The number of "significant" natural catastrophes in North America causing more than $1 billion in losses of more than 50 deaths, 1950-2012: Number of natural catastrophes in North America, 1980-2011: For the climate change skeptics in the audience, these charts come not the Ecology Action Centre, the Natural Resources Defence Council, or the Pembina Institute, but from Munich Re, a $265-billion company that is one of the world's leading reinsurance brokers. (A reinsurer is an outfit that re-sells insurance liabilities when the risk becomes too great for a single retail firm, so it is on the front lines when catastrophic events loom.) Bear...

10 July, 2013

Writing in the New Republic, Ben Crair has ripped off a screed against the current fashion for standing desks — that is, desks you work at while standing or, for extremists, walking on a treadmill. To prepare Screw Your Standing Desk! A sitter's manifesto, Crair asked writers about their sitting/standing/treadmilling work habits. Most replied they had more important things to consider, but Gary Shteyngart, author of The Russian Debutante's Handbook, Absurdistan, and Super Sad True Love Story, offered this response, dear to Contrarian's heart: I do not sit. I lie. I am in bed now, writing to you. All my writing is done...

10 July, 2013

Miranda July has a publishing project underway that exists only in your email inbox. She asked 10 famous and somewhat famous friends and acquaintances (writers, actors, scientists, artists, athletes)  to look through their email archives and send her real emails in which they discuss particular topics like money or giving advice. She groups these by topic, and she'll be sending out a set every Monday from July 1 through November 11, 2013. You can sign up to receive them. "How they comport themselves in email is so intimate, almost obscene — a glimpse of them from their own point of view," July writes. Here is...

09 July, 2013

Premier Darrell Dexter shot a few baskets Monday afternoon during a courtesy call at the former Holy Angels High School, which New Dawn Enterprises is turning into a center for cultural organizations and entrepreneurship. Pictured in the doorway is Blair Oake, recently retired manager of City Printers, who will manage the facility. Seated in the stands, wearing a blue shirt,  is New Dawn president (and defeated mayoral candidate) Rankin MacSween. Dexter squeezed in a series of meet-and-greets en route to the NDP's Cape Breton-The Lakes nominating convention in Eskasoni, where Mi'kmaq John Frank Toney was acclaimed. Toney's nomination, tacitly endorsed by Eskasoni Chief...

09 July, 2013

Peter Spurway thinks I'm romanticizing Don "Fuzzy" Bacich's legendary crankiness about patrons who wanted to slather his delicious French fries with ketchup: “… and another bastion of quality and tradition falters.” Tradition, yes. Quality? No. Not providing something that many of your customers would like to have has nothing to do with quality. It has everything to do with the perspective of the owner. While I certainly grant the owner the right to fashion their product to their own liking, they have to accept that a percentage of their current and potential customers are not going to like it and it will be seen by...

08 July, 2013

Patrick Smith's Ask the Pilot blog adds an astounding data point to the accident, which killed at least two people and injured many more, some very seriously. [T]his was the first multiple-fatality crash involving a major airline in North America since November, 2001. The streak has ended, but it lasted nearly twelve years, with some 20,000 commercial jetliners taking off and landing safely in this country every single day — an astonishing run. Is it perverse to suggest that Saturday’s accident, awful as it was, serves to underscore just how safe commercial flying has become? [Emphasis added] 20,000 x 365 days x...

08 July, 2013

Facebook continually pesters me to entrer the "city" where I live, but rejects Kempt Head, Ross Ferry, Boularderie, and Cape Breton all of which are more-or-less accurate. It will allow me to enter Halifax, Sydney, or Baddeck, none of which is accurate. Contrast this with Google, which embraces locations with admirable granularity. Google effortlessly adopts islands, villages, hamlets—even micro-locations like Frankie's Pond and Parker's Beach—as long as it sees real people using them. This may seem a small thing, but it strikes me as a profound difference in the cultures of the two organizations. One constantly cajoles you into ill-fitting pigeonholes. The...

08 July, 2013

This afternoon, in a move sure to flabbergast longtime French fry fans in Sydney, a worker at Fuzzy's Fries offered a patron a plastic packet of ketchup. Civilization, as we know it, may be in peril. Former owner Don "Fuzzy" Bacich, who founded the landmark chip wagon at The Esplanade and Townsend St. 40 years ago,* offered a selection of salt, pepper, and vinegar, but had no truck with ketchup. He knew his proud creations owed their universal acclaim to the golden simplicity of their potatoey goodness. A little salt? Certainly. Some vinegar? Sure. But to slather his chips with the garish, tomato-based condiment...

07 July, 2013

One month after the apparent death of chronic lobster poacher and trap vandal Philip Boudreau, the CBC continues to falsely identify him as a fisherman.     [Click images for full-sized image.] This is perplexing  The CBC's very capable reporters and editors know full well that Boudreau held no commercial or sport fishing license of any kind. They know his status as a non-fisherman is both a key fact, and a probable factor, in the events leading to his disappearance. Never discount the role of haste in deadline journalism. Toronto web editors who are not the primary reporters covering this story may have simply assumed that a...

04 July, 2013

Here's the view this morning from the second storey of the Nova Scotia Power building on Lower Water Street. Photo: David Rodenhiser. Click image for full sized version. Of course, you can't see the NS Power building from this photograph, but I will take this opportunity to note that it is the most under-appreciated architectural marvel in Nova Scotia—a magnificent structure with many interesting features that combine to make it an exceptionally beautiful and functional workplace. The ground floor of the defunct coal-fired generating station is accessible to the public from the boardwalk side. If you are in the neighbourhood during business hours, you really should...

03 July, 2013
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