[caption id="attachment_4124" align="alignright" width="150" caption="A really old brain"][/caption] With uncanny accuracy, the New York Times's Barbara Strauch describes the workings of Contrarian's brain. The part about boiling water is particularly embarrassing....

03 January, 2010

A week after the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a Northwest Airlines fight, two polar-opposite American columnists — one left, one right — have come to nearly identical conclusions about the essential danger posed by airline security restrictions. From the right, a New Year's Day column by the New York Times's David Brooks decried a citizenry that "expect[s] perfection from government and then throw[s] temper tantrums when it is not achieved." [T]he Transportation Security Administration has to be seen doing something, so it added another layer to its stage play, “Security Theater” — more baggage regulations, more in-flight restrictions. At some point, it’s...

03 January, 2010

On January 1, a new law in Ireland bans publication or uttering of material grossly abusive or insulting to matters held sacred by any religion and thereby intentionally causing outrage among a substantial number of adherents of that religion. The law carries a 25,000 Euro fine and permits some defenses. The website blasphemy.ie declares it "both silly and dangerous." It is silly because medieval religious laws have no place in a modern secular republic, where the criminal law should protect people and not ideas. And it is dangerous because it incentives religious outrage, and because Islamic States led by Pakistan are...

03 January, 2010

Tim Bousquet's rules for using anonymous sources: The information gained through granting anonymity is not otherwise available. Or, put another way, granting anonymity is not a shortcut to doing the hard work of gathering solid information and good reporting. The anonymous source must have something to lose, should anonymity not be given: loss of a job, etc. Using an anonymous source must result in some positive public good. “Spinning” someone’s view is not a positive public good. Bousquet adds: When I was a reporter at a daily in the states, I had a publisher who wouldn't allow me to use anonymous sources at all. At...

03 January, 2010

The Washington Post looks at what happened to the US economy over the last decade: For the first time since the 1930s, no growth in jobs, a decline in household net worth, and falling middle-class earnings. Moneyquote: There has been zero net job creation since December 1999. No previous decade going back to the 1940s had job growth of less than 20 percent. Economic output rose at its slowest rate of any decade since the 1930s as well. Middle-income households made less in 2008, when adjusted for inflation, than they did in 1999 -- and the number is sure to have declined further...

03 January, 2010

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that many fine editors had struggled to improve Contrarian's prose over the years. One of these was Jo-Anne MacDonald, a journalist of cool discernment and unflagging commitment who edited my columns in the Port Hawkesbury Reporter and the Halifax Daily News. Jo-Anne now works at the National Post, today's edition of which carries her lovely story about  76-year-old Lella Dubuque of Walpole, Mass. Last year, doctors diagnosed Lella with inoperable cancer, and many rounds of chemotherapy failed to arrest the disease. Her son Michael urged her to get a second opinion and to make her annual...

02 January, 2010

An end of year column by the Globe's John Ibbitson proclaims Harper's prorogation of Parliament "a travesty...

02 January, 2010

From reporter Erin Guy's opening declaration that she's "never seen anything like this before," through her breathless retracing of hard-to-see tire tracks "right here in this yard," and her apparent inability to pronounce "'mergency vehicle," this story, from television station KOCO-5 in Oklahoma City, captures 21st century North American newsgathering with delicious acuity. But the 10-second clip of putative ambulance thief Wendy Jones, at 1:02 into the story, can have few equals in the annals of perp walks. Yes, Ms. Jones is shackled. Hattip: Buzzfeed's year-end list of 2009's 15 funniest local news reports. ...

02 January, 2010