Yesterday I complained that Nova Scotia's Chief Electoral Officer, Christine McCulloch, had impaired the usefulness of her annual tally of political donations by rendering them impossible to search electronically. Ms. McCulloch responds: I make no apology for doing our utmost to protect the privacy of Nova Scotians while meeting the obligation of full disclosure of political contributions required under the Members and Public Employees Disclosure Act (MPEDA). The purpose of the disclosure provision of MPEDA is to provide everyone with access to the identity of contributors to recognized parties and candidates and how much they have contributed. That is met in our...

06 September, 2011

Our friend Teresa, a radiation tech at the Cape Breton Regional Hospital, volunteers at the SPCA. Lately she has posted photos of impounded dogs in the nuclear medicine department. On Monday, this caused a hospital visitor to remark that he really should get over to the SPCA and look for a new dog. His beloved labrador had died several months ago. "I have pictures on my iPhone of all the dogs up for adoption, if you'd like to scroll through them," Teresa offered. The man did just that, until he came upon this photo:   "That's Cheesie!" the man said. "That's my friend's dog!" He...

12 July, 2011

Nova Scotians could be forgiven for feeling confused about prospects for shale gas fracking in the province. Is shale gas a sensible short-term approach to reduced carbon emissions? Or an environmental calamity waiting to happen? Those who stand to profit from shale gas, and governments desperate for energy solutions that won't cripple the economy, are predictably bullish on our shale gas reserves. Many environmentalists oppose fracking with the unreassuring obduracy they bring to every issue (see: the nonsensical flap over biosolids). I have no idea who's right about shale gas, but today's New York Times offers a massive dump of insider documents purporting to...

26 June, 2011

  11:45 PM ADT: Barring some unexpected last minute breakthrough, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers is set to strike Canada Post in about 75 minutes. Amazing these organizations could both think it clever to remind Canadians how much their importance has shrunk in 30 years....

02 June, 2011

The European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) on Cerro Paranal, a 2,635 m high mountain in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, combines the light from four fixed optical telescopes equipped with 8.2 meter (27 foot) lenses with that from four moveable auxiliary telescopes equipped with 1.8 meter (6 foot) lenses to produce images of the southern sky with a resolution of one milliarcsecond. This means it could distinguish the gap between the headlights of a Ford pickup parked on the Moon (if they had Fords on the Moon, and no winter parking ban). The observatory's José Francisco Salgado and...

30 May, 2011

As the 2011 flood season ramped up across the US and Canada, TheAtlantic.com's tech blogger, Alexis Madrigal. found himself wondering how the Mississippi River system works. So he produced an explainer that lays out the complex combination of natural and human forces that create, and attempt to control, the inevitable natural process of river flooding. What is the Mississippi River? It's not actually a silly question. The Mississippi no longer fits the definition a river as "a natural watercourse flowing towards an ocean, a lake, a sea, or another river." Rather, the waterway has been shaped in many ways, big and...

22 May, 2011

Photograph of the Earth and the Moon, viewed from 183 million kilometers away by the Messenger spacecraft that went into orbit around Mercury last month. H/T: Peter Barss....

08 April, 2011

Tech publisher O’Reilly Media does not put digital-rights management (DRM) controls on its electronic books to discourage unauthorized copying and sharing. Forbes Magazine asked CEO Tim O’Reilly if he wasn’t worried about piracy. No. And so what? Let's say my goal is to sell 10,000 copies of something. And let's say that if by putting DRM in it I sell 10,000 copies and I make my money, and if by having no DRM 100,000 copies go into circulation and I still sell 10,000 copies. Which of those is the better outcome? I think having 100,000 in circulation and selling 10,000 is way...

27 March, 2011
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