Always something new with Mr. Ford

A cellphone video that appears to show Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine is being shopped around Toronto by a group of Somali men involved in the drug trade.

Two Toronto Star reporters have viewed the video three times. It appears to show Ford in a room, sitting in a chair, wearing a white shirt, top buttons open, inhaling from what appears to be a glass crack pipe. Ford is incoherent, trading jibes with an off-camera speaker who goads the clearly impaired mayor by raising topics including Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau and the Don Bosco high school football team Ford coaches.

One part 'interesting if true' and one part 'take title with grain of salt'

A fascinating map of the world’s most and least racially tolerant countries

The lastest Ford thing as seen from Popehat

Various journalists are claiming they have seen a video of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack.

This led to the most darling legal threat ever from a lawyer named Dennis Morris — who has represented Ford for some time — to Gawker:

The lastest Ford thing as seen from Popehat

Various journalists are claiming they have seen a video of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack.

This led to the most darling legal threat ever from a lawyer named Dennis Morris — who has represented Ford for some time — to Gawker:

Also posted at Dreamwidth, where there are comment(s); comment here or there.

As pointed out in email

India’s declining fertility rate, now only slightly higher than that of the United States, is part of a global trend of lower population growth. Yet the media and many educated Americans have entirely missed this major development, instead sticking to erroneous perceptions about inexorable global population growth that continue to fuel panicked rhetoric about everything from environmental degradation and immigration to food and resource scarcity.

In a recent exercise, most of my students believed that India’s total fertility rate (TFR) was twice that of the United States. Many of my colleagues believed the same. In actuality, it is only 2.5, barely above the estimated U.S. rate of 2.1 in 2011, and essentially the replacement level.

Hamutal Dotan's What We Do and Do Not Know about Rob Ford and Drug Use

Two publications—the New York-based site Gawker, and the Toronto Star—report that they have seen a video that allegedly shows Toronto mayor Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine. Both say they were approached with the video by a man who was seeking a six-figure sum in exchange for the footage; both report that they did not pay money to obtain the video, but were able to meet with the tipster and view the video on a cellphone.

As soon as the news broke a great many people started saying a great many things—about how this shouldn’t be surprising given the Ford’s known history, about how his mayoralty is clearly finished, about how they were excited to see him fall. The jokes about addiction came in a torrent, some wry and many gleeful.

Most of those things are both wrong and wrong-headed.

Bean (1995 - 2013)

If it had been up to him, I am sure he'd have lasted until his owners came back but in the end the progressive damage to his liver was just too much and he died sometime after noon.

Bean (1995 - 2013)

If it had been up to him, I am sure he'd have lasted until his owners came back but in the end the progressive damage to his liver was just too much and he died sometime after noon.

Also posted at Dreamwidth, where there are comment(s); comment here or there.

Today I got an arc as a gift

I may not say anything about the book itself but I am permitted to say the manner in which it was described to me was "Books designed to make James cry."

Who has worse odds of their character surviving?

Sean Bean or Indira Varma?

And what does Taiwan think of recent events in Toronto?

Rob Ford: 42 remarkable moments from Toronto mayor’s career

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s political career has had some colourful moments prior to the allegation that he is the man seen in a cellphone video appearing to smoke crack cocaine.

Brave New World Part 1 & Part 2 (Based on a novel by Aldous Huxley)

New World Part 1
New World Part 2

In part one, a dissatisfied young Bernard Marx, a member of the elite, comes under fire because he does not like the world of rigid castes, promiscuous sex, drugs and stultifying conformity in which he lives. It happens that he works in Hatcheries and Conditioning where lectures about how the world came to be one of rigid castes, promiscuous sex, drugs and stultifying conformity, which is jolly convenient for Mr. Huxley. By pure chance, Marx discovers his boss has a biological son named John, families being unheard of and unacceptable in this day. It is easy enough to convince John to come back to civilization with Marx and in so doing expose his boss to disgrace.

Except, of course, that doesn't fix Marx's real problems with the society he lives in and it exposes John to a world for which he is badly adapted.


Excellent sound quality on this. The story is a bit thin (but then, it's an anti-utopia and utopias generally a bit thin) and I have to admit while I don't see the world in 632 A.F. as a wonderful place to live, in the context of what was considered acceptable practice when Huxley wrote this I cannot buy into the lip-smacking disapproval of Marx's world the way Huxley wants us to. Oh, probably should have mentioned Huxley has a speaking role in this.

Fans of Cannon and other fine shows may be interested to know William Conrad is in this.