The good news about the healthful effects of a certain delicious, refreshing, invigorating hot beverage just keeps piling up. (Previous instalments here and here.) Researchers with the US National Institute of Health examined the association between coffee drinking and mortality among 400,000 men and women in a Diet and Health Study they conducted in association with the American Association of Retired People. Participants with pre-existing cancer, heart disease, and stroke were excluded. RESULTS During 5,148,760 person-years of follow-up between 1995 and 2008, a total of 33,731 men and 18,784 women died. In age-adjusted models, the risk of death was increased among coffee drinkers. However, coffee drinkers were also...

18 May, 2012

Contrarian reader Silas Barss Donham [Disclosure: Gee, that name seems familiar] can put up with most of the steps required to heat his Orangedale house with wood: the cutting, hauling, splitting (or paying someone to), the stacking outside to dry, tossing into the basement, re-stacking inside, carrying upstairs to the fireplace, and the constant sweeping of ashes, bark, and furch. But he grows weary of making "the daily, just-so crumple of old newspaper to light the fire." Not being a daily newspaper reader, I have to go from store to store to collect enough expired papers (avoiding the new Globe and Mail...

11 March, 2012

While puffed up pols and media toffs worked overtime this week to present Halifax at its snotty, hidebound worst, one local business demonstrated the city's best spirit. During tonight's Occupy Nova Scotia rally on the Parade Grounds, a carload of free pizza arrived from Freeman's Little New York, together with a note: And how did the Occupy Nova Scotia kids respond? They voted to donate one of the pizzas to the HRM cops. Now that is classy. Photo: Bethany Horne; H/T: Chris Lambie...

16 November, 2011

As ocean stocks dwindle, humanity turns increasingly to farmed fish. But does this actually make matters worse? Graphic artist Nigel Upchurch thinks so: [Video link] It matters which farmed fish you're eating, as some species consume more than others. Salmon is the worst, as this table, from a paper by Albert G.J. Tacon and Marc Metian of the University of Hawaii, demonstrates: The red arcs represent wild fish inputs, the yellow arcs farmed fish output. The numbers inside the circles show the ratio between the two. Numbers greater than one mean more wild fish is consumed than farmed fish produced. Upchurch provides...

28 May, 2011

Contrarian has previously voiced astonishment that environmentalists — more accurately crackpots posing as environmentalists — would oppose a recycling project that transforms harmful municipal waste into a valuable organic fertilizer here and here. We're also chagrinned the Halifax media's gullibility and lack of interest in actual scientific information about the topic. Now, a North End resident has voiced similar incredulity in a letter to District 11 councillor Jerry Blumenthal: Dear Mr. Blumenthal, For a long time, I couldn't understand why Haligonians keep comparing their city to tiny Moncton, but now I'm beginning to get it. And I'm not referring to Moncton's apparently...

22 May, 2011

Oblivious to their fate, five Tamworth pigs, a scarce heritage breed, peer out from their pen at a certain unconventional restaurant somewhere in Nova Scotia. More on this another time....

26 March, 2011

Contrarian reader Stan Jones offers further evidence of 21st Century North America's altered perception of weight: Footage of the Benny Goodman Orchestra playing Sing, Sing, Sing in 1937. Those are some skinny musicians. Note especially Harry James, whose solo begins 38 seconds into the tune: (That is, of course, Gene Krupa on drums, and Goodman himself on clarinet.) As a former TV host, Glennie Langille has first hand experience with society's social expectations around weight. She offers a skeptical view of the notion that skinny equals healthful: My first observation is that the original photo of Kennedy makes him appear to have an enormous...

22 January, 2011

Scott Logan, who formerly served as Nova Scotia's Assistant Deputy Minister of Health Promotions, responds to our observation that John F. Kennedy would seem skinny today: This piece and the previous on "Your Lying Pants" speak so graphically to socialized norms. When the majority of people smoked it was "cool." When—for various reasons—the tipping point was reached where the majority were non-smokers, the efforts to reduce tobacco's harmful impact on society gained great momentum.  In tobacco, the strategy was based on "re-normalizing" society's previous normal view of smoking. In other words the "new cool" was re-cast in a non-smoking image. The health...

17 January, 2011

The John F. Kennedy Library in Boston has released a huge trove of digitized images and recordings of the late president. Alexis Madrigal, The Atlantic's tech blogger, has published a selection. Here's what struck me: As a young naval officer, Kennedy was certainly slim, but no one would have thought him gaunt or emaciated. Yet Kennedy's Navy ID card reveals that he was six feet tall and weighed just 150 pounds. Six feet, 150 pounds! How our standards of girth have changed (as previously noted)....

15 January, 2011

.. .. Chiquita Brands International, successor to the United Fruit Company, a cartel whose imperialist policies in Latin America gave life to the term banana republic (coined by O. Henry), has revealed the winners in its contest to replace the company's iconic fruit sticker. Here are Contrarian's favorites: . . . ...

10 October, 2010
Show more
Loading...