Archive for: February 2012
Rosa goes birding
Last Friday, Rosa’s school had an in-service day, so Rosa went birding at Point Pleasant Park. She brought the cardboard binoculars she got for Christmas.
She spotted a Common Loon trying to swallow a whole crab:
Way off the tip of the park, she spied a Common Eider Drake:
A Northern Pintal was hanging around First Beach. Notice his blue bill?
Here he is again, standing on one leg:
A Pintail-Mallard hybrid was resting on the sand:
A Red-Breasted Merganser was drying his feathers in the sun…
…but when Rosa got too close, he headed for the safety of the water:
The trip was exciting, and fun, but also exhausting:
Photos: Joshua Barss Donham
Orange you glad we didn’t choose blue or red?
Halifax engineer Jeff Pinhey thinks Contrarian’s attempt “to find political intrigue in childrens’ lunch bags is beyond petty, it’s almost creepy.” Pinhey first advanced this view in a clever message whose irony sailed right over Contrarian’s head:
I am outraged at all the obviously NDP sponsored vests being worn by almost every single construction worker in Nova Scotia! And when I looked into this I found that not only are they all NDP orange with some yellow – get this – they are forced to wear them by a LAW! We actually have been legislated to show our support for the governing party. How Orwellian is that?
In a follow-up exchange, Jeff wrote:
I don’t give a rat’s ass what some politico-phobic people think about primary school kids’ lunch bags, but I would object if they were NOT orange and/or yellow simply because it would represent a lost safety advantage for free.
Ann Blackwood, Executive Director of English Program Services for the Nova Scotia Department of Education, doesn’t cite safety as a factor in the selection of NDP orange for the insulated school lunch bags handed out to Grade Primary students this month, but she insists politics played no role. The bags were filled with a variety of learning and play materials, and described as part of “Succeeding in Reading” and the “Kids and Learning First Education” plan.
Having teachers work with parents on how to use these bags will help children connect their learning in school and at home – and connect learning with play and creativity.
The process that went into choosing the red and orange colours* of the bags… was managed solely by professional educators aimed at getting a product with greatest appeal to children. Political colours did not enter into the discussion.
The team that evaluated submissions for the bags and their contents comprised the Department of Education’s Literacy Coordinator, Early Learning Co-ordinator, Literacy Support Consultant, Literacy Evaluation Coordinator, and a Student Services Consultant.**
The insulated lunch bag was available from our supplier in the following tote colours/trim and gusset colours: red/light orange, black/grey, blue/royal blue, green/lime green.
The team as well as support staff, who were consulted, liked red/orange for the following reasons:
- Blue/royal blue was considered, recognizing that blue is a colour often associated with boys (as pink is with girls).
- Black was considered not appropriate since bright neon colour palettes appeal to young children more than dark colours.
- Support staff thought red and orange looked fun and would appeal to both boys and girls.
It was concluded that the red/light orange bags would be most appealing to grade primary children. That was the colour that was ordered.
We look forward to having teachers distribute these learning resources to parents of Grade Primary students in four regions this month and next. They will be available to families of all next year’s Grade Primary students in September.
Blackwood made these comments in an email forwarded by the Education Department’s communications branch.
The outrage directed at the giveaway reflects, in part, anger over the NDP Government’s cancellation of the Reading Recovery program. If there is money to send home free magnetic fridge letters, the reasoning goes, why not keep a much acclaimed program? Contrarian is aware of the controversy, but doesn’t feel qualified to offer an opinion. We welcome yours, however. See the comment tab, above.
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* My informants on the school bag issue go ballistic when defenders of the giveaway claim the bags are merely red with orange trim. “The f*****g bag is orange,” wrote one. “Orange. It is not red with orange trim.”
Contrarian has arranged to personally inspect one of the bags later today, and will render a verdict that will satisfy no one.
** I do not wish to take cheap shots, but the fact the department employs a group of professionals with these titles, and the fact their duties included selecting the color of a lunch bag, does give one pause. The fact that literacy is a common element in the titles suggests that the department does see the giveaway program as, in some sense, a replacement for the much praised Reading Recovery program.
Orange is as orange does
Labor lawyer Ron Stockton, who is also president of the Lunenburg NDP Association, protests that the insulated lunch bags distributed to Grade Primary students in Nova Scotia the Annapolis, Cape Breton-Victoria, South Shore, and Strait regional school boards this month and next (and pictured here) do not appear to be NDP orange, but rather, red with orange trim.
If the government were Liberal would you have levelled the same criticism? If a PC government put out materials that were blue (admittedly a much more commonly used colour) would you have criticized them? At my age I like things to be as colourful as possible (just as I did when I was a kid). I love the look of it even though I may have used more orange than red and added a bit of glow-in-the-dark green.
The confusion is, I’m afraid, an artifact of the way computer screens reproduce color shades. The bag is NDP orange. Here’s a close-up:
Contrarian reader Paul Taylor asks a bonus question: Where were the bags manufactured and printed? For the answer, we turned to the information label affixed to the bag, as required by the Textile Labeling Act (apologies for the poor resolution):
That would be Sweda USA, an “integrated supplier and manufacturer of promotional products that provides innovative marketing solutions for the advertising specialties industry,” and China, a manufacturing powerhouse in Asia. Jobs here? Not so much.
And while on the subject of full disclosure, this is as good a time as any to reveal that last Friday, at 10:30 pm, I joined the federal New Democratic Party, just before the midnight deadline for qualifying to vote in the leadership race. I intend to vote for whichever candidate is most open to cooperating with the Liberals in defeating the Harper Government and allowing Canada’s moderate-left consensus to govern, probably this one. When the Liberal leadership voting deadline rolls around, I’ll probably join that party, if they’ll have me, with the same goal in mind. And I voted Conservative in two of the last three provincial elections. Go figure.
But I still think the Nova Scotia New Democratic Party should reimburse the province’s taxpayers for this shameless bit of political promotion aimed at schoolchildren and their parents.
Has Don Mills put CRA in a conflict of interest?
A Contrarian reader asks:
Does it not seem to you that there is a major conflict of interest in the Savage-for-Mayor camp? [AllNovaScotia.com, the online news service] lists Don Mills as one of Savage’s top supporters. Since Mills operates Corporate Research Associates, the major polling firm in the province — one that just recently reported Savage with a big lead — why would one trust anything CRA has to say on the race?
A fair question, and we put it to Mills, who replied:
Corporate Research Associates has been since its inception a non-partisan polling company. It is one of the reasons our polling is so respected by the media. Every time we publish poll results , our reputation is on the line. We adhere to the highest standards in the conduct of our business. We attempt each and every time to ask questions in a fair ad unbiased manner. We publish the questions used in order for the public to judge the quality of our work. I have worked hard all my career to ensure the integrity of our work. Our record speaks for itself in that regard.
I have lots of issues with political polls and the way they are presented, but in this case, I’m inclined to accept Mills’s assurances. He runs the pre-eminent blue-chip polling firm in Atlantic Canada. It’s his bread and butter. He would be foolish indeed to squander that standing by rigging polls in a municipal election whose outcome doesn’t seem all that hard to predict, with or without polling data. Reinforcing this view is the fact Mills made no effort to hide his support for Savage.
Early learnin’ NDP style
This week month and next, as part of the Nova Scotia Department of Education’s Early Learning Campaign, the Dexter government distributed a variety pack of learning materials — books, a CD, construction paper, plastic animals, bubbles, clay, scissors, and sundry other education-related items — to every Grade Primary student in the province Grade Primary students in the Annapolis, Cape Breton-Victoria, South Shore, and Strait regional school boards.
Best of all, the goodies all came packaged in a handy insulated orange lunch bag, suitable for use throughout the school year.
Subtle, eh? Early education for today’s families, you could call it.
No, the lunch bags do not come emblazoned with NDP logos. Just the colors.
Reasonable people may disagree about the value of sending home these learning materials. Personally, I’m fine with it. But packaging it all up in the governing party’s colors? That’s pretty slimy.
The NDP should reimburse the province for the cost of the lunch bags.
Infographics: Map your Twitter contacts
Locate your twitter contacts on an interactive world map with this simple mashup.
Let your cursor hover over the bottom right corner of the map (not the one above, which is just a screenshot, but the interactive map linked to here) and a Twitter Account sign-in dialog will open.
H/T: Nathan Yau
Snoopy as spirit dog
Our friend and fellow contrarian Christine Comeau, a writer who makes movies in Nova Scotia and Quebec, seems an unlikely marathon candidate:
The project is a fundraiser for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Canada.
Maher critiques Contrarian
PostMedia’s Stephen Maher, whose blog post on the Toews contretemps I featured moments ago, has weighed in with a critique of Contrarian’s first two posts on the subject. Here’s what he wrote (and then let’s close the subject for now):
In your post on the Parliamentary Press Gallery, you say the gallery met @vikileaks30 with a “frenzy of denunciation,” but provide no examples. You do not accurately describe the gallery’s reaction to @vikileaks30. The journalists I know found it to be a matter of lively interest. Nobody reacted with anger, fear or embarrassment.Also, to point to the failings of the gallery, you point to Toronto Star stories about Adam Giambrone and the Citizen story that identified the IP address of @vikileaks30. Those stories were not produced by reporters in the gallery. The gallery did, in fact, report on Toews divorce, just not as extensively as you would like, and did not report on Giambrone, which is a municipal story.It seems normal to me that media outlets in Winnipeg and Toronto would approach questions of privacy differently. That has nothing to do with the gallery, however.You may be able to argue that the gallery is too timid when it comes to the private lives of cabinet ministers, but you would need to do more research for it to be persuasive.
Another view on why reporters gave Toew’s infidelity a pass
Parliamentary scribe Stephen Maher, formerly of the Herald and now with PostMedia, offers a different view on why the Press Gallery all but ignored Vic Toews’s infidelity prior to #vikileaks30. (Previous views here, here, and here.)
Maher’s blog post is the more refreshing for its inclusion of updates from people who disagree with him. It rewards reading in full. I actually agree with most of what he says. Generally, I have little stomach for exposing the private lives of public figures, let alone their sex lives. But unlike Maher and his colleagues, I think there are clear grounds for an exception in Toews’s case.
Maher wrote:
If [a] secretly gay cabinet minister started mouthing off hypocritically about family values, I would write that story in a minute.
To which I say, substitute the word “philandering” for “gay,” and you have the nub of my argument for serious coverage of the Public Safety Minister’s extramarital monkey business.
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One defense I have not heard from any press gallery member is: “I didn’t know about Toews’s infidelity.”
If no one was writing about it (beyond a few, fleeting references), how come everyone in the press gallery knew about it? Likely because they were talking about it, among themselves.
They found it interesting enough to talk about, but judged that we, as mere consumers of journalsim, did not have a need to know.
Reporters should be awfully careful when placing themselves in the position of censor. It’s a slippery slope, one all to easily greased by such considerations as future access to official sources and the political orientation of the news organization that writes the reporter’s pay check.
A more thoughtful rebuttal from the Parliamentary Press Gallery
In response to my critique (here and here) of the national news media’s handling of the @vikileaks3o dustup last Friday, CBC’s Kady O’Malley has offered a more thoughtful rebuttal (more thoughtful than this):
Here’s the major flaw in
@kempthead‘s thesis re: “Hill journos” allegedly enraged at having “the news cycle snatched from their grasp”… He appears to have mistaken journalists for communications flacks, who *do* attempt to control a news cycle… Journalists just want news to report. We have no desire to dictate the news cycle, we just hope it takes us someplace good.
To which @DavisvilleHabit tweeted:
That’s a sweeping statement [...]
O’Malley again:
Any journalist who aspires to control the news cycle has lost the plot…. Seriously, most of us are chaos junkies. We *love* it when things go exactly the opposite as expected. Especially if it’s pear-shaped…. In fact, if we have a vague kind of raison d’etre, it is thwarting those who DO attempt to control a news cycle…. That’s why the
@Vikileaks30 story was covered so heavily, for heaven’s sakes. It was Something Different And Unexpected And Unknown.
[Note: For readability, I have combined several tweets, rather than reproducing them as screenshot. Elipses indicate separate tweets. The order and text are unchanged.]
