Exactly how big was that Dreadnoughtus schrani, the titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur discovered recently in the Argentinian portion of Patagonia? The BBC offers this handy chart: The BBC story is here. The first scientific paper documenting the massive discovery is in the journal Nature's Scientific Reports. H/T: Flowing data....
Ian Jones, the MUN professor urging removal of horses from Sable Island, offers a rebuttal to the skepticism I voiced in a post this morning: You need to correct some parts of your blog post...
Eco-provocateur* Ian Jones, a seabird biologist at Memorial University in St. John's NL, is demanding Parks Canada remove the fabled feral horses of Sable Island on the factually correct grounds they are an exotic, invasive species that has seriously altered the island's ecology. The CBC quotes Jones as saying Parks Canada is obliged to remove them because of a stipulation in part 3.2, section 11 of the Canada National Parks Act: All practical efforts will be made to prevent the introduction of exotic plants and animals into national parks and to eliminate or contain them where they already exist. [caption id="attachment_14192" align="alignright" width="250"] Biologist Ian Jones[/caption] If making Sable...
Tim Bousquet on the joint Halifax Regional Police-RCMP raid of a compassionate use marijuana club that operates openly in Halifax: Continuing to arrest people for pot is ridiculous and counter-productive: arresting backyard gardeners puts the entire trade in the hands of organized crime. We all know that use of marijuana will be legal or decriminalized in a few years, and yet we continue to ruin people’s lives for a victimless crime. I will continue to ridicule the police for making pot arrests because they deserve ridicule. This is an evil—yes, evil—use of police powers, the very antithesis of serving and protecting. They should be...
On the outskirts of River John, Nova Scotia, my grandson Josh spotted one of his favourite things in the world: ...
Q: When is a candy store no different from a surf shop? A: When HRM’s planning department wants to avoid enforcing accessibility standards. Just over two years ago, Halifax developer Mickey MacDonald caused a scandal by opening a Chicken Burger restaurant in a completely inaccessible building on Queen St. in downtown Halifax. HRM's Planning Department gave MacDonald an occupancy permit despite his flagrant disregard for the Canada Building Code. As a result of this negligence, no disabled person could patronize Chicken Burger, let alone work there. It was as if Mickey MacDonald, Mayor Mike Savage Peter Kelly*, and all the members of HRM Council had slapped a sign on the building...
A few months ago, an email from the Atlantic science blogger Alexis Madrigal introduced me to the word lagniappe, pronounced LAN-yap. It means a small bonus a merchant bestows on a customer, "something given over and above what is purchased" (Oxford English Dictionary). It's akin to the 13th donut in a baker's dozen, or those promotional mini bottles the Liquor Commission sometimes attaches to the necks of 40-ouncers, except it's proffered only after the sale has been completed and paid for. In current use, it's mainly confined to the New Orleans area, where such petit gratuities were once a local tradition, albeit one resented by shopkeepers, who...
Data journalism doesn't have to be complicated. The front page of this morning's St. Louis Post Dispatch compares the percentage of African Americans in 31 Missouri municipalities with the percentage in their respective police forces: H/T: AS...
Employees of Seaside Communications,* the Cape Breton company that built what is thought to be the world's largest fixed wireless Internet system,** took the bucket challenge yesterday in support of fellow employee Darryl Bach, an IT systems administrator who has been living with ALS since 2011. Seaside videographer Jason LeFrense, whose videos about the late Ryan Gillis and the Weird Bread Troupe have won wide praise, put together this account of Bach's life with the illness, and the friends and co-workers who gathered to cheer him on yesterday. It's Darryl who makes the video so compelling, avoiding slogans but instead giving a matter-of-fact account of what the disease is like, how it came...
Halifax filmmaker Andrea Dorfman made Lost and Found, the short movie below about Halifax artist and writer Jane Kansas, in 2008. I somehow missed it until this morning, when someone posted it on Facebook. That's timely, because Kansas's one-woman exhibit, "Kansas: Fifty Year Retrospective," opens tonight (Aug. 23) at (((Parentheses))) Gallery, 2168 Gottingen St. The exhibit is sure to be head-shakingly funny, arresting, insightful, and touching. Kansas is one of the most original and talented artists in Nova Scotia. When I featured excerpts from the travel blog of her solo walk across the continental US on Contrarian.ca (here and here), I wrote: What Nova Scotia...