[caption width="600" id="attachment_14915" align="alignnone"] The Court of Star Chamber sat in the Palace of Westminster until 1641. Sessions were held in secret, with no indictments, right of appeal, juries, or witnesses. The Court could impose punishment for actions it deemed morally reprehensible, but not contrary to the letter of the law. It could punish offenders for any action it thought should be illegal, even if it was not.[/caption] Lots of reader reaction and Facebook comments to my criticism of Dalhousie University's treatment of whistleblower Ryan Millet. In that Saturday post, I wrote: This calls to mind the ancient ducking* stool, a judicial instrument that tested the guilt of accused witches...

09 March, 2015

stile - noun ['stahyl] a structure that allows people to pass over a wall or fence but remains a barrier to sheep or cattle. From Creatividad con sencillez (creativity with simplicity). H/T: Silas. [UPDATE] I assume this clever device is located somewhere in South America, possibly Chile or Peru. Contrarian's engineer friend points out it might not work so well in winter. Especially this winter. Especially in Halifax....

09 March, 2015

What the media has inaccurately  portrayed as a decision by Dalhousie Dental School to allow whistleblower Ryan Millet's conditional return to his studies is, more accurately, an attempt by Dal to coerce a false confession from an innocent student on the basis of a secret tribunal. So Orwellian is the process Dal has imposed on the student who exposed its rampant misogyny, the school won't even acknowledge its disciplinary character. That would require such safeguards as due process, natural justice, the right to an impartial hearing, and an opportunity to confront one's accusers. In place of these age-old standards, Dal dons the fig...

07 March, 2015

No matter how wintry it is where you are, chances are it's worse in Ingonish. You can test this proposition, any time, by checking the web cams at the Highland Links Golf Course in the Cape Breton Highlands National Park. Here are two views of the cam at hole 1, aka Ben Franey: on a fine July day at left, and on March 1 at right. The dude standing knee-deep in the snow is not actually a man, but a bronze statue of renowned Canadian gold course designer Stanley Thompson, who designed the Highland Links course, posed next to some National Park-style plaques. My...

04 March, 2015

Season three is out, and has Contrarian well and truly in the clutches of another House of Cards binge. Vox marks the event with a 3-1/2-minute video explaining the linguistic ins and outs of true southern accents—including a transAtlantic history of r-dropping, and an introduction to something called ay-ungliding. Good for word-lovers whether or not they are House of Cards addicts. The short explanation is that Spacey's from California, and he's faking it....

03 March, 2015

The Washington Post has outed Jihadi John as former Briton Mohammed Emwazi. Way down in the depressing story, former hostages reveal that Emwazi "participated in the waterboarding of four Western hostages." Gee, I wonder where ISIS got that idea? Even if the ethics of torture don't trouble you, which they should, the unfathomable stupidity of stooping to war crimes is the near certainty those you subject them to will apply them to your own nationals when they inevitably fall into the adversary's hands. Because chickens roost....

26 February, 2015

[caption id="attachment_14871" align="alignnone" width="550"] Ye Olde Discriminator[/caption] Accessibility activist Gus Reed has posted an extraordinary tale of bureaucratic evasion in the quest to achieve equal treatment for Haligonians in wheelchairs. The original is richer and wittier than the following summary, but in outline: Nova Scotia Homebuilders' Assoication offered its office to government advisory panel on accessibility legislation because it was free, and had an accessible washroom. Washroom turned out to be dangerously deficient for wheelchair users. Builders association produced copy of city plan it followed when building washroom. City compliance bureaucrat acknowledged plan is based on pre-2006 standards and therefore "moot;" promised steps to ensure it is no...

23 February, 2015

[See update below.] Maybe there are facts i'm unaware of, but barring something that diverges sharply from initial accounts, laying criminal charges against the boy whose horseplay led to the death of his friend and fellow student at Sydney Academy last week, seems harsh and inappropriate. Condolences, of course, to the family and friends of Christopher Walter Chafe. The loss of any child is a horrible thing. For the loss to occur so suddenly and randomly, at 18 years of age, is an awful thing to bear. But if this terrible event resulted from friendly rough-housing gone horribly awry, charges are unwarranted and cruel. As...

22 February, 2015

It's a gorgeous day at Contrarian world headquarters—crisp and sunny with a few fair-weather clouds and not a hint of precipitation. Here's the official version, courtesy of Google: It's the kind of day that puts Vitamin D back in our systems and makes us feel winter isn't such an grim thing after all. Every business on the island is open. And all schools are closed. The Cape Breton-Victoria District School Board, known  for its hair trigger school closure protocols, has been rendered dysfunctional by the death of a high school student last week. The accident was horrific. Two lads were engaged in horseplay when one of them...

20 February, 2015
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