Clay Shirky thinks so. He cites this graph: Journalists have been infantilized throughout the last decade, kept in a state of relative ignorance about the firms that employ them. A friend tells a story of reporters being asked the paid print circulation of their own publication. Their guesses ranged from 150,000 to 300,000; the actual figure was 35,000. If a reporter was that uninformed about a business he was covering, he’d be taken off the story...

21 August, 2014

Four days ago, burglars broke into LaHave folksinger Darren Arsenault's house and made off with a clutch of treasured vintage instruments: an early 1960s gibson long neck banjo; a handmade Gilles acoustic guitar with a redwood top, butternut back and sides; a black Baritone guitar, and some recording gear. Arsenault posted this message on his Facebook page: As of today, when Arsenault posted the update below, 561 Facebook members had shared the message on their Facebook pages. Whatever else you might say about social networks, they seem to be pretty effective at inspiring the return of stolen musical instruments....

20 August, 2014

If you've ever wondered what Alexander Calder's work might look like in a strip club, check out the Great Art in Ugly Rooms Tumblr Blog: H/T: Sorry, can't recall who or what led me to this gem....

20 August, 2014

Yesterday I wondered why small town police forces in the US thought they needed mine-resistant armoured vehicles. This morning I marvelled that Keene NH, pop. 23,409, had asked for and received a Lenco Bearcat (Ballistic Engineered Armored Response Counter Attack Truck) to protect its annual pumpkin festival from potential terrorist attacks. In an update this afternoon, I discovered that Ottawa Police have a Lenco Bearcat of their own. Now thanks to an alert Contrarian reader with Pictou County roots, I know New Glasgow Regional Police have obtained a Canadian Forces surplus Cougar Light Armoured Vehicle. That's it pictured above, with Emergency Response Team members from New Glasgow, Stellarton and Westville. (The...

19 August, 2014

Yesterday I asked what use a small town police department could possibly have for one of the mine-resistant armoured vehicles US Homeland Security has been handing out like candied apples at a Halloween dance. Thanks to Contrarian reader Ryan Van Horne for pointing our that comedian John Oliver already supplied the answer on his Sunday HBO show, Last Week Tonight: http://youtu.be/KUdHIatS36A?t=6m48s When applying for one of the vehicles, the town of Keene NH said, "the terrorism threat is far reaching and often unforeseen," and cited the need to keep its annual Pumpkin Festival safe from terrorists. Not since Whittaker Chambers led investigators from the House Un-American Activities...

19 August, 2014

In case you missed it, the New York Times provided this startling interactive graphic showing the amount of surplus military equipment US Armed Forces have supplied to local police departments, county by county, since 9/11 unleashed runaway militarization of civilian authority in the United States and elsewhere: Once you click through to the New York Times, you can filter the map for types of weaponry, or hover your cursor over any of the 3,007 counties in the US to see exactly what gear police in that jurisdiction obtained. Some of this is mindbogglingly inexplicable. I'm unaware of anyone—right, left, libertarian, vegetarian, Quaker, or Muslim—setting land mines in Centerburg or Plainville. So what exactly...

18 August, 2014

In the annals of musical eccentricity, one of the unlikeliest characters has to be Johan "Bottleneck John" Eliasson, 43, a blues musician from Lit, Sweden, pop. 1040. I've been following Eliasson for years, because he shares my fondness for blues music and antique mechanical contrivances—old tractors, make-n-breaks, hot bulb engines, and hydraulic rams. He's a sucker for vintage instruments, and he loves turning old machines into impromptu rhythm sections. Here, in a clip he released yesterday, Eliasson plays a steel-bodied, 12-string Dobro and a ~50-year-old Volvo tractor. (Note how, at the 1:50 mark, he brings the tempo down by means of the tractor's steering-shaft-mounted throttle.) In this clip, from December...

15 August, 2014

The head of Pete Seeger's 5-string banjo famously carried the inscription, "This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender." I thought of Pete yesterday when I saw the way two three young activist women responded the Ontario men who've been displaying gruesome (and possibly faked) images of aborted foetuses along heavily trafficked commuter routes in HRM. The pro-choice women could have lashed out in anger. No doubt they were angry. But instead they chose to respond with a message of love—and of reassurance for women who face tough choices about sexual and reproductive health, and who may have felt frightened or intimidated by the anti-abortionists'...

13 August, 2014

On the last day of July, I called out Communications Nova Scotia for not abandoning a patronizing, politically tainted, Harperesque style of news release that, I asserted, had been imposed by Premier Darrell Dexter's office as it tightened the political reins on government communications. (I made a similar argument in a pre-election post last fall.) Readers who once held senior positions at CNS took issue with my analysis. Jim Vibert, longtime head of CNS who now runs his own communications consultancy, wrote in response to the first piece: [Y]our CNS reference is, on the surface, correct, but this sure isn’t the first government to...

12 August, 2014
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