A couple of day-after comments about Darrell Dexter's cabinet shuffle seem worth passing on: First, a longtime New Democrat writes that, "Having to take Maureen out of Health to backfill Finance indicates a lack of bench strength." Précisément. Second, a friend notes that, as a former paramedic, incoming Health Minister Dave Wilson should put paid to Nursing Union president Janet Hazelton's campaign to featherbed the new Collaborative Emergency Centres. Hazelton has complained the staffing model of one nurse and one advanced care paramedic, with telephone backup from an emergency room specialist physician, is insufficient to meet, ahem, professional standards. Nothing less than two union nurses will do,...

31 May, 2012

A Chinese engineer, on his first trip to the United States, a work assignment for his company, snapped this photo, reproduced today on James Fallows's blog. Fallows asks his readers: Why did he take the photo? What happened next? For the answers, go here....

07 May, 2012

  The video of a clever mariner squeezing his 80-foot mast under a '65 bridge on the Inter-Coastal Waterway reminded Chris Lambie of sailing across Florida's Lake Okeechobee with his father. We weren't sure if our mast would clear a bridge on the eastern edge of the lake, as the water level was pretty high. But my dad did the calculations and figured we'd squeak through. As we slipped underneath the span, the VHF antenna ticked gently against one of the girders, and dad got a speck of rust in his eye. I also remember running gently aground somewhere in the silt that...

24 April, 2012

On Sunday, I questioned the sudden closure of the Talbot House Recovery Centre, and the treatment accorded it's executive director, Fr. Paul Abbass, after a victim's rights activist apparently passed along an unspecified third- or fourth-party complaint about Abbass to the Department of Community Services. A sample of the responses follows, but please also see this clarification of my original post. A reader writes: I am a former resident of Talbot house and I am convinced the experience saved my life. At no time during my therapy did I witness any impropriety on the part of Paul Abbass or any staff member. Talbot...

03 April, 2012

Here's another placemarker for an issue I've wanted to write about for some time. I have not read any details of the Harper Governments plan to rein in federal environmental assessments, but in principle, I believe such an exercise is long overdue. It is a dirty little secret of the environmental movement that federal environmental assessments are a massive scam. They take far too long. They cost far too much. They do not focus on important issues. Everyone in the system knows this, but no one complains, because almost everyone benefits. Engineering companies get tens of millions of dollars to carry out...

30 March, 2012

The Strait-Richmond Regional School Board cancelled classes in all schools today. Apparently there's a wicked storm underway. Thank God the children are safe. Not to mention the teachers and board administrators, union members all, right up to the superintendent. To be fair, there is snow visible in half of these highway cam images from the school board's catchment area, just none on the actual roads beings monitored. In case you missed Jim Meek's column on this subject in Saturday's Herald, you can find it here. Said Meek: My idea of hell is [CBC weather dude Peter] Coade broadcasting the weather forecast in an...

27 March, 2012

[caption id="attachment_9552" align="alignright" width="250" caption="Too damned many."][/caption] In response to my note about the 40-something Norwegian who had never seen a snow day until he came to Nova Scotia, Contrarian reader Joyce Rankin of Mabou Westmount blames consolidation of schools and secularization of society for the proliferation of snow days. Her response sparked a lively email debate. I remember we never used to have snow days either. But then again, we were close enough to school that we could walk. The questions to ask, for a proper comparison, would be how far children in Norway travel to school, and how far people drive to...

12 March, 2012

Contrarian reader Silas Barss Donham [Disclosure: Gee, that name seems familiar] can put up with most of the steps required to heat his Orangedale house with wood: the cutting, hauling, splitting (or paying someone to), the stacking outside to dry, tossing into the basement, re-stacking inside, carrying upstairs to the fireplace, and the constant sweeping of ashes, bark, and furch. But he grows weary of making "the daily, just-so crumple of old newspaper to light the fire." Not being a daily newspaper reader, I have to go from store to store to collect enough expired papers (avoiding the new Globe and Mail...

11 March, 2012

I met a Norwegian immigrant last night, a man in his 40s. He has lived in Nova Scotia for four years. At one point, the conversation turned to snow days. "You know," he said, "in 40 years in Norway, I never saw one snow day. Not from school. Not from work." Four years in Nova Scotia, and he's seen about 40. Just saying'....

07 March, 2012

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...

24 January, 2012
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