Max Headroom: 4.5 metres wasn't quite enough this morning for a pair of Halifax-bound trucks carrying two halves of a windowless metal-clad building: Daylight appears between the Old Enfield Road bridge and the load in this second photo, but that's only because the trailer was detached and resting on the pavement of Highway 102: Feedback: A contrarian Contrarian reader called Jeff writes: Low Bridge? What low bridge? That is an oversized load. Your anti-government bias shows! I am teasing, but, at the same time, I do find it interesting you report it from that perspective.  Am I being too contrarian?...

30 November, 2009

Canadian Press alumnus Dan Badel, who often covered state visits, writes: [W]hichever protocol staff were in charge would always provide reporters with a card describing what she was wearing, whoever "she" happened to be — Princess Diana, the Queen, etc. Those notes covered it all - from the shoes to the hat, which was especially important for the Queen! I rarely included any of that detail in my reports since I felt I was there to cover news, not fashion. However some media — especially social or fashion reporters and many of the photographers — would snatch them up and usually quote...

29 November, 2009

In the PMO War Room, columnist Christie Blatchford must have seemed an inspired choice. She can turn a purple phrase with the best of them. She stands foursquare for troops, widows, and orphans. She's against plummies, toffs, and pointyheads. She's long on guts and glory, short on assay. She has an ego as big as the Ritz, and fragile as a Gruyère Soufflé. To receive a document drop on a Matter of National Importance would be sweet validation. So the Harper Government—someone in the Harper Government—got the brilliant idea of handing Blatchford a trove of Richard Colvin's long-sought emails from Kandahar,...

29 November, 2009

Jeffrey Simpson has a sensible column on NB Power's proposed sale to Quebec Hydro, which he correctly portrays as the latest battle in the decades-old war between Newfoundland and Quebec. That's a war in which Nova Scotia is no innocent bystander. Simpson, who spoke in Baddeck Friday, can't disguise his contempt for Danny Williams, the uppity colonial, but he has the broad strokes of the conflict right. He notes Ottawa's "desperate" reluctance to intervene on behalf of the weaker party, a bit of realpolitik that might cause one to wonder whether Canada really is a country after all....

29 November, 2009

If the largest news service in the United States still feels the need to run musty sidebars about the distaff side of state functions, then we can't be too surprised when it makes a boo-boo this cringe-inducing: First lady wears Naeem Khan gown to state dinner By SAMANTHA CRITCHELL (AP) – 4 days ago First lady Michelle Obama chose to wear a gleaming silver-sequined, flesh-colored gown Tuesday night to the first state dinner held by her husband's administration. She was tending to her hostess duties in a strapless silhouette with the beads forming an abstract floral pattern that was custom-made by Naeem Khan. Er,...

29 November, 2009

The National Post ferrets out a Canadian army officer's surprisingly critical master's thesis on Canada's handling of Afghan detainees. In an exhaustive critique, the author concluded Canada's decision to hand over suspected insurgents to Afghan authorities with a history of abuse violated Canadian ethical values, could turn ordinary Afghans against foreign troops and likely increased the stress of this country's combatants. The policy might even have contributed to the alleged mercy killing of a Taliban fighter by a Canadian soldier, she wrote. Major Manon Plante's thesis, completed this year as one of the requirements for a master's degree from the Canadian Forces...

28 November, 2009

A highly scalable map [5 meg .pdf] of offshore wind farm installations in northwestern Europe shows how far behind Canada is in exploiting this renewable energy source. The map detail at right is a static screen capture, at far less than maximum enlargement. (The map is reminiscent of various offshore petroleum maps of Nova Scotia's, an example of which can be downloaded here [400-k .pdf].Hat tip: Colin May....

28 November, 2009
"Oil," a major exhibition by Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, is currently on display at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. in Washington, DC. The exhibit includes horrific photos of the Alberta Tar Sands: Burtynsky-06-s [Click images for larger view - links fixed.] Burtynsky specializes in sweeping, often eerily beautiful views of landscapes altered by industry: mine tailings, quarries, scrap piles. James Fallows, of the Atlantic, which features another of Burtynsky's images this month, writes:
The impact of the exhibit as a whole is, well, hard to convey in words.... [V]ery few people have seen the range of oil-industry artifacts that he has captured in his wall-sized and incredibly-detailed photos. Extraction and refinery operations around the world; the industries oil has made possible; the indications of the end of the oil era. Hard to forget.
The exhibit moves next to The Rooms Art Gallery in St. John's, Newfoundland, where it will be on display from May 7–August 15, 2010. It will continue to travel through 2012. More photos and a video after the jump.
28 November, 2009

Previous posts questioning the efforts to "cure" Down syndrome begin here and here. Tora Frank of Madison, Wisconsin, whose daughter Asha has Down syndrome, offers a different view: I would be eager to provide my daughter with a medication that could help her to learn more quickly, struggle less with everyday tasks, communicate better with those around her, make her needs known, allow her more independence. No, not eager—I would be *frantic* to do so. But is that assertion a comment about how I value my daughter? Am I somehow saying that I want her to be different—or that...

27 November, 2009
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