In the summer of 1976, Tom Enders, Canada's Ambassador to the United States, and officials of the US State Department were negotiating the details of a meeting between Foreign Affairs Minister Allan J MacEachen and US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Since Kissinger had called upon MacEachen in Ottawa the previous October, the assumption was that the next meeting would take place in Washington. As recorded in a confidential August 7, 1976, State Department memo to Kissinger, one of more than 1.7 million U.S. State Department cables dating from 1973-1976 released last week by Wikileaks, MacEachen suggested an alternative plan: AMBASSADOR ENDERS HAS ALSO INFORMED...

10 April, 2013

I generally refrain from commenting on developments in the Sydney Tar Ponds project, because I know better than most the PR minefield faced by those charged with getting the job done. Nevertheless, the Government of Canada has just released a short video that sanitizes the history of the cleanup in a manner so patronizing and false, it demands comment. Here's an excerpt from the video's smarmy narration: In the years and decades that followed, Sydney would see good times, and it would see hard times. But the resilience of its people would never falter. Faced with the environmental legacy of a century of...

10 April, 2013

If the earth were only 100 pixels wide (instead of 12,756 kms.), what would the distance to Mars look like? Two British designers, Jesse Williams and David Paliwoda, have devised a neat interactive animation to show you the answer, along with how far it is to a GPS satellite and the moon. . Don't stop here. Click on the image (or here) to see the animation for yourself. Hint:  Even at an impossible 3x the speed of light, it's a long way off. ("And we put a piece of equipment on it," my friend Jeff P. observed in wonderment.) H/T:  Flowing Data  ...

08 April, 2013

Last week, I posted a photo of Contrarian's home turf that Chris Hadfield, 35th Commander of the International Space Station, had taken from 370 kilometres overhead. An avid photographer, Hadfield has produced scores of images depicting locations all over the earth, including at least 10 of Nova Scotia sites.* You may already know what I managed to miss: that geographer David MacLean and his students at the College of Geographic Sciences in Lawrencetown, NS, have created a database of Hadfield's images (and some by fellow astronaut Thomas H. Marshburn) that you can access through a wonderful, interactive map. MacLean has been kind enough to let...

07 April, 2013

My granddaughter Kate's first birthday provided an opportunity to sample the newest addition to Nova Scotia's craft beer landscape. Big Spruce Beer, brewed on the Yankee Line in Nyanza, is perishable, and must be refrigerated. It is sold only at the brewery, and only in these 1.89 l. (2 US quart) jugs (which ensures its status as a sociable drink). It has a mild, hoppy edge, and compares favourably with the best offerings from Propeller or the Granite Brewery. Well done! UPDATE: Big Spruce will have launch parties at Governors Pub in Sydney on April 12th, and The Wooden Monkey in Dartmouth on...

07 April, 2013

Is there anything in all of news and current affairs less edifying and more hypocritical than morning-after analysis of provincial budgets? No matter who is in power, the response of the self-serving talking heads who pop up in the media is always the same: Shame! You decreased (or failed to sufficiently increase) funding for the industry or interest group I represent. Shame! You increased (or failed to sufficiently decrease) taxes on the taxpayer cohort I represent. [caption id="attachment_11587" align="alignright" width="200"] Erjavec[/caption] Spend more (on me)! Lower taxes (on me)! And don't you dare run a deficit! The finger-waggers never acknowledge the tradeoffs required for a...

05 April, 2013

From Halifax artist Shawna Mac:   [Click here for the full-sized image.] "I'm not very good with 'art talk,' " Shawna replied when I asked her what she was going for in this picture. "It just seems there is a lack of contemporary historical Canadian art. Most of the pictures being made these days are either derogatory, abstract, or pretty flowers and landscapes.  Not that there's anything wrong with that, but someone should fill in the blanks.  I'm just glad I live in a country where I don't go to jail for it." To my undiscerning eye, the image imparts a schoolboy geekiness to...

05 April, 2013

In a prescient book published a quarter century ago, when few people had heard of the internet, Carolyn Marvin, a professor of communications at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication, catalogued the fear and loathing with which newspapers greeted the advent of the telegraph and the telephone. High on the list of perceived horrors was the inevitable moral degradation of women. Old media are still at it, constantly warning us to be very afraid of the perils lurking in the internet, computers, smart phones, cell phones, etc. The magazine Pacific Standard gamely took note of this handwringing today with an article...

04 April, 2013

Less than an hour ago, from his perch aboard the International Space Station, Cmdr. Chris Hadfield posted this photo of Contrarian's Kempt Head, Boularderie Island, home. (Just incidentally, the photo also shows the ice of Baddeck Bay, from which Alexander Graham Bell's research team flew Canada's first powered aircraft, the Silver Dart, in 1909, a factoid Hadfield happened to mention.) For the geographically challenged, Boularderie Island is the slender finger of land extending in from the right edge of the photo. Kempt Head forms the island's southwestern tip, and is the name applied to the community that occupies the portion of the island...

04 April, 2013
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