A documentary film crew follows a group of daredevil commercial artists as they hand paint a 20x50 foot brick wall in NYC: Higher resolution here; Stop animation of the advert's creation here. Hat tip: Daily Dish....

20 May, 2010

Back on February 15, Contrarian had the temerity to opine that the MLAs' expense scandal was pretty small potatoes—more a matter of public begrudgery than actual wrongdoing. This evoked private expressions of appreciation and gratitude from MLAs and political aides of all parties—and howls of indignation from readers (here, here, and here). Events swiftly made my apologia seem naively over-generous. Two MLAs resigned, a third was kicked out of government caucus, and Premier Darrell Dexter, who built his career on his seemingly perfect ear for public sensibilities, turned suddenly, stubbornly, and uncharacteristically tone-deaf when his own personal expenses fell under scrutiny. Much...

12 May, 2010

The Boston Globe has 40 heart-wrenching photos of the Gulf oil spill. A sampling: Thirty-six more here. Hat tip: Elaine Gibson....

12 May, 2010

Hannah Fairfield of the New York Times plots the number of miles driven by US drivers, both private and commercial, against the retail price of gasoline from 1956 to February, 2010. The horizontal axis represents miles driven, while the vertical axis shows the price per US gallon (3.79 litres) in current US dollars. The drawn path represents the passage of time. Note that sharp spikes in gas prices coincided with reductions in miles driven in 1973, 1978, and from 2005 to 2010. Click here for a larger image with interesting subgraphs and embedded commentary....

12 May, 2010

An Ontario Divisional Court ruling has thrown the The Coast's craven cave-in to an HRM Fire Service lawsuit into sharp relief—along with an imprudent ruling by Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Heather Robertson. The Chief and Deputy Chief of the fire service asked Robertson to order The Coast to release identifying information about individuals who posted anonymous comments about alleged racism in the fire service on the newspaper's website. The officers said the comments, since removed, defamed them, and they needed the identities of the authors to pursue a suit for defamation. Having lured readers into posting anonymously, the Coast tossed them...

12 May, 2010

Nature by Numbers, a four-minute film by Spanish graphic artist Cristóbal Vila, explores the natural world's use of Fibonacci's number, the golden ratio, the golden angle, the Delaunay Triangulation, and Voronoi Tessellations. Very cool. If you know a math teacher, send her the link. View HD version here. Hat tip: FlowingData.com....

12 May, 2010

First Fivethirtyeight.com gets Canadian politics bassackwards, now the Daily Dish's Andrew Sullivan compounds the error: The Americanization of British politics continues. First the TV debates, now fixed parliamentary terms. If that's true, it means that the new government will not be a caretaker before another snap election, but a potential fusion of the Liberal and Tory brands over several years - perhaps the embryo of a whole new center-right party. It feels a little like Canada's Progressive Tories. [Emphasis added.] Canada's Progressive Tories? How is it possible for US* journalists to misperceive Canadian politics so utterly? The Conservative Party of Canada was...

11 May, 2010

We've read a lot lately about the value of swift, full, and forthright apologies when public figures screw up. What about companies that screw up? Blippy is a website that lets users trade updates about their consumer purchases. Recently, an obscure programming error, compounded by mistakes at Google and one small midwestern bank, allowed Google to index the credit card numbers of four or five Blippy customers, potentially exposing these numbers to people browsing the web. Co-founder & CEO Ashvin Kumar's apology to users could serve as a model for companies that find themselves in a similar pickle. Moneyquote: It has been...

11 May, 2010

Contrarian reader M. Austin writes: Your reporting on Go Ogle taking the pi** out of some has brought to my attention the fact that whiz is spelled with an h. This realisation has me looking at Velveeta's jarred cousin with suspicion....

10 May, 2010
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