An anonymous reader writes: Marriage is the cruelest form of celibacy, so I thank you for the reminder of what women look like....

20 March, 2011

Ron Coleman, please note: Tim Hartford, the Underground Economist, weighs Genuine Progress as it plays out in the men's room of your favorite neighborhood pub. The question: Whenever I go to the gentlemen’s toilet in a pub, I’m unsure how to behave...

08 March, 2011

Kill the Friendly Giant. That's how Cape Breton University political science professor Tom Urbaniak describes the response of school boards and the Nova Scotia Teachers' Union when the Dexter government sought ideas for reducing the education budget. That's the tactic the CBC used a few years ago when the government announced a cut in its budget: The cuts would force it to cancel Canada's favorite children's show. Parents and children rose up, and the cuts got cut. As former education bureaucrat Wayne Fiander wrote to Contrarian recently, "the school boards and the teachers' union...

02 March, 2011

If your supercomputer is going on jeopardy, how do you give it an interesting voice and an appealing face? That's the problem that confronted the Automata Studio and technology artist Joshua Davis, hired by IMB to give Watson personality. If you can't see this video, try here. H/T: Nathan Yau....

15 February, 2011

CBC Weekend Mornings' take on school snow days, rain days, bad Camry days, and damp snow pants days: [Those without a Flash-endowed machine, go here.] H/T: Doug Barron, director. Cast: unknown....

13 February, 2011

Overheard on the 'net: Zadie (Age 4):    Look in my nose Zadie's mother:    I don't see anything in your nose. Zadie:    Oh. I don't smell anything in your eye....

05 February, 2011

Our old friend Ivan Smith, retired teacher and citizen Internet pioneer, takes up the suggestion that distance education could play a big part in reforming Nova Scotia's unaffordable education system: Identify a topic in grade 4 math (or grade 3 or 5) that currently is particularly troublesome for students. (This topic should be something that can be covered properly in not more than three or four class periods.) Identify four teachers, two male and two female, who have substantial experience in teaching this topic, and who have had results significantly better than average. Arrange for each teacher to teach this topic in...

31 January, 2011

Many assume the Dexter Government made a mistake when it asked school boards to consider—and report back on—the consequences of a hypothetical 22 percent cut in their budgets. They say this gave the boards and the NSTU a license to frighten voters, and thus rally support for their comfortable status quo. Contrarian reader (and retired Education Dept. bureaucrat) Wayne Fiander puts the case vividly: Having served two premiers in this province, I can say with some confidence that a real education "right sizing exercise" is necessary to preserve public education. No government has yet tackled this issue correctly. They start...

31 January, 2011

Readers have responded quickly to my challenge for new ideas to deal with the real crisis in provincial education funding, and the dominant theme so far is school size. Stephen Moore wants to eliminate small schools: My suggestion, though it will likely be unpopular, is to close smaller schools. There are many schools with extremely small classes sizes (and some instances of miltiple grades in one room). I agree that small classes can be beneficial and that small schools are a resource for rural communities; however, these are communities with declining enrollments and an aging demographic....

27 January, 2011

Speaking on CBC Cape Breton last week, former Conservative Education Minister Jane Purves offered a rare, even-handed take on Nova Scotia's education funding debate: The government is genuinely looking for savings in education. I think it has been very good at promoting the truth that the syste has cost way more over the last 10 years but there are far fewer students. However, I’m wondering if in retrospect it was wise to floaat this 22 percent because they should have known what was going to happen: And what’s going to happen is that every board is going to come up with...

27 January, 2011
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