If there’s any truism I cling to, it’s that: people don’t get the leaders they deserve. Why not? Because of all the haughty intervenors between the citizens and those who govern — they generally get the leaders they select, either sooner or later. Here I come to urban guru and U of T prof Richard Florida, who I do find embarrassing in this context, but also instructive. He wrote this week in the Globe and Mail: “It is time to convene a blue-ribbon commission on Toronto’s future … the top leaders of all of our key institutions must step up — our banks and corporations, schools and universities, labour unions, the city, the province, and more. No one can stand on the sidelines if we are going to forge the model of private-public partnership that is needed … ”

Does he really not get it — that this is exactly the mentality that led to the Ford mayoralty, out of widespread popular disgust for an unelected elect who think they have the right to gather in blue ribbon bodies and decide on behalf of everyone else? The goal, Florida says, is that Toronto’s “future mayors will look less like Rob Ford and more like New York’s Mike Bloomberg, Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel” — leaders who’ve aimed to decimate the core of their communities: their public school systems; and have met huge popular resistance. Besides, the sole concrete thing Mayor Ford has done is to public-privatize garbage collection here, if that’s your cuppa. Talk about confusing the problem with the solution.

So, at the moment, the city is divided between anti-Forders who often view Ford Nation as irredeemably “stupid” (and I quote), versus stubborn Forders who resent that contempt and are desperately hoping Rob finds a way not to be starring in that crack video. But it’s been ever thus, if in less stark terms: Mel Lastman followed by David Miller. Rob Ford against Olivia Chow or John Tory.

H/T to the Phantom Observer for the link.

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A government is like a shark. If it stops swimming, it drowns. Harper has lasted 11 years as a party leader for two reasons: He was never alone and he had a plan. Indeed, it’s the plan that has often helped keep him from being alone, because his are a loner’s instincts. He reached out to the Progressive Conservatives in 2003 after battling them for 16 years because he knew his Canadian Alliance was too slim a platform for a man who aspired to govern. He made serious concessions to Quebec nationalism after mistrusting it all his life. After he united the Conservative party, he reached outside its bounds to attract Liberal MPs — David Emerson, Wajid Khan — and then, through Jason Kenney’s ethnic-outreach efforts, he took away an ever-growing bite of the Liberal voter base.

At every moment, he could afford such bold moves because he was secure in his leadership of the Canadian conservative movement. Harper’s critics tend to describe him as a loner, a brain in a jar created by mad scientists toiling in underground laboratories at the University of Calgary. But in fact he has expressed a broad cultural conservatism in the land. Millions of Canadians have been happy he is their Prime Minister. Knowing he had a base, he could build beyond it through decisive action.

And now? He is increasingly alone and isolated. Look across the country, across the border, around the world, and even within his own caucus.

[. . .]

In private conversations with reporters, Conservatives were calling for Harper to provide far more detail about the Duffy-Wright deal than he did on Tuesday. He let them down, as he has often done in this drama. Duffy was Harper’s choice for Senate. Wright was Harper’s chief of staff, working under Harper’s nose. When their plot was revealed, Harper’s response was to make a great show of reminding his MPs to keep their own noses clean. It’s like a neighbourhood kid who sends a baseball through your living-room window and then comes over to lecture you on your clumsiness.

All of this would matter less — to Conservatives, to the country — if it felt like a distraction from an “active and important agenda.” Of course, some of this government’s activity is well-known and broadly popular among Conservatives. Since the 2011 election, Harper has shut down the Health Council of Canada, the National Council of Welfare, the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, Rights and Democracy, the First Nations Statistical Institute and the National Council of Visible Minorities. The Millennium Scholarship Foundation, the Council for Canadian Unity and the Canadian Council on Learning were shut down a little earlier. The end of the mandatory long-form census was only the beginning of sharp cuts at Statistics Canada.

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If you’re a UBC student, staff, or faculty member, and want to start a business, you’re eligible for up to $5000 worth of business services (though, in practice, most use far less). And unlike virtually every other entrepreneurship system in Canadian PSE, there are no requirements whatsoever with respect to using UBC technology, nor is there any stipulation that the business be some kind of technology enterprise. Want to open a flower shop? This fund’s for you.

There’s no catch. UBC certainly isn’t interested in equity, for instance. All they want is recognition. All companies that move through the program must display a logo declaring themselves as “UBC-affiliated companies” for a period of five years.

How brilliant is that?

First, it creates a great, dense network between an institution and small businesses in its community (which will no doubt pay off philanthropically, down the road). Second of all, it allows the institution to get a much better handle on the post-graduation activities of its entrepreneurs, and hence allows UBC to highlight its larger role in job creation and innovation in British Columbia. Frankly, UBC could pay for this out of the Government Relations budget, and it would make complete sense — how great will it be to be able to walk into an MLA’s office and rattle off the names of all the new, “UBC-affiliated” businesses that have started-up in his/her riding?

It’ll be interesting to see how this works out in the long run, as $5,000 isn’t enough to establish a business but it can be a helpful amount of money to an otherwise undercapitalized business.

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“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

That’s the full text of the First Amendment. But (with apologies to the old Far Side comic), this is what many in the press, academia, and government would hear if you read it aloud: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, blah blah blah, or abridging the freedom of the press, blah blah blah blah.”

[. . .]

The press can always be counted upon not just to speak up for itself, but to lavish attention on itself. “We can’t help that we’re so fascinating,” seems to be their unspoken mantra.

And that’s fine. What’s not fine is the way so many in the press talk about the First Amendment as if it’s their trade’s private license.

The problem is twofold. First, we all have a right to commit journalism under the First Amendment, whether it’s a New York Times reporter or some kid with an iPhone shooting video of a cop abusing someone.

I understand that professional journalists are on the front lines of the First Amendment’s free-press clause. But many elite outlets and journalism schools foster a guild mentality that sees journalism as a priestly caste deserving of special privileges. That’s why editorial boards love campaign-finance restrictions: They don’t like editorial competition from outside their ranks. Such elitism never made sense, but it’s particularly idiotic at a moment when technology — Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Vine, etc. — is democratizing political speech.

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The New South Wales Police Force, guardians of Australia’s most-populous state, have gotten themselves into a panic over the Liberator, the 3D-printable pistol.

The Force’s Commissioner Andrew Schipione today appeared at a press conference to denounce the Liberator and urge residents of the State not to download plans for the gun.

Schipione offered this advice after the Force’s ballistics team acquired a 3D printer, downloaded plans for the Liberator and assembled a pair of the pistols.

One, when fired into a resin block said to simulate human flesh, is said to have penetrated to a depth of 17 fatal-injury-inducing centimetres.

The other experienced “catastrophic failure”, as we predicted a couple of weeks ago. [...] That failure didn’t stop Schipione declaring the Liberator a threat to public safety.

To understand why, you need to know that NSW has of late experienced gun violence at rather unusual levels by Australian standards (which means over a year all of Sydney had about half an episode’s worth of gun violence on The Wire). That spate of shootings has led to Operation UNIFICATION, an effort kicking off this weekend that encourages Australians to rat out strike a blow for public safety by informing Police about illegal guns.

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Parks Canada’s underwater archeologists have been studying what remains of the ships in the waters off Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Site since the early 1960s. For this dive, they are also gathering fresh, high-quality video and pictures for new exhibits and for a festival of all of Parks Canada’s archeologists to be held during Louisbourg 300 celebrations this summer.

Jonathan Moore of Parks Canada’s underwater archeology service said that after so many years on the ocean floor, what is left of the warships is mainly the remains of the lower hulls, which are embedded into the harbour bottom.

“You are not seeing a lot of structure above the sea bed,” he said Wednesday morning, after the five-person team returned to the wharf in Louisbourg. “A lot of the heavier materials located in the lower-most reaches of the ships are laying on the seabed.

“A common thing we are seeing is cannons that were on the warships when they went down: cannonballs, cannon shot, bar shot — all of the kinds of ordnance that was on the vessels when they sank.”

Some ship parts like some rigging, pulley components, stone and iron ballast are also on the ocean floor.

Underwater archeologists last visited the shipwrecks in 2008.

“We haven’t seen any dramatic change, which is a good sign,” said Moore.

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According to the referenced survey only 8% of Canadians trust bloggers.

Which begs the obvious question, indeed so obvious that the professional pollster quoted above didn’t bother asking it: Have 8% of Canadians even read a blog?

Those of us who comprise the mostly unpaid army of bloggers are perfectly aware that we are a niche. Really thousands of little niches. Most people do not get their news or commentary from blogs, or at least from blogs not affiliated with an MSM outlet. It’s why we call the MSM the MSM, they’re the mainstream and we’re the outsiders. So when you ask Bob and Mary Canadian do you trust bloggers, a term they’re probably only vaguely familiar with, they’ll say no.

Does anyone trust something they know almost nothing about?

What’s impressive is that the MSM has trust ratings in the 32-33% range, despite decades of incumbency and powerful distribution networks. When most people are very familiar with your product, and still think you stink, that’s a huge credibility issue. Bloggers are doing this for the hell of it and some spare change. The MSM is doing this for a living. If upstart amateurs have one-quarter the trust level of professional journalists, that says far more about journalists than bloggers.

Pollsters, ironically, scored lower than journalists.

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Porn is not addictive. Sex is not addictive. The ideas of porn and sex addiction are pop psychology concepts that seem to make sense, but have no legitimate scientific basis. For decades, these concepts have flourished in America, but have consistently been rejected by medicine and mental health. The media and American society have accepted that sex and porn are addictive, because it seems intuitively true — we all feel like sometimes, we might do something stupid or self-destructive, when sex is involved. But, this false belief is dangerous, and ultimately not helpful. Because when people buy into the belief that porn is addictive, it changes the argument, and all of a sudden, it seems like it is porn and sex that are the problems. Porn addiction becomes a label, and seems to be an explanation, when in fact, it is just meaningless words and platitudes that distract from the real issue. But sex and porn aren’t the problems. You are.

People do have a strong response to video pornography. Internet porn is very good at triggering male sexuality. The economic forces of the open market have driven modern internet porn to be very, very effective at triggering male sexual buttons, to get them aroused. But women actually have a stronger physiological response to porn than men and based upon this research, women should be more addicted to pornography than men. But the overwhelming majority of the stories we hear about are men. Why is this? Because one part of this issue is an attack on aspects of male sexuality, including masturbation and use of pornography, behaviors which society fears and doesn’t understand.

Porn can affect people, but it does not take them over or override their values. If someone watches porn showing something they find distasteful, it has no impact on their behavior or desires. But, if someone watches porn depicting acts that they, the watcher, are neutral about, then it does make it slightly more likely that they express interest in trying that act themselves. Take anal sex for instance. If a porn viewer finds it disgusting, watching anal pornography isn’t going to change that. But, if they are neutral on it, then watching anal porn probably will slightly increase the chance that I would be willing to at least give it a try. But, there is the crux of the issue — the people who gravitate towards unhealthy, violent porn, are people who already have a disposition towards violence. So — the problem is not in the porn, but in those people. Regulating porn access really is going to have no impact on these people as they can (and do) find far more violent and graphic images in mainstream Hollywood films like Saw.

Here’s some often-ignored empirical science about porn — as societies have increased their access to porn, rates of sex crimes, including exhibitionism, rape and child abuse, have gone down. [...] Across the world, and in America, as men have increased ability to view Internet erotica, sex crimes go down. Believe it or not — porn is good for society. This is correlational data, but it is extremely robust, repeated research. But, it is not a message that many people want to hear. Individuals may not like porn, but our society loves it, and benefits from it.

H/T to Radley Balko for the link.

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One of the most shocking things about the brutal attack in Woolwich yesterday was the arrogance with which one of the bloodied knifemen claimed to be acting on behalf of all Muslims. In what sounded like a South London accent, this British-seeming, casually dressed young man bizarrely spoke as if he were a representative of the ummah. He talked about “our lands” and what “our people” have to go through every day. He presumably meant Iraqis and Afghanis, or perhaps the broader global “Muslim family”.

How can a couple of men so thoroughly convince themselves that they speak for all Muslims, to the extent that they seriously believe their savage and psychotic attack on a man in the street is some kind of glorious act of Islamic resistance? Perhaps because they live in a country in which claiming to speak “on behalf of” a community, even if you’ve never been elected by or even seriously talked to that community, is taken seriously. A country where one’s identity, one’s racial or religious or cultural make-up, now counts for everything, certainly for more than what one does or what one believes. A country in which the politics of identity, the narrow and deeply divisive communal politics of shared cultural traits, has been privileged over all other kinds of politics.

The Woolwich murderer’s impromptu claim to be acting on behalf of the grievances of Muslims everywhere echoes the statements made by the 7/7 bombers. “Your democratically elected governments continue to perpetuate atrocities against my people all over the world”, said chief bomber Mohammad Siddique Khan. “My people” — what extraordinary arrogance and self-righteousness. Did Khan ever talk to “his people” or win a mandate from them? Of course not, no more than the knife-wielding nutter in Woolwich engaged with the inhabitants of what he thinks of as “his lands”. Rather, in this era in which any old fool can claim to be a “community spokesperson”, and can be treated seriously as such, these murderous loners seem to be trying a psychotic version of the same trick — claiming that by dint of shared skin colour or common religious sentiment they have the authority to speak on behalf of millions of people they have never met or whose lands they have never visited.

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In the final analysis, there are only two political “philosophies” in the world, comprised, as Robert Heinlein suggested, of “those who think that people should be controlled, and those who do not”. The latter sort are called “individualists” and the former are called “collectivists”.

Naturally, the reason for controlling people is so that whatever they create or earn can be taken from them easily, using a variety of excuses, by those who are capable of creating or earning nothing themselves.

To the individualist, individual rights are the supreme value. Only individuals have rights, and they are not additive in character. Two people, or two thousand people, or two million people have no more rights than a single individual, and to the extent that a society is permitted to exist at all, it is to protect and advance the interests of its basic, indispensable building block, the individual. Every single relationship within such a society must be explicit and totally voluntary.

To collectivists, however, there are no individual rights, and the individual’s interests and opinions count for nothing in the broader, grander, collective scheme of things. Individuals are born with what amounts to an unpayable obligation to society. They are nothing more than worker-ants, whose talents and labor are there to be exploited by the collective. Anybody who objects is anti-social, as both Josef Stalin and Barack Obama would tell us, and most likely insane and in need of confinement.

L. Neil Smith, “Right Wing Socialism”, Libertarian Enterprise, 2013-05-19

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