How does The New Yorker come up with ideas for its Talk of the Town column? Here's the great magazine's helpful instructional video: Yes, with this post, Contrarian has succumbed to shameless viral marketing, but it's New Yorker shameless viral marketing....

15 June, 2011

Lightning flashes around the ash plume rising from the Puyehue-Cordon Caulle volcano Entrelagos, Chile, on Sunday (Reuters photo by Carlos Gutierrez). Dormant for half a century, the volcano erupted in south-central Chile Saturday, throwing ash more than 10 km into the sky, as winds propelled to toward Argentina, prompting the evacuation of several thousand residents. José Pujol, graphics editor of the Spanish website público.es has assembled a stunning selection of photos of the eruption. Here’s one more, by Ian Salas of the Spanish news agency EFE. H/T: Adrian Noskwith...

09 June, 2011

A tweet by Brent Gohde alerted me to a spectacular, and apparently unusual solar storm that took place early Tuesday morning. A medium sized flare, the kind that usually escapes from the surface and brings "solar weather" to Earth a few days later, erupted around 1:30 a.m. Atlantic time. But the solar filament that resulted didn't quite achieve escape velocity, so it plunged back to the surface with a splash that covered half the sun's diameter. [Direct video link here] Wired Magazine reported: “I’ve never seen anything like it before,” said NASA solar physicist Jack Ireland...

08 June, 2011

Responding to my response to his earlier response to Lindsay Brown’s letter to HRM Councilor Jerry Blumenthal decrying council’s decision to spend $50,000 repeating decades of studies that have confirmed the safety of biosolid use in agriculture, Cliff White writes: Halifax Harbour is certainly cleaner then it was. Well, as long as it hasn't rained in three days, and thank god we get so little precipitation here abouts. And it would be churlish of me to mention that the sewage plants don't meet the new federal regulations for what can be released into the ocean, so I won't. Let me just point...

06 June, 2011

Scientists at UBC used ecosystem models, underwater terrain maps, fish catch records, and statistical analysis to estimate the biomass of Atlantic fish [large PDF] at various points the last century.  David McCandless of the UK Guardian's Data Blog turned the resulting maps into this animated GIF: McCandless writes: These early accounts and data on the past abundance of fish help reveal the magnitude of today's fish stock declines which are otherwise abstract or invisible. They also help counter the phenomenon of "shifting environment baselines". This is when each generation views the environment they remember from their youth as "natural" and normal. Today that...

06 June, 2011

  11:45 PM ADT: Barring some unexpected last minute breakthrough, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers is set to strike Canada Post in about 75 minutes. Amazing these organizations could both think it clever to remind Canadians how much their importance has shrunk in 30 years....

02 June, 2011

Paul W. Bennett, Director of Schoolhouse Consulting and former headmaster of the Halifax Grammar School and Lower Canada College, wades in on the school issue (previous posts here and here): Better schools for less money is not only possible but achievable in Nova Scotia. Judging from the "Kids not Cuts" spending spree, the NSTU, the NSSBA, and their acolytes sense that the public is awakening to their "Kill the Friendly Giant" strategy. Why else would they be pouring thousands into a media campaign attempting to remould their image?On the matter of teacher hiring, I think that you are slightly off the...

02 June, 2011

Port Hawkesbury resident Bert Lewis writes: You have only touched the tip of the iceberg in educational reform. Expand your thoughts to the entire system including colleges and universities with the P-12 system. Nova Scotia should lead the way in designing a system for 2011 to replace systems that were implemented many years ago to serve a different time. Long overdue and holding us back. Surely Mr. Lewis, a retired Community College Principal and recent NDP by-election candidate, will elaborate. Meanwhiles, HRM resident Ryan Van Horne  recalls: Your comment about the hiring process is bang on. That’s exactly why I...

01 June, 2011
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