You may not want to eat them after seeing this, but oysters have a prodigious ability to filter polluted harbour waters. Watch what the laboratory oysters in this time-lapse video accomplish in just 90 minutes: Federal and state agencies in the US, together with non-profit groups and academic researchers, are enlisting oysters in their efforts to restore the badly degraded waters of Chesapeake Bay, between Virginia and Maryland. Oysters were once abundant in the bay. As young oysters settled and grew on the shells of old, they formed extensive reefs. In the 19th Century, researchers estimate, oysters could filter the entire volume of the...

02 November, 2014

In response to Friday's post deploring the purchase by HRM Police of military-issue, semi-automatic assault guns, and the department's ill-advised use of these guns in response to a burglary, a reader who knows his way around HRM politics writes: A properly functioning Board of Police Commissioners would have asked questions at budget time about what equipment was to be provided through the budget. Or perhaps this was discussed "in camera"  for "reasons of security." You won't find this in the minutes. A reader in British Columbia writes: Couldn't we demilitarize police uniforms? Get rid of the combat boots, bloused trousers, ball caps, and maybe, by the way, ditch the badass shades...

01 November, 2014

Earlier today, my friend Audra was looking for information about residency restrictions on Canadian First Nations reserves. As she began typing a search term into Google.ca, the autocomplete feature, which offers suggestions based on popular search terms, proffered the following: Still think we don't have a problem with racism in Canada?...

31 October, 2014

We awoke this morning to a CBC report that Halifax Regional Police have laid in a additional stock of military-issue, semi-automatic weapons, and they found two opportunities in the last 10 days to draw these weapons on the streets of Halifax. I am no gun expert, but piecing together police statements, photographs of the two incidents, and a little internet sleuthing, the guns in question appear to be Colt Canada C8-IUR carbines like the one pictured above, outfitted with 10- or 11.6-inch, cold hammer forged barrels for use in what Colt's promotional material calls “close-quarter battle.” Close-quarter battle. HRM Police stocked up on the weapons back...

31 October, 2014

Writing in the Metro News, reporter Ruth Davenport seeks to explain why so many women choose not to report episodes of sexual violence and abuse. Like so much of this discussion, it's a strongly worded piece, and it puts the lie to the notion women who "fail" to go to police "couldn’t possibly have been assaulted." Think about being groped, molested and raped, and then think about whether you’d want to give the detailed play-by-play to a whole stable of complete and mostly male strangers...

30 October, 2014

In the aftermath of Wednesday's shooting in Ottawa, here are four brief readings: two from readers, and two from columnists running counter to the national press hysteria. Longtime Contrarian reader Tim Segulin writes: Finally the Harper government has the undeniable pretext it has sought for years to spy on the phone and internet communications of innocent citizens without need of judicial oversight. After shrill charges that those who didn't agree 'stood with child pornographers' and an attempt to install it by exploiting the Rehteah Parsons and Amanda Todd tragedies was foiled by the Supreme Court, now the Harper government can claim that we...

28 October, 2014

    Director Ashley McKenzie and actress Carmen Townsend on the set of "4 Quarters Makes A...

27 October, 2014

Many online critics of the CBC's decision to fire Jian Ghomeshi have cited an earlier contretemps between the corporation and DNTO host Sook-yin Lee as having established the precedent that private sexual behavior is irrelevant to on-air employment at the public broadcaster. Here is how one twitter-poster put it: Sook-yin Lee did porn flicks. She still works for them. The comparison is inapt, and the details dead wrong. Notwithstanding the expertly crafted, pre-emptive defense in Ghomeshi's Facebook post, it seems all but certain that the issue in his firing is not private, non-mainstream sexual tastes, but the level of consent in specific sexual...

27 October, 2014

Now that the fog of fear and bombast is lifting, here is what we are left with: a single, mentally ill Canadian man approached a ceremonial guard at the National War Memorial Wednesday and shot him dead. The killer then drove and ran the very short distance to Parliament Hill, where rushed past security and was shot dead in a brief gunfight. The death of Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, a 24-year old army reservist from Hamilton, ON, is particularly sad, as he was a single father. Moreover, any violent disruption of Parliament constitutes an affront to democracy to be resisted with firm resolve. But then, the 500+ victims of homicides that occur every year in...

26 October, 2014

The week's events got one Contrarian reader thinking about policing: We have way too many police, and we pay way too much for them. Regardless of what people think, our crime rate is dropping. As I sometimes tell people when I am particularly argumentative, "If your child is not aboriginal or a new immigrant, then she is the safest person who has ever lived." So when I get a ticket for failing to stop at a stop sign given by a nice older man in the RCMP, any cost benefit analysis would say: way too much cost for too little benefit. --  Salary...

26 October, 2014
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