The news media sessions often last 25 minutes, with 5 minutes left at the end for questions from anyone still awake. Those types of PowerPoint presentations, [retired Marine Corps Col. Thomas X.] Hammes said, are known as “hypnotizing chickens.” From We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint, a New York Times story by Elisabeth Bumiller about the growing cadre of military strategists who think PowerPoint dumbs down decision making. More on this when I have a few minutes to string together. Hat tip: Andrew Weissman...

28 April, 2010

Brett Domino and Steven Peavis use a variety of electronic folk instruments to perform a medley of Justin Timberlake tunes: Featured instruments include Stylophone Beatbox, DigiDrummer Lite on the iPod Touch, Kazoo, Thumb Piano, Shaker, Stylophone, Cowbell, Recorder, Ukulele, Theremin, Spoons, and Roland AX-Synth. Via: Andrew Sullivan....

26 April, 2010

A source I trust tells me the consultant's report on gambling Labour Minister Marilyn More won't release truly is substandard. Let's assume that's the case, and More was right to reject it after many attempts to get the contractor to fulfill the his obligations. Barring public access to the report is still the wrong thing to do. In effect, Minister More is saying interested Nova Scotians aren't sophisticated enough to understand or evaluate the report. It might cause them "anxiety" and "confusion." Such matters should presumably be left to their betters—people like More, and the Gambling Corp. honchos who talked her...

25 April, 2010

In answer to concerned queries from readers: No, I do not personally get up at 3 a.m. to send out the daily Contrarian e-mail. Google's Feedburner service does that for me. At 3 a.m., Google automatically sends every item I have posted over the preceding 24 hours to everyone who has signed up for the daily Contrarian email (option 1 in the box at right)....

25 April, 2010

Photographarian writes: Photographic representations of  pretty sunrises—like pretty pictures of sunsets—are a trifle cliched. While Contrarian may take pleasure in his sunrise snapshot, Photographerian would like to point out that it does not make any meaningful contribution to photography, or to the well-being of humanity. Contrarian is but the humblest of snapshotists. He welcomes any contributions to photography (or the well-being of humanity) that Photographarian wants to send along....

25 April, 2010

Contrarian reader Denis Falvey writes: A decision that flies in the face of one fact of science does not necessarily constitute ignorance. A bounty may not eradicate coyotes, it may not even lower their numbers appreciably, but it will change their habits. Coyotes live in an ecological niche; like any other animal, they will multiply to fill that niche. I would prefer that the limits on their ecological niche not include my doorstep, and the only way to achieve that is for the animals to be wary of coming near my doorstep. That's not going to happen with my singing Kumbayah'....

25 April, 2010

When Fordham Rams pinch hitter Brian Kownacki rounded third and headed for home on Chris Walker's eighth inning double last Wednesday, Iona Gaels catcher James Beck was waiting at the plate with the ball. Kownacki looked like a dead dunk, until...

24 April, 2010

Experts say a bounty won’t lessen human encounters with aggressive coyotes, and might make matters worse. They base this conclusion, in part, on experience in Nova Scotia, where a $50 bounty in the 1980s failed to reduce coyote numbers. They say it on the Department of Natural Resources website—or they used to, until inconvenient scientific information was expunged just in time for Minister John MacDonell's flight from evidence-based decision making. [caption id="attachment_5079" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="John MacDonell "][/caption] The Winston Smiths assigned to expunge the historical record missed a few spots. They failed to delete wildlife director Barry Sabean's 1989 and 1991 declarations...

23 April, 2010

When you bring $145 million a year into the treasury of a province as deeply in hock as Nova Scotia, you swing a big bat. So when a consultant hired by the banished Tory government delivered a cost-benefit analysis of gambling in Nova Scotia to the newly elected NDP government, it stands to reason that the big bat wielders at the Nova Scotia Gaming Corporation*, the agency that administers the provincial government's addiction to gambling revenue, had first dibs on reviewing it. [caption id="attachment_5075" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Marilyn More"][/caption] Whatever the report said about the human toll exacted by provincially sponsored gambling, we...

23 April, 2010
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