"Today's high winds out of the north created quite a storm surge along the southern shore of the Bras d’Or Lake," writes hydrologist Fred Baechler....

Beaches are complex, dynamic, fragile systems that protect coastlines from storm damage, support wildlife, and offer recreational pleasures. They are imperilled when road builders with no scientific expertise in beach management muck about with excavators....

Today’s Morning File led off with a victory lap in which Editor Tim Bousquet proclaimed that, “as I predicted, [the Tuft's Cove spill] was much larger than originally reported.” I call B.S....

Scientific American calls bullshit on wind chill: [I]f the air temperature is, say, 15 degrees F, and a 20–mile per hour wind makes the wind chill –2 degrees F, would the temperature of your exposed skin drop to that temperature? No. Your skin temperature cannot drop below the actual air temperature. The coldest your uncovered face could get would be 15 degrees F whether the wind is calm or howling at 40 mph...

Saturday in Purcell's Cove: Ruby had much to say about this intrusion in her own backyard. The deer, perhaps spying the leash, feigned indifference. Photo: Marla Cranston...

Every Christmas since 1993, British Television's Channel 4 asks a noteworthy figure to record an "alternative" to starchy pieties of Her Majesty's annual Christmas message to her subjects. This year, Channel 4 tapped whistleblower Edward Snowden. From his temporary asylum in Russia, Snowden sounded a pithy, 1 minute, 43 second, warning about the dangers of government spying: A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all. They’ll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves — an unrecorded, unanalysed thought...