Carson Cistull of Fangraphs reaches back to to Homer for the most erudite commentary on Bautista's epic blast: Because Homer provides little in the way of psychological commentary and also because Achilles isn’t a real person, it’s hard to know precisely how the latter feels during Book XXI of the Iliad while avenging the death of Patroclus by filling the River Scamander with so many Trojan dead that the river itself is compelled to assume human form and reprimand the hero, as follows: “Achilles… My fair waters are now filled with corpses, nor can I find any channel by which I may...

14 October, 2015

How did safety and security come to be central issues in this federal election campaign? If you don't feel safe in Canada, where on earth could you possibly feel secure? Canadians may just be the safest people in the history of our planet. Yet Prime Minister Harper implores us live in fear: Fear of the future, fear of each other, fear of new Canadians whose stories and backgrounds are different from our own. This view isn't simply inaccurate, it's unpatriotic. It belittles Canada. On this Thanksgiving Day, I pause to give thanks for living in a country where my family, friends, and neighbours are...

12 October, 2015

Tonight at Dalhousie University's Weldon Law Building, Lauren Soubolsky and Kathryn Piché will stand up for the rule of law and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms when they defend one Ron Campbell against a charge he violated the Nova Scotia Elections Act by photographing his ballot in the 2011 provincial election and tweeting the resulting image. In reality, there is no Ron Campbell, at least none who used his cell phone camera in a ballot booth three years ago. However his apocryphal actions may call to mind the notorious acts of a blogger familiar to you. Soubolsky and Piché are third...

07 October, 2015

An ironic result of the smart phone revolution is that phone calls have become a minor arrow in the telephone quiver. A 1995 video from the Swiss-Swiss-American artist and compser Christian Marclay, courtesy of Duke University’s Nasher Museum of Art, underscores the point. Marclay combines a bewildering array of phone calls from 130 Hollywood films into a mesmerizing, seven-minute narrative. [Video link] From the museum notes: Using his building blocks – dialing, greeting, conversing, farewells and hang-ups – Marclay plays with the notion of cinematic continuity by splicing newer and older films into his own narrative. The video opens with a man...

02 October, 2015

On Monday, I published Robert Westbrook's beautiful photo of the eclipse as seen from his driveway in Port Hawkesbury. After taking more than 200 photos that night, Robert Photoshopped 21 of them into this composite image showing the Moon's track over the Strait of Canso and through the Earth's shadow: For the photographically inclined, Robert offers these details: I took around 220 close-up shots of the Moon during its traversal of Earth's shadow using the tracking scope...

02 October, 2015

We are reaching the point in the election campaign where progressive voters* must decide whether to support Mulcair's New Democrats or Trudeau's Liberals. There are planks to like and dislike in both parties' platforms, but if we keep dithering between the two of them, we will be complicit in re-electing Stephen Harper. Two obstacles impair the ability of Canada's progressive majority to defeat Harper: The apparatchiks of both center-left parties care more about their team winning all the marbles than they do about saving Canada from the damage Harper will do given another four  years. The leaders of  both center-left parties have been trying...

30 September, 2015

Why on earth would Premier Stephen McNeil want to get tangled up in the Harper Government's Mother Canada fiasco? The project is unpopular with Canadians, most decidedly so in Atlantic Canada. It violates the integrity of the province's largest national park. It runs roughshod over the National Parks Act. It ignores best practices for acquiring public art. It was designed without public consultation, cooked up in secret, and rushed through a half-baked environmental assessment that produced an error-riddled report written by one of the project's corporate sponsors. It abounds in spiritual mumbo-jumbo and tacky kitsch. It employs a discredited style of...

30 September, 2015

Thanks to Robert Westbrook for this photo, taken from his Port Hawkesbury, NS, driveway about 11:15 p.m., Atlantic Time, using a "Canon t2i, iOptron SmartEQ Pro tracking mount, and an 80mm aperture 900mm focal length refracting telescope." What a gorgeous sight! Robert has a string of beautiful images in sequence on his Facebook page. [Photograph ©2015 by Robert Westbrook. Used by permission.]...

28 September, 2015

On their best days, the 2015 Blue Jays seem to possess Yankee-like invincibility of the sort that tormented Boston Red Sox and Brooklyn Dodger fans for decades. Their lineup is a Murderers' Row stretching to the horizon, offering opposing pitchers no respite from terror. Their pitching staff includes half a dozen men who—on good days—resemble mowing machines. The Jays' worst days make you wonder how they will fare in the post-season. With 16 regular season games to play, the Jays have clinched a playoff berth, but what are their odds of winning the World Series? The Age of Sabermetrics has bred battalions of...

18 September, 2015

[caption id="attachment_15269" align="alignwrap" width="550"] Mario Beauregard (CP)[/caption] I first met Elizabeth May when she was 21 and I was 30. Together we fought a government plan for spruce budworm spraying in Cape Breton in the late-1970s, a plan we helped scuttle. If we both live to be 110, I will find it hard to forgive May for her leading role in prolonging the destructive, 20-year debate about the Sydney Tar Ponds, an ugly controversy that enhanced her career even as it sapped Sydney's capacity to find a way forward after the death of its steel industry. Perhaps paradoxically, I nevertheless regard May as...

18 September, 2015
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