Earlier today, former Finance Minister Graham Steele voiced appreciation for CBU President David Wheeler's thoughtful comments about the all-too-common incivility of public discourse in Nova Scotia. "[I]magine you are a politician," wrote Steele, "facing this level of incivility and mudslinging, day after day, on issue after issue...
Fed by the Rio Grande, Elephant Butte Reservoir in New Mexico drains 74,850 square km, almost half again the area of Nova Scotia. When full, it holds 2,065,010 acre-feet, or 2.55 cubic kilometres of water. It was at or near capacity for most of the the period from 1985 to 2000, but last summer, it dwindled to its lowest level in 41 years. The image on the left, taken June 2, 1994, show it about 89 percent full. At right, July 8, 20134, it was down to about 3 percent of its capacity. The paired photos are from a series of NASA images showing changes in the earth's surface. Many...
Shift change at the Kéréon lighthouse, on Snapping Stone Reef (récif de Men Tensel), Breton, France. In Brittany, an isolated, sea-bound lighthouse is called a ‘Hell.’ Le Kéréon was the last French hell to be automated, in January, 2004. Not sure why there is a shift change at an automated lighthouse. Maybe Paul Cranford will know. H/T: Jim Prime...
Former Cape Bretoner Peter Kavanagh writes from Toronto: I have been following the back and forth here and on various sites with some keen interest. As to Wheeler's last paragraph and his concern that in Nova Scotia, "we cannot seem to come to terms with civil discourse about important topics," I feel compelled to say, welcome to the club. This is by no means a Nova Scotian problem. I think it's an environmentalist problem. Perhaps because of the movement's history of civil disobedience—sometimes admirable, sometimes repellant—advocates too often fall into the lazy substitution of catcalls and personal attacks for the hard work of research, coalition building, and...
David Wheeler, president of Cape Breton University and unpaid chair of the independent panel reviewing fracking in Nova Scotia, has responded to yesterday's Contrarian post about a west coast journal's attack on his objectivity. In my view, his position doesn't need much of a defence,; Andrew Nikiforuk's original attack was pretty thin gruel. But his last paragraph below highlights an existential crisis in the environmental movement. We have never needed a strong environmental movement more than we do today. The dire consequences of climate change are bearing down upon us, while too many politicians and business leaders find it expedient to deny the problem or put off action...
In response to this post on soccer's unexpected-by-the-sports-establishment popularity in North America, and this John Cleese rant, Contrarian reader Merrill Smith thinks we're missing the point: Could it be that Ann Coulter has a sense of humour? I would never have thought so, but the piece you linked to read like genuine sarcasm. I think it was funnier than the John Cleese clip. And I find myself on her side of this argument. I have tried to like soccer. When I went to England long ago, I adopted Man U because Bobby Charlton was the only player I had ever heard of. I...
Andrew Nikiforuk. a respected journalist-critic of the petroleum industry, yesterday attacked David Wheeler, president of Cape Breton University and head of Nova Scotia's independent fracking review panel, for failing to disclose what he called close ties "to a company that trains oil and gas workers for Exxon Mobil, a key promoter of hydraulic fracturing and one of the world's largest energy companies." His critique appeared on TheTyee.ca website. Although the Nova Scotia Hydraulic Fracturing Review Panel describes David Wheeler as the president and vice-chancellor of Cape Breton University, it makes no mention of his public responsibilities with LearnCorp International. Nor does it...
Last month I mused about the surprise and befuddlement sweeping through North America's sporting establishment over the unanticipated (by them) popularity here of World Cup Football, a sport the good ole boys seem to regard as foreign, if not anti-American. My thanks to a European reader of Contrarian, studying in Halifax, who passed along this analysis of the soccer-football conflict from John Cleese: H/T: JR...
In a series of pre-election posts last fall on things the Dexter government had done well, and things it had done badly, I faulted the government's Harperesque imposition of political control over Communications Nova Scotia. Among other things, Premier Dexter's office imposed a ham-handed template for news releases. It replaced traditional straightforward explanations of what government was doing with treacly accounts of how Nova Scotians would benefit from some government action or policy, and exactly which subset of Nova Scotians would benefit most. I diagrammed it this way: [Some subset of] Nova Scotians will [experience something good] because of [something the Dexter government has done]. Habits...
Writing in this week's New Yorker, editor David Remnick calls the new biopic, Get On Up, "the second-best film ever made about James Brown." The best? That would be this grainy, 18-minute YouTube clip of Brown's October, 1964, appearance at the T.A.M.I. (Teenage Awards Music International) show in Santa Monica. Four nervous Rolling Stones were waiting in the wings, and Brown, pissed at being scheduled to play before them, was determined to show them up. Keith Richards later described the decision to play after Brown the biggest mistake of the band's career. There's lots more rich detail about this amazing concert in Remnick's piece....