Last week, I posted a photo of Contrarian's home turf that Chris Hadfield, 35th Commander of the International Space Station, had taken from 370 kilometres overhead. An avid photographer, Hadfield has produced scores of images depicting locations all over the earth, including at least 10 of Nova Scotia sites.* You may already know what I managed to miss: that geographer David MacLean and his students at the College of Geographic Sciences in Lawrencetown, NS, have created a database of Hadfield's images (and some by fellow astronaut Thomas H. Marshburn) that you can access through a wonderful, interactive map. MacLean has been kind enough to let...

07 April, 2013

[caption id="attachment_7540" align="alignright" width="200" caption="James Fallows"][/caption] Contrarian regulars know of my admiration for the eclectic James Fallows, who writes and blogs for The Atlantic. James is in China this winter, finishing up a book, and while he does that, rotating squads of unterbloggers are filling in for him. I'm in the rotation this week, and I've posted three items so far: A word about our sponsor Meet Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim. Alexander Graham Bell Defends His Butler. My week of guest-blogging happens to fall amidst a crush of other work, so it's unlikely I'll get much posted here until things settle down. But...

17 March, 2011

That's what Atlantic tech blogger Alexis Madrigal calls Google's Books Ngram Viewer. Google has scanned about 10 percent of all the books ever published. Enter any word or phrase into the search box, and the viewer returns a graph of its frequency of appearance in books published over the last two centuries. Note that the searches are case sensitive, and you can compare the relative frequencies of up to four five different words or phrases, separating them by commas in the search box. Say, "Nova Scotia" and "Ontario," for example: Try it yourself, and please send me any interesting pairings you come up with. Madrigal's...

16 December, 2010

China hand James Fallows expends a lot of time and words reassuring Americans that China is not the unstoppable, omnipotent superpower they fear it to be. Reality is more complicated, he argues, especially when viewed up close, from within China, where he has spent years. However, a Fallows cover story in the current Atlantic warns of one technology in which China is leaving the west in its dust: the quest for ways to burn coal without emitting carbon. In exhorting the west to greater effort in pursuit of clean coal, Fallows takes aim at one of the environmental movement's most sacred bovines: the...

13 November, 2010

Do not miss Jeffrey Goldberg's continuing posts about his surprise command audience with Fidel Castro last week. First instalment here; second here. Goldberg is a perplexing figure, a former member of the IDF, quick to call anti-semitism against anyone who balks at his lockstep advocacy of troubling Israeli policies. He caused a stir recently with an Atlantic cover story speculating about an impending Israeli nuclear strike against Iran. Many regarded the article as thinly disguised tub-thumping for such an attack (see here and here), while others demurred. In the end, the Atlantic held an extensive, online print debate about the issue — which...

08 September, 2010

Alexis Madrigal, Atlantic's new tech blogger, poses the question this way: You hop onto a parent's computer to check your email or do a little work. But, to your dismay, the only browser available is Internet Explorer and (for whatever reason) you don't like Internet Explorer. You download Firefox (or Chrome), then install and launch it. Firefox (or Chrome) then asks whether you want to make it your (Mom's) default browser. Of course you do! But should you really make this decision for Mom? Yes, says Madrigal, quoting a mashup of Tweeted responses: "It's our responsibility to help our parents figure out technology"...

15 July, 2010
The Atlantic's* blog section, my single favorite part of the Internet and a frequent source of posts and links here, is in turmoil this morning owing to a redesign that has stripped its superb habitues of the graphical personality and color that made their individual pages so compelling. It didn't help that a series of glitches accompanied the changeover, including the (apparently temporary) loss of RSS feeds and the (hopefully temporary) disappearance of daily email updates. The esteemed James Fallows, though characteristically uber-polite, is unable to conceal his unhappiness:
[T]he new layout scheme -- in which you see only a few-line intro to each post but no pictures, block quotes, or other amplifying material -- unavoidably changes the sensibility and tone of personal blogs. It drains them of variety and individuality, not to mention making them much less convenient to read. Only now that it is gone do I realize how important the placing of photos has been to my own sense of what I wanted to convey, along with the ability to alternate between longer and shorter posts on a "landing" page, or to deliberately save some material for "after the jump" placement.
01 March, 2010

A cautious Contrarian reader writes: A friendly caution about taking pictures inside the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority pre-board screening area: If noticed, likely to attract unwanted security attention. Noted — but isn't this just further evidence that the real purpose of security theater is not to keep Canadians safe but to buttress the puffed-up functionaries charged with upholding these useless, colossally wasteful procedures? [caption id="attachment_2591" align="alignwrap" width="545" caption="Left: Stanfield International Airport 7 a.m., October 15. The security queue extends past the Clearwater Seafoods kiosk to the Air Canada check-in counter. Right: Half and hour later, inside the CATSA security zone. "][/caption] The overwhelming evidence...

18 October, 2009
faulkner-cJames Fallows, author, Atlantic Magazine writer, and erstwhile speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter, has cataloged with discernment his admiration for several of President Obama's landmark speeches over the last 18 months. So it was surprising to read his prediction that the president's acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize will flop. Fallow's argument is "probabilistic:" Of the hundreds of Nobel prize acceptance speeches delivered over the years, he contends, only one was ever noteworthy:  the three-minute oration by novelist William Faulkner, a man notorious for hating to make speeches. Here is Faulkner's remarkable address, delivered on December 10, 1950:
The full text is after the jump:
12 October, 2009

I promise not to go on about this ad nauseam, but I just discovered that Beagle-owner Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic noted Rosie's obit in his Daily Dish blog Sunday. Rosie's sardine can caper reminded Andrew of the time his now aging beagle Dusty broke into an overnight bag some house guests had imprudently left on the floor of his loft—with two large boxes of Godiva chocolates hidden inside. Moneyquote: It was a beagle Linda Blair - with viscous chocolate liquid projectile vomiting everywhere in sight. I went to grab her to get her outside. She decided this was a game....

09 October, 2009
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