A wee bug has laid contrarian low for a few days. Posts will resume shortly....

20 July, 2009
calder
The Halifax Chronicle-Herald details the arrest of Anne Calder, a defense lawyer and former Crown prosecutor, on suspicion of smuggling prescription narcotics to a client in the Burnside Jail. As it happens, contrarian knows Calder slightly. She has always struck us as an idealistic, compassionate, conservative woman. She was also an outspoken admirer of Peter MacKay, with whom she served when they were both Crown prosecutors in Pictou County. An Amherst native, Calder followed an unconventional career path.  She graduated from Dalhousie and Carleton Universities, then worked as an airline flight attendant before earning her law degree at the University of British Columbia. At various times she worked as as a Crown prosecutor, either staff or casual, in Halifax,  Truro, Pictou, and New Glasgow. Along the way she spent a few years in New Zealand, and graduated from the one-year, masters in journalism program at King's in 2006.
15 July, 2009

.. .. .. .. First coffee prevented Alzheimer's. Then beer, wine, and spirits prevented Alzheimer's. Now, according to the Journal of Neuroscience, a big fat doobie prevents Alzheimer's. Can sex be far behind? Moneyquote: Our results indicate that cannabinoid receptors are important in the pathology of AD and that cannabinoids succeed in preventing the neurodegenerative process occurring in the disease. [Emphasis contrarian's] Hat tip: D. Parsons. UPDATE: Devastating development. [Hat tip: W&G]...

14 July, 2009

Leonard Cohen wants fellow musicians to stop doing covers of Hallelujah. "I was just reading a review of a movie called Watchmen that uses it, and the reviewer said 'Can we please have a moratorium on Hallelujah in movies and television shows?' he told CBC Radio's Jian Ghomeshi in a live interview on Q last Thursday. "And I kind of feel the same way. I think it's a good song, but I think too many people sing it." The following day, the Guardian newspaper in the UK published a partial transcript of the interview, and suddenly, Cohen's comment about Hallelujah became a...

14 July, 2009
Seminal environmentalist (and sometime Cape Breton summer resident) Stewart Brand promotes a series of environmental heresies in this surprising talk. In 1968, Brand created the Whole Earth Catalog, which Apple founder Steve Jobs described as the conceptual forerunner of the World Wide Web. A counter-cultural touchstone, the Catalog helped inspire and galvanize the environmental movement. Today, Brand calls himself an ecopragmatist. This talk previews Whole Earth Discipline, a book he will publish this Fall challenging contemporary environmentalists to reconsider objections to nuclear power and genetically modified foods. Brand is pro-city, pro-genetic engineering, pro-nuclear, and so profoundly worried about climate change, he believes geoengineering will probably be necessary. After the jump, some excerpts from the talk.
14 July, 2009

[caption id="attachment_1459" align="alignleft" width="615" caption="Screenshot: coincidental tweets."][/caption] Contrarian has fully recovered from the fleeting (and uncharacteristic) sympathy we felt for Prime Minister Harper over the Case of the (Allegedly) Missing Host. We hereby revert to our customary stance: a plague on all their holier-than-thou houses. Let's review: A  Catholic vicar general complained that the Prime Minister has committed not just sin but scandal by failing to consume the host during holy communion at Romeo LeBlanc's funeral. When the press dutifully reported this, PM spokesman Dimitri Soudas (he of the misattributed Ignatieff non-quote) insisted Harper had indeed consumed the host, whereupon more protectors...

11 July, 2009

The fact that Stephen Harper mistakenly thought Michael Ignatieff was the author of a warning that Canada could lose G8 status misses the point. Substandard staff work? Sure. But at root, it was simply a mistake, for which Harper quickly, if tersely, apologized. It's the ease, nay alacrity, with which Harper slips into a nasty tone that reveals so much about Harper's character. "Ignatieff is supposed to be a Canadian," he snarled, implying that the Liberal leader's patriotic bona fides are somehow less than his own. The same ugly tone plays out in Harper's TV attack ads, a polite grilling about...

11 July, 2009
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