A Bit More Detail

rfmcdpei @ 2009-07-17T19:27:00

2009-07-17T23:27:49Z

Whenever I go for extended walks--like when, yesterday, I walked west from the Osgoode TTC station along Queen Street West and then up Roncesvalles Avenue--I always think of the walk as stictching together another bit of the city into my mental map, of penetrating into the dim grayness of the areas of town that even now I'm not familiar with ("Etobicoke"? what is Etobicoke"?).

Back in February, I created a [FORUM] asking where people saw their community's psychological boundaries lying. It's a fascinating subject, not least because of my above stated predisposition, but because I've recently come across the writings of British author Will Self on what he and others starting with Guy Debord call psychogeography. There's a Toronto Psychogeography Society, complete with a blog that seems sadly inactive, so I'll turn to a Self, first to a Self article about Toronto, then to an extended interview with him by the Toronto Star's Murray Whyte ("Slow down, you move too fast").

For centuries, geography has been disappearing. Slowly, at first: The wheel rendered modest, walkable distances passable in a fraction of the time. Then, it was quicker, much quicker, thousands of miles vanishing at once as carriages, galleons, ocean liners and cars, and finally air travel, made it almost irrelevant, reducing a once epic 5,700-kilometre transatlantic journey to a trifling six-hour stretch of boredom salved with filmic interludes from Will Farrell.

It's all awfully fast. Too fast, Will Self says. So he's trying to slow it down. Six hours, more or less, took him from London Heathrow to Pearson yesterday. Six more hours, give or take, of walking took him from Pearson to Swatow, a Chinatown icon (the grilled pork really makes it) on Spadina Ave. last night.

[. . .]

Self, the iconoclastic British author of such novels as My Idea of Fun and Great Apes, is here this week for the International Festival of Authors. He writes a column in the Independent called "Psychogeography," accompanied each time with an illustration by the artist Ralph Steadman. Four years' worth have been collected into a newly released book of the same name.

It's not as confrontational as it sounds. "Really, it's about being where you are, about trying to infuse human geography with physical geography," Self says.

Then again, maybe it is. Self's position runs counter to modern modes of living taken for granted long ago. Living in a city, for most of us, means a handful of significant nodes – home, work, shopping – connected by high-speed journeys – cars, cabs, trains. The space in between wings by barely visible, unexperienced, untouched.

Self comes by the fascination honestly. His father was an academic whose field was urban planning. Self was surrounded with urban theory his whole life. Then, in his 20s, he experienced "an odd epiphany – I had lived in London all my life, and I had never seen the mouth of the Thames, only 20 miles away."

Self's mother was American, and he was making trans-Atlantic flights as a matter of habit. Yet here he was, at home, yet somehow foreign-feeling, displaced. It occurred to him that modern travel "destroys that sense of where we are," and thus were the seeds of psychogeography planted: Knowing a place from a human perspective, not through the side window of a plane, train or car.

Psychogeography embraces those ignored liminal zones – the spaces in between – step by step, as actual, tangible and real. "The whole thrust of the mass transit folkway is to annihilate those places we seek to recover," he says.

Shawn Micallif at the Spacing blog covered a Self walk in New York City, if you're interested in his further exploits.

In his article, Self mentions the intruiging murmur project, where people can cell phones who find themselves next to a metal icon of a green ear can phone a number and get a snippet of someone's record memory about that place. It makes things additionally concrete, adds them a measure of psychological legitimacy that the walk might have lacked.

Might. Anna Bowness' "Literary History of the Flâneur" makes it clear that, just as Self argues, the mdoern trend is for walkers to create their own realities, their own legitimacies.

Benjamin’s image of the flaneur, wandering the streets idly and with a dandy’swardrobe, was the one that stuck in the popular imagination until later theorists ofwalking – also, notably, from Paris – tweaked the idea a little. Michel de Certeau and Guy DeBord politicized the pedestrian, and turned him from a passive observer to an activist of sorts. Without making him do anything in particular – Certeau’s and DeBord’s flaneur is just as directionless and whimsical as Benjamin’s – these latertheorists showed how the simple act of walking makes a statement as loud as words.Certeau argues that a city – its buildings, streets, and crowds – is a language initself, and that by taking a walk, the flaneur preserves this language and thuspreserves the space itself. Guy DeBord, co-founder of the Situationists, turnedwalking into art and activism. Spawning a whole movement – which endures today,in Paris and Toronto and elsewhere – Guy DeBord and the Situationists coined theterm “psychogeography” and gave a whole vocabulary to walking and the streets.After the Situationists, the flaneur had a purpose if not an itinerary.

Lately I've been finding my planned itineraries really boring. Why go the same old route when there are so many more--not infinite, but many more--possibilities? Spadina Avenue might be nice, but what about Spadina Road? Et cetera. Give me some new space for me to inscribe with my feet, or I'll just have to find some.

[LINK] "Why free trade with the EU goes nowhere"

2009-07-17T23:10:20Z

Iceland and Croatia might be close to getting into the European Union, but is Canada even close? Paul Wells of MacLean's is profoundly skeptical.

If this negotiation is to succeed, each side will have to give up what it hasn’t been prepared to give up before. [European Commission trade director Mauriccio] Petriccione portrayed the Europeans as late but zealous converts. He always enters trade talks with a detailed mandate from European trade ministers. In 20 years, no trade negotiator has been given such a mandate more rapidly than he was for this Canada round.

“We are committed to this negotiation,” he said. “We are prepared to go into all the classic no-go areas. There can’t be any if we want to make progress.”

But with a veteran diplomat’s polished grace, Petriccione asked whether Canada is as committed. Can a complex federation sing from one song sheet? “I must confess we are watching with extreme interest . . . I think this is a huge test for Canada.” Some Canadians are certainly trying. Quebec’s Jean Charest has named one of his predecessors, Pierre Marc Johnson, as the province’s lead negotiator for the EU trade file as a demonstration of his seriousness.

But up to now the provinces have been so eager to keep one another out that they are reluctant to let European investors in on the same terms as locals. “I could take the easy way out and say it’s Canada’s problem to solve. But what I can add is that we have had region-to-region negotiations [between the EU and other international partners] that we have suspended because our partners would not offer us the benefits of an integrated market, equal to those that we were offering.”

That’s the fate that awaits Canada if we try to bargain down to the same old tired routines. The urbane Italian visitor was daring Canadians to go big or go home. “We will want equivalent benefits to those we are prepared to offer.” He nodded at his fellow Canadian panellists. “All I can say is, I hope that Roy, Ross and many others were dead right when they convinced us.”

So, to sum up: It isn't so much the Netherlands or Portugal that some Canadians are afraid of so much as it is New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.

Oh Canada.

[LINK] "Someone will have to pay for a two-tier job system"

2009-07-17T19:06:23Z

Unlike last year's TTC messiness, the current Toronto city workers strike hasn't left me very unhappy. Perhaps it's because I did my big apartment cleaning the week before the strike; perhaps it's the lack of a garbage depot in a nearby park; perhaps it's because I like the slightly straggly grass. Toronto has held up reasonably well, I think, the occasional unmanaged spot of garbage on the sidewalk aside. Torontonians can be proud that they're managing reasonably well.

But. Reasonably well does not mean happily. Margaret Wente makes the point that a lot of Torontonians are unhappy with the extra income and other privileges enjoyed by city workers compared to their private-sector peers.

Toronto's garbage strike is about as popular as a skunk at a picnic. As the streets get messier and smellier, public support for the union seems to be hovering at zero. Why? Because the garbage workers are striking to hang on to benefits unknown to the rest of us, including a cushy deal that allows them to pile up sick days and cash them in when they retire.

The sick days have caused public outrage. But they're the tip of the entitlement iceberg. Across the country, the compensation gap between public- and private-sector jobs has grown increasingly wide.

The garbage workers are typical. Their hourly wage is about 20 per cent higher than in the private sector. They have a gold-plated benefits plan, to which they contribute not a cent. After 10 years service, their jobs are guaranteed. Workers with top seniority get seven weeks vacation. Then there's the pension - a generous defined benefits plan, guaranteed by you and me.

A stunning piece of research by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business has chronicled the public/private wage gap. It found that public-sector workers across Canada earn 8 per cent to 17 per cent more than people with similar jobs in the private sector. The public-sector wage advantage is now 11.9 per cent for municipal workers, 7.9 per cent for provincial workers and 17.3 per cent for federal workers.

That's just half the story. They also get better benefits and pensions. Their work weeks are shorter (typically 33.5 hours, versus 37.3 in the private sector), and they get more vacation and sick leave. Once you calculate the value of the benefits and shorter work time, the total compensation advantage adds up to 35.9 per cent for municipal workers, 24.9 per cent for provincial workers and 41.7 per cent for federal workers.

There used to be a deal that everyone understood: Public-sector work didn't pay a lot, but there were good benefits and job security. Now, people are forking over tax dollars so government workers doing essentially the same jobs can make a lot more than they do.

Yes, there is a lot of sentiment being voiced for breaking unions and turning things over to private contractors. Why do you ask?

[LINK] Some Friday links

2009-07-17T18:56:32Z

Acts of Minor Treason's Andrew Barton speculates on the constellations seen by someone living on a world orbiting the young but broadly Sol-like star of Iota Horologii.

blogTO's David Marciniak doesn't think that the city of Toronto's decision to pay an additional $C 417 million for new streetcars after the federal government bailed out is a good one, especially since it takes money away from other, arguably more useful, projects.

Broadsides' Antonia Zerbisias <ahref="http://thestar.blogs.com/broadsides/2009/07/impotence.html">blogs</a> about how a generally impotent Hamas makes itself feel powerful by bullying women who don't accept subordination.

Aslak at Demography Matters points out that, contrary to social conservatives' beliefs, it's actually the most liberal societies which evidence the highest birth rates, and that it's the societies with more traditional gender roles that see impressive fertility declines.

Far Outliers blogs about the 11th century trade boom in northeast Asia.

Douglas Muir at A Fistful of Euros examines the implications for Kosovo if the International Court of Justice rules against the legality of its creation.
At his Halfway Down the Danube, Douglas also takes a look at Ugandans fears of trouble in 2011.

Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen examines how Alan Turing's hidden sexuality and possible autism influenced the design of the Turing Test for artificial intelligence.

Slap Upside the Head makes the point that a celibate gay man who was employed by an Ontario Catholic church as an altar server really should be surprised that he was fired. What could he have expected?

Strange Maps has a somewhat gruesome map showing where people jump off of the Golden Gate Bridge, and also shows a remarkable map of the world as seen from late Tokugawa Japan.

The Dragon's Tales blogs about plans for NASA-ESA cooperation on future Mars missions.

[PHOTO] The Tower at 315 Bloor Street West

2009-07-17T18:47:58Z

The Tower at 315 Bloor Street West
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

This is a side view of the circular tower attached to 315 Bloor Street West, current location of the University of Toronto's Admissions and Awards office but in the 19th century a centre for meteorological research.

[BRIEF NOTE] On Turkey and the Uighurs

2009-07-16T21:26:17Z

In Tuesday's Globe and Mail, Frank Ching observed ("Why the West is silent on rioting in Xinjiang") that Western countries were generally uninterested in taking a stand on the recent riots there.

Last year, Western countries put pressure on Beijing to hold a dialogue with representatives of the Dalai Lama, with French President Nicolas Sarkozy even threatening to boycott the Beijing Olympics if China refused. Beijing's protestations that Tibet was an internal Chinese affair were disregarded.

This time, however, the Western response is muted. The United States has adopted a mild tone, with President Barack Obama merely calling on all parties in Xinjiang “to exercise restraint.” The European Union has gone even further, taking the position that violence in Xinjiang “is a Chinese issue, not a European issue.” Serge Abou, the Eu's ambassador to China, said Europe also had its problems with minorities and “we would not like other governments to tell us what is to be done.”

While there are similarities between events last year in Tibet and those in Xinjiang this month, the world has changed: China is now seen as an indispensable partner of the United States and Europe, both of which are facing a financial crisis. Beijing's diplomatic assistance in resolving the Iranian and North Korean nuclear issues is also seen as too important to put in jeopardy.

The countries that were interested in critizing China were Muslim, most especially Turkey.

What reaction there has been came mainly from Muslim countries. The Saudi-based Organization of the Islamic Conference, which represents 57 Muslim governments, condemned what it called the excessive use of force against Uyghur civilians. At least 184 people, both Uyghurs and Han Chinese, have been killed.

The OIC statement declared: “The Islamic world is expecting from China, a major and responsible power in the world arena with historical friendly relations with the Muslim world, to deal with the problem of Muslim minority in China in broader perspective that tackles the root causes of the problem.”

The country that has taken the strongest position is Turkey, whose people share linguistic, religious and cultural links with the Uyghurs. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan actually went so far as to characterize what has happened as “a kind of genocide” and said his country would bring the matter up in the United Nations Security Council.

Calling a series of riots that reportedly killed two hundred people of various ethnicities "a kind of genocide" is a bit much, and is more than a bit funny given Turkey's own relationship to actual actsof genocide. Mind, the numbers don't seem especially significant, involving thousands of people in a country with tens of millions of inhabitants.

Thousands of Turks and Uyghur expatriates took to the streets across Turkey after Friday prayers, protesting the violence in Xinjiang and burning Chinese flags and products, AFP photographers and media reports said.

The biggest of the demonstrations was at Istanbul's Fatih Mosque, where an estimated 5,000 people gathered and said prayers for members of the Uyghur community who lost their lives in the ethnic unrest in Xinjiang, the NTV news channel said.

"No to ethnic cleansing!" chanted the crowd, waving the Uyghur flag depicting a white crescent on a blue background, as some protestors set fire to Chinese flags and goods produced in China.

Some 200 people attended similar prayers at Istanbul's Beyazit mosque at the call of a Turkey-based Uyghur association and Turkish nationalist groups, after which they held a brief demonstration, shouting "Murderer China", an AFP photgrapher said.

That said, Turkey does have a strong interest in Xinjiang, inasmuch as Turks and Xinjiang's Uyghurs both speak Turkic languages. Early in the 20th century among the Turks of the collapsing Ottoman Empire, Pan-Turkism was a popular ideology, serving to justify a reorientation of Turks away from Europe and towards areas of the Caucasus and Central Asia populated by peoples speaking related Turkic languages: Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, perhaps even Tatarstan and the Uyghur lands in Xinjiang. This failed, as the consolidation of the Soviet state and the weakness of the Turkish state in the 1920s combined to make Pan-Turkism a dangerous ideology. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Turkey promptly reopened relations, this time apparently hoping not to dominate but rather to cooperate, but with mixed results. Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan switched scripts from Cyrillic to Latin, for instance, but Turkey just wasn't a powerful enough force in Central Asia relative to a dynamic China and a Russia with a long history and all manner of links with Central Asia. Even Turkey's historically close relationship with Azerbaijan has been threatened by the ongoing Turkish-Armenian rapprochement. Hugh Pope, author of Sons of the Conquerors, a book on the Turkic world, expects a consolidation of these countries to take place only slowly. Expecting Turkey to exert any influence in Xinjiang, now, is completely unrealistic. Turkey has aspirations, but not the means.

[DM] "Institutional Adaptations to Migrants and Transnationalism"

2009-07-16T17:43:14Z

I've a post up examining how the Catholic Church in early 20th century French Canada and contemporary Mexico examining how the Roman Catholic Church first tried to prevent then tried to regulate emigrants and their behaviours, with suggestions that this sort of transnationalism might be present right now.

[BRIEF NOTE] On lunar Helium-3 mining (again)

2009-07-16T16:49:41Z

Jean-Louis Santini's AFP article will make some people reading this post weep in frustration. That's right, the lunar Helium-3 meme is on the run again.

The moon still has a great deal of scientific information left to be discovered that relates directly to... our understanding of the history of the Earth and early history of other planets," geologist Harrison Schmitt told AFP.

Schmitt landed on the moon in 1972 aboard the Apollo 17, the last manned mission to ever touch down on the lunar surface. He is among an elite group of 12 Americans who are the only people to have walked on the moon.

[. . .]

Schmitt, a former astronaut, noted that the moon's soil is rich in helium-3, which comes from the outer layer of the sun and is blown around the solar system by solar winds.

The element is rarely found on Earth, unlike on the moon, where it is heavily accumulated because it is pushed away by the Earth's magnetic poles.

Helium-3 is highly sought for nuclear fusion, and though the technology is still in its infancy, the element "will ultimately be quite valuable on Earth," Schmitt said.

"It's not the only solution to the accelerating demand for energy that we are going to see on Earth, but it's certainly one of the major potential solutions to that demand."

Reserves of helium-3 on the moon are in the order of a million tons, according to some estimates, and just 25 tons could serve to power the European Union and United States for a year.

Helium-3, a light isotope of helium, is seen by proponents as an ideal fuel for nuclear fusion reactors, with collisions of helium-3 with the heavy hydrogen isotope deuterium to produce abundant, radioactive waste-free power. Russia and China have stated their intentions to start mining helium-3 by the middle of the 2010s.

Three problems with this meme come to mind.

We don't have fusion reactors: They've always been fifty years in the future. Collecting materials certain to be unusable for decades might not be economic.

The MIT Technology Review makes the point that helium-3 fusion requires unrealistically extreme conditions in order to actually happen.

Finally, as Depleted Cranium noted, besides the massive investments required for a lunar mining program and the pointlessness of collecting unusable fuel, there's already plenty of helium-3 on Earth, not least in the form of the decay of the unstable heavy hydrogen isotope tritium.

[MUSIC] Lo Fidelity Allstars, "Battle Flag"

2009-07-16T16:36:23Z

Back in the late 1990s, I saw an arresting video for an electronica song, centered around a hated corporative executive who was killed in a limousine fire as a result of a conspiracy by everyone around him: mistress, employees, wife, the people he fired, even his children. The video was memorable, but I really loved the hard electronic music and the biting vocals. Alas, all I could remember of the song was the chorus of "C'mon baby tell me/Yes we aim to please." For years, the song has popped up, earworm-like, frustrating me because I didn't know its origins.

And then, one day last week, I realized that I should Google it. This revealed 6 610 hits and took me to this page, the first hit, which told me that the song was Lo Fidelity Allstars' 1998 "Battle Flag". I went to YouTube, and what do you know, the poster back there was right.

It's an angry song, as the music and the lyrics reveal. The key to the song, I think, are the last two lines, "You want a revolution behind your eyes/We got together and organize." Whether it's a change of mind or a change of something larger, there needs to be a willingness to change.

It would have been impossible for me to find this song a decade ago, as I know all too well from personal experience. It would have been very unlikely for this video to have been played two decades ago. That I could find the lyrics so quickly and watch the video with such ease is one of the thing about our era that I love.

[LINK] "Facebook violates Canadian privacy law: watchdog"

2009-07-16T14:50:56Z

The Canadian Press' Jim Bronskill has the story.

Canada's privacy watchdog says Internet phenomenon Facebook breaches the law by keeping users' personal information indefinitely - even after members close their accounts.

Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart says the popular social networking site should hang on to the data only for as long as truly necessary.

In a report Thursday, Stoddart urged Facebook to remedy the problem, one of several serious privacy shortfalls she discovered.

Facebook, which has nearly 12 million Canadian users, allows people to keep in touch with friends and family by updating their personal pages with fresh messages and photos.

Stoddart said although Facebook provides information about its privacy practices, it is often confusing or incomplete.

"It's clear that privacy issues are top of mind for Facebook, and yet we found serious privacy gaps in the way the site operates," Stoddart said in a statement.

For example, the "account settings" page describes how to deactivate accounts but not how to delete them, which actually removes personal data from Facebook's computer servers.

[. . .]

The privacy commissioner will review Facebook's actions after 30 days to gauge progress. She can take the case to the Federal Court of Canada to have her recommendations enforced.

She launched a probe of Facebook in response to a complaint last year from the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic.

The clinic, based at the University of Ottawa's law faculty, alleged numerous violations by the high-profile site.

David T.S. Fraser goes into more detail at his Privacy Lawyer blog.

[PHOTO] "I see roses at night"

2009-07-16T14:44:48Z

"I see roses at night"
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

The photographer's flash is so useful.

[REVIEW] Andrew Sancton, The Limits of Boundaries

2009-07-16T01:49:47Z

Talk about creating a Province of Toronto has surged then and again, usually prompted by complaints that the Ontario provincial government is neglecting Torontonian interests, in infrastructure and government service investment, say, in favour of thsoe of a wider province. Others have proposed that Montréal be separated from Québec in the event of Québec secession. Talk of the city-region, a region centered upon a city characterized by a sort of economic and demographic unity, as the defining entity of the 21st century has been current for a while. Kenichi Ohmae's The End of the Nation State imagines the deconstruction of nation-states into much smaller subnational units, each having their own policies in order to maximize growth. Jane Jacobs, famed Toronto urbanist, went so far as to suggest that each unit could have its own currency, the better to exploit its particular niche.

Andrew Sancton's The Limits of Boundaries: Why city-regions cannot be self-governing shoots these ideas down simply be pointing out that the boundaries of these regions are far too narrow. He examines other city-regions and finds them lacking: the failure of the 1996 referendum on uniting Berlin with the Land of Brandenburg that surrounds it has forced the two Länder to establish unwieldy common planning boards, while the huge fuss over language rights for Francophones in the Flemish districts around Brussels and the question of these territories' ultimate fate has risked shattering the Belgian state. Sancton approves of the Community of Madrid, but notes that the Community's frontiers were specifically designed to include Madrid and its hinterland during the post-Franco democratic transition. Sancton also raises the very important point that the frontiers of city-regions move outwards as technology advances and transport becomes easier. At one point, Hamilton was an entity separate from Toronto; soon, London may be included. Ironically, enfranchising city-regions as levels of government would stifle the dynamism that makes them so productive. The traditional levels of government, he concludes, are large enough and stable enough to accomodate cities' needs through their economies of scale, perhaps with a bit of tinkering necessary but nothing that can't be maanged..

(And yes, I know that The Limits of Boundaries is a book of obvious relevance to--say--talk of the partition of California into several units. Guess why I picked it?)

[FORUM] "Should California Be Broken Up?"

2009-07-15T19:04:23Z

The Volokh Conspiracy's Ilya Somin asks this question over at that blog.

By now, almost everyone agrees that California government is seriously dysfunctional. The state suffers from a grave fiscal crisis, extraordinarily high taxation (which, however, is still not enough to finance the state's exorbitant spending), overregulation, and numerous other problems. "Governator" Arnold Schwarzenegger has been no more able to curb these tendencies than his much-reviled Democratic predecessor, Gray Davis. Steven Greenhut suggests that California's problems are structural, not merely the result of bad decisions by individual politicians. He argues that the Golden State's people would be better off if it was broken up into three or four separate smaller states. The idea of partitioning California is not a new one; but it has never been more timely. While I don't necessarily endorse Greenhut's specific proposal, I do agree with the general argument that California's problems stem partly from its excessive size. With some 38 million people, California has about one-eighth of the nation's population.

Normally, the ability to "vote with your feet" is one of the strongest checks on dysfunctional state policies, a point John McGinnis and I discussed in this article. If a state government has poor economic policies, excessive taxes, or bad public services, taxpayers will tend to migrate elsewhere, putting pressure on the state to clean up its act. That, for example, is what happened with my own home state of Massachusetts when it lost population to southern and western states in the 1970s and early 80s. Even if the poorly performing state government doesn't shape up, at least migration will reduce the number of people who have to put up with it.

California has been largely insulated from foot-voting pressure because of its huge size, and the way in which it monopolizes most of the desirable parts of the US West Coast. Because of these geographic advantages, the cost of leaving California is often much higher than that of leaving most other states. As a result, Californians have had to put up with more abuse than most other state governments could get away with.

If California were divided into three or four smaller states, the cost of exit would be lower, and the new states would have strong incentives to compete with each other for people and businesses. Foot-voting would be a far more viable option. Of course we wouldn't want states that are too small to exploit economies of scale. However, each of the new states would probably have some 8 to 14 million people, more than such medium-size states as Virginia, Washington, Indiana, and Massachusetts, which few if any believe to be too small.

This is almost certainly not going to happen, since Californians aren't interested in this project and I can only imagine the extreme political and institutional difficulties associated with a division of California into multiple states. This plan is destined to be one of many abandoned plans. That said, what do you think of the idea? Are there other political entities that you think are too large?

Discuss.

[LINK] "A Calendar for Ceres"

2009-07-15T18:59:16Z

Long-time readers will be aware of my boosterism for 1 Ceres, a dwarf planet of largely rocky composition located in the asteroid belt--I even have a dedicated Ceres tag. With its likely abundant water, carbonaceous, and metal resources, if there is space colonization Ceres is as likely a target as any, perhaps even as much as Mars. The question of a local calendar may well come up--Robert Zubrin has devised one for Mars. Now, Andrew Barton has come up with a calendar for Ceres.

Once humans go into space to stay, the Gregorian calendar isn't something they'll necessarily take with them. A timekeeping system based around equinox and solstice and organized for the needs of an agricultural society may not have much more than nostalgic value to the pioneers of Sol, considering that the environments they inhabit will be purely artificial. Depending on the tempo with which space is settled, humanity's new worlds may well ditch Earth's dating system in favor of one which is relevant to them, and not just an apron string binding them across the light-hours to a land that's no longer home.

[. . .]

Ceres' orbital period is a little over four and a half Earth years - 1680.5 days, and the Cererean calendar divides this out into 1,680 twenty-four hour days with a bit left over at the end. The days are grouped into twenty-one months, each eighty days long, and owing to my vision of Ceres as being run along technocratic lines, they are for the most part named after scientists, astronomers, and people relevant to the discovery of Ceres.

Go, read the post in whole.

[BRIEF NOTE] The new Solar System

2009-07-15T18:53:26Z

In the course of an examination of the possibility of a high-speed mission to the dwarf planet of Haumea, one of many Kuiper belt of icy bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune, Centauri Dreams makes the point that our understanding of the structure of the Solar System has changed radically, from a solar system with nine planets to one with eight planets and huge numbers of dwarf worlds.

As Poncy did, I’ll use outer planet specialist Mike Brown’s illustrations of what has happened to our Solar System in the last few decades. The first illustration shows the Solar System most of us grew up with, a system with nine planets that were more or less clearly defined, with what was assumed to be a certain amount of debris and cometary material further out.

Now, of course, we see a new Solar System. Depending on how we define planets, we can declare that we have numerous such objects in the outer system — call them ‘dwarf planets’ — along with, much further out, the enormous, spherical system known as the Oort Cloud. Think about this: The number of objects with a diameter beyond 500 kilometers has doubled in just ten years from thirty-five to more than seventy as we’ve continued our investigation of trans-Neptunian objects. It is fully assumed that within another decade or two, we’ll know of hundreds more of these objects.

Let me quote [space proponent Joel] Poncy on this:

If we now recap all sizable Solar System planetary objects larger than 500 km, we get 19 objects closer than the orbit of Uranus, orbit-able after a decade or so of cruise with current technologies. Uranus itself can be flown by but not orbited for a decent travel time. We have already more than 40 objects at Uranus and beyond and this number will grow considerably by 2020. This is even starting to change the appellation ‘Outer System,’ which was previously used to name the part beyond the frost line at 4 AU, and is now sometimes used to designate the part beyond 30 AU.

Consider, too, that we once thought of the the Solar System as being enclosed in a well defined heliosphere that separated it from true interstellar space. Now we have objects like Sedna, with an aphelion (942 AU) that is well beyond the heliosphere. In moving to its perihelion at 76 AU, Sedna moves from interstellar space into the heliosphere and then gradually works its way back out again. The new Solar System is packed with objects that defy all the definitions we once brought to the term.

The images, and much else, are available at the blog site.

[BRIEF NOTE] On Romany in the Czech Republic and Canada

2009-07-15T13:31:43Z

The recent decision by the Canadian government to impose visas on visitors from the Czech Republic hasn't pleased Canadian Romany leaders.

The Roma Community Center in Toronto has criticised the Canadian government for today's reintroduction of visa requirements for Czechs, which the Center says harms the persecuted minority of Czech Romanies.

The situation in the Czech Republic and other countries is similar to the situation in Germany in the 1930. Like at the time, Canada now prevents a persecuted minority from finding a safe refuge, Paul St.Clair, an activist from the centre, told CTK.

"We are disappointed that Canada has decided to shut the door to Czech Roma who are genuine refugees even if they come from a highly developed central European country," the Center said in a press release.

St.Clair recently faced accusations that he personally profits from the Romany immigration to Canada, being one of its organisers. He has sharply dismissed the accusations.

St. Clair said Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB), which decides on granting asylum, has complied with 85 percent of Czech Romany asylum claims in the past one-and-a-half year.

However, in a press release concerning the visa reimposition on Monday, Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said that more than a half of the claims have been rejected or withdrawn before the IRB makes the final decision.

The statistics are therefore distorted, Kenney said, indicating that a number of Czech claimants only abuse Canada's asylum system.

St. Clair goes on to claim--sadly plausibly--that Romanies in the Czech Republic are faced with violence that meets with indifference from the state.

It's important to note that this 2009 exodus of Czech Romanies to Canada is not the first. As Josef Klíma wrote for Radio Prague ("The Roma Exodus to Canada"), an earlier exodus also strained Canadian-Czech relations.

On Tuesday, August 5 (not Aug. 6 as widely reported), the private television station Nova, by far the most-watched in the country, broadcast a documentary portraying the life of Czech Roma who'd emigrated to Canada as carefree and comfortable. The 15-minute report, by reporter Josef Klima on the Na vlastni oci (With Your Own Eyes) program, showed Czech Roma families living comfortably on state support as they waited to be granted asylum by the Canadian government.

Within days, there were reports of large numbers of Roma, reportedly 5,000 in the large east Moravian city of Ostrava alone, selling their property and possessions in preparation for emigrating to Canada. By the following week, the Canadian Embassy in Prague was receiving hundreds of calls a day, 90% from Roma, and flights to Canada from Prague were booked into October. The situation was also fuelled by offers by the mayors of some towns to contribute funds to buying airline tickets for the Roma who wanted to leave. The mayor of Ostrava-Marianske Hory, Liana Janackova, told Mlada fronta dnes, "we have two groups of people -- Gypsies and whites -- that live together, but can't and don't want to. So why can't one group take the first step toward finding a solution? I don't think it's racist. We just want to help the Gypsies."

[. . .]

Lucie Cermakova, spokeswoman for the Canadian Embassy in Prague, denounced the program as one-sided. "The program presented only one side of the matter and picked out only nonsensical ideas," she said. A similar opinion was voiced by a spokeswoman for the Czech Embassy in Ottawa, Marie Jurkovicova: "According to our information, the program was full of half-truths, which strongly distorted reality and practically invited the exodus of large groups of Czech Roma. It concealed a number of facts." (Mlada fronta dnes, August 13, 1997)

[. . .]

Canadian officals in the Czech Republic are attempting to convince Czech Roma that emigrating to Canada is no easy or safe path to follow, Terry Mooney, charge d'affaires at the Canadian Embassy in Prague told the Canadian Press. "We're trying to stop them by indicating that they're taking an enormous risk in going," he said. "They may not be accepted. And if they are returned, they will return, generally speaking, to impoverished circumstances...We're trying to tell them that life in Canada is not a bed of roses, even if they are accepted. They need to think very soberly about whether all of this is worth it." (CP, Aug. 26, 1997)

There were also reports in Canada that the Canadian immigration officials were delaying the processing of asylum claims by Roma to make checks for criminal records. During this delay, the Roma applicants are left without any legal status in Canada and they cannot apply for working permits or social aid. And the hostels in Toronto, for instance, are already beginning to run out of space to house them.

Where did Canada's Gypsies come from? The ever-useful Multicultural Canada has a few pages on the subject.

Beginning in the nineteenth century, the Rom began to migrate to other parts of Europe and, after the 1880s, to both North and South America. Today, most Gypsies in Canada are Rom. Although no systematic research has been conducted on their arrival in this country, on the basis of available data, it is reasonable to estimate their first appearance as having been around the turn of the century. Passenger lists record Rom arriving at New York in 1899, 1900, and 1901 who claimed either to have been in Canada or to be headed here. Border-crossing records show Rom entering the United States from Winnipeg and Montreal in 1903, and a photograph exists from the following year of a band of Rom camping at Innisfail, Alberta.

The Canadian Rom are divided into two main tribes – the Machwaya (from the Mačcva region of northern Serbia) and the Kalderash – of which there are numerous branches. According to the Rom themselves, most belong to the Mineshti clan of the Kalderash tribe, a group of related families claiming descent from a common ancestor, Mina, who is variously identified as a man or a woman. If the latter, she is described as a large, strong woman who travelled across Russia with her seven sons and a pig. The majority of Canadian Rom trace their ancestry to four brothers, Zlatcho, Grofia, Wasso, and Bochi, the sons of Zurka, a descendant of Mina. According to oral tradition, they first came to the United States in the 1880s or 1890s and thence to Canada. Other clans arrived at about the same time and were probably associated with one another through marriage ties. They include the Papineshti (geese clan), the Supeshti, a clan of Russian Kalderash, and the Goneshti, who claim to be members of the Churara tribe, a group distinct from both the Machwaya and the Kalderash. Since 1970 there has been a steady influx of Lowara Rom from Europe, and if police reports are any guide, they now constitute the largest Gypsy group in Canada. The Lowara are closely related to the American Rom but have diverged from them to some extent in dialect and customs as a result of their longer stay in Europe.

Regardless of nomenclature, all these groups are Rom with almost identical speech and customs. They apparently interact and intermarry freely; for all practical purposes they should be considered variants of a single ethnic entity. In addition, several other Gypsy groups have arrived in North America and subsequently sojourned or taken up residence in Canada. The Rom were preceded in this country by the Romnichals from the British Isles (1870s) and the Ludar from Bosnia (1890s). Hungarian musician Gypsies, or Romungros, are found in the bigger Canadian cities, but their history in Canada is largely unknown. As well, several Irish and Scottish traveller groups, who are not of Gypsy origin though they are commonly so regarded by non-Gypsies, have immigrated to this country.

Their urbanization began around 1920, it seems, and most Romany now are concentrated in central Canada with a total population numbering in the hundreds. The extent to which this population statistic is accurate is open to question, on account of the low status associated with Romany identity and those who claim it.

[PHOTO] Field of dreams in winter

2009-07-15T13:16:44Z

Field of dreams in winter
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

I caught this scene of a baseball field in winter, partly iced over, this winter past when I was returning to the TTC from my flu shot.

[URBAN NOTE] "Deadpool looms for Pages Bookstore"

2009-07-14T19:48:33Z

Pages Bookstore, one of the institutions of Queen Street West, will be closing down on the 31st of August on account of the trendy district's rising rents as Derek writes.

The sad, but perhaps inevitable, news came today that Pages, one of Toronto's most-loved bookstores, will indeed be closing its doors on August 31st. Efforts by owner Marc Glassman to maintain the viability of his business amid "skyrocketing rents" on Queen West have ultimately hit a brick wall in the form of lease-cycle that's finally run its course.

As previously reported, a six month extension worked out with Pinedale Properties in February was occasion for cautious hope, but the discrepancy between what Glassman can afford to pay and what Pinedale believes it can charge is simply too wide. A fixture for artists, intellectuals and book lovers coming on 30 years, the store will be sorely missed.

[. . .]

Hesitant to give me a drop-dead date on a search [for a new location], Marc instead explained that beyond just finding a new location, it's become both necessary and desirable to rethink the store from the ground up. In the age of the Kindle and eBooks, it's his belief that the independent bookstore will have a better chance to thrive if it's operated as something of a split between a retail venture and an event-space. (Perhaps something like powerHouse Books?)

[. . .]

While the importance of the materiality of books will certainly continue to fade, it's unlikely to completely disappear. There's plenty out there who'll continue to treasure the beauty of the book as an object. Indeed, I'd count myself one of these people. But to rely solely on this form of business is, given the current situation at Pages, hardly prudent.

While I'm not a very big Queen Street West aficionado, all the less so since I moved from a residence just a block from Queen Street West, Pages' disappearance does sadden me. It was a wonderful place to browse. The closure doesn't surprise me, really. What can you expect out of a district that has long since abandoned its bohemian atmosphere for super trendiness on the pattern of once-bohemian Yorkville?

[LINK] "Czechs want visa answers"

2009-07-14T19:37:36Z

The recent decision of the Canadian government to require visa of visitors from Mexico and the Czech Republic, on the grounds that these countries produce too many refugees, has not be welcomed at all by the Czechs and Mexicans.

The Czech Republic's ambassador to Canada will fly out of the country this afternoon partly in protest and partly to plot his country's reaction to new visa restrictions on Czech visitors to Canada, the embassy in Ottawa says.

Ambassador Karel Zebrakovsky will be leaving less than 24 hours after Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced the federal government will attempt to stop what it sees as an unacceptable number of refugee claimants from both the Czech Republic and Mexico, with new visa requirements that go into effect at midnight tomorrow.

In Prague, where Canada thinks thousands of the Roma minority have been launching fraudulent refugee claims, the reaction was fierce.

Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer branded the restrictions a "unilateral and unfriendly step." He was speaking after an emergency government meeting to discuss the new visa requirements, Reuters reported.

[. . .]

In retaliation, the Czech government will require Canadian diplomats and civil servants to obtain visas before entering the country on official business, he said. But Prague is powerless to place visa requirements on all Canadian visitors to the country because it is a member of the European Union and must harmonize immigration policies with all of the 27 member countries.

Czech diplomats will also begin raising the Canadian visa problems with the European Commission in a bid to reach a mutually agreeable resolution.

[. . .]

The restrictions on Mexican visitors to Canada could have even greater economic ramifications.

Mexican asylum claims make up one quarter of all applications that Canada receives, the government says. But tourism and business trips from that country to Canada have also been on the rise.

The tourism industry is urging the federal government to delay the visa requirement for Mexican visitors until Nov. 15.

A group of hotels, restaurants and tour operators from Ontario and Quebec that rely on business with Mexico said the government's move came without advance warning and in the middle of a recession.

"This has blindsided our industry," Hume Rogers, general manager of Capital Hill Hotel and Suites, told reporters in Ottawa.

Carlo Dade, executive director of the Canadian Foundation for the Americas, said the government's decision didn't offer any exceptions for the growing number of Mexican business travellers, or the possibility of a program to pre-clear frequent visitors such as that which Canada has with the U.S.

[CAT] "It's not love your kitty wants, it's dinner"

2009-07-14T19:32:36Z

Thanks to Andrew Barton for pointing me to this Associated Press article.

A cat's purr normally says, "I'm happy." But a new study suggests some purrs send cat owners a different message: "Feed me!"

Researchers found that purrs of hungry cats included a higher-pitched sound, somewhat like a cry or meow. They played recordings of these purrs from 10 cats to 50 human volunteers. Even people who'd never owned a cat found them more urgent and less pleasant than contented purrs from the same animals.

These food-seeking purrs may exploit the way humans naturally respond to a baby's cry. Some cats apparently learn it's effective in getting a human to feed them. Karen McComb of the University of Sussex in England and co-authors present their work in today's issue of Current Biology.

CBC has more.

And no, I don't feed Shakespeare whenever he wants to be fed. I love him, but I also want him to be healthy.

[BRIEF NOTE] What happened to Vancouver's Japantown?

2009-07-14T14:26:07Z

On Monday, before Japan's Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko finished their tour of Canada and left for home, they visited a school in downtown Vancouver that once was the heart of Vancouver's Japantown.

As the Emperor and Empress of Japan emerged from the Japanese Hall on Alexander Street in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, Cy Saimoto was at their side, smiling and waving to the people packed six deep along the street to witness the couple's visit to a building and a neighbourhood that were once the heart and soul of Japantown.

A few minutes after helping the royal couple into a waiting limousine yesterday, Mr. Saimoto was still smiling, basking in the afterglow of escorting them around the hall and in the symbolism of the event.

“It meant a lot to the people, to the Japanese community. And the Downtown Eastside. Because the first Japanese settlement was here,” said Mr. Saimoto, who is 81 and an honorary chairman of the Vancouver Japanese Language School & Japanese Hall.

[. . .]

Hundreds of people lined the block in front of the school to catch a glimpse of Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko, who are on a 12-day visit to Canada that began in Ottawa on July 3 and ends this week in Vancouver.

School directors and others in Vancouver's Japanese-Canadian community lobbied to get the school on the royal couple's itinerary, arguing that the building's historical significance should outweigh any worries about the royal couple seeing rundown areas of the city.

The school and hall opened in 1906 and have operated since, except between 1942 and 1952, when the property was confiscated and used first by the Canadian military and then by local businesses.

In 1953, after a lengthy campaign, half of the property was turned over to the Japanese-Canadian community. Of all the boats, stores, homes, businesses and other assets seized from Japanese-Canadians during the war, the school is the only property to have been returned.

Vancouver's Japantown was once the nucleus of the Japanese Canadian community, a major feature in downtown Vancouver located next to Chinatown. Unlike Chinatown, however, Japantown didn't survive the 1940s.

During World War II when Japanese Canadians had their property confiscated and were interned (see Japanese Canadian internment), Japantown ceased to be a distinct Japanese ethnic area. Although some Japanese returned after the war, the community never revived. The area is now part of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

Along Powell Street, a few remnants of the former Japanese neighbourhood still exist. The Vancouver Buddhist Church, formerly the Japanese Methodist Church, still exists at 220 Jackson Street (at Powell).[3] So does the Vancouver Japanese Language School and Japanese Hall at 475 and 487 Alexander Street (at Jackson), which was established in 1906.

Until the boom in Japanese restaurants in the 1980s, two restaurants on Powell Street were among the only Japanese dining in the city.

In a 2007 Vancouver Sun article, one community activist quoted was skeptical that the community could ever reform on this territory.

It was Nihonmachi, at least until 1942. That's when rabid, racist paranoia caught up with the events of Dec. 7, 1941, at Pearl Harbor, and the thriving Vancouver community of Nihonmachi, or Japantown, was torn apart to satisfy Canada's hatred of its latest enemy in the Second World War.

It's no secret Japantown never recovered from the deportations, seizure of property and sheer viciousness of Canada's hysterical over-reaction. Today, the many problems of the Downtown Eastside are much in evidence around Oppenheimer Park, which was once the heart of Nihonmachi.

Miko Hoffman is general manager and program director for this weekend's Powell Street Festival, held at and around Oppenheimer Park. She isn't optimisitc that the vibrancy of Japantown will ever return.

"I would love to see it happen, love to," she says. "It's just that the community is so dispersed, it would take a lot to get people to come back here."

This 2004 blog entry compares and contrasts Japantown with Chinatown. Apparently Seattle has the only functioning Japantown on the west coast of North America.

What happened after Japantown's destruction? Its social fabric destroyed, Japantown ended up assimilating into the Downtown Eastside, a slum area that's notable for its inhabitants' low incomes, high rates of HIV infection and homelessness, and the street prostitution that attracted serial killer Robert Pickton, who picked up prostitutes, took them to his rural home, killed them in ways that the Crown hasn't revealed in order to protect his victims' dignity, and then apparently feed them to his pigs, all without anyone important noticing something wrong for a decade. Apparently tour organizers were concerned about the neighbourhood's potential risk to the imperial couple, but high levels of security and the importance over the Japanese Hall overrode these.

[CAT] Shakespeare in bed

2009-07-14T14:11:39Z

From a very early age Shakespeare was aware of the global body heat shortage, as evidenced by his continuing preference for sleeping next to me. The below two photos were taken while he was still a kitten, weighing less than 10 pounds and as adorably cute as ever.

The photo quality's bad, I know. I choose to blame that one the problems inherent with disposable camera, but if I was honest I'd also have to blame my--shall we say--underdeveloped photography mojo.

Shakespeare under the blanket
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

Shakespeare, a blanket, and transhumanity
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

I'd like to point out that the book that Shakespeare is lying next to in the second picture is Fifth Wave, a supplement for the Steve Jackson Games RPG setting Transhuman Space. In this setting, a team of ambitious but perhaps impetuous geneticists create a subspecies of cat with language abilities and an IQ of 80; they later downgrade the intelligence to 60 on discovering how uncontrollable the cats were, although some cats may have escaped into the wild ... Might he be telling me a message?

[LINK] "It's 20 years since reunification but is Germany still divided?"

2009-07-13T19:09:47Z

The Independent's Tony Paterson takes a look atnthe ways in which the former East Germany--and, of course, East Germans--have and have not been integrated into unified Germany. Some areas are winners; some, definitely losers.

The haunting German film The Lives of Others, which tells the story of how an East Berlin writer and his girlfriend are kept under round-the-clock surveillance by the infamous Stasi secret police, provides an inkling of what Prenzlauer Berg was like 20 years ago. The district, which used to sit close against the Wall, was not massively damaged by Allied bombing during the Second World War, but it still looked as if the war had ended yesterday. The borough, which incidentally used to be twinned with London's Hackney during the latter's socialist heyday, contains street after street of late-19th-century apartment blocks. Two decades ago, the facades of all of them were either falling off or pockmarked with the holes of millions of bullets sprayed on them by the invading Red Army (the tactic was designed to deter snipers) as they took the city in May 1945. The district stank of a soft brown coal called lignite, which was used to heat people's homes, and two-stroke-engine car exhaust fumes. It was home to academics, dissidents and intellectuals but also to Communism's failures and rejects, those without enough friends in the ruling Socialist Unity Party to warrant a decent apartment.

Prenzlauer Berg is no longer twinned with Hackney. Perhaps that is just as well: in the interim it has transformed itself into the Berlin equivalent of Islington – a yuppie enclave in a city which has been affectionately dubbed "poor but sexy" by Klaus Wowereit, its gay Social Democrat mayor. There is not much poor about Prenzlauer Berg, however: once the city's punk borough, it has come of age and is now home to a baby-boomer population of trendy, young, middle-class and educated Germans. Its streets, which once had the odd Trabant or Russian Lada parked in them, are now full of Audis and BMWs. Children cavort in the well-organised playgrounds that have been set up on what seems like every inch of green space. They, like their parents, are dressed in designer clothes, while babies are wheeled about in pristine prams costing 1,000 euros apiece.

[. . . ]

Eisenhüttenstadt is the opposite of Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg, but its predicament is shared by hundreds of similar towns and communities in the former Communist East. The town is literally dying on its feet. Before the fall of the Wall, Eisenhüttenstadt was home to a population of close on 60,000. Today, the number has fallen to nearly half that figure and is still falling year by year. An unemployment rate of around 20 per cent has meant that the town's young people have simply upped sticks and gone west in search of work.

Steffi Schultz now survives on a state pension. Under Communism she had a job in a waste-recycling factory which she says she enjoyed, but she was made redundant not long after unification. Fields of flattened weed-choked rubble have taken the place of the Communist-era flats that surrounded her tower block a few years ago. A few concrete table-tennis tables stand in a deserted playground – but the children that used to play on them have long since disappeared. Like many of the other remaining residents in her street, Steffi Schulz is not convinced that Germany's reunification has amounted to much. "In the old days there was a real community round here," she said. "But if it goes on like this there will be nothing but pensioners left in the east," she added.

[LINK] Two links on French in Canada from the Toronto Star

2009-07-13T19:05:51Z

Chantal Hébert describes, from her own experience as a mother and a Canadian Francophone, the conscious planning that it take to keep the French language in good stead, whether among children or within cities.

Rob Ferguson reports that Premier Dalton McGuinty, with a Francophone mother and French-language schooling, is the only leader of Ontario's three major political parties to speak French. The other leaders--Tim Hudak of the Progressive Conservatives and Andrea Horvath of the New Democratic Party--are trying to catch up.

[LINK] "Windsor's jobless rate climbs to 14.4 per cent as nation's highest"

2009-07-13T18:59:41Z

Things continue to go very badly in the southern Ontario city of Windsor, an automotive manufacturing centre located on the other side of the US-Canadian border from Detroit.

Windsor continued to have the highest unemployment rate in Canada in June with the latest labour market figures released by Statistics Canada Friday showing that 14.4 per cent of the local population was jobless.

That represented a jump of 0.6 per cent over 13.8 per cent in May, meaning that there were more than 25,000 people out of work in the metropolitan area at the beginning of summer.

However, Rick Laporte, president of CAW Local 444 representing Chrysler workers, suggested the reopening of the Windsor Assembly Plant June 30, and the announced addition of a third shift Friday may mean that the local economy hit its lowest point in June and may now begin to recover.

“I’m hopeful,” he said. “I don’t know if we’ve hit bottom, but with the plant back back up, the numbers should improve. Certainly I expect a softer (unemployment) rate next month, no question.”

He said the 3,500 Chrysler workers who returned to the job at the end of June should also have a positive impact on area feeder plants, with some of them possibly being in the position to hire.

“The third shift is wonderful news,” He said. “That 14.4 per cent number seems ridiculously high.”

The Windsor Star has an economy section with articles on different aspects of Windsor's various economic issues.