Twenty two years ago today, Expos ace Dennis Martínez threw the 13th perfect game in Major League Baseball history, defeating the Los Angeles Dodgers 2-0 in LA. Here is the last half of the ninth, with Expos broadcasters Rodger Brulotte and Denis Casavant calling the play-by-play en français. In a major league career that spanned 22 years, Martínez compiled a 245–193 record, and is one of a handful of pitchers to have won more than 100 games in both the American and National Leagues. There have been 10 perfect games since Martínez threw his, a statistical curiosity Contrarian has pondered here, here, and here. H/T: David Horton...

28 July, 2013

Things went from bad to worse for a young smelt herring in West Pubnico Saturday morning. A common tern and a green crab had their eyes cocked for a meal when he happened by. My guess is that herring and green crab both fulfilled their destinies as breakfast. Nova Scotia Bird Society stalwart Ronnie D'Entremont was on hand to capture the action with this once-in-a-lifetime shot. Nova Scotia has a lot of wonderful nature photographers, but Ronnie ranks with the best. Photo copyright ©2013 by Ronnie D'Entremont. Reproduced by permission. All rights reserved.  Click the image for a higher-res version....

22 July, 2013

Our friend the curmudgeon has been quiet for a while, but the spectre of Detroit's decayed grandeur propelled him to the keyboard: Move along, Nova Scotians. There's nothing for you to see in the grotesque collapse of the city of Detroit. Keep your focus on rural development. Don't worry about Halifax. It's wealthy beyond imagination. There's nothing wrong with its downtown that arresting a few panhandlers won't fix. Avoid tall buildings; spread out instead. Never mind that only seven of 16 HRM electoral districts are genuinely urban. You can count on the other nine councillors to keep the urban centre healthy and...

22 July, 2013

I enjoy Malcolm Gladwell's writing, and often feel I come away with fresh insights into the way the world works, as opposed to how it appears to work. But I will read Gladwell with more skepticism after reading a spectacular takedown in an unlikely blog called "Ask-a-Korean." If you have followed media coverage of the July 6 crash of Asiana Flight 214 at San Francisco Airport, you have doubtless heard speculation that Korea's culture of deference to authority, a culture deeply embedded in the Korean language, played a role in the crash. This theory owes much to Gladwell, who devoted a...

21 July, 2013

[caption id="attachment_12344" align="alignnone" width="600"] Michigan Central Station[/caption] At the end of the XIXth Century, mankind was about to fulfill an old dream. The idea of a fast and autonomous means of displacement was slowly becoming a reality for engineers all over the world. Thanks to its ideal location on the Great Lakes Basin, the city of Detroit was about to generate its own industrial revolution. Visionary engineers and entrepreneurs flocked to its borders...

20 July, 2013

Capping and containment of the last sections of the former Sydney Tar Ponds nears completion. Looking northwest from the top of the old Sysco slag heap, this image, taken Wednesday evening, shows the mouth of the newly restored Muggah Creek. What appears to be black soil at the side of the stream is actually plastic sheeting, part of the engineered containment system for the stabilized and solidified coal byproducts below. From the same vantage point, the view to the southwest shows the Ferry Street bridge in the distance. Containment and capping of solidified wastes in the north Tar Pond, on the...

18 July, 2013

The provincial government has changed the Labour Standards Code to protect the jobs of parents who take time off because their child is critically ill or has fallen victim to a serious crime. The changes guarantee a parent's right to return to work at the same pay and working conditions after: up to 37 weeks if they have been caring for a critically ill child up to 104 weeks if their child has died as a result of a crime up to 52 weeks if a child has disappeared as a result of a crime. Who could possibly question measures to ease the suffering of...

14 July, 2013

Toshi-Aline Ohta Seeger died Tuesday night at her home at Beacon, NY. She was 91. Here's how her grandson, Tao Rodriguez-Seeger, summed up her marriage to America's most famous folksinger: "Without my grandmother, there would be no Pete Seeger the way people understand it," Rodriguez-Seeger said. "That's not an exaggeration. She kept everything working so that he could focus on the world-saving, civil rights, anti-nukes, Clearwater - all of the projects that my grandfather worked on." A few years ago, Pete recorded these thoughts about his wife of 70 years, and her extraordinary family background: Mark Moss, editor of Sing Out! magazine has...

11 July, 2013

Well here's some depressing news: Of the seven bat species* ever recorded in Nova Scotia, only three — the little brown bat, the northern long-eared bat, and the tri-coloured bat — have been present in "significant populations." Today, provincial wildlife experts listed all three as endangered under the Nova Scotia Endangered Species Act. The Department of Natural Resources website cites white-nose-syndrome, a fatal fungus-borne disease that has killed nearly seven million bats in eastern North America in the last eight years. The three years since the disease was first detected in Nova Scotia have seen an estimated 90% percent decline in our populations. There is...

11 July, 2013
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