The International Symbol of Accessibility (ISA), more widely but less correctly known as the handicapped sign, is evolving. The original symbol (far left), designed by Susanne Koefoed in 1968, was pretty much just a stylized wheelchair. The International Commission on Technology and Accessibility (ICTA), a committee of Rehabilitation International, humanized the it by adding a head (second from left). This is the icon we are most familiar with. Critics complain that its static nature stigmatizes the wheelchairs as instruments of helplessness and passivity.  In 2005, VSA, an international organization on arts and disability, produced a more active icon implying self-propulsion (third from left). At least one store,...

05 September, 2011

Salon sex columnist Tracy Clark-Flory clucks disapprovingly at what she deems excessive media coverage of that award-winning New Mexico state trooper busted on security cam having sex on duty and in uniform with a woman splayed across the hood of her Honda. Contrarian takes a different view. You cannot spend as much time in newsrooms as we have without developing a grudging admiration for the comic extremes of tabloid chutzpah. We particularly admire the Hispanic-oriented, Chicago-based website Hispanically Speaking News for shining a spotlight on the small but curious dog that wandered in for a closer look at the steamy curbside quickie,...

04 September, 2011

Back on the last day of June, CBC Radio's Information Morning program put Justice Minister Ross Landry on the hot seat for the Dexter Government's embrace of the Civil Forfeiture Act, a right-wing scheme to short-circuit the presumption of innocence. More accurately, the program's listers put him on the hot seat. The act lets cops seize property from suspects as long as they can convince a court the assets probably came from criminal activity. No proof needed. Just probability. As a standard of justice, it's more Queen of Hearts ("First the verdict; then the trial") than Justice Blackstone  ("Better ten guilty...

15 August, 2011

For the better part of a decade, developers have successfully quashed efforts to block new office and residential projects in the city, and then failed to build them. Contrarian reader Marian Lindsay asks: What gives? Does anyone have anything to say about all this procrastination? This seems a ridiculous waste of time and perfectly good space. Does no-one in power find this unacceptable? Can no-one get these projects rolling? And, why, I ask, if these are private developers, are they dependent on government hand-outs? Has this just become the standard way of operating in this province? Yet, it seems to me, that...

15 August, 2011

Developers often portray Halifax as a place where they face a demoralizing obstacle course of preservationists and pencil pushers whenever they try to build anything. But lately, the self-styled progressives have been winning the day, vanquishing opponents  to win approval for project after project. So where are the shovels? A friend of Contrarian took a stroll around downtown Halifax recently and sent us this photo album of projects long since approved but not yet begun.   Sisters missing, not twisted This project, approved in 2007 after a long fight with its detractors, featured two buildings with vertical twists, like licorice sticks. The “Twisted Sisters” were...

13 August, 2011

Here's a bit of contrarian sporting news that escaped my attention when it happened April 18:  The 20 fastest finishers in the men's 2011 Boston Marathon had one thing in common: All raced in wheelchairs. Our friend Warren Reed highlights this remarkable (but largely unremarked upon) fact in an article for the Journal of Medical Ethics decrying the use of outdated terms about disabilities in scholarly writing by medical researchers. It's a point Reed has gently chided Contrarian about in the past. In an informal search of half a dozen medical journals, Reed found 8,680 articles in which the word "wheelchair" was...

11 August, 2011

Our friend Teresa, a radiation tech at the Cape Breton Regional Hospital, volunteers at the SPCA. Lately she has posted photos of impounded dogs in the nuclear medicine department. On Monday, this caused a hospital visitor to remark that he really should get over to the SPCA and look for a new dog. His beloved labrador had died several months ago. "I have pictures on my iPhone of all the dogs up for adoption, if you'd like to scroll through them," Teresa offered. The man did just that, until he came upon this photo:   "That's Cheesie!" the man said. "That's my friend's dog!" He...

12 July, 2011

And what kind? David McCandless of Information is Beautiful has the graphic details. (Which turn out to be complicated, especially for pale-faced contrarians.) Supporting data here....

12 July, 2011

(l to r) Producer Nelson MacDonald, Director Ashley McKenzie, and screenwriter Christine Comeau celebrate the underdog victory of their short film RHONDA'S PARTY in CBC'-TV's Short Film Faceoff at a gathering of friends, crew, and admirers in Darrel's Sport Bar, Halifax, Saturday night, as the TV monitor shows McKenzie being interviewed on the program. The room exploded in cheers and whoops when CBC host Steve Patterson announced that McKenzie and MacDonald, both of New Waterford, had beaten out films from Vancouver and Montreal in viewer voting. The victory brings the young filmmakers $40,000 cash and $10,000 in equipment and supplies toward...

09 July, 2011
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