Former Talbot House resident Greg Carter writes: I'm writing in response to the department of community services' refusal to meet with the board and at least let them reopen. After all, the allegations against Fr. Paul Abbass were unfounded and in my opinion malicious. I spent 18 months at talbot house and never once felt or saw any inappropriate behaivior on any of the staff's part. The staff and Fr. Paul always acted with professionalism and care for the residents. Once my stay was over, I was able to come out to the house for a little work during the back shift,...

13 August, 2012

Here at last is Contrarian's searchable map of 2011 political donations in Nova Scotia: [Direct link to map] Each dot represents a donation. The dots are color-coded by party: orange (and brown) for NDP; red for Liberal; blue for PC; green for Green; and white for Atlantica. The larger dots stand for donations of $1,000 or more. Clicking on an individual dot reveals a pop-up table listing the name and address of the donor, the party to whom they donated, and the amount and type of donation. Use the + and – slider on the left side of the map to zoom...

12 August, 2012

My kind of Olympics commentary: [Video link] [UPDATE] Thanks to loyal reader JC for pointing out that this brilliant spoof is the work of Chris ‘The Viper’ Tordoff of the Hardy Bucks, an Irish mocumentary TV series akin to Nova Scotia's Trailer Park Boys. It centres on five "scheming, drinking, work-shy procrastinators from fictitious ‘Castletown’ in County Mayo, Ireland." Backstory here and here. IrishCentral reports that the spoofed sailing commentary first appeared on Vimeo, but was taken down, either by Vimeo acting on its own or on a take-down demand from the International Olympic Committee. This provoked a profanity laden audio retort from The Viper. Original H/T:...

12 August, 2012

They're back. (In case you spent the last 48 hours in a cave somewhere, here's the backstory.)...

10 August, 2012

Shocking to realize how far we've come from will.i.am (with apologies to Gotye): [Video link] H/T: Stephen Puddicombe...

10 August, 2012

J-school prof Ivor Shapiro's complaint that Canadian sports reporters uncritically promoted a we-was-robbed version of  the Canada-US Women's Olympic soccer final provoked Contrarian readers to provide contrary examples, and a testy chinwag amount tweeting Halifax journos (viz.:  @pdmcleod, @bbhorne). Ruth Davenport, who knows a little about news, thinks he jumped the gun: Shapiro’s beef stuck in my craw for the same reason any unfounded assertion of laziness or incompetence sticks in my craw: it’s unfounded. He was griping about a lack of reporting that was patently in evidence – he just didn’t bother to look.  Even if those particular pieces hadn’t been published...

09 August, 2012

TV producer John Wesley Chisholm,  whose Arcadia Entertainment production company is located on Halifax's Quinnpool Road, wonders why the street never quite achieves its potential as a great urban neighborhood. In some ways it’s a classic mainstreet. But it’s schizophrenic. It’s a highway with a hundred hidden driveways. It’s a shopping district and residential street. It’s six lanes wide in places, narrow in others. It’s a pedestrian arcade yet almost impossible to cross conveniently. It’s highspeed traffic and slow drag. It’s a parking lot and a thoroughfare. One thing is certain, it’s tired. The faces of the buildings are tired. The wires,...

08 August, 2012

The much admired Cape Breton musician Carmen Townsend holds the cherry red, 1965 Guild Starfire guitar that was stolen, along with three others, from the trunk of her car in a break-in last night on Willow Street in Halifax. Townsend, who performs as a soloist and also with such bands  the Tom Fun Orchestra and Motorleage, has owned the Guild since she was 19. "It is my baby," she writes in a Kijiji ad seeking its return. "I am crushed." Everyone who experiences a break-in or a burglary feels violated, but the theft of a struggling musician's tools of the trade is a...

08 August, 2012

Journalism prof Ivor Shapiro, writing on the website of the Canadian Journalism Project, thinks news reports of the Canada-US women's football semi-final, fell short of the standard required to condemn the much maligned ref. Was the ref biased? Of course the Canadian players and supporters thought so, but for a reporter, the best way — the professional way — to address a conflict is not to add to the yelling and bawling but instead, to show the evidence. Where was the tick-tock — the chronological list of tough calls the ref made (or didn’t make) through the match, for and against the Canadians? Where were...

07 August, 2012

Tense video of mission control scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Pasadena, California, as they receive word of the Curiosity rover's descent and landing on the surface of Mars, interspersed with a beautiful animated simulation of the landing. [Video link] And here is the first color photo Curiosity transmitted after landing, showing the landscape to the north of the rover: The image, which shows the north wall and rim of Gale Crater, has been tilted to level the horizon. It's blurry because the camera that took it still bears a transparent lens cap that is covered with dust kicked up during landing....

07 August, 2012
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