More interesting maps than you can shake a stick at

If you read these posts, you might know that I'm a bit of a sucker for a good map. I find that maps are a good succinct visual method of presenting a lot of comparative information. Plus, it appeals to the geek in me.

Anyway, Bored Panda has brought together no less than 112 interesting maps, many, but by no means all, relating to Europe. They run the gamut from more mainstream subjects like population change, life expectancy, and measures of wealth, to more esoteric aspects like the starting month of the school year, percentage of people with fair hair, percentage of teen moms, the price of Spotify Premium, attitudes towards LGBTQ travellers, and the average number of sexual partners, via assessments of things like quality of life, home ownership, achieved human rights, and wine consumption.

And, of course, a few crazy things pop out of all this. For example, did you know that the most common origin of legal immigrants to North Dakota, New Hampshire and Vermont in 2023 was Bhutan? Me neither. That the most common surname in France was Martin? That the average Greek and Polish worker works nearly twice as many hours each year as the average Swede or German? That French and Spanish trains go twice as fast as Dutch and Belgian ones on average, and nearly four times as fast as trains in the Balkan countries? That you can buy alcohol at age 16 in Germany, Switzerland and Austria? That in Finland, holiday gifts are brought by the Christmas Goat?

There's a lot to discover, in addition to more general observations, like the huge differences between western and eastern Europe based on a whole host of different aspects. Happy map-viewing!

Is "Drill, baby, drill!" a good slogan?

I've been trying to find out who thought it a good idea to use the phrase "Drill, baby, drill!" as a political slogan.

Both Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance have used the slogan in recent days to mark their commitment to unrestricted and unfettered domestic oil production, and at one point the Republican National Convention crowd took up the refrain, because that's the kind of puerile simplistic sound bite they like there (remember "Lock her up!"?) Paradoxically, this comes in spite of the much more measured ambitions of the country's top oil producers in recent years.

Setting aside the slang meaning of "drill" to mean sexual intercourse or gang murder, It seems the phrase was first used as recently as 2008 to express the Republicans' blanket and unquestioning support for the oil and gas industry. Sarah Palin made use of it in her Vice Presidential debate in that year, although she didn't actually coin it. After the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, environmentalists parodied it as "Spill, baby, spill!" and "Kill, baby, kill!"

I assume it is based on the 1976 disco hit by The Trammps: "Burn, baby, burn, Disco Inferno", although I have no proof of that. But it seems a bit of an unlikely 21st century meme to take hold. Unless you stop to think that the demographic of today's Republicans skews quite hard toward the disco era.

Laughing Kamala? Sounds like a compliment to me

Donald Trump, who is known for the childish, politically incorrect nicknames he gives to his rivals, seems to be scraping the barrel. After Sleepy Joe Biden, Lyin' Ted Cruz, Sloppy Chris Christie, Little Marco Rubio, Crazy Nancy Pelosi, etc, he was under some pressure to come up with something hard-hitting for his new rival, Kamala Harris.

His solution? Laughing Kamala. Wait, what? He explains: "I call her Laughing Kamala. Have you seen her laughing? She is crazy. You can tell a lot by a laugh. She is nuts." Er, OK. That seems to be the best he can do.

I don't know about the laughing, but Ms. Harris does always seem to have a broad grin on her face when meeting the public. She seems like a genuinely nice, happy person, and that in itself would almost be enough for me to vote for her. Compared to the dour, cynical, angry, grey old men she faces, she is a breath of fresh air. Luckily, she's also whip-smart and strong, but don't write off the positive vibes of a smile.

Bidenomics has actually been remarkably successful

Joe Biden will serve out the remaining months of his four-year administration. Just because he decided not to stand for a second term, and just because he is rubbish at debating, does not mean he is incapable of continuing the job he has been doing, pretty successfully for the past three-and-a-half years, whatever Donald Trump et al might tell you.

And therein lies the main point of contention in this upcoming election. The Republicans are claiming that his presidency has been a failure. Hell, Trump say it has been the worst presidency EVER, despite a consensus among non-partisan historians that, actually, Trump's presidency was the worst. Indeed, history tells us that Democratic presidencies in general handily out-perform Republican ones in economic terms.

The fact of the matter is that Biden has presided over a very successful American economy. So, much so that the label "Bidenomics" has been applied to his policies (it started off as a pejororative description by Republican critics, before being reclaimed by proud Democrats). This is the first such label since "Reaganomics" back in the 1980s, and it is indeed almost as revolutionary.

Republicans still speak of Reaganomics in hushed tones, and Reagan is usually still revered as the greatest Republican leader of the country, even though the modern neo-con Republican party has very little in common with Reagan's Republicanism, which dates from a gentler, kinder era. 

Reaganomics was based on the concept (largely discredited these days) that prosperity trickles down from the top. Thus, we should put our trust in the "invisible hand" of the market to fairly and efficiently distribute resources, and the state should interfere as little as possible with the private sector's running of the economy. It was a theoretical philosophy marked by the real life policies of tax cuts, wage suppression, and deregulation. Trillions of dollars moved from the poorest 99% to the top 1% as a direct result.

Bidenomics, on the other hand, is based on three main tenets: public investment, empowering workers, and promoting competition. It realizes that prosperity and a strong economy grow from the bottom up and the middle out, not from the top down. "When the middle class does well, everybody does well", as Biden often says.

Thus, public investment can actually attract more private sector investment, rather than "crowding it out" as Reagan believed, and that has turned out to be true, as evidenced by the achievements of the Inflation Reduction Act in green energy and cleantech and the CHIPS and Science Act in computer technology. 

Biden has actively strengthened labour unions, rather than trying to break them as Reagan did, and has largely cleared the logjam of stagnant labour wages of the last forty years, resulting in higher employment and happier workers. 

And, on competition, Biden has aggressively enforced anti-trust laws, rather than just looking the other way as a few mega-conpanies divide up the spoils of whole industries, so that the "efficiencies" of big business do not also come with unacceptable amounts of economic and societal risk.

So, it turns out that higher wages do not actually kill jobs, deregulation does not automatically boost competition and innovation, and there is no evidence to support the claim that cutting top tax rates stimulates economic growth (the Time article links to other articles on these matters).

And, as the article also concludes (as do articles in The Guardian and other thoughtful outlets), "Bidenomics is working", even if Biden fails to get credit for it from polls and voters. Most Americans do not seem to be able to see past the fact that things cost more and their mortgage rate is high. But inflation, and the resulting increase in interest rates, is a worldwide problem resulting from the pandemic, war in Ukraine, etc, over which Biden had little or no control. Even so, inflation has now been largely tamed (note, that DOESN'T mean that prices will actually fall - economists are not magicians!) and interests rates are expected to start falling soon as a result.

In the meantime, economic growth in the USA has accelerated (at a time when many economists were predicting a recession), consumer spending is solid, employment is high, real wages have improved, wage inequality has reduced, child poverty rates have fallen, crime rates are down, manufacturing industry has seen a renaissance, major stock indexes are constantly breaking records, etc, etc. 

Neverthless, Americans are stubbornly downbeat about the economy under Biden. Bearing in mind that the good times they remember under Trump (pre-pandemic, anyway) were largely generated by riding the coattails of an extended economic recovery under Barack Obama, and that Biden was tasked with dealing with significant challenges after the pandemic and four years of Trump, they should be a lot more appreciative of life under a Democrat government than they actually are. 

History will probably judge Joe Biden more favourably than the average guy on the American street. Maybe Kamal Harris will do a better PR job on the economy under the Democrats than Biden did, and a better job of countering the lies, inaccuracies and half-truths Trump & Co has been spreading. Let's hope so, for all our sakes.

Russian athletes fall outside the line in the sand

Russia has not fielded a full complement of Olympics athletes for many years now, due to its repeated violations of performance-enhancing drug rules. In the Tokyo and Beijing Games, Russian athletes competed under the rather awkward Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) moniker, but that didn't stop them from fielding essentially a full roster of competitors and winning a substantial haul of medals.

At the Paris Olympics, things are different. Since the invasion of Ukraine, Russian and Belorusian athletes can only participate as "Individual Neutral Athletes" (AIN in Olympics acronyms), and they will not be allowed to raise their flag or play their national anthem on the medal podium. 

Crucially, any athlete that appears to be "actively supporting" the invasion of Ukraine, or who has served in the Russian military, is specifically banned from competing. So, the onus is on the athletes to prove that they don't support the invasion, which is a kiss of death (almost literally) in Russia, as well as a difficult value judgement.

As a result only about 15 Russians have registered for the Games in 10 different sports disciplines so far (the final number could be higher). Few people will miss them. Ukrainian athletes in particular will not miss having to line up next to a Russian.

But it is a tough call. It doesn't seem very much in the Olympic spirit to ban a country due to politics, even politics as exteme as Russia's, and it's hard to know where to draw that line in the sand. For example, Israel seems to be welcomed (indeed, its athletes are being provided with special security). China is considered a global pariah in many respects, but it hasn't actually invaded anyone (yet), and so is welcome to attend. Countries like Ethiopia and Myanmar have clearly not transgressed enough to merit a ban. But, to some extent, it is very much a case of "how long is a piece of string".

Who's the cranky old geezer now?

Well, it seemed likely that Donald Trump might be a bit annoyed that Joe Biden finally pulled out of the presidential race. But it's still a bit of a surprise that his reaction was quite so ... well, unhinged, is really the only appropriate word.

In an extended rant on his own Truth Social platform, which was created mainly to accommodate his own lies and libels, Trump raged, "It's not over! Tomorrow Crooked Joe Biden's going to wake up and forget that he dropped out of the race today!"

Trump is now the old geezer in the race, the one with the mental health challenges, the one saying things that don't make much sense: "Who is running our Country now? It's not Crooked Joe, he has no idea where he is. If he can't run for office, he can't run our Country!!!"

(Incidentally, I've often wondered why these kinds of statements don't quality as slander or libel or defamation. I'm sure they would in other walks of life. Well, apparently there are different categories of individuals in law - public figures, limited public figures, and private citizens - and there is a significantly higher burden of proof for public figures, including politicians, than there is for regular private citizens. For a public figure, the defamation must also amount to "actual malice", which history tells us is very hard to prove in a court of law. And which, rightly or wrongly, is why the tenor of our political discourse is so poor, and why ad hominem attacks and outright lies of this kind are considered legal.)

And then, the kicker from Trump: "He is the threat to democracy!" Another pro-Trump Republican added on X, and also apparently without an ounce of irony: "The coup is complete."

To say that Trump and his lackeys are rattled would would an understatement. There is hope yet.

Olympics officials' dip in the Seine just part of the razamatazz

In what has now become a hallowed tradition, a bunch of Olympics officials went for a dip in the River Seine in Paris.

The Seine has a horrible reputation as a polluted waterway, but Olympics officials insist that much has been done to clean it up for the swimming events in the upcoming Olympics. And the fact that the officials themselves are willing to brave it is supposed to give both competitors and viewers some confidence that it is in fact safe and is not going to lead to mass illnesses. I remember the same thing happening in London and Rio.

However, I just can't imagine those competitors watching this PR campaign and nervously nodding to each other, saying, "Look, it MUST be safe!" It has just become another part of the Olympic razzamatazz, along with parading the Olympic Flame through obscure part of the world, and inventing increasingly bizarre methods of lighting the cauldron.

Expecting a new Trump? Sorry

Anybody that thought that Donald Trump's RNC speech last night - his first since the assassination attempt - might reveal a chastened, circumspect, humble Trump, one all about unity and love for his fellow man, were surely kidding themselves. Some press outlets and political commentators were predicting that, but it never seemed very likely to me.

What we got was vintage Trump, sporting an oversized ear bandage, and engaging in an hour-and-a-half of rambling, incoherent anecdotes, braggadocio, lies and attacks. Did we really expect anything else? The faithful lapped it all up of course, but they are not the ones to worry about (they will vote for Trump no matter what). It still amazes me how many Americans can mistake the ability to work a crowd with  competence, prudence and integrity, to mistake confidence with truth. 

Kudos to CNN, though, for bothering to do their usual fact-check on some of Trump's more lurid claims and outright lies. It must be hard to keep doing this year after year. You can check out the details here (for what it's worth - you won't find Republicans reading or watching CNN), but they include:

• There is record inflation under Joe Biden
• He stopped North Korea's missile launches
• He defeated ISIS in a couple of months
• The Florida federal judge ruled the case against his was unconstitutional
• Immigrants are destroying the Medicare and Social Security systems
• A trade deal with China resulted in them buying $59 billion worth of American products
• Gas prices are up 60%
• The Biden administration recently hired 88,000 IRS agents to audit individuals
• Biden wants to raise taxes fourfold
• Trump's Right to Try law on experimental drugs saved many lives
• Russia still has warships and nuclear submarines operating near Cuba
• The US left $85 billion of military equipment when they left Afghanistan
• The world was at peace during his presidency
• Venezuela's crime is down.72% because they are sending all their criminals to the USA
• Immigrants to the USA are coming from foreign jails and mental institutions
• America's crime rate is going up while everywhere else it is going down
• US immigration is "the greatest invasion in history" and Biden is doing nothing about it
• Grocery prices are up 57% during the Biden administration
• The US was energy independent under Trump and now it's not
• Trump presided over "the biggest tax cuts ever"
• There was no inflation at all during his administration
• He can lower gas prices by more oil drilling
• Biden won't talk about American hostages in Gaza
• The 2020 election was rigged (*sigh*)

Most of these are old one re-hashed, some are new. All are wrong or extremely misleading. Trump's base believes them all, mainly because he recounts them so convincingly.

What's with that clenched fist motif the Republicans are all sporting?

While I seem to be in a phase of commenting on US politics - it's sure hard to look away - I may as well raise the issue of that raised fist that has become de rigeur in Republican circles these days.

Trump has used it for many years now - including, rather incongruously, on a Merry Christmas photo -  but now members of his family, fellow delegates and other attendees at the Republican National Convention have taken it up. It has become suspiciously similar to the ubiquitous Nazi salute in the 1930s and 1940s (although Trump at least had the sense not to use the same salute). You definitely mark yourself as being a Trump acolyte by using it.

The clenched fist image is not new, of course, and it certainly doesn't belong to Trump or the Republicans in any way. Indeed, it has been used since the early 20th Century by fascists, socialists, Black Power advocates, Black Lives Matter, the Occupy movement, even some sports personalities. In general terms, it usually denotes solidarity and defiance, so it seems strange seeing it used by besuited conservatives and suburban housewives. But I can see that they just want to be seen to belong to whatever it is Trump has going (let's not glorify it with the label "movement").

George R.R. Martin is never going to finish A Song of Ice and Fire

I hadn't really thought about it for a while, but I was reminded recently that George R.R. Martin has still not finished his A Song of Ice and Fire series of books.

He started the series way back in 1996, with A Game of Thrones. The last published part was A Dance With Dragons in 2011 and, at that time, he was anticipating the next installment, The Winds of Winter, to be out by about 2014. That's now 10 years ago. 

Last we heard - November 2023 - he still had about 1,100 pages of that book written (!), the same number as he had in 2022. So, it seems like he either has writer's block, or just doesn't really care any more. He has published other books in the meantime, including Game of Thrones offshoots and prequels, and much of his time has been taken up with screenplay work for the Game of Thrones TV series (and offshoots like House of Dragons).

So, many fans have just given up on ever seeing The Winds of Winter, let alone the planned series coda A Dream of Spring, and a good number of them just don't really care any more, myself among them. Which is unfortunate, and maybe an indication that Mr. Martin doesn't really care much about his readers. With the great success of the Game of Thrones television franchise (and its offshoots), he's clearly not hurting for money. And maybe that says it all.

A little glimpse into who JD Vance is

If you want a little glimpse at who Trump running mate and vice presidential nominee JD Vance is - does he not have a proper name? even his wife calls him JD! - a little snippet from his speech at the Republican National Convention last night affords one such.

Vance makes a big deal about his relatively humble beginnings - the Republicans don't have many members that can do that, so he's a valuable commodity - and one of the tedious anecdotes in his speech was about this grandmother ("Mamaw"), who was found dead in 2005 with 19 loaded handguns stashed everywhere around the house.

Anyway, Vance's point was not, "Crap, that is just so dangerous! No wonder the USA has a problems with gun violence!" It wasn't even, " Now, how did such a poor person get hold of, and manage to pay for, 19 guns?" No, his punchline was, "That's who we fight for. That's American spirit!" Audience members guffawed and cheered wildly, so I guess that was the correct interpretation of the story.

That, of course, is just one snippet from Vance's performance. The one-time "never Trumper" has become Trump's most ardent supporter and enabler, with a set of social and economic views to match. He openly admits that he would have done what Mike Pence would not in 2020: reject the certification of the Electoral College so as to allow Trump to win regardless of the electoral votes. 

On Ukraine? "I don't really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other". On NAFTA (and its successor CUSMA): "a bad trade deal that sent countless good jobs to Mexico". On inmigration: "We need to deport every single person who invaded our country illegally". On American economic policy in general: "We won't cater to Wall Street. We'll commit to the working man. We won't import foreign labour. We'll fight for American citizens."

That, my friends, is JD Vance. And, for what it's worth, I'm guessing at Jeremiah Donald. 

Republican "unity" merely means bending the knee to Trump

There can be no better illustration of the extent to which Donald Trump has dominated and remade the Republican Party in his own image than the Republican Convention love-fest going on in Wisconsin right now.

Speaker after speaker fell over themselves in an attempt to be seen as even more pro-Trump than the previous overblown speaker. Most notable are the one-time Trump opponents, or even Trump-haters, who have apparently had a spiritual revelation on the way to the Convention. Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Ben Carson, Vivek Ramaswamy, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio - all of these influential Republicans once professed hatred and scorn for Trump, often in very graphic terms. And Trump scorned them back, often with offensive and belittling name-calling (remember Birdbrain Nikki, DeSanctimonious Ron, Lyin' Ted, Little Marco?)

And top of the pile must be one-time "never-Trumper" JD Vance, who has now officially been made Trump's running mate (and potential Vice President). From outspoken critic to lickspittle-in-chief. Pretty impressive.

So, what's with these Paulian conversions, these transformations and 180° flip-flops? Well, the buzzword of the Convention is "unity", by which we are supposed to believe is meant national unity in the wake of the Trump shooting, but which is actually all about party unity. From the vitriol which they continue to spit at Joe Biden and the Democrats, it's pretty clear that they have no interest in THAT kind of unity.

How I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall for some of these miraculous comversions. Of course, it's all about realpolitik. These are professional politicians and power junkies. They don't care that they may have completely jettisoned some of the policies they once espoused, and on which they were voted into Congress by the people they are supposed to represent. It's all about rallying behind the person - any person - they see as their mealticket into power. Everyone is diminished apart from Donald J. Trump, and they are OK with that. It's not necessary to actually be persuaded by Trump's arguments, only to bend the knee in the interests of "unity". If that requires some Orwellian doublethink, then so be it.

I have been watching House of the Dragon recently, and it's hard not see some parallels with modern American politics. A little less killing and fewer dragons, sure. But the rampant deceit and mendacity, and the cut-throat attitudes, are all quite reminiscent. And it's almost as compelling television, were it not so depressing.

Big Grocery beats out Big Beverage in recycling game

For a tantalizing (but short) time there was a possibility that Ontario could finally establish a deposit return system for soft-drink containers, similar to the one that already exists for alcohol containers in the province, and for soft drink containers in most other provinces.

Ontario has the worst recycling rates in Canada for cans, plastic bottles and cartons. But about a year ago, a working group was set up to look into what can be done here, a working group including representatives from the beverage industry, the retail industry, the waste management industry, environmental groups and provincial officials. Hope was in the air for a while.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, out of the blue, senior officials from the Ford administration summarily shut down the working group. 

It seems the Retail Council of Canada, representing the major grocery and big box chains like Loblaws, Metro, Costco, Walmart, etc, went behind the backs of the other participants and used their prodigious influence to get Ontario to shut down the whole idea of a soft drink recycling system, an idea that might cost them some money and eat into their huge profits. The Canadian Beverage Association, representing the likes of Coca Cola and PepsiCo, which interestingly enough was very much in favour of the recycling plan, is outraged at the province's shifty move, as of course are the various environmental stakeholders. 

Big Grocery 1 : Big Beverage 0. End of game.

Trump's would-be assassin missing a clear motive

The next chapter in the ongoing soap opera (farce?) that is the American federal election is being written as we speak. Front-runner Donald Trump survived what is being called an assassination attempt, the latest in a series of assassinations and assassination attempts that have blighted US politics for decades.

But the "assassin", Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year old math and history geek employed as a kitchen worker at a local nursing home in suburban Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, turns out to have been a registered  Republican (although, to complicate things, he did also make a $15 donation to a Democratic fundraiser back in 2021).

So, of course, the question arises: was it really an assassination attempt? I confess that when I first saw the footage of the shooting, my very first thought was: "I bet this was a set-up by some Republican aiming to elicit a sympathy vote for Trump". It's a huge indictment of modern America, Trump and the Republican Party that such a lurid made-for-TV idea would even occur to me. That, or my own cynicism.

And I'm far from the only one who thought, at least at the beginning, that the whole thing might have been staged, and a bunch of conspiracy theories have already surfaced in the darker regions of the Internet - I'm talking about X/Twitter here -  conspiracy theories on both sides of the political aisle.

Mr. Crooks - who is now dead, killed within seconds by security personnel, so we will probably never know his motives - was big into guns and explosives, watching TV shows like Demolition Ranch, and sporting hunting outfits to school. But it turns out he wasn't actually a very good shot, despite his predilection for crawling around on roofs with his dad's "AR-style rifle". In fact, he never even made his school's varsity rifle team, despite trying. (Wait, schools have rifle teams?) So he probably wasn't capable of deliberately taking out an ear at such a distance (about 150 metres).

So, just another disturbed individual with access to guns? I guess. No clear motive immediately pops out from what we know so far. But Trump will probably get his talking point and his sympathy vote anyway, given that he does not feel the need to stick to the actual truth. Indeed, he raised his little fist to the cameras and mouthed "Fight!", after calling on the security detail to wait while he bled a little more. The crowd cheered and rose to their feet in defiance. 

That photo of a bloodied Trump, fist raised, with an American flag billowing behind him in a pure blue sky, will be shared ad nauseam by supporters (already has), his very own Iwo Jima graphic. Some politicians are already referring to him as a kind of martyr to the cause, even though he actually just has a small nick out of one ear. From one Florida Congressman: "First they tried to silence him. Then they tried to imprison him. Now they try to kill him." ("They", of course, being the Democrats.) I kid you not. Trump's already-formidable persecution complex will be on full display in the weeks to come. And, of course, some are saying that only God can have saved him, so that he can carry out the Lord's (political) will. *Sigh*

Ah, America...

Why do people hold their cellphones like that?

We need to talk about cellphones. Well, we don't NEED to, but I would love some kind of explanation. I'm not talking about cellphones in school, social media addiction or disinformation, I'm talking about the way people hold them.

Most people under about forty - and a smattering of self-consciously modish copycats over that age - seem to hold their phones horizontally in front of their mouths. This looks rather awkward, and is certainly counter-intuitive given that phones come with a speaker at the top and a microphone at the bottom for good reasons. When I see someone move their horizontal phone from their mouth to their ear to hear a response, I itch to show them how it's designed to be used (vertically, by the side of the face), but I know I shouldn't.

Anyway, I have tried and failed to find out if there's a good reason why they do it. I did wonder if it was something to do with avoiding radio waves, but I don't think that's it. I think it's literally a fashion thing - someone somewhere decided it looked cool, and everyone else just followed blindly along. I mean there's no practical reason for people to wear their pants halfway down their bums, but it doesn't stop people from doing it.

Most older people, me included, just don't understand it. Most of what I can find on the internet about it is clearly written, despairingly, by older people (here's one quite amusing example). Maybe someone will explain it to me some day.

Eagles stop cormorant removal work

Urban wildlife management is hard. This is known. 

The double-crested cormorant (the official name of the regular everyday cormorants we see around the Great Lakes) was in terminal decline a few decades ago, mainly due to toxic pesticides like DDT. Due to conservation efforts, it made a miraculous recovery, and now has a very healthy summer population in the area - perhaps too healthy.

Thing is, they are pretty unpleasant birds. Perhaps their worst habit is killing off the very trees they nest in - their guano or droppings is very acidic, as well as pungently, putridly smelly, and kills their nesting trees over time. You might have seen (and smelled!) the blighted area of trees towards the tip of Tommy Thompson Park (better known locally as the Leslie Street Spit), just offshore from downtown Toronto, where they have nested for some years now.

Having killed off that area of trees, the cormorants thought it a good idea to move just across the bay to Centre Island and infest a grove of trees there. But Centre Island is a tourist area and adjacent to the small community of people who live on the islands. Toronto naturalists and park managers tracked the move and have been trying to deter the cormorants from settling on Centre Island

However, that work is now on hold. The reason? Two bald eagles moved in to a cormorant nest on Centre Island this spring, spruced it up, tripled its size, and this has those same naturalists very excited. Because, other than another nesting pair that made an undisclosed Toronto ravine home earlier this year, these are the first bald eagles ever to settle in Canada's most populous city.

So, the cormorant removal work promptly stopped in order to give the eagles some space, and now the cormorant population on Centre Island has mushroomed from about a thousand to at least two thousand. The eagles have been seen snacking on cormorants, but that's not going to be enough to discourage them from wrecking the trees of Centre Island. 

*Sigh* What to do? Well, now that two healthy eaglets  have fully fledged from the nest, Toronto Region Conservation Area personnel believe they can now continue their work of aggressively relocating the cormorants back to Tommy Thompson Park. And I guess they will do the same thing all over again next year if the eagles return.

LCBO strike will struggle to find too much support

As workers from the LCBO - Liquor Control Board of Ontario, otherwise known as "the liquor store" in Ontario's restrictive booze business - go out on strike, serious questions are being asked about the organization's continued relevance.

I am normally reasonably supportive of striking workers, who typically don't take such drastic action lightly. But a lot of normally supportive individuals are not quite so gung-ho about this one. It may be partly their rather disingenuous sloganeering which attempts to equate a government-controlled wine and spirits business with the provincial healthcare system. Yes, the LCBO contributes about $2.5 billion in profits into the province's coffers, but under other circumstances that would be achieved by taxation.

I actually think the LCBO does a pretty good job of providing a good selection of local and international wine and beer (I'm not a spirit-drinker and so can't really comment there). A bit pricey, maybe, but a monopoly will do that.

The editorial in today's Globe and Mail laid out the main problem, though. The ship has already sailed. Booze is now available through many different outlets, and the LCBO's monopoly position is already severely weakened (partly due to Doug Ford's alcohol privatization crusade over the last few years, which has had its own problems as I have noted previously).

The editorial breaks down the numbers. There are 650 LCBO stores in the province, but there are also: 628 wineries and winery retail stores selling wine; 82 distillery retail stores selling spirits; 373 breweries selling beer; 437 Beer Stores selling beer; 448 grocery stores selling beer and wine; and 389 LCBO "convenience outlets" inside small stores in rural areas selling beer, wine and spirits. 

Add to that the upcoming further relaxation of retail rules which will allow convenience stores to sell wine beer and premixed cocktails, and there you have it. People are not going to be too worried about the LCBO stores closing for a few weeks. 

The writing is on the wall, the cat is out of the bag, the horse has bolted, use whatever idiom you prefer. But the fact is the status quo has shifted, and we are never going back to the grim old days I remember from when I first moved here, when alcohol was grudgingly dispense in brown paper bags from Soviet-style rationing offices.

Poll: only one person can beat Trump (and it's not Biden)

A Reuters/Ipsos poll looking at US voter intentions based on various Democratic presidential candidates facing off against Donald Trump, and the results are certainly illuminating.

The poll gives Joe Biden a 40% vote against Trump, exactly equal to Trump's vote against Biden. Note that this was AFTER the "Great Gaffe" - the first presidential debate, which Joe Biden memorably bodged - and so this is probably as bad as it gets (except this is much more generous to Biden than some other polls which show him about 6 percentage points behind Trump).

If Biden were to stand down - and, thus far, he insists that he won't - the most likely replacement would be Vice President Kamala Harris. The poll gave her 42% of the vote against Trump, but Trump would get 43% of the vote against her (fewer "don't knows" and abstainers).

Other potential Democrat presidential candidates fare worse still: Gavin Newsom 38%, Trump 42%; Gretchen Whitmer 36%, Trump 41%; Andy Breshear (who?) 36%, Trump 40%; JN Pritzker (who??) 34%, Trump 40%. None of it looks good.

But there is one more name covered by the poll: Michelle Obama. According to the poll, Ms. Obama would win 50% of the vote, compared to Trump's 39%. Problem is, Michelle Obama has repeatedly confirmed that she is not interested in standing for President. I wonder whether this poll might change her mind? God, I hope so.

Strategic voting saves Macron's (and France's) neck

If France's election this last Sunday teaches us anything it is the value of strategic voting.

In the first round of voting, Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally (RN) party polled well and looked to be firmly in the driver's seat and on course to form a far-right anti-immigration anti-EU anti-Ukraine government (anti-everything really).

But the reality turned out to be far from that. RN came in third place after the New Popular Front leftist alliance and President Macron's own Ensemble liberal alliance. RN is still the largest single party (New Popular Front and Ensemble being composite alliances), and they did increase their seat count from 88 to 140. But they have been kept out of government by a concerted agreement between the parties of the left, a kind of alliance of alliances.

Over 200 candidates from the Popular Front and Ensemble parties voluntarily pulled out of the second round of voting so that a better-placed progressive candidate could stop RN from winning. RN, of course, call this cheating, but it is really just a particularly vivid example of strategic voting, and you can see how effective it is.

You can debate till the cows come home whether President Macron was right to call a general election right after the far right made such large gains in the European Parliament, particularly in France, but he seems to have got away with it. Hard negotiations still remain between Macron and New Popular Front leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon in order to make this alliance of alliances work. But it just goes to show that swallowing pride and establishing cooperation can have dramatic results. 

Canada's Liberals and NDP could learn a lot from this experience. Canada too is saddled with a three main party system, in which two of the parties can be seen to be united in their fear of a Conservative sweep next election (2025). But Canada has the added advantage of time to plan. There is time for the two centre-left parties to swallow their pride and amalgamate in the national interest, particularly given that they are no longer even that far apart politically.

Quebec tries to muzzle the Supreme Court of Canada

Quebec is calling for a Supreme Court of Canada judge to recuse himself from an appeal case on the province's proposed secularism law, Bill 21.

Well, that might not seem like big news to you. But Quebec's argument is that Justice Mahmud Jamal is not impartial to the case because he was chairman of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) when the group first challenged the law in Quebec's Superior Court back in 2019.

What the province of Quebec is actually saying is that it doesn't want Justice Jamal to vote on the case because it knows which way he will vote (and they don't like it). This would be like asking the Conservative members of the US Supreme Court not to vote on an abortion case, like the one they recently embarrassed their country with, because everyone knows which way they will vote.

Thus far, the Supreme Court of Canada is saying that there is no reason for Justice Jamal, who is no longer associated with CCLA, to recuse himself. They need to hold that line.

Iranian election makes a statement but don't expect change

Iran has given a resounding vote of confidence to a new "reformist" president, in the recent election to replace President Ebrahim Raisi, who died mysteriously in a helicopter crash in May of this year.

Masoud Pereshkian, the only "reformist" candidate in the slate of six presidential candidates allowed by Iran's Guardian Council, received 16.3 million votes compared to 13.5 million votes for conservative hardliner Saeed Jalili in the run-off round of voting on Friday. You have to see this as a slap in the face for the regime, as the people voted overwhelmingly for the only "reformist" candidate they were allowed. Voter turnout was, however, a historic low at less than 50%.

Of course, "reformist", in Iranian terms, does not really mean that much - you'll notice I'm using quote marks throughout - so don't get your hopes up. Pereshkian did promise to ease enforcement of Iran's mandatory headscarf law, but let's see whether he is even allowed to do that. He is technically in control of a government that is still largely made up of hardliners, and most of the real power in the country still resides with the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini. Preshkian he will almost certainly not try and cross Ayatollah Khameini in anything important, so his aims will remain modest.

The country is not really expecting a major turnaround in its international policies any time soon, and it will remain a pariah at the extreme fringes of the geopolitical status quo.

Where are those monarchs?

I saw my first monarch butterfly of the year just yesterday, 4th July, here in Toronto. I swear it gets later every year.

It's hard to find hard information on monarch numbers on a timely basis, despite them being probably the most researched butterflies in the world. The best I can find is a late June report by Monarch Watch, which seems to suggest that there is nothing to worry about.

Despite the winter monarch count in Mexico being the second-lowest ever recorded and some low early numbers of migratory returnees, Monarch Watch says that they take comfort in the fact that the early arrival were just that, early. 

"It seems safe to say that the numbers indicate that the growth of the population this year is comparable to that of most populations since 2015. The recovery to this point is nothing short of extraordinary and is a testament to the monarch's resilience."

Hmm, OK. That doesn't gel with my own observations of increasingly late arrivals and low numbers here in Toronto. So, what to think? Wait and see, I guess.

UK Reform Party celebrating, but election results underwhelming

This is the day after the UK general election in which Keir Starmer's Labour Party swept the board with 412 seats out of the 650-seat British Parliament. It wasn't a surprise, with an electorate in desperate need of a change after 14 years of turbulent Conservative rule, but it may have been more definitive than even Labour had hoped, more than doubling it's previous seat count, and handing the Conservatives their worst electoral defeat in 200 years.

But, as of last night, and based on exit polls, a lot of the media attention was focussed not on Starmer but on the grinning mug of Nigel Farage, leader of the nascent Reform Party (ex-Brexit Party and UK Independence Party). Garage is Boris Johnson's far right alter ego, a blustering mendacious populist who was responsible in large part for the misinformation that led to Britain's disastrous exit from Europe.

As of last night, the Reform Party - named, incidentally, in deference to Canada's Reform Party, in whose footsteps Farage transparently hoped to tread, taking over the larger, more moderate Conservative Party from within - was predicted to win 13 seats, including Farage's own (after seven previous failed attempts). While this is only 2% of the available seats, it represented a big breakthrough for a far right party in Britain, and therefore a big deal.

In the cold light of today, the Reform Party actually only won 4 seats: Farage in Clacton, Lee Anderson in Ashfield, Richard Tice in Boston/Skegness and Rupert Lowe in Great Yarmouth. That's just 0.6% of seats, and so not exactly a tsunami, and certainly not the "many, many seats right across the country" that Farage was expecting. As it happens, this is the same seat count as the Green Party, and less than the Scottish National Party (9), Sinn Fein (7), individual members standing as independent of any party (6), and the Democratic Unionist Party (5). The Green Party saw its haul of seats rise almost as dramatically as Reform, from 1 to 4, to much less recognition -  wouldn't/shouldn't that be as big news? UPDATE: the 4 Reform seats have now been updated to 5, with James McMurdock belatedly taking the seat for Basildon South and East Thurrock,  which messes up my math, but my point stands.

Farage and Reform are nevertheless celebrating getting a foot in the doorway, so to speak, and Farage, ever the blusterer, is not ruling out a spell in Downing Street in five years' time. 

Julian Barnes introduces us to his ill-remembered namesake

I have been reading Julian Barnes' 2022 novel Elizabeth Finch. And, while it is a good read, like all of Barnes' books, it is a strange animal, and not at all what I was expecting.

This is largely because a sizeable proportion of it is given over to an extended account of one of the Roman Empire's less-talked-about emperors, Julian the Apostate. I can only think that Mr. Barnes went down a rabbit hole concerning his namesake, and decided to lead us down there too. It's a strange detour in a novel that is ostensibly about a student's long-term unrequited love for an eccentric but brilliant teacher, but in fact it also makes an interesting novelette in itself (and yes, there is a kind of connection to the main story, it's not completely random).

Julian the Apostate (Flavius Claudius Julianus) was Caesar of the declining Roman empire for five short years, from 355 to 360 AD. He inherited the position from his uncle Constantine the Great, the first Christian Emperor and the founder of the great city of Constantinople.

Julian, though, was a maverick. He was, by all accounts, oafish, hairy unkempt, and poorly-presented in an age when the patrician classes prided themselves on their clean-cut, well-coiffed image. Julian was oblivious to such worldly concerns, and devoted himself to philosophical ruminations, becoming remarkably well-read for a late-Empire emperor. He made some attempts (none too successful) to weed out the corruption and foppery that had taken over the higher echelons of Roman society in his day.

His studies led him to an intellectual rejection of Christianity, preferring the divinity-rich paganism of old and the philosophy of Neoplatonism. He spent much of his time and money on elaborate auguries, animal sacrifices, etc.  However, he did not purge Christianity in a violent manner (in traditional Roman fashion), but preferred to use words and arguments, showing a policy of "ingenious clemency" or blanda persecutio ("persecution by gentleness").

He was reviled by most in his own time, partly for his appearance and methods, and partly for his anti-Christian rhetoric at a time when Christianity had taken strong hold among the general public and particularly among the gentry. He enjoyed a short period of endorsement and validation among the intelligentsia of the French Enlightenment in the 18th century, but in general he has been treated shoddily by history.

Julian was killed trying to extend Roman occupation into the deserts of Persia, which he undertook based on his own positive auguries and in spite of the dire warnings of his advisors. Go figure.

It is, though, an interesting academic exercise to imagine how history might have been changed had Julian lived, and had he succeeded in steering the civilized world away from Christianity. What if? If the great scholarly libraries of ancient times had never been destroyed or lost, there would perhaps have been no need for a European Renaissance or an Enlightenment. Might Christians, Jews, Muslims, pagans and tree-huggers have lived side by side in peace, with no need for the religious wars that racked Europe for centuries, no need for over-zealous missionaries scouring the world for souls to save, decimating their populations in the process? Imagine science progressing unhindered by religious persecution and shortsightedness. People living for the joy to be had in life, rather than cowering before the threats of the priesthood in the forlorn hope of some imaginary life after death.

Probably not. But it's nice to speculate.

Toronto can now recycle its coffee cups

It's taken a while, but Torontonians can now recycle their disposable paper coffee cups, including plastic/wax lined ones.

I don't know quite how they are suddenly managing to deal with such composite products in the recycling system, and forgive me for being a bit suspicious about it. But, assuming this is all above board and not just greenwashing, kudos to Toronto for achieving this. 

In fact, the kudos goes to Circular Materials, the administrators of Ontario's recycling system. And this announcement for Toronto is just a pilot projects, which will hopefully spread to the rest of the province. 

It comes with a few provisos -  cups must be rinsed out, lids must be removed, and cups may not be stacked - and I think it may lead to a lot of confusion for a while. Perhaps the main sticking point is that it only applies to single- and multi-residential homes, long-term care homes and retirement homes, and elementary and high schools within the city of Toronto. So, not street garbage/recycling bins, which is probably where a lot of coffee cups are currently disposed of, I'm guessing.

But hopefully people will get used to it, and it will represent a genuine step forward in our recycling capability.

The GOP elephant in the US Supreme Court room

I suppose I have to comment on the US Supreme Court's groundbreaking and frankly inexplicable decision granting near absolute immunity from prosecution for a serving president acting in the course of their duties. It is, after all, one of the most important and momentous decisions the court has ever made, the Dobbs abortion case notwithstanding. And it's absolutely wrong (just ask any legal scholar without a Republican axe to grind).

Thus is the first time that ANY kind of presidential immunity has been officially ruled on, and it throws out a lower court ruling which rejected Donald Trump's claim of immunity from federal criminal charges regarding his attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 election. It does concede that there is no immunity for a president's "unofficial acts", however that might be interpreted, but this ruling has thrown everything regarding Trump's various court cases wide open. At the very least, it has effectively put most of Trump's cases on hold until after the November election. Good job, guys.

Some have described it as a modern equivalent of the medieval "divine right of kings". It effectively puts the president, and even former presidents, above the law, and marks a severe blow to democracy in an America where Trump is already talking about taking on dictatorial powers if he is voted in. 

Other legal commentators, including some conservative judges, have accused the Supreme Court conservative majority of abandoning the legal philosophy of "originalism" that they have claimed to espouse in other cases. This latest decision lacks any basis in the Constitution or historical tradition.

As one of the dissenting judges put it, the ruling creates a "law-free zone around the president", and it raises the possibility that a president could, for example, assassinate a political rival with compete impunity, or take a bribe in exchange for a pardon, again with effective legal immunity. "In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law", she wrote. A president, under this ruling, can lie, steal, kill, imprison rivals, trade secrets to foreign powers, all with complete impunity. Is that really what the Supreme Court intended?

Now, I don't want to get into any more of the details and implications of the case. You can read up on that yourselves. But I do want to address the huge elephant in the room. And that is the fact that the ruling was a purely political, rather than a legal, one. All six conservative judges voted for it; all three liberal judges voted against. So, there is really no chance that this decision was made on legal principles alone. It is a mockery of the rule of law, and another step along the path of the destruction of democracy itself. And that is indeed a scary thing.

UPDATE

Although it predated the presidential immunity decision by a few days, and although it perhaps received less media attention, another Supreme Court ruling - also by a 6-3 margin along party political ideological lines - may be just as important.

The ruling overturned the Supreme Court's own 40-year old "Chevron deference" doctrine. The practical effect of this is to make it harder for executive agencies to tackle a wide array of policy areas from environmental and health regulations to labour and employment laws, giving the judiciary more say in what federal agencies can do in  interpreting and implementing laws.

Justice Elena Kagan, one of the forlorn liberal voices dissenting the decision, notes that Congress would normally prefer the interpretation and resolution of ambiguities in new laws to be carried out by a responsible agency with expertise in the area, not by a generalized court of law, and warned that the ruling is likely to produce widespread and large-scale disruption. More federal rules will be challenged in the courts, and will find themselves subject to more ideological interpretation. She called the decision a "grasp for power" by the majority Conservative element of the Court.

EU to be led by an anti-EU Viktor Orban

Europe is now in the weird position of being led by someone who doesn't appear to believe in the grand European experiment at all. As of tomorrow, July 1st, Hungary's Viktor Orban takes over the European presidency for half a year.

There's not much Europe can do about it. The post rotates among member countries, and this next six months happens to be Hungary's turn. Orban has been a thorn in the side of the European Union for years now, seemingly taking every opportunity to block, water down or delay key EU decisions, such as on Russia and the war in Ukraine, China, and any efforts to defend or extend democracy. 

Orban is a hard right-wing populist and demagogue, most of whose policies and beliefs are in direct contravention to those of mainstream Europe. He seems to relish his reputation as a spoiler and frustrater of EU policy, right down to his deliberately Trump-esque motto for the presidency position "Make Europe Great Again".

Luckily, the post of EU President does not actually carry with it that much power, and the bloc deliberately pushed through several of the more important votes while Belgium was still at the helm. So, as one commentator puts it, "Hungary cannot do potentially much harm". 

It will be interesting to see, though, to what extent Hungary under Orban will keep up its anti-EU rhetoric, even while technically leading it.

UPDATE

And now there are reports of Orban planning a trip to see Vladimir Putin, something that EU top diplomats say he has no mandate to do. Orban is the only head of government to have maintained close ties with Russia, even throughout the Ukraine war.

What's with those "strange" Black names?

If you've ever wondered about all those unusual Black names - often referred to as "strange" or "weird", and often the butt of off-colour jokes by the less politically correct white comedians - I don't think you need to be afraid to ask. Most Black people will happily oblige with an answer.

Black sports personalities, actors and entertainers, and just regular folks from suburbia, glory in names like Tayshaun, Raynell, Chaunte, RaMell, Jamal, Latasha, Rau'shee, D'Andre, Latonya, DeMar, Trevell, LaKiesha, Sha'Carri, Tayvon, Shaday, Kareem, Michandra, JohnTae, D'Quell, Lakasia, Tavondra, DeShaun, Dremiel, Shanequa. Comprised of apparently random blended syllables, often with random capitalization and random punctuation, they are nevertheless distinctively Black.

And that is (part of) the point. Such invented - and inventive - names have a double purpose: they are asserting individuality, but they are also deliberately - and assertively - identifying themselves as Black.

While the current trend can be said to have begun with the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 70s (and the later Afrocentrism cultural movement of the 1980s and 90s), the history of distinctively Black names goes much further back. Back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, names like Booker and Perlie were almost exclusively used by Black people, and many Biblical names like Elijah, Isaac, Moses and Abraham were as likely as not to be associated with Black people. Names designating empowerment, like Prince, King, Caesar and Freeman, were also very popular. 

In fact, the trend of distinctively Black naming became much more pronounced during the antebellum slavery period, and that is no coincidence. (At the same time, White people started deliberately avoiding these names.) This was partly a reaction to a time when White overlords would deliberately change the names of Black slaves to more standard names like Ruth, Mary, James and Joseph. The chosen names were not actually African, just ... different and individualistic.

So, don't think of these names as strange or weird, think of them as creative, affirmatory and assertive.

UPDATE

Incidentally, the report that has been circulating of a US judge railing against the "ridiculous names" Black women are giving their kids these days is in fact spurious. 

It was a spoof or satire, in deliberately poor taste "to make you think", according to the outfit in question ("The Peoples [sic] News").

The rise of the "boss economy"

Canada is registering an extraordinary business statistic: management is the fastest-growing occupation in the country, with more than half a million new manager jobs being created since just 2021. This represents a 33% increase over a period when non-management jobs grew by just 8%. Managers now account for 10.2% of all workers, up from 8.5% just a few short years ago.

Now, it's not quite as black-and-white as that appears, and there are some complicating explanatory factors. For example: many employers are doubling up young managers as a large cohort of baby boomers continue to retire, so that they can be mentored by the retiring managers; companies are dispensing management titles more easily as means of staff retention in a period of historic low unemployment; and the title itself is being diluted ("title inflation"), largely as a sop to Gen Z workers who feel starved of recognition. 

In the tech sector.in particular, many new jobs, especially remote ones, may carry the title "manager", even if they don't involve the oversight of subordinates.

But the trend is real, and can be seen in many different sectors, from professional, scientific and technical services (up 59.4% between 2019 and 2023) to wholesale trade (up 49.8%) to manufacturing (up 41.5%) and, to a lesser extent, finance (up 27.1%). This outsized growth is even more marked in the private sector than the public. The USA has experienced a similar management surge, although less dramatic than in Canada (up from 5.5% to 6.9%).

This could, of course, have profound implications for Canada's productivity crisis,  which I have commented on elsewhere.

Maybe I can get behind the Edmonton Oilers this time

I'm not a big Edmonton Oilers fan, or a fan of anything from Alberta, really. But I have been captivated by the hockey team's spirited comeback in the Stanley Cup finals this year. And, truth be told, I'm even less of a fan of the Florida Panthers, who have beaten the Maple Leafs too many times for comfort.

So, when the Oilers (embarrassing name!) started their comeback against Florida from 0-3 to 1-3 to 2-3 to, finally, 3-3 last night, it's hard not to get a bit excited. After all, the only other team to come back from 0-3  to win the Stanley Cup finals was our very own Toronto Maple Leafs, who managed this feat against the Detroit Red Wings back in 1942. Indeed, only one other team has come back from 0-3 to 3-3, only to lose the final, and that was Detroit in 1945, who ultimately lost to - guess who? - Toronto in Game 7. So, history is potentially being written here.

And I used to think that there is no point in supporting a team like Edmonton just because they are a "Canadian team". Because, like the Maple Leafs and most other teams, they are comprised of players from all over the world - aren't they? - and so not really any more "Canadian" than any other team.

But it turns out that this particular Oilers team has the highest make up of Canadians of any Cup finalists over the last 20 or so years, from star forward Connor McDavid down. There are 20 natives on the team, and 16 of them could well take the ice at some point in Tuesday's Game 7. So, if we can't get behind THIS "Canadian team", I don't know when we'll ever be able to. 

Canadian hockey teams used to completely dominate the Stanley Cup in past decades, as a quick perusal of past winners shows, but the Cup is more likely to end up in the deserts of Nevada or the swamps of Florida in recent years. The last time a Canadian team hoisted the Cup was Montreal in 1993. So, can this be first time in over 30 years the Cup comes back "home", as well as a fairy tale comeback story? Well, just maybe.

UPDATE

Well, it wasn't to be. The unlikely dream has ground to a halt as Florida beat Edmonton 2-1 in a gritty, hard-fought Game 7.

Pathways Alliance's response to the new greenwashing provisions says it all

You may have seen their advertising: earnest commitments from a consortium of six major oil sands developers to the effect that they are hard at work making Canada's environment cleaner and more sustainable. In particular, the Pathways Alliance assure us that they are well on the way to a net-zero future, through advanced carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects among others.

In fact, CCS is largely a failed technology and shows little or no prospect of success in the foreseeable future, while in the meantime proving a dangerous distraction from the more immediate problem of reducing our carbon footprint.

So, it's not a huge surprise to see that the Pathways Alliance has suddenly removed all content from its website and social media feeds in anticipation of the federal bill C-59 which, among other things, contains a truth-in-advertising amendment to the Competition Act that would require corporations to provide evidence to support their environmental claims. 

Otherwise known as the "anti-greenwashing provision", this is considered a major win by the environmental movement, even though it is in essence quite modest and not specifically aimed at the fossil fuel industry. 

Greenwashing is rampant these days, and studies show that up to 50% of companies' and governments' environmental claims have no supporting evidence and weak or non-existent verification. Worse, 57% of Canadian consumers no longer trust firms' green claims, making the work of honest firms that much harder.

The Pathways Alliance's public statement says that the amendment "will create significant uncertainty for Canadian companies that want to communicate publicly about the work they are doing to improve their environmental performance". What they actually mean is, "crap, we've been rumbled!" 

Rather than creating "significant uncertainty", the amendment does quite the opposite. It really just requires companies to tell the truth, and to be able to back up their claims with evidence. Seems reasonable, right?

Record numbers dying at annual hajj as Middle East climate worsens

Religion leads people to do amd say some very silly things. Thus has it always been. It is almost the exact antithesis of common sense.

What would lead thousands - no, millions - of people to spend many hours out in the sun in record-breaking temperatures, surrounded by so many other people it is almost impossible to move, let alone seek shade when necessary? Oh, yes, religion.

Muslims are very strongly encouraged by their imams to make the hajj pilgrimage to the holy site of Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Poor people sell all their worldly goods and even abandon their families to make the trip. Every year, many die, mainly due to crowd crushes and stampedes, but also because of the heat. It's kind of a crazy thing.

This year the hajj coincides with 52°C temperatures (although the temperatures are almost always dangerously high), and an estimated 550 people have died (so far), mainly Egyptians, Indonesians and Jordanians, and almost all from heat-related causes. Other tallies put the death toll at 577 (so far). Over 2,000 have been treated for heat stress.

The Saudi authorities caution the use of umbrellas and water, and avoiding exposure to the sun during the hottest part of the day. But, as they well know, many of the prescribed rituals involve being outdoors for hours during daytime hours. There are some air-conditioned facilities along the route, but these are not accessible by the thousands of "unofficial" pilgrims who cannot afford the often costly procedures for official hajj visas, and often skimp on food and water too. The Saudi health ministry seems to consider it a huge success that they managed to avoid any major disease outbreaks.

Do people who die at the annual hajj count as martyrs for the cause? Do they get to enjoy all those virgin? I doubt it somehow. And, anyway, did anyone ask the women whether they want to enjoy virgins? Ah, forgive my flippancy, but it does make you despair about religion in general, doesn't it?

UPDATE

The heat death numbers have now surpassed 1,000, the vast majority of them unregistered Egyptians.

UPDATE UPDATE

The final tally was at least 1,300 deaths. Really, this has to stop.

US ADVANCE bill not what America needs right now

A huge new bill just passed in the US Senate that has the American nuclear industry deliriously excited, and it has me (and others) in two minds.

The ADVANCE bill (Accelerating Deployment of Versatile Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy - an awkward moniker, to say the least) passed in the Senate by 88-2, with 10 abstentions and just Bernie sanders and Ed Markey voting against. It is designed to reverse the American nuclear industry's decades-long decline, by slashing development fees, speeding up the licensing process, and hiring new staff for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Spokespeople for the industry are calling it "monumental", "game-changing" and "much-needed".

The main impetus for the bill is climate change and carbon reduction, but it will affect more than that. The USA has been leery of new nuclear projects since the Vogtle plant on Georgia went so far over-budget and over-time, and solar and wind power generation became so comparatively cheap. Now, the US government - no doubt at the behest of the still-powerful nuclear lobby - is looking to tilt the playing field in its favour again.

But it will almost certainly have the effect of drawing money and investment away from true renewable energy and battery technology, which is ultimately where we need to be going. Nuclear power is a low carbon option, admittedly, but it is also expensive, slow, inflexible, and comes with a whole catalogue of other unsavoury side-effects, not least the need to safely store spent fuel for centuries. It's also not even necessary. And don't get me started on small modular reactor (SMR) nuclear  plants, which people have been calling the saviour of the energy industry for decades, but which still doesn't even exist, and show no signs of ever becoming practical. Even notoriously pro-nuclear France has just scrapped its SMR plans due to soaring costs.

Joe Biden will almost certainly rubber stamp the bill when it is presented to him. But it is probably not the right direction to go. Focussing on nuclear is an unwelcome distraction from the job in hand.

UofT justifies Hebrew University associations in the name of academic freedom

If you needed further evidence that the Israel-Palestine issue is complicated - despite the black-and-white that both sides seem to be able to find in it - take just one of the demands of the University of Toronto pro-Palestine encampment.

The UofT protesters are calling on the university to boycott and cut all ties with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in addition to disclosure and termination of the school's investments in Israel and in weapons manufacturers that enable Israel's war in Gaza. 

Hebrew University is located at Mount Scopus in East Jerusalem. East Jerusalem was annexed by Israel in the 1967 war, and is still claimed by Palestine as their capital city, despite being part of Israel's illegally occupied territory. Canada, like the UN and most other countries, "does not recognize Israel's unilateral annexation of East Jerusalem", and regards it as part of the illegal occupied territories, "stolen land" in less polite terms.

The UofT administration argues that it has had a working relationship with Hebrew University for some time (actually just since 2007), and that academic relations transcend political considerations and should be regarded as sacrosanct. The phrase that springs to my mind in this connection is "yes, but not at any cost" - such esoteric sentiments should not be used to justify abuses of human rights.

It is further argued that the university has been at Mount Scopus since 1925, long before the establishment of the state of Israel, when the area was part of British Mandate Palestine, and that it "maintains continuous private property rights in East Jerusalem, regardless of the area's sovereignty status", a highly suspect claim either legally or morally. But, anyway, it closed down there in 1948, and then re-opened again in 1967, at a time when the area was officially illegally occupied by Israel. So, bit of a red herring.

And should we care that 17% of the student population of Hebrew U are Arab? Or at least they were in 2022 - I've a suspicion that may well have changed in the past few months.

It should be noted also that Hebrew University has programs directly associated with the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), the outfit current laying waste to the remnants of Gaza. It also hosts Havatzalot, an IDF intelligence training program. The university describes this association as "purely academic", but somehow I don't think so.

So, complicated, perhaps, but not THAT complicated. As even a Jewish Faculty Network member at UofT concludes, citing academic freedom in this situation is "totally disingenuous and misleading ... how can the collaboration with such an institution be defended in the name of academic freedom?"

Can we have too much renewable power?

Every now and then (and increasingly so, it seems), there is a news report about a country where electricity prices turned negative due to a glut of renewable solar and wind power generation. The latest example is France, but there have been previous reports from Germany, Denmark, Spain, California, etc.

The language in these reports is often mildly disparaging, not so much "congratulations on being able to produce so much green energy" as "*sigh*, this whole renewables thing is never going to work". Or even, "those damned cheap renewables had the audacity force France to reduce their really expensive nuclear capacity". Those are not actual quotes, but that is the vibe. 

Actually, a big part of the problem is the difficulty and the cost of shutting down inflexible baseload generation like nuclear power stations, which therefore tend to get preferential treatment in these situations.

What these occurrences do highlight, more than anything, is the need for batteries. We have good battery technology now, but we need to be investing more in installing battery capacity so that, when there is a glut of renewable power, it doesn't just go to waste or, worse, mess up the whole grid supply system. That, and an improvement in transmission to neighbouring countries and jurisdictions that do not have such a wealth of renewable energy capacity.

That way, there won't be so many snide comments in the mainstream press. Excessive renewable power is not, in itself, a bad thing.

A power source with negative carbon emissions?

The idea of a power source with negative carbon emissions - yes, that's "negative", not "zero" - sounds like pure science fiction, right? But it can be done, just not at useful, commercial levels yet.

The technology described in a new research paper looks at effectively hijacking the photosynthesis process as algae converts carbon dioxide into food. With an anode and cathode chamber separated by a honeycomb-shaped proton exchange membrane, the process starts by taking in carbon dioxide from the air, and its only by-product is water, making the whole process carbon-negative. At a simplistic level, it works by capturing the electrons that the algae creates during photosynthesis, and harnessing them to produce electricity. 

Thus far, researchers have only succeeded in creating a terminal voltage of just one volt from a single micro photosynthetic power cell, and scaling it up may well prove challenging. But, hey, scientists love a challenge don't they?

Does Elon Musk deserve a $56 billion pay package?

Should Elon Musk get a $56 billion pay package? Should we even care? Many people have weighed in on this, from Tesla shareholders to a Delaware judge to regular guys on the street like me.

Tesla shareholders, which comprise thousands of Tesla/Musk fanboys as well as serious institutional investors, originally voted for this unprecedented and record-breaking ten-year pay package for the company's eccentric and divisive CEO back in 2018. This was partly because the company actually did hit enough of the various benchmarks and targets set back in 2018 (Tesla is not performing as well as hoped, particularly of late, but it has been doing some things right). But it was also partly in an attempt to keep the famously mercurial individual's attention on Tesla, and not on his various other pet projects, like social media, space exploration, AI, etc, and even to prevent him from possibly leaving the company.

The pay package went before a Delaware judge (also unprecedented), which ruled in January that Musk had unfairly controlled the company's compensation process, and that Tesla's disclosure of the pay package was inadequate. The judge took the extraordinary step of striking the down the package, calling it "unfathomable" and "deeply flawed".

Now, though, Tesla's shareholders have doubled down and reinstated the pay package, regardless of the legal ruling, although the award is now only worth about $45 billion sincere value of Tesla stocks have fallen substantially in recent months. The proposal is also now officially approved as a board resolution.  Moreover, the meeting voted to move Tesla's incorporation from Delaware to Texas on order to avoid more "woke" legal grief. 

It's not clear where things will go from here. Legal experts are unclear as to whether the shareholders approval will be enough to overturn the Delaware court's decision. As always, chaos and controversy follows Musk around everywhere he goes.

Law students and the Israel-Hamas issue

An excellent extended article by award-winning journalist Robyn Doolittle in the Globe and Mail does a really good job of looking at the complexities, the misunderstandings and the high emotions involved in the reactions of students and faculty to the Israel-Hamas conflict.

She does this in the context of the Lincoln Alexander School of Law at Toronto Metropolitan University, an avowedly progressive school that embraces equity, diversity and inclusion. Specifically, it investigates the reactions and pushback caused by a pro-Palestinian petition circulated in the early days of the conflict.

In among all the detail that Ms. Doolittle sets forth, and all the interview clips she reports, a few things jump out at me:

• The importance of distinguishing between criticism of the state of Israel (its politics, its rhetoric and its beliefs) and antisemitism (hostility to Jewish people in general).
• The extreme conservatism of the legal profession (or at least the high-end, commercial wing of the legal profession, as often described as "Bay Street lawyers").
• The way in which the Israel-Palestine issue polarizes people, unlike almost any other single issue.
• The way in which law students (and even teaching staff) are in existential fear of the legal establishment, which expects them to toe the line on pain of excommunication.
• And finally, be careful what you put your name to, and read it carefully first.

Several other thoughts occurred to me too as I read the article. It's worth a read.

Irony lives in the Republican Party (or are they maybe serious?)

This is priceless. 

Lara Trump, Donald Trump's daughter in law, who, coincidentally, is now chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC), made an impassioned speech about election fraud at a convention in Detroit.

"If you cheat in an election, we will find you, we will track you down, and we will prosecute you to the full extent of the law." Thing is, I believe this was said in all seriousness, with no trace of irony.

So, the political party of Donald Trump, who is currently facing multiple trials for attempting to do just that, cheat in an election, is trying to take the moral high ground on electoral integrity. 

The RNC under Lara Trump even has a new "electoral integrity division", so you know she's serious. The division is being led by Christina Bobb, who has just been charged in Arizona with trying to interfere with the state's 2020 election results.

You couldn't make this stuff up.

Welcome to the world of the "mouse-mover"

Well, here's a bizarre concept. The more I read on the internet, the more weird stuff jumps out at me.

Wells Fargo Bank has recently fired over a dozen employees for using "mouse-mover" or "mouse-jiggler" software. So, yes, there are computer programs out there that will move a computer's mouse or trigger phantom keyboard entries without any human intervention, so as to give the impression that the computer is being used, i.e. that the owner is working.

I mean, I guess it's quite clever, but it means that there is a market out there for such a service. And this is because, in this post-pandemic era of working-from-home, there are a whole load of people who want to appear to be working when they are actually out cutting the grass or smoking dope or working out or whatever it is they do.

And here's the kicker, the reason this is an issue in the first place is because companies like Well Fargo (and I'm sure many more) are employing their own software to check that absent employees are using their computer mouse or typing things (anything). Because, apparently, moving your mouse equates to work. 

I knew that some companies installed spyware on their employees' computers to check on what they are doing. And that's bad enough. But apparently there are some who just want to check that employees are moving their mouses!

This seems inconceivable to me. Can't they check that the employees are actually achieving concrete results, like bringing in customers, producing reports, or whatever? Or is that just incredibly naive and old-fashioned of me?

Trans Mountain pipeline at risk over quality of Albertan crude oil

So, you know that Trans Mountain Pipeline extension (TMX) the government spent billions of taxpayer's money on to transport Alberta heavy crude oil to the Pacific coast? Well, it may have nearly tripled shipping capacity, but it turns out that a lot of American refiners on its West coast don't like it.

The oil that is. The heavy crude oil that is produced in Alberta's oil sands is very "sour" (i.e. it has a high sulphur content), has high acidity, and comes with a high vapour pressure. All of this can damage refining equipment, cause polluting vapour leaks, or is just not compatible with the specifications of the machinery.

There are fears that this could dampen demand for Canadian oil, or lead to lower prices. West coast American refineries were expected to be the top buyers of crude oil delivered through TMX, and they are unlikely to make major upgrades or changes to their equipment just to accommodate the Canadian oil. Therefore, there is now a lot of uncertainty over the pipeline's future (or at least its profitability).

The economic benefits of a more moral Canadian economy

In a thought-provoking opinion piece, political advisor and pundit Allan Gregg weighs in on the perennial bête noir (and what Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland recent called "the Achilles heel of the Canadian economy"), productivity, a subject I have also written on recently.

There has been much hand-ringing over the decline in Canada's productivity, a measure of gross domestic product per capita. Over the last 40 years, Canada's economic growth per population has been sadly lagging that of its peers (although, anecdotally, that does not seem to have translated into anything disastrous, if you ask me). As things stand, the OECD predicts that Canada's economy will grow slower than all other advanced economies (per capita, that is, part of the calculation being attributable to Canada's relatively high immigration rates).

Mr. Gregg has a few solutions to offer. The first is to do away with corporate subsidies. Whether in the form of tax incentives or direct funding and loans, $50 billion a year is put into such subsidies at the federal level, almost as much as is spent on healthcare, and as much as 80% of it is useless and does not lead to increased productivity or boost real income for Canadians in any way. That's $40 billion a year going into propping up failing companies and subsidizing their already-rich shareholders. There is an argument to just stop such corporate welfare (although Mr. Gregg does not consider the potentially disastrous employment effects of allowing such companies to actually fail). 

Likewise with corporate share buybacks: when a company buys back its own shares, the only people who benefit are those same rich shareholders. It does not strengthen the company or improve its productivity in any way. Why then do we allow them? Once again, the practical impossibility of such a government intervention is not considered: this is very much a theoretical brainstorming session on the author's part.

Education is a major driver of personal income, and with 200,000 to 300,000 young Canadians dropping out of high school every year, many potentially higher incomes are being squandered. Again, there is a real world practical caveat being ignored here: not every child can go on to higher education - some have neither the drive, the intelligence, nor the aptitude for it, and the higher education system would not be able to cope with it anyway.

Most of Mr. Gregg's potential solutions, though, focus on rectifying social inequities, which in addition to the moral benefits would, he argues, have a huge economic boon. The gap between the rich and the poor has continued to widen, he contends, and Canada's Gini Index, a measure of income or wealth inequality, has increased shamefully. (In fact, as far as I can see, at 31.7, Canada's Gini Index is not that bad, and has been steadily falling since 2006. Indeed, it is better than that of the UK, many European countries, and certainly the USA.)

Leaving that aside, Mr. Gregg suggests that closing the 10% employment gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, for example, could add 100,000 people to the Canadian work force, and generate $27 billion, or about 1.7% of GDP, to the Canadian economy (this according to the National Indigenous Economic Development Board).

Closing the 18% employment gap between foreign-born and Canadian-born workers of equal qualifications - immigrants are typically much more highly educated than those born in Canada, with 55.1% having a bachelor's degree or better, compared to 28.5% for Canadian-born - could boost GDP by about $50 billion, or 2.5%, if barriers were removed and new Canadians of equal qualifications were paid the same as their Canadian-born counterparts (this according to RBC Economics).

And finally, if women made up their 10% employment gap and their $7,200 average pay gap, almost 2 million new employees could be added to the labour force and (according to McKinsey) as much as $150 billion, or 7.5% of GDP, could be added to the economy.

The total of all these measures together would be in the region of $268-$317 billion, or 12-15% of our total national wealth, Mr. Gregg estimates. The hurdles to be cleared en route would be prodigious, and in practice only a small proportion of these gains could ever be realized, but the potential gains are clearly huge.

Hunter Biden's conviction is not in the same league as Trump's

It seems bizarre to me that Hunter Biden's conviction for gun crimes is being equated in some circles with Donald Trump's conviction on 34 counts of falsification of business records with intent to defraud the voting public.

Hunter Biden is not standing for President of the United States last I checked. Donald Trump, for our sins, is. Joe Biden was not involved in his son's bad decisions. The worst you could argue is that he should have been, although that would be a stretch, and being a good father is not a major requirement of the presidency, not should it be (can Trump be said to be a better father?)

If anything, the Biden trial served to confirm the probity of the American justice system. And Joe Biden's grave and measured response to his son's conviction - his respect for the verdict, painful as it may be, and a heartfelt hug - marks a pointed difference from Trump's denial, outrage and histrionics.

There are many better bases on which Americans can hang their votes. Policies, maybe? International respect? Ability to tell the truth? Fathering? Not so much.

Still, Trump and the more rabid elements of the right-wing American press now talk about the "Biden Crime Family" and the "Biden Family Criminal Empire". And some, not content with the conviction, are portraying Hunter Biden's trial as a fake cover-up for the family's "true crimes". Conspiracy theories abound as to what these putative crimes may be, and truthfulness, or even a basic level of truthiness, are not a necessary element. Trump's son, Jr., for example, talks about the Biden trial "trying to create that illusion of equal justice under the law"

Canada has its own problems, most countries do. But America today is a sad old place, and the longer this stuff goes on, the lower the country's image sinks in the eyes of the rest of the world.