Matt McKeon turned the Electronic Freedom Foundation's chronology of eroding Facebook privacy settings into an interactive graphic showing how much of your FB data is visible, by default, to various categories of Internet users, by year. You can get a sense of the problem from these screenshots, but the details emerge best in McKeon's website. Still plotting my escape. Hat tip: Flowing data....
The news media sessions often last 25 minutes, with 5 minutes left at the end for questions from anyone still awake. Those types of PowerPoint presentations, [retired Marine Corps Col. Thomas X.] Hammes said, are known as “hypnotizing chickens.” From We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint, a New York Times story by Elisabeth Bumiller about the growing cadre of military strategists who think PowerPoint dumbs down decision making. More on this when I have a few minutes to string together. Hat tip: Andrew Weissman...
In answer to concerned queries from readers: No, I do not personally get up at 3 a.m. to send out the daily Contrarian e-mail. Google's Feedburner service does that for me. At 3 a.m., Google automatically sends every item I have posted over the preceding 24 hours to everyone who has signed up for the daily Contrarian email (option 1 in the box at right)....
Photographarian writes: Photographic representations of pretty sunrises—like pretty pictures of sunsets—are a trifle cliched. While Contrarian may take pleasure in his sunrise snapshot, Photographerian would like to point out that it does not make any meaningful contribution to photography, or to the well-being of humanity. Contrarian is but the humblest of snapshotists. He welcomes any contributions to photography (or the well-being of humanity) that Photographarian wants to send along....
Three national reporters for CBC Radio News carried out the devastating survey posted here last night, a source tells Contrarian. Veteran reporters Vic Adhopia of St. John's, Dave Seglins of Toronto, and Greg Rasmussen of Vancouver conducted the survey in March after months of grousing by colleagues about the operation of The Hub, the Toronto unit that co-ordinates all assignments for radio and TV news reporters. They submitted the survey to CBC brass, who responded in a conference call with all national reporters two weeks ago. News head Jonathan Whitten led the management team on the call, which one...
A survey of 24 CBC Radio national news reporters shows dismal morale and widespread dismay over organizational changes that funnel all radio and TV news assignments through a single "hub" in Toronto. A couple of nuggets: If anything, the individual reporters' comments are even more devastating: Read the full report below: ...
Two readers see The Coast's failure to lift a finger in defense of its reader-posters not as an unwelcome blow to free expression but as an overdue comeuppance for the well-known excesses of anonymous Internet posting. Bill Turpin writes: The Coast's greatest failure to its readers was in allowing anonymous posts in the first place. It's The Coast, not Samizdat, and this is Canada, not the former Soviet Union. You're free to write what you want in this country, subject to defamation laws which, while imperfect, are not odious. There is no need to hide behind an alias. But when you do,...
The former idealists who built The Coast into a substantial Halifax institution let down their readers and their craft today by failing to contest an order to help identify people who posted controversial opinions on their website. Madam Justice Heather Robertson granted an application by HRM Fire Chief Bill Mosher and Deputy Chief Stephen Thurber, who say the posters made allegations of racism, cronyism and incompetence against them. I want to stress that Contrarian has not read the comments in question, or the article that provoked them, and I have no opinion as to the merits of the dispute. But...
The Brain Repair Centre at the QEII Health Sciences Centre took a magnetic resonance image of Contrarian's brain today, as part of a study on memory loss in people with Alzheimer's disease. The researchers assured me I was there solely as a control! While the machine buzzed, clicked, and roared, the kindly technicians played CBC radio through my headphones. This is what Contrarian's brain looks like while listening to Costas Halavrezos....
On The Moth storytelling podcast, the great Lewis Lapham reminisces about his first job, covering Oakland City Hall for the San Francisco Examiner in an era when reporters wore hats. Featuring The Horny Photographer, The One-Legged Woman, and The Unencumbered Widow. Hat tip: Silas....