Snap quiz:  What do the following verses have in common? And that's how it went all afternoon, one lizard after another It made me wonder if snow leopards have a taste for joggers as well As is typical, the Pope stayed above the fray and did not comment. Whether such tactics will have a chilling effect remains to be seen. Answer: All four are inadvertent haikus, composed by humans but discovered by machines. The first two come from a Tumblr blog created by New York Times editor Jacob Harris, who adapted some open-source compter code to scan the homepage of the New York Times, looking for snippets of text that conform to the Haiku...

14 April, 2013

Before the end of June, each year, Nova Scotia law requires the Chief Electoral Officer to a publish all the political contributions made in the previous year. For the years 2007, 2008, and 2009, Christine McCulloch complied with the law, posting the information to the Elections Nova Scotia website in a manner that was accessible, searchable, printable, and even, with effort, downloadable to a citizen's own database. This gave every citizen the tools to determine whether contractors who won big roadbuilding contracts, storeowners who won liquor commission franchises, or communications consultants (like me!) who were selected for Communications Nova Scotia's Standing...

05 September, 2011