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

Little Shining Man, a kite sculpture created by Heather and Ivan Morrison, takes flight from a beach at St. Aubin's Bay, on the Bailiwick of Jersey. Videography by James O'Garra. H/T John Hugh Edwards....

12 January, 2012

In an almost perfect illustration of Donham's Law, the New York Times reports this morning that New English fishermen are pooh-poohing calls from fisheries scientists for greater restrictions, or even an outright ban, on cod fishing in the gulf of Maine. The scientists point to new data showing cod stocks in much worse shape than previously thought; the fishermen say there's an abundance of fish. “Fishermen will almost always tell you that, and it’s not that they’re lying,” said Mark Kurlansky, whose 1997 book, “Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World,” documented how Canada’s once-abundant Atlantic cod were fished almost...

11 December, 2011

Last year, we published a snapshot of Contrarian's brain as he listened to Costas Halavrasos on Maritime Noon. Psychobiologist Barry R. Komisaruk of Rutger's University in New Jersey has done me one better, by releasing a stop motion animation showing sequential MRI brain scans of 54-year-old PhD student and sex therapist Nan Wise as she manually stimulated herself to orgasm. It is not known whether Wise was listening to Halavrasos at the time. The first portion of the video shows a sequence of 20 snapshot fMRI images, taken over a 12 minute period, during which Wise approached orgasm, achieved orgasm, and entered a refractory period. The...

15 November, 2011

I don't normally post videos that already have five million hits, but this animated version of a talk by educator and creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson underscores a point made by Sunni Brown in her TED talk about the merits of doodling. There is something about the combination of speech and visual note-taking that enhances comprehension, especially comprehension of irony and ideas in conflict. Robinson's talk is about education, but the animated nature of the talk the talk is as arresting as the content. [Educators] are trying to meet the future by doing what they did in the past, and along the...

30 October, 2011

Jeff Jarvis speaking to Leo LaPorte on this week’s edition of This Week in Google: I listen to Radio Canada -- CBC -- on Sirius all the time, because they have good programs, and they’re covering RIM like it’s really a story, ‘cause they have to, ‘cause it’s like a national requirement. It’s so sad. Peter Rojas chimed in: That company...

21 October, 2011

The internet has some peculiar websites. This one comes from Wilsonville, Oregon-based SSI Shredding Systems, Inc., a company that claims to be "motivated by  one recurring question: What Needs Shredding?" You can sign up to receive the company's Shred of the Month video. I particularly enjoyed the impromptu bowling tournament. H/T: Silas...

17 October, 2011

Air Canada flight attendant to passengers in Row 4 of a flight to Sydney Tuesday afternoon: "You are in the emergency exit row, so I have to show you how to open the emergency door." [Gestures to door handle.] "Pull it down. It opens in. Throw it out." [Pause.] "Any questions?" Airline safety instructions are so often wordy and prissy. How refreshing to encounter a  no-nonsense pro who understands the value of brisk, imperative prose, and isn't afraid to use it....

27 September, 2011

1000memories.com, a website about organizing and sharing home photography, illustrates Facebook's dominant role in photographic storage. Digital cameras are now ubiquitous - it is estimated that 2.5 billion people in the world today have a digital camera. If the average person snaps 150 photos this year that would be a staggering 375 billion photos. That might sound implausible but this year people will upload over 70 billion photos to Facebook, suggesting around 20% of all photos this year will end up there. Already Facebook’s photo collection has a staggering 140 billion photos, that’s over 10,000 times larger than the Library of...

21 September, 2011

There's a ton of reader reaction to Contrarian's dustup with Nova Scotia's Chief Electoral Officer Christine McCulloch (my original post here; McCulloch's response here). I intend to post a selection shortly, but what with having been out late last night, and having to wrangle opening night at the fall season of the Cape Breton Island Film Series later today, it will have to keep. But why wait any longer for this? Within eight hours of my original post, one resourceful Contrarian reader managed to crack McCulloch's digital locks and return the 2010 donations list to the traditional open pdf format, one that permits...

08 September, 2011
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