Contrarian reader Peter Barss waxes philosophical about the primal draw of radio-storms and weather-porn: It 's exciting to sit in our warm, safe living rooms listening to dire warnings of impending weather doom. It's even more of a thrill to turn on our flat screen TVs and watch weather gals and guys get whipped by wind-driven snow as they stand outside yelling into their microphones so they can be heard over the howling "weather bomb." We live in a society that is soft and luxurious. One of the luxuries we indulge is the illusion that if we just do everything right we...

01 March, 2013

Most of the listeners who responded to my debate with CBC manager Andrew Cochran about the network's (in my view) inflated coverage of weather are just fine with the CBC's weather treatment. [caption id="attachment_11355" align="alignright" width="300"] Highway conditions at 3:30 pm, February 20, when Cape Breton schools closed early due to forecasts of possible freezing rain that evening: Pavement dry; precipitation nil.[/caption] This doesn't surprise me. Some people like being frightened about weather, just as others like being frightened about crime. Lurid coverage of crime by some media has led to a sharp increase in the public perception of personal risk from...

01 March, 2013

Kudos to Andrew Cochran, Maritimes Regional Director of the CBC, for agreeing to debate the network's hyperventilated coverage of routine weather events. We hashed it out in an extended session this morning on CBC Cape Breton's Information Morning program. Longtime Contrarian readers know I think Nova Scotia has lost all perspective about weather, working ourselves into a lather over events we would have taken in stride 30 years ago. The CBC is one link in this chain of timorousness. Environment Canada, which issues daily "statements,"  "advisories," and "warnings" about routine weather inconveniences, is another. School officials arbitrarily grant paid holidays to hundreds of...

28 February, 2013

Saint Mary's professor Larry Haiven thinks blaming unions for unnecessary snow days is silly: This is part of a syndrome of "if in doubt, blame the unions."  So convenient.  So wrong. A few years ago I was taking a tour of the new Toronto opera house.  We were allowed to go everywhere except on stage, even though the stage was bare, with no current production going on. One of the tour members asked the docent why we couldn't go on stage.  The tour member said he had been on tours of all the great opera houses of Europe and had never been barred...

07 March, 2010

By 7:30 a.m., today, it had stopped snowing at Kempt Head. Total accumulation: 2-5/8ths inches. Cancellations: Cape Breton Victoria School Board; Strait Richmond School Board; NSCC Marconi Campus; NSCC Strait Campus; Mayflower Mall (until noon, except for anchor stores); and pretty much every other event you could think of. Imagine! Two and five-eighth inches of snow! In February, in Nova Scotia! Gadzooks! Why hasn't the army been called? What on earth has happened to us? What has turned us into a nation of cowering, cringing, 'fraidy cats who darsn't get out of bed in the morning, lest something bad happen. Something bad might happen. Get...

17 February, 2010