Archive for August 2010
[LINK] “Bilingualism pays, study finds “
This news item is interesting, if not that true to me. I wonder if this phenomenon works in other multilingual societies, in the United States for people fluent in English and Spanish, say, or in Belgium for people who speak French and Dutch. On balance, I suspect that it would be at play in Belgium and not the United States, if for no other reason than that Dutch and French are each dominant and legally established languages in their own territories, while in the United States Spanish lacks much by the way of official status, or high social status.
If you speak both French and English, you’re likely to earn more than your unilingual counterparts, according to a new study by researchers from the University of Guelph. And depending on where you work in Canada, you don’t necessarily have to use a second language on the job to reap the financial rewards; merely knowing it can translate into a higher income.
Economics professors Louis Christofides and Robert Swidinsky found that men in Quebec who can speak both official languages earn an average income 7 per cent higher than those who speak only French, and bilingual women in Quebec earn 8 per cent more.
Meanwhile, in the rest of Canada, men who know both languages earn an average income 3.8 per cent higher than those who know English only. Bilingual women earn 6.6 per cent more.
But the researchers found that the rewards for actually using both languages on the job differ based on where in the country you work.
In Quebec, men who use their second language frequently at work can earn an additional 14 per cent (on top of the 3.8 per cent) than those who speak only French, and women can earn an additional 7 per cent. In the rest of Canada, however, it makes no significant difference whether English-speaking men and women use French at work or simply know the language; the financial benefits are about the same.
Dr. Christofides, a professor emeritus at the University of Guelph and also a dean of the faculty of economics and management at the University of Cyprus, says employers may be willing to pay workers extra simply for knowing a second language because bilingualism is associated with other attributes, such as a proclivity for education, cultural sensitivity or sophistication.
“They would see a [bilingual] person who is ‘able’ or ‘sensitive’ or ‘has good social skills,’ ” he says. And as indicated by the lack of difference between the financial benefits of using and knowing French in English-speaking provinces, “the employer doesn’t care that this person doesn’t speak French as well. He has no use for it. But when … you use this marker that the individual is bilingual, this marker is going to pick up all these extra qualities that the individual has.”
In Quebec, however, the substantial financial reward for actually using English on the job reflects the demand for English in the marketplace, he says, particularly in the province’s major cities. Moreover, jobs in Quebec that involve international business also value English.
[PHOTO] Big Daddy’s Computer Lounge, 274 Coxwell Avenue
Something about the external appearance of this east-end Toronto Internet cafe, located at 274 Coxwell Avenue, makes me think of the past, of avenues not taken. Maybe it’s the dated signage; maybe it’s the knowledge that the Internet cafe was likely a passing phase, midway between the isolation of the desktop at home and computer labs and the relative freedom offered my laptops and WiFi and smartphones.
[URBAN NOTE] Precocity
Walking south from St. Clair West towards home after I bought Shakespeare his $C22.42 bag of dry cat food at a conveniently-located veterinarian’s office, I found myself walking down a residential street where children were cavorting. On my side of the street, one boy, 10 or so; on the other side of the street, on the patio, a boy and a girl. They were laughing as they spoke across the street.
– Even though she doesn’t have a girlfriend, she told me that she wanted me to pretend to be her boyfriend.
– Total fail! the boy on my side yelled.
– I told her I didn’t like being used.
[LINK] “Qaddafi Urges Conversion to Mark Italian ‘Friendship’ Treaty”
The Italy-Libya relationship, as Bloomberg observes, combines bizarre stunts with economically lucrative and mutually profitable exchanges. The –shall we say–personalities of Qaddafi and Berlusconi contribute a lot to this, of course.
Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi urged hundreds of young women in Rome to convert to Islam as he marked the second anniversary of a “friendship” treaty with Italy that is paying dividends for Italian companies including Eni SpA and Finmeccanica SpA.
Before seeing Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Qaddafi met 200 women today who were paid to attend and listen to Qaddafi’s lecture on Islam. He told 500 women last night that Islam should become the religion of all of Europe, triggering criticism from both Berlusconi allies and opponents.
Qaddafi’s visit was an “embarrassment,” said Carmelo Briguglio, a lawmaker with the Future and Freedom for Italy party, a former Berlusconi ally. Members of the opposition Italy Values party protested outside the site where Berlusconi met with the Libyan leader in a Bedouin tent erected for the visit.
Qaddafi was due to entertain his Italian hosts with an equestrian show featuring 30 berber horses flown to Rome with their riders for the event.
Behind the theatrics, there was business as to be done. The two year-old treaty, which served as Italy’s apology for 30- years of colonial rule, intensified commercial ties between the two countries. The agreement included a pledge by the Italian government to spend 5 billion euros ($6.3 billion) to build a highway across Libya and has led to contracts for Italian companies and more Libyan investment in Italy.
[. . .]
Italy is Libya’s biggest trading partner and commercial ties between have intensified since Qaddafi pledged to steer 90 percent of his business to Italy when he signed the treaty. Berlusconi has emerged as the Libyan leader’s closest European ally, while his political rivals say he’s ignoring Qaddafi’s human rights record and that Libya is gaining too big a footprint in the Italian economy.
[. . .]
Berlusconi’s political opponents have railed against the premier for his business links with Qaddafi. Berlusconi’s Fininvest SpA holding company has a minority stake in a Paris- based film company owned by Ben Ammar called Quinta Communications. A unit of the Libyan Investment Authority also has a minority stake.
[LINK] “Witness compares veracity of census data to information obtained through torture”
Yes, that’s the gist of this Globe and Mail article. I myself agree that the operation of the census-taker and the whole context of census-taking is entirely like that of waterboarding and torture, save for the many, many, many ways in which they’re different. WTF?
Coercing people to answer personal questions in a mandatory long-form census produces unreliable results, in the same way confessions obtained under torture are suspect, a former deputy health minister from B.C. told MPs.
Lawrie McFarlane was one of several witnesses called before a Commons committee Friday, including a farmer and a Calgary talk-radio show host, who were sympathetic to the Harper government’s decision to scrap the compulsory long-form census.
They were outnumbered by economists, researchers and social policy groups, invited on the recommendation of opposition parties, who decried the move and said a replacement voluntary survey will yield a skewed demographic picture of Canada.
Mr. McFarlane, who also once served as chief executive officer of a Saskatchewan regional health authority, said Canadians lie on the census. He retold a story, cited by the Prime Minister’s Office earlier this summer, of how 21,000 Canadians registered Jedi as their religion in the 2001 census.
He said it’s understandable Canadians lie on especially sensitive census questions, such as mental health, child rearing habits or the amount of their savings.
“What you can guarantee by compulsion is a response: You put a gun to somebody’s head, they’re going to say something,” Mr. McFarlane told the House of Commons industry committee.
“It’s almost like the argument for water boarding: if you water board enough people, they will tell you something,” Mr. McFarlane said.
[URBAN NOTE] “In Defense of the Crystal”
Pictured here in winter, the Royal Ontario Museum’s Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, a very striking post-modernist addition to a fairly classical museum, that has inspired a lot of public reaction, most of its highly polarized and much substantially negative. In an interesting Torontoist article, Michael Boughn defends the crystal. First comparing the controversy over Daniel Libeskind’s Crystal addition to the ROM with the general support for Frank Gehry’s renovation of the Art Gallery of Ontario, he argues that Libeskind’s design deconstructs the museum nicely.
[T]he museum became material proof of the superiority of European culture, its treasure house, at the moment it literally possessed the world, contained it. The new architectures of display presented these materials flayed, pinned, and lined up in orderly presentations in rectilinear spaces that encoded significances beyond the mere visible objects. The physical orders of the halls and the cases they contained revealed the order of nature, the order of human progress, the order of knowledge that was fundamental to the emerging culture of modernity. Grouping artifacts according to nations and national schools displayed not only the artifacts, but “nation-ness” itself, as if it were “natural.” Displaying artifacts in terms of the progress of humanity, from primitive to civilized, naturalized “progress” as a given fact—as well as located its pinnacle in the culture that collected and interpreted the artifacts and created the display before which the spectator stood.
One thing Libeskind’s building does, then, and does with real zest, is explode out of the smugness of this cultural configuration. It explodes onto Bloor Street—talk about responding to your context. Many people express discomfort with this architectural assertion, but perhaps they are supposed to feel discomfort. At the very least it disrupts—I would say enlivens—what always seemed one of the most pretentious, undistinguished, nineteenth-century colonial corners in Toronto. Between the old Anglican church, the “grand” Hyatt hotel, the neo-classical Department of Household Sciences (where women in the University of Toronto learned how to clarify soup and other subjects “related to their role”—now an upscale clothing store), and the undistinguished beaux-arts façade of the museum, Bloor and Avenue roads exuded the colonial complacency associated with Orange parades and dry Sundays.
Throughout his renovation, Libeskind stripped off the surfaces that hid the museum’s history beneath the appearance of some fictional, unassailable totality. The curiosity cabinets are one such gesture. Another is the revelation of the seams where various other renovations joined the original building over the years. The illusion of a single, seamless, monumental structure is gone. More important, however, is the way he explodes the complacency of the interior spaces. Michel Serres, the French philosopher of science, has suggested that we need to start thinking of knowledge in terms of sacks rather than boxes. Libeskind may not go quite that far, but there is nary a box to be found in his new spaces.
Further down, commenter aleksey has a somewhat different take, arguing that the Crystal is good not great architecture, that it was certainly better than the other proposals, and that Toronto will get used to it, perhaps one day building up a tolerance for great architecture.
Me? I visited the ROM with family on Saturday, and I think that the crystal has grown on me. The crystal provides a spectacular background for the fossil displays on the second floor, especially the dinosaurs, while the windows allow for interesting interactions between the museum interior and the exterior streetscape. I think that, after years, I come down firmly on the side of “like.”
[PHOTO] The Former This Ain’t the Rosedale Library
This Ain’t the Rosedale Library, during its three decades of existence one of the premiere independent bookstores of Toronto–indeed, arguably the world—came to an end this June when the bailiff changed the locks on the door. Once located at Church and Wellesley, in the past year it had moved to Kensington Market to escape rising rents, but here, it seems, the rent-to-income ratio was still too high. The closure saddens me: for any number of reasons, it was one of my favourite bookstores, ever.
[FORUM] What moments of unexpected beauty have you come across lately?
Following up on this afternoon’s butterfly post, I thought that I’d ask my readers a simpke question: What moments of unexpected beauty have you come across lately?
Discuss.
[PHOTO] Butterflies
Early this morning at something like 2:30, I was walking north up Spadina towards that street’s intersection with Bloor Street West when he heard a young woman saying earnestly to her friend, “Some people don’t see the sunrise and the sunset. They don’t realize how gorgeous things are.” True, that; beauty can be found if you look, regardless of the scale.
Beauty can be small-scale indeed. While Andrew and I were walking east along Gerrard Street a couple of months ago, I saw some scraps of odd colour in a front-yard garden that turned out to be some butterflies perched on a cluster of what my mom, the garden, told me was a cluster of coneflowers. He took pictures, I took pictures, I’ve three below.
A Bit More Detail 