French born Guillaume Blanchet, now working as a copywriter for the Montreal advertising agency Bleublancrouge, rode his bike through the friendly streets of Montreal for 382 days, while filming himself from the handlebars, with this whimsical result: My father is 64 years old. He's been riding his bike more than 120,000 km. And he keeps going. I dedicate this film to him. More on Guillaume here and here....
One in Brittany, France, the other in Cape Breton, Canada. One cleaned up in a month, the other untouched after four, with no cleanup in sight. Here's the TK Bremen shortly after it grounded on Kerminihy Beach, near Erdeven, Brittany, France, on December 11. 2011. And here's the M/V Miner after it grounded on Scatarie Island, Cape Breton, after a towing cable parted on September 14, 2011. The much larger Miner was under tow, bound for a scrapyard in Aliaga, Turkey. Here are the two ships' specifications: M/V Miner TK Bremen Launched 1965 1982 Type Bulk carrier General cargo & bulk carrier Built in Quebec, Canada Pusan, South Korea Length (LOA) 222.5 m 109 m Beam 23...
Harvard's prestigious Nieman Foundation for Journalism has cast its discerning eye on a Nova Scotia online journal that succeeds while disdaining all the internet rules: How a tightly paywalled, social-media-ignoring, anti-copy-paste, gossipy news site became a dominant force in Nova Scotia Every morning, the business and political elite in the biggest province on Canada’s East Coast turns to an unlikely source of information about their own world. Among all the online news organizations trying to find a way to profitability, consider AllNovaScotia.com, which has just celebrated 10 years online and now challenges its historic print rival for the attention of the province’s leaders. It’s done that by not...
The critical issue is: Which part of the board should players of varying skills aim for?
Should they aim for the triple 20, with a big payout on a success, but a low score from a miss? Or, should they aim for the bullseye? Alternatively, is there some other optimal location on the board they can aim for that, whilst not the highest scoring region, has a large expanse of middle-of-the-road point values. Would aiming for this region, even with an inaccurate shot, get a reasonable number of points such that, on average, the expected score is the highest that can be achieved? The true answer to this riddle, as we will see, is that "it depends…"
Little Shining Man, a kite sculpture created by Heather and Ivan Morrison, takes flight from a beach at St. Aubin's Bay, on the Bailiwick of Jersey. Videography by James O'Garra. H/T John Hugh Edwards....
From the moment I first stepped inside one, I have regarded dollar stores as miraculous institutions, unappreciated by the cognoscenti. In this morning's New York Times, reporter Jesse McKinley describes how he outfitted his new apartment in Albany, NY, entirely from items purchased at the various dollar stores that abound in the area (with a slide show). The daring Mr. McKinley does not observe my only rule of dollar store consumption: Avoid items intended to be ingested....
Lauren Oostveen, Nova Scotia's tweeting archivist, today unearthed a clipping from The 4th Estate, Halifax's one-time alternative weekly, about a vampire conflab that took place at Dalhouse 39 years ago this month. The 4th Estate story is good, but the yarn Oostveen dug up to go with it is even better. Organized by English Professor Devendra P. Varma, a renowned Dracula-lit buff, the goth-before-its-time conference boasted "the largest gathering of vampire experts ever presented in Canada," and featured a screening of the classic 1931 movie Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi. The Himalayan-born Varma, who died in 1994, was apparently quite a character. According to Oostveen,...
For once in his life, Grapes is worth listening to: H/T: Silas...
What's that ghostly visage cruising over Halifax on an overcast Fourth of July, 1936. Hint: take a closer look at the logo emblazoned on the airship's tail. It's Luftschiff Zeppelin #129, better known as the Hindenburg, on a transatlantic flight just 10 months before its catastrophic docking at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey. The photo is one of many fascinating images on a Nova Scotia Archives web display called An East Coast Port: Halifax in Wartime, 1939-1945. The Hindenburg overflew the city at about 1000 feet, causing the Halifax Herald to fret two days later over the possibility “those aboard the Hindenburg were...
Toronto Star movie critic Peter Howell is a 2001: A Space Odyssey fanatic who claims to have seen the 1968 Stanley Kubrick sci-fi classic more than 40 times. For the second holiday season in a row, Bell Lightbox, the Toronto International Film Festival's modernistic movie showcase, is featuring a 70MM version of the film. Critic Howell marked last year's screenings with a column titled, "21 cool things about 2001: A Spacey Odyssey." He reprised the column yesterday with "21 more cool things." In this year's instalment, Howell reports that when Kubrick was editing Space Odyssey, the comedian and filmmaker Jerry Lewis was...