Anyone who saw Cirque du Soleil's recent shows in Halifax will have noticed the circular structure used to convey people and props between the stage and the upper reaches of the MetroCentre's girders. The shape of this trussed torus, and the way it hung in the air, reminded me of something I couldn't quite put my finger on. Then it hit me: Alexander Graham Bell's circular kite, two fabric-covered disks, conjoined by tetrahedral trusses, flying over Beinn Bhreagh. No larger point here — the structures aren't even all that similar in detail — just a striking confluence of shape, style, and scale across...

15 May, 2012

Our friend in New Brunswick has been channeling Pat Boone: Dear Aliant, It’s not me, it’s you. We’ve been through a lot together. Land lines and cell phones. Dial-up, high-speed, wireless Internet sticks and now, fibre-op. I’ve treated you well. Sent you hundreds of dollars every single month. Tried to keep the lines of communication open. We’ve talked and talked – never more than during my recent move to New Brunswick. In fact, we just got off the phone with one another, marking our tenth call related to my move from Nova Scotia. I called you just now because I was alarmed to receive...

07 May, 2012

Answer: It takes a big pair of balls. The video was taken somewhere on the InterCoastal Waterway around 2007. See a longer version here, and another vantage point here. The original poster explains that the balls, each containing a tonne of water, are swung out with an initial turn of the boat to port or starboard. At that point, the boat tends to continue heeling on its own, but the degree of list can be controlled by extending the line holding each bag, using a winch in the cockpit. H/T: Eliot Frosst...

19 April, 2012

  The management of Simeon's Family Restaurant in Sydney attached a makeshift sign to the venerable but non-functioning Bell-Aliant pay phone in the restaurant's vestibule. With the explosion in cell phone ownership and use, timely maintenance of the ancient pay-per-use devices just isn't a priority any more. "Trying to find a working pay phone," wrote one friend when I posted this photo on Facebook, "is like trying to find a four-leaf clover." "I love pay phones," wrote another. "They hint at a world of possibilities."...

09 April, 2012

The bow section of the Titanic resting on the Atlantic Ocean bottom. A pair of self-propelled, undersea robots scoured the 3-by-5-mile debris field, snapping more than 100,000 hi-resolution side-scan sonar images that a computer lated stitched together to create the most comprehensive map yet of the disaster's remains. The bow section roughly corresponds to the highlighted portion of the photo below. The stern section, which suffered far more damage during the two-and-a-half-mile plunge to the ocean bottom, lies in pieces scattered half a mile away from the bow. Researchers from RMS Titanic Inc., the wreck's legal custodian, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in...

12 March, 2012

Earlier today, I posted a photograph of uncertain provenance showing Nova Scotia as seen from the International Space Station at night, and wondered out loud where it had come from. The estimable Bethany Horne of Halifax Open File pointed us to this Reddit post, and thence to this collection of NASA astronaut videography, where we tracked down the amazing sequence from which our image — a screenshot, as it turns out — was clipped. Check out this gorgeous time-lapse video from the space station's January 29 pass up the East Coast of North America, starting at the southern edge of the Gulf of...

14 February, 2012

A view of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and parts of Maine and Quebec, taken from the International Space Station. Click the image for a larger version. The bright spot at the left side is Montreal Quebec City;* that on the middle right is Halifax. Other bright spots include (left to right) Bangor, Saint John, Moncton, and Charlottetown. Close inspection reveals Truro, New Glasgow, Antigonish, Port Hawkesbury, and Sydney. The St. Lawrence River appears as a string of lights heading northeast from Montreal, and the Gaspe Peninsula is outlined in light. I believe the aurora borealis accounts for the greenish hue on the horizon. A...

14 February, 2012

Contrarian reader George Gore liked the video if Guillaume Blanchet, The Man Who Lived On His Bike, because: I lived for four months on a bicycle in the fall of 2006 and spring of 2007, riding from Chester to Ciudad Victoria, in Mexico, and then up the Rio Grande valley from Matamoros to Alpine. Gore also shares my non-hostility toward Amazon: In 1961 I was a twenty-one year old college freshman partially supporting myself by working in a bookstore. The store manager was Bobby Berg, who was the best bookseller I have ever encountered, and I shared that opinion with a lot of...

12 February, 2012

I bought a lot of books on line in the run-up to Christmas, and I was struck by how much quicker Amazon was able to get them to me than Chapters. When I tweeted this observation, a fellow tweep chided me — of all people — for not patronizing local bookstores. I like a nice bookstore as much as the next fellow. Who doesn't enjoy wandering through the stacks at J. W. Doull's, feeling the stairs creak underfoot, talking books with the marvellous staff he employs. But it's no accident that John Doull can no longer afford the rent in downtown...

02 February, 2012
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