Rosa Donham, age 4, got a USB microscope for Christmas. This week, she began photographing some of her favorite objects around the house, including this one: It's the mouth of a sand dollar....

13 January, 2011

. . . . . . . That schools in the Cape Breton-Victoria School District will close is obvious. Enrolment here has dropped 22 percent over eight years, with no end to the decline in sight, while costs have risen 25 percent over the same period. That Holy Angels High tops the list of candidates for closure is equally obvious. The geriatric Catholic order that owns the school wants to unload it, and has offered it to the board for $750,000. The board estimates it would need another $8 to $10 million in repairs, while newer schools nearby have lots of space. The prospect of closure has provoked the...

17 November, 2010

Haligonian Warren Reed objects to the thoughtlessly patronizing word choices many journalists apply to wheelchair-users and those who discriminate them. In an email to two Chronicle-Herald reporters who recently wrote about separate cases of discrimination by Metro Transit and the Nova Scotia Justice Department against wheelchair users, he complained about three sentences in their stories: "The driver even called his supervisor, who confirmed that wheelchair-bound passengers are not allowed on [Bus No.] 60." "However, Sunday morning the driver said that he could get in a lot of trouble for letting wheelchair-bound passengers onto non-wheelchair routes." "Amy Paradis, 16, is quadriplegic and...

25 October, 2010

Contrarian reader Denis Falvey writes: A decision that flies in the face of one fact of science does not necessarily constitute ignorance. A bounty may not eradicate coyotes, it may not even lower their numbers appreciably, but it will change their habits. Coyotes live in an ecological niche; like any other animal, they will multiply to fill that niche. I would prefer that the limits on their ecological niche not include my doorstep, and the only way to achieve that is for the animals to be wary of coming near my doorstep. That's not going to happen with my singing Kumbayah'....

25 April, 2010

President Barack Obama has appointed visual data guru Edward Tufte (previously mentioned: here) to the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel. Tufte will advise on such things as the Recovery.gov website, where citizens can punch their zip code into a track-the-money map and see all the recovery projects in their area. Bob Garfield of New York public radio's On The Media interviewed Tufte about the appointment this week (audio embedded below; transcript here). GARFIELD: Tufte has inspired a generation of innovators with his ideas for the efficient, clean and rich presentation of information. He’s a fan of The New York Times website,...

04 April, 2010

Saint Mary's professor Larry Haiven thinks blaming unions for unnecessary snow days is silly: This is part of a syndrome of "if in doubt, blame the unions."  So convenient.  So wrong. A few years ago I was taking a tour of the new Toronto opera house.  We were allowed to go everywhere except on stage, even though the stage was bare, with no current production going on. One of the tour members asked the docent why we couldn't go on stage.  The tour member said he had been on tours of all the great opera houses of Europe and had never been barred...

07 March, 2010

Educational consultant Paul W. Bennett, a former principal of Halifax Grammar School, thinks we should not be too quick to dismiss the connection between unsnowy snow days and the provisions of the teachers' collective agreement. [T]he key factor [in school closures] is the collective agreement which has been in place in Nova Scotia since the mid-1970s. In that sense, the Education Department is just as culpable as the NSTU. The teachers' agreement originally included an understanding that about five days a year would be written off as "throw-away" snow days. The Agreement with the NSTU also stipulates...

07 March, 2010
Several readers have questioned, taken issue with, and even canceled subscriptions (!) over my criticism of overly cautious school closures, particularly my suggestion that union sympathies may play a role in unwarranted snow days.
Since when are school administrators (who make decisions about snow days) part of the teachers' union? [TB]
Snow days are decided upon by the School Board. The teachers and their union have nothing to do with it. Teachers have to show up on snow days to babysit any kids dropped off by parents. The fact that you are so silly as to blame Unions—good heavens how silly!—I have now figured you out: Another Conservative who will blame the victims for all the country's ills. [AMcG]
At least in HRSB, the school officials who make the call are school board Superintendents - not unionized, but management. [AB]
Another possible explanation is the requirement to please big, risk-averse insurance companies. [BW]
OK, so now I've done what I should have done before posting, checked with Peter McLaughlin, my ex-Daily News colleague who now speaks for the Nova Scotia Department of Education. Turns out the situation is at once more complicated than I suggested, and less clearcut than my interlocutors believe. Full explanation after the jump.
06 March, 2010

Contrarian will be at the Inverary Inn's Thistledown Pub in Baddeck this evening to lead a discussion about blogging sponsored by the Cabot Trail Writers' Festival, the group that organized this event last fall. In addition to an annual fall festival, the group plans a series of satellite events, of which tonight's discussion is the first. I'll be talking about the writerly (journalistic, aesthetic, ethical) aspects of blogging; Mike Targett will be on hand to backstop me on those issues, and to add his technical smarts to the discussion. The pub serves supper from 5:30 to 8; The fireside blogging discussion,...

06 March, 2010

On World AIDS Day last week, UNAIDS published new estimates of the number of people living with AIDS around the world, and Xaquin G.V. turned the data into a cartogram, or a value-aread map: Click image for larger view. Hat tip: Flowingdata.com....

08 December, 2009
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