Yesterday, I posted a slo-mo  video of a Slinkeys, which, when dropped while their springs were completely distended, appeared to levitate momentarily, until their springs had time to re-compress, whereupon they began their expected downward trajectory. My pal Peter Barss (who is descended from a real pirate, kids) has a question "for anyone who remembers their physics better than I do." During most of the its fall, the bottom of the Slinky remains absolutely motionless, which, to my mind, means the gravitational force acting on the slinky pulling it down is exactly balanced by the force compressing the bottom of the...

26 June, 2012

Every once in a while, between pleas from search engine optimizers, deposed African Generals, and cut-rate Viagra pushers, spam coughs up a gem. Like the 5,711-word message I just received from Father Yahweh, yea Jehovah, Most High God, aka Linda Newkirk of Little Rock, Arkansas. It began like this: It can now be reported that many of the wildfires in the western United States have been started by highly trained and well equipped foreign terrorists. It can also be reported that these terrorists are also responsible for the numerous explosions that occured in Michigan on the 6th and 7th of June...

26 June, 2012

All the actions is in the first 140 seconds.The remaining four minutes of explanation, involving claims of "information transfer" and "signals," strike me as, frankly, bulltwaddle. Much more plausible is the explanation furnished by Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, which in turn came from an even more thorough explanation on Rhett Allain's blog at Wired.com. What you're seeing: If a slinky is hung by one end such that its own weight extends it, and that slinky is then released, the lower end of the slinky will not fall or rise, but will remain briefly suspended in air as though levitating. Explained: [T]he best thing is to...

25 June, 2012

H/T: YNW [Update] Our friend the cranky physicist comments: A true contrarian would look at the actual risks of the asbestos and it's removal as well as the cost to taxpayers from how we overreact. That was also my first reaction, because I get that not all asbestos is dangerous in all circumstances. But, hey, school ended today. Couldn't they have waited a week?...

24 June, 2012

When information is presented in a format computer programs can read, as opposed to a static, telephone directory-style list, fresh insights spring from the data. Contrarian friend Gus Reed prepared a compendium of revelations arising from Elections Nova Scotia's annual political donations report—once we liberated it from the cloistered format favored by the former Chief Electoral Officer. Some examples: Does Nova Scotia have a party of the rich? Not according to the donations made in 2010. When Gus plotted the proportion of donations against their size, all three major parties showed a remarkably similar distributions: Vote tallies for the three major parties in...

22 June, 2012

In a series of posts last September, Contrarian revealed that Nova Scotia's Chief Electoral Officer had degraded the format used to report political donations over $50. For the first time, she released the file as a scanned PDF that cannot be searched or readily copied to other formats. Helpful Contrarian readers promptly hacked* McCulloch's degraded files, enabling us to republish the data in the searchable, text-grab-friendly format used in previous years’ reports. Today's long overdue follow-up provides the data in two new, even more useful and interesting formats: An Excel spreadsheet readers can view, parse, and re-use in ways limited only by their imaginations and...

21 June, 2012

Cape Breton musicians and artists celebrated their hope for photographer Carol Kennedy Wednesday night with wonderful music and just the right words, spoken by just the right people.  Cape Breton University's Boardmore Playhouse was a roomful of love. Kennedy, in treatment for cancer, wasn't up to the drive from in from her North River Bridge home, so she listened and watched on Skype. From time to time, audience members could hear her shouted hellos and thank yous to emcee Maynard Morrison. "Angels are people who counsel from a place of love," Kennedy wrote in an email read by Joella Foulds. "I am definitely surrounded...

21 June, 2012

Last November, a series of Contrarian posts depicted the mesmerizing spectacle of starling murmuration: the undulating patterns made by starling flocks in flight (here, here, and here). Beyond their intrinsic beauty, these scenes provoke a sense of wonder: how do they do it? How do the hundreds of individuals who make up a flock of birds (or a school of sardines, or a swarm of midges) know how to execute their particular roles in the collective ballet. The standard explanation, recounted by a pair of Italian physicists who have studied the question [PDF], runs like this: [T]his collective behaviour stems from some simple rules...

20 June, 2012

Rule 1 for Copy Editors: Pay attention to the photo your slapping in next to that headline, and vice versa. A friend who logged more than a few nights on the rim writes: It's hell laying out a tabloid front, eh? Especially when half of it is sent to you from T.O. I note that Canada is becoming a world leader in random gruesome crimes. As you know, this is a leading indicator that the Harperite vision of Canada is progressing well. Note that this is the Winnipeg version of Metro, not the Halifax edition....

19 June, 2012
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