On the morning of July 12, 2007, US soldiers aboard two Apache helicopters used 30mm cannons to kill about a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad. The US military caimed that all the dead were anti-Iraqi combatants, but among them were two Iraqi employees of the Reuters News Agency, driver Saeed Chmagh, 40, a father of four, and photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, described as on of the best war photographers in Iraq. Two children were also injured. Reuters demanded an investigation. US authorities concluded that their forces acted properly. Using the Freedom of Information Act, Reuters unsuccessfully sought...

05 April, 2010

In 1950, Max Klein, President of Detroit’s Palmer Paint Company, was looking for a way to jack up demand for paint. Dan Robbins, a commercial artist employed by the company, remembered Leonardo da Vinci used to give numbered patterns to his apprentices. The following year, Palmer introduced the Craft Master line of paint-by-number kits with the slogan, “Every man a Rembrandt,” and a craze was born. The company sold 12 million kits. Robbins became the most exhibited artist in the history, a title he still holds, according to the on-line Paint by Number Museum, entry portal pictured above. Palmer went on to...

05 April, 2010

Our old friend Ivan Smith's ears perked up at our mention of an independent advisory panel to offer suggestions on how to improve a government website. He wonders if anything similar is planned in Canada. Smith points to copyright activist Michael Geist's interesting testimony March 25 before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage (available, sigh, not on the committee's website, but on Geist's.) Moneyquote: In recent years, many countries have embraced open data initiatives, including both the U.S. and U.K.  Others, such as Australia, have adopted open licenses to make government content more readily usable and...

04 April, 2010

Gary Lauder calculates the wasted fuel and time caused by one intersection's stop signs at $100,000 per year. Roundabouts work better, but how about a "Take Turns" sign? Hat tip: Crest Halifax....

04 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

A reader writes: I understand you dislike CBC.  Well that is fine for you, but for those of us who don't want to listen to the local shows made up of canned music and dubious prattle, the CBC treats their listeners as intelligent human beings. Just don't listen if you dislike the station. Point taken. I feel odd defending myself against the proposition that I dislike the CBC, but given recent posts (here and here), I suppose it's an understandable assumption. As an immigrant who came to Canada after my schooling had ended, I learned most of what...

03 April, 2010

The Globe and Mail's Tabatha Southey uses the same Pullman quotation to cast a harsh spotlight on an embarrassing Canadian example of political correctness run amok, courtesy of that habitual offender, the British Columbia Human Rights Commission, a tribunal whose main activity seems to be punishing the exercise of a human right it doesn't much care for: speech. Hat tip: Kady O'Malley...

03 April, 2010

CBC led its hourly radio newscasts this morning with a headline touting the release of the Apple iPad. Well, so did Contrarian; No complaint there. But it turns out the headline was only a teaser. Listeners had to wait 'til the last item in the newscast before hearing about Steve Jobs's latest gift to early adopters. And before getting there, they had to sit through a one minute-40 second "news story" about a CBNC contest to pick Canada's most hockey-crazed town. The humiliating chore of filling, oh, 20 percent of the radio service's flagship morning newscasts with this witless advertorial fell...

03 April, 2010

April 3:  Is this the transient alcoholic flicker on a too sweet rum cake, or a nuclear flash that will mark April 3 as a milestone we'll observe 20 and 40 years from now? According to David Pogue and Leo LaPorte, techies are scornful and users are awestruck, in which case, the smart money will be on the users. But there’s a big problem. To some, Jobs and Apple are a modern version of Bauhaus: elegant utilitarian design with fascist undertones. Apple’s singular control over what media its machines can play, and what machines can play its media, represents a giant backward...

03 April, 2010

English novelist Philip Pullman’s latest book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, has provoked threats of a Christian fatwa against him. At a public forum this week, Pullman responded to an audience member who complained that “to call the Son of God a scoundrel is an awful thing to say.” Yes, it was a shocking thing to say and I knew it was a shocking thing to say, but no one has the right to live without being shocked. No one has the right to spend their life without being offended. Nobody...

02 April, 2010
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