PC Leader Jamie Baillie's election promise to hold power rates at current levels came in a position paper that included the following unsourced graph, purporting to show that something called "energy costs to rate payers," measured in units it did not explain, have increased by 27 percent since 2009: Wow, that certainly looks shocking! Contrarian is no statistician, and my graphic skills are tenuous, but I read Darrell Huff's classic How to Lie with Statistics shortly after it came out in 1954, and Chapter 5, "The Gee Whiz Graph," stuck with me. Of the persuasive power of graphs, Huff had this advice...

Former you-name-it Norman Spector (@nspector4) points out a glaring omission in my partial list of pundits who inveighed against BC Premier Christy Clark's demand for a share of profits from the Northern Gateway pipeline, while mostly ignoring Quebec's brazen extortion of Newfoundland hydro exports. Stephen Maher, late of the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, and now typing for the Postmedia chain, had a terrific column on the dispute last weekend, one that places the Quebec-Newfoundland precedent front-and-center. The nub: History suggests...

Earlier today, I posted a photograph of uncertain provenance showing Nova Scotia as seen from the International Space Station at night, and wondered out loud where it had come from. The estimable Bethany Horne of Halifax Open File pointed us to this Reddit post, and thence to this collection of NASA astronaut videography, where we tracked down the amazing sequence from which our image — a screenshot, as it turns out — was clipped. Check out this gorgeous time-lapse video from the space station's January 29 pass up the East Coast of North America, starting at the southern edge of the Gulf of...

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....

Contrarian reader PC responds to our annoyance at our future king's mispronunciation of the name of Canada's 10th province: I am more troubled by the many Canadians west of the Atlantic Provinces who use the same mispronunciation, including Carol Off on As It Happens just a few nights ago.  How can someone who works for the CBC, where every national program announcement finishes with "half an hour later in ...

As the final chord of "Paint it Black," opening number in the Rolling Stones' 2006 Halifax Commons concert, faded into the distance, Mick Jagger thanked the crowd for coming out despite foul weather. "We hear there's even a group that came all the way from Newfoundland," he said. The remarkable thing is that Jagger, the consummate professional, took the trouble to pronounce the name of Canada's 10th province correctly. So after 60 years as heir to the throne, is it too much to ask the presumed future King of Canada to show the same care and respect? [Update] Contrarian readers have leapt to...

[caption id="attachment_2847" align="alignright" width="350" caption="Inter-provincial power grid diagram shows the startling degree to which Nova Scotia is an energy island. This is a big obstacle to the development of local renewable energy supplies like wind and tidal, which are intermittent and therefore require robust interconnection with nearby power porducers and users. The Hydro Quebecwick deal means that any increase in our connectivity with the rest of the world will be at the mercy of the new monopoly owner of the grid, the Government of Quebec."][/caption] Premiers Shawn Graham (NB) and Jean Charest (QC) have unveiled the details of the Hydro Quebecwick...

One of the gems Canada acquired when it joined Newfoundland in 1949 was the then-infant Anita Best of  Merasheen Island, Placentia Bay. Anita was barely a teenager when Joey Smallwood expunged her fishing community of residents in the great and tragic resettlement. She grew up to be the greatest collector and interpreter of Newfoundland music, storytelling, and folklore of our era—a national treasure in both nations. Anita writes: Just read the comment on Roger Howse's Hendrix night at Bearly's.  Thanks for posting it.  I miss Roger's music a lot. High praise indeed....