The Atlantic's* blog section, my single favorite part of the Internet and a frequent source of posts and links here, is in turmoil this morning owing to a redesign that has stripped its superb habitues of the graphical personality and color that made their individual pages so compelling. It didn't help that a series of glitches accompanied the changeover, including the (apparently temporary) loss of RSS feeds and the (hopefully temporary) disappearance of daily email updates. The esteemed James Fallows, though characteristically uber-polite, is unable to conceal his unhappiness:
[T]he new layout scheme -- in which you see only a few-line intro to each post but no pictures, block quotes, or other amplifying material -- unavoidably changes the sensibility and tone of personal blogs. It drains them of variety and individuality, not to mention making them much less convenient to read. Only now that it is gone do I realize how important the placing of photos has been to my own sense of what I wanted to convey, along with the ability to alternate between longer and shorter posts on a "landing" page, or to deliberately save some material for "after the jump" placement.
01 March, 2010

Symphony of Science offers a musical answer: ...

01 March, 2010

In the 1920s, the German writer and artist Fritz Kahn produced a series of illustrations depicting the human body as a machine, most famously in the 1926 poster, Der Mensch als Industriepalast (Man as Industrial Palace): Now, another German artist, 20-year-old Henning Lederer has created an animated version of the poster: Hat tip: Flowingdata.com....

25 February, 2010

Liberal economist Paul Krugman is fielding questions in a live chat on the New Yorker website, in connection with a profile of him in the current issue. On the subject of the inherent inefficiency of government: [G]overnment isn't nearly as bad -- or the private sector nearly as good -- as it's often portrayed. I know I lot of very good, very hard-working government employees; and while I don't work for a large corporation, I do read Dilbert. ...

24 February, 2010

[caption id="attachment_4532" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Pedro Almodóvar"][/caption] Last Thursday, the Cape Breton Island Film Series showed Pedro Almodóvar's Broken Embraces, which Roger Ebert describes as, "a voluptuary of a film, drunk on primary colors, caressing Penelope Cruz, using the devices of a Hitchcock to distract us with surfaces while the sinister uncoils beneath." It's a lush, layered melodrama, with lots of surprises hidden among its folds, including this utterly unexpected footnote to Contrarian's conversation about whether medical science should try to "cure" Down syndrome. The central character, Harry Caine (Lluís Homar), is a movie director who turns to script-writing after a brutal car...

20 February, 2010

David Beck of Clarkson University and Jennifer Jacquet of the University of British Columbia won an honorable mention in the illustration category of the [U.S.] National Science Foundation's 2009 Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge for Jellyfish Burger. Other winners include a comic strip about brain development, an animation showing why identical twins become less similar as they grow older, and a two minute video about airline routes. Fuller account here. Slideshow of other winners here. Podcast interview with some of the winners here. (The last two sites may require free registration.)...

19 February, 2010
Previous installments here, here, and here. A longish dissent from reader Jay Wilson:
The way you make it sound, we, the public, are the ones who indirectly caused this problem by forcing our poor beleaguered elected representatives underground and into making the kinds of reckless spending judgements they made. I take issue with that. As you said in your blog, "Upon taking office, most MLAs set aside established careers in exchange for a job with far less security than comparable positions in the private or public sector." That once was the case, for a good reason. Once upon a time, MLAs made very little money as elected representatives. To offset their costs of travel, constituency responsibilities, etc, they were given expense money. Fine. Then more people from different walks of life started getting involved in politics who didn't necessarily make as much as the usual assortment of doctors, lawyers and businesspeople who had mostly made up the elected ranks. Not to mention the complaints from the very sorts of individuals you referenced: People from higher-paying occupations who said it wasn't enough to live on and they could make more in the private sector. Over time, a new sensibility developed along the lines of "Let's pay them a better salary so that they can afford to live while serving our best interests." In the interests of fairness, the thought occurred to some that the money spent on expense accounts and the like could be decreased as now these elected officials would actually be making more. That's not what happened. In fact, as salaries continued to increase, so did money for expenses and then it diversified into a whole host of different expense categories. MLAs were getting money for everything and the kitchen sink, and who made these changes? Who increased their salaries and expense money? Who made the rules so deliberately ambiguous and full of holes so wide you could drive a tank through them? They did, behind closed doors and in quick legislative motions, with cursory mentions in the local press for the most part. Please don't try to excuse MLAs for their sorry behaviour. This is about three things: A pronounced sense of entitlement, a disconnect from reality and pure abject greed. Maybe it isn't on the same scale as the scandals in Britain and even Newfoundland, but those three things are present in each situation and they are things we should all be vigilant against.
19 February, 2010

Previous installments here and here. Paul Pross, emeritus professor of public administration at Dalhousie and the author of several books on lobbying, NGOs, and the formation of public policy, thinks we are being too hard on our politicians: I first met a politician fifty years ago. Since then, as a political scientist teaching at Dalhousie and, since retirement, as an active party member, I have met many more. A few turned out to be crooks. There were some self-important, pompous twits. But the majority were decent men and women who worked hard at a challenging and often stressful...

18 February, 2010

A few weeks ago, a swab test of Contrarian's laptop at Stanfield International Airport registered traces of nitroglycerin, leading to an additional interview and a 95% thorough physical pat-down. Details here. The Canadian Air Traffic Safety Agency (CATSA) has apologized in writing to a Winnipeg-based human-rights activist for a similar incident. A swab test of Ali Saeed's hands - not his laptop - turned up traces of trinitrotoluene, or TNT. After questioning, Saeed was permitted to board his flight for Denver. His return flight was uneventful. Regular readers will know that Contrarian detests many aspects of airport security. Recent air travel through...

18 February, 2010

I hesitate to start this, for fear of luring Olympic-worshiping bores out of their rec-rooms, but US bloggers had a field day with the perfectly hideous opening ceremony in Vancouver. My favorite was Heather Havrilesky in Salon.com, Moneyquotes: Some dramatic photography paired with soaring music and a lot of melodramatic prose. "Here, where a swerving coastline submits to waves of glacial peaks, where the mapping of the Western world came to an end, the discovery yet begins anew!" Praise Jesus! Who writes this stuff? Nelly Furtado and Bryan Adams perform the lamest song since that thing they play at the end of...

17 February, 2010
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