 bikes were reported stolen across the Toronto region between January 1, 2010, and June 30, 2015. Having a bike stolen is upsetting for anyone, regardless of income. However, for low income individuals, the risk of having a bike stolen can mean the difference between justifying the upfront cost of investing in a bike – or not.

The expense associated with buying and maintaining a bike is a barrier to cycling for low-income individuals, according to a 2010 report from Portland that used focus groups with 49 people of color in low-income communities to understand their barriers to cycling. Though the report also notes that safety concerns and a lack of secure bicycle storage also influence whether low income individuals choose to bike, a majority – 60% of respondents – expressed concern about the cost of a bicycle.

The cost of bicycles is not just a barrier to cycling in Portland. A 2016 survey conducted by University of Toronto researchers as part of the Scarborough Cycles project found those in lower incomes brackets were more likely to respond that financial concerns were part of the reason why they would choose not to bicycle, even if the weather was good. Specifically, 10-15% of those with incomes under $60,000 believe that bicycles are too expensive. Similarly, 20-30% of these individuals did not own a working bicycle. Although worry that the bicycle might be stolen was a concern regardless of income, those in lower income brackets were more likely to list this as a barrier to cycling than those in higher income brackets.

[URBAN NOTE] On John Tory, the TTC, and his cuts

In the Toronto Star, Edward Keenan's links John Tory's recent ride in a subway car without air conditioning from one end of the Bloor-Danforth line to another with Tory's confused statements on cuts.

The TTC, like every other city department, has been told to prepare an operating budget 2.6 per cent lower than last year’s — and this in a year when, due to factors outside its control (labour costs already negotiated, inflation, startup costs for a subway extension), the TTC faces new costs that amount to more than 10 per cent of its total budget. This according to numbers compiled by transit activist and writer Steve Munro, who calculates the TTC has actually been asked to propose a budget showing a 12.4 per cent cut from its previous baseline plan.

Perhaps understandably, the TTC and its supporters have balked at this demand. A leaked memo showed TTC CEO Andy Byford saying such cuts — which might involve delaying the opening of the new subway extension or cutting bus service, for example — would be “unpalatable” and his agency could not recommend them. The mayor has insisted the proposed cut budget be prepared anyway. After Byford’s memo, he even suggested, “If (the TTC) can’t do this themselves, and I’m confident they have enough good management there to find these ways of doing things better and differently, then I guess we could help them,” and further said the only reason they couldn’t find the cuts without reducing services is because they didn’t want to.

Lay observers, and not a few city councillors, have reasonably interpreted this demand by the mayor to mean cuts are coming. And when your existing daily transit ride is a sweaty, overcrowded, often-delayed exercise in frustration, the suggestion of cutting budgets seems like just further torture.

But I call this whole budget debate a “performance” because Mayor Tory has frequently said he won’t actually cut the budget if it means service cuts. He wants the TTC to see what it can cut, and propose a budget that has the requested cuts in it. If those cuts are, indeed, “unpalatable,” Tory has suggested, they won’t be made. It appears he wants the TTC to examine what it can do without (or do more cheaply), but also perhaps that he wants to have a budget that shows how little there is left to cut — a way to justify not cutting for a politician who promised the electorate a penny-pinching approach to finances (and no property tax increases beyond inflation). A performance of fiscal discipline.

“I don’t know how many times I have to explain this,” he said Wednesday to reporters after his ride in the hot subway car. “We have asked them to submit a list of things that would be necessary to be done in the way of efficiencies and doing things better to achieve a 2.6 per cent change. That is a list of proposals . . . We’re going to look at those lists, we’re going to determine the impact they would have on people and the city, and then we will make some decisions. But we’re just asking people to submit the list.”

In even more blunt terms, he said he wouldn’t cut service. “It doesn’t make sense to think that I, for example, am going to show the leadership I did personally in investing 135 million new dollars in transit over the last two years, and then go about accepting some list that suggested all those improvements be undone.”

Well, he’s right, that wouldn’t make a lot of sense. But then, it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense to demand a list of over $200 million in proposed budget cuts just so you can not make them. It doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense to ride for over an hour in a sweatbox if you don’t have to.

Torontoist's David Hains parses Tory's words, as well.

[URBAN NOTE] "Toronto can overhaul public realm with Rail Deck Park"

blogTO hosts Alex Josephson and Nicola Spunt's article calling on Toronto making use of the proposed Rail Deck Park to revamp how the city works.

The completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway remains one of our country's most definitive acts of nation-building. Snaking across the better part of Canada, this critical piece of transportation infrastructure conveys people and goods and drives economies.

It also reflects one of the core stories we like to tell about our national identity: that in spite of its sprawling expansiveness, Canada is a connector, a country that unites diverse peoples across diverse geographies.

Like elsewhere, Canadian cities have grown up and expanded around rail tracks. But this has also created a problematic legacy from an urban planning and design perspective. The downtown cores of metropolises like Toronto and Vancouver are lacerated by transit infrastructure that bisects valuable swathes of real estate and compromises people's experience of their cities at grade.

Cue the Rail Deck Park. A few weeks ago, Toronto Mayor John Tory, flanked by Chief Planner Jennifer Keesmaat and Councillor Joe Cressy (Ward 20), dropped an unexpected -- and unexpectedly inspired -- announcement: the city's intention to protect 21 acres of space in order to create a legacy park that will blanket the CN rail corridor between Blue Jays Way and Bathurst Street.

The idea comes courtesy of TOcore, a city planning initiative tasked with studying the densification of downtown Toronto and developing strategies for new infrastructure that redresses the physical and social strains arising from vigorous intensification.

[URBAN NOTE] "Toronto’s Film Industry Is Booming"

Bloomberg's Gerrit De Vynck reports on how Toronto is becoming, again, a world capital of film.

A woman in scrubs hustles a patient out of a hospital in a wheelchair and into a waiting black SUV, her face a knot of anxiety. Suddenly she sees someone and turns to leap into the car.

“Cut!” calls out a director on the Entertainment One Ltd. production “Mary Kills People” -- and immediately the real-life bustle of an afternoon commute resumes on the leafy Toronto street. A police officer lets through a held-up streetcar and pedestrians begin to navigate around cameras, electrical cables and lighting booms. Film shoots have become so common in Canada’s biggest city that hardly anyone bats an eye at the commotion all around them.

“This place is nuts,” says actor Richard Short, who co-stars with Caroline Dhavernas in “Mary Kills People,” a drama about a doctor circumventing legal issues to provide physician-assisted suicide. “Just last night we were one of three productions on one block. We’re sharing parking lots with other shows almost every day.”

Stoked by a drop in the Canadian dollar against the U.S. greenback, favorable tax credits and a surge in demand for original content by companies such as Netflix, Amazon and Hulu, film and television production is at a record in Canada. Toronto alone will play host to almost 700 productions in 2016, according to the city. These include ABC’s political drama “Designated Survivor” starring Kiefer Sutherland, a movie version of the Stephen King thriller “It” set for release in 2017, and the CBS-led “Star Trek: Discovery,” which began shooting this month.

Foreign production in Ontario rose 52 percent to C$763 million ($594 million) in 2015, boosting spending to a record C$1.52 billion, thanks in part to mega-projects like Warner Bros.’ “Suicide Squad.” Producers on that big-grossing, critically panned film spent more than C$80 million in the province, according to the Motion Picture Association of Canada.

[URBAN NOTE] "TTC splits King Streetcar route into 2 during TIFF opening weekend"

CBC describes how TIFF has bisected the various streetcar routes running along King Street.

The King streetcar route has been split into two for the first weekend of the Toronto International Film Festival.

TIFF festivities have closed part of King Street West for a second straight year. As a result, the TTC is not servicing any streetcar or bus stops between University and Spadina Avenues from Sept. 8-11.

Instead, there are eastern and western loops for the streetcars. Rush-hour buses that serve the route are diverting around the festival closures.

[URBAN NOTE] "Toronto breaks a heat record for September 7"

CBC News' Emmett Shane and Jay Scotland describe how yesterday, the 7th of September, set a heat record. Today has not been much different.

If you thought this was the hottest Sept. 7 you've ever experienced in Toronto, give yourself a pat on your undoubtedly sweaty back. You were right.

The city broke a temperature record Wednesday, with the daytime high of 34.5 C, breaking the previous record of 33.9 C, which was set in 1969.

And the city could break more records before the summer is out, according to CBC Toronto meteorologist Jay Scotland.

"Today was also the 38th time we've topped the 30 C mark this year, compared to only 14 times last year and seven the year before," Scotland said.

"The record is 43 days at 30°C or higher set back in 1959."

[URBAN NOTE] Two links on the hot Toronto real estate market

The Canadian Press' article "Toronto real estate hot as the weather in August" was carried by the Toronto Star.

A record number of homes were sold in the Greater Toronto Area last month as listings continued to dwindle, the city's real estate board said Wednesday.

The Toronto Real Estate Board said its members had 9,813 sales in August, a 23.5 per cent increase from the same month last year, though there were two more working days this year.

Still, even adjusting for an equal number of days, last month's sales volume in the Greater Toronto Area was up about 13 per cent from August 2015.

“The conditions underlying strong demand for . . . housing remained in place, including a relatively strong regional economy, growth in average earnings and low borrowing costs,” Larry Cerqua, president of the Toronto Real Estate Board, said in a statement.

“Unfortunately, we did not see any relief on the listings front, with the number of new listings down compared to last year. This situation continued to underpin very strong home price growth, irrespective of home type or area.”

The average price for homes sold, regardless of type of property, was $710,410, an increase of 17.7 per cent. Detached homes in the city of Toronto proper cost on average $1.2 million, up 18.3 per cent.

Diana Petramala's "Toronto is the new Vancouver, but this housing market will also cool", published in The Globe and Mail, notes that the fundamentals are good for continued booming growth in Toronto.

[T]the Toronto market has picked up steam. According to the Toronto Real Estate Board, existing home sales hit a record in August and the average home price was up 18 per cent (roughly $100,000) from last year. Toronto’s appreciation in average home prices since early 2015 has now exceeded Vancouver’s.

On Wednesday, the Bank of Canada signalled a continued stable and extraordinarily low interest-rate path in the months ahead, so there is little to brake the Toronto market’s near-term momentum.

Economic fundamentals continue to favour robust home demand: Employment growth so far this year is running at about 3 per cent year-over-year, more than triple the national pace. And the population between 30 and 40 (those in the first-time buying stage) has been growing rapidly over the past two years, contributing to a large pool of pent-up housing demand.

We also can’t ignore the city’s attractiveness to foreign purchasers. A quest for yield around the world will remain supportive to real-estate investment.

Despite its rapid valuation growth, Toronto real estate continues to be relatively affordable when stacked up against Vancouver and other global cities. At roughly 3.5 to 5 per cent, cap rates on rental apartment investments in Toronto are more than a percentage point higher than those recorded in Vancouver. The additional land-transfer tax on non-residents in Vancouver will also likely prompt more foreign buyers with an interest in Canada to set their sights toward Toronto.

[BRIEF NOTE] On the 50th anniversary of Star Trek

The 50th anniversary of Star Trek has gotten no small amount of resonance in the blogosphere. In my corner alone, see Russell Arben Fox's recounting of five classic moments of the original series, or Paul Campos' open discussion thread at Lawyers, Guns and Money. For me, Charlie Janes Anders' "What if Star Trek Had Never Existed?", published at Wired resonates deeply.

Even trying to imagine a world without Star Trek is like visiting an alternate world as weird as any planet the Enterprise ever voyaged to. And, obviously, it’s impossible to prove a counterfactual, especially one about a show that has now had so many incarnations in TV, film, and other media. But the fact of the matter is even though the Space Age was in full swing in the mid-1960s and shows like Irwin Allen’s sci-fi hits Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Lost in Space were getting attention, nothing as smart and sprawling as Star Trek had ever been seen before. Where Lost in Space was a kid-friendly show that aired at 7:30 p.m., Roddenberry’s show was a more mature version of sci-fi, one that aired in a more adult-oriented timeslot.

And if that second Trek pilot hadn’t happened for whatever reason, NBC might have filled the gap with another goofy Irwin Allen show. The network did, after all, consider picking up two Allen productions in the late 1960s: Man From the 25th Century and City Beneath the Sea. But based on interviews with over a dozen experts, one truth emerges: If Gene Roddenberry hadn’t been willing to fight for his show, and Lucille Ball’s studio hadn’t been willing to take a chance on it, nobody else might have been able to make something as visually and intellectually ambitious as Trek.

“I think that Star Trek emerged from a unique convergence of very special talents, and it is very possible that in their absence, nothing of a similar quality would have appeared,” says science fiction scholar Gary Westfahl, author of The Mechanics of Wonder, adding that it’s easy to imitate the pulp 1930s space-opera of E.E. “Doc” Smith (as George Lucas and others later did), but vastly harder to imitate the more mature space adventures of Robert A. Heinlein (the way Roddenberry did).

And that’s really the crux of what made Star Trek different, especially for American TV of the time: It showed space exploration as a serious endeavor, one undertaken by a crew of professionals. That vision had existed in print science fiction for years, but it was extraordinarily difficult to bring to the screen.

“He made a science fiction series about humans, about us,” Eugene “Rod” Roddenberry says of his father. “I think a lot of the other science fiction of the day was more fear-oriented: ‘Look at this crazy alien. Look at them attacking us.’ It was one-dimensional science fiction.”

Star Trek got those additional dimensions by unifying disparate strands. Long before sci-fi allegories like Battlestar Galactica, the show was combining 1930s pulp space opera with the rising tide of social criticism in 1960s sci-fi novels. Trek also tied together the thought experiments of The Twilight Zone with Western-style action and Captain Video-style space adventure. Without that pioneering work, it’s not hard to imagine today’s world of sci-fi movies and TV looking very different.

Without Star Trek, I cannot imagine how different my experiences, of science fiction and of pop culture and of other people, would have been. I daresay that I've been bettered by it. What else can I say but "Thanks for the shows" and hope for more to come? Discovery, at least, looks pretty promising.

[MUSIC] Die Antwoord, "Banana Brain"

I've been listening to "Banana Brain", Die Antwoord's latest single and the first off their new album Mount Ninji and Da Nice Time Kid.

"DIE ANTWOORD - BANANA BRAIN (Official Video)" (Watch on YouTube)

I have to say that Die Antwoord's video for "Banana Brain" makes me like this rave-infused song more.

There's the expected shock, of course: Yolandi again plays a worryingly underage teenager, this one someone who drugs her parents into unconsciousness so she can go out clubbing, while among other things Ninja tries to shoot through a bathroom door.

Their videos strike me as a throwback to the 1980s, when the music video was treated as a self-contained art in itself. It also fits squarely into another tradition, running through to the present, of musical artists using music videos as platforms for film stardom.

Anyway. This song is quite fun. Recommended.