In stunning act of altruism, journalist retires at 70

I thought my friend the annoyed media critic was going to have a stroke when she heard CBC host Linden MacIntyre was retiring for the good of the children. This Linden MacIntyre story is gag-inducing. MacIntyre should have left five years ago if he wanted to help younger journalists. Seriously. What Spin. He's 70. Wonder how many full days he was putting in for his salary (which he wouldn't disclose, of course). Apparently 130 young journalists can be hired now. Yippee! The country's 20- and 30-somethings are all underemployed because of the glut of boomers sitting at the top, waiting for the their savings to rebound from...

Movies, massacres, & hobby horses—feedback

I walked straight into this one. In yesterday's post, I derided those who see every tragic event as an invitation to hobby horse dressage, then pivoted to endorse the anti-gun, anti-craven politician cri de coeur by the father of a Santa Barbara victim. Reader: You should have followed the advice of your own post and resisted the blaming of a crazy person on a hobby horse of your liking. Contrarian: Touche! But at least my hobby horse is rationally connected to the killing spree. Reader: As rationally connected as the knife that he killed the first three people with, and the car he drove around with. Hobby horses never die! ...

When tragedy strikes, saddle up the hobby horses

I've done my best to avoid ingesting details of the Santa Barbara killings, but thanks to Dave Pell, one of my favourite Internet gem aggregators, I did see Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday's loopy suggestion that, "a steady diet of Judd Apatow comedies in which the shlubby arrested adolescent always gets the girl" might be a factor. (Put down Apatow—and Seth Rogen, also implicated by Hornaday—as unamused.) Pell's comment seems apt: "Whenever a sociopath does something horrific, there is a race to explain how that singular act is representative of a broader societal trend. But what if it's just representative of extreme...

Lynn Ferguson says no

When the Scottish writer and comedian Lynn Ferguson was 37, she got pregnant, and there ensued an battle of wills with staff of the hospital where she was to give birth. She told the story recently on The Moth Storytelling Hour. Almost as soon as everybody agreed that I was technically in the family way, they decided that I should have an amniocentesis. An amniocentesis is, like, an invasive test. They put a needle into the fluid here—the amniotic fluid—and it can tell you whether the baby has Down Syndrome or not. But there's also a one percent risk that it will cause...

MLB: The strange division

We interrupt the annual Canadian orgy of hockey obsession to note the fleeting strangeness of the Major League Baseball American League East Division standings:* There are a number of curiosities here. All five teams in the division are on losing streaks (although, in the case of the Yankees and the Blue Jays, the "streaks" are only one game long). Only the Blue Jays have a positive run differential (DIFF: more runs scored by than scored against). Though they are in third place, barely above .500, the Blue Jays are given the best chance of making the playoffs (POFF: a projection supplied...

Correlation is not causation

Now this is strange: When margarine consumption in the US began a steady decline at the turn of the century, the divorce rate in Maine fell in lock-step: Oh, but wait, correlation is not causation! The apparent connection between inferior butter substitutes and marriage breakups in the Pine Tree State is a mere co-incidence. Harvard Law student Tyler Vigen is collecting, and graphing, statistical sets that appear to track one other closely, but have no real world connection. (Probably.) "The charts on this site aren't meant to imply causation, nor are they meant to create a distrust for research or even correlative data," Vigen writes. "Rather,...

Ballet of loon, filet of sole

Last month, Loons began their annual return to breeding sites along Nova Scotia's freshwater lakes and ponds. Friday morning, Joshua Barss Donham captured this video of a loon feasting on flounder in the Northwest Arm of Halifax Harbour, just metres away from traffic on Quinpool Road and the Armdale Rotary. [Click the [  ] icon at the bottom right to view full screen.] "How long does it take a loon to tenderize and swallow a flounder?" asks Joshua. "About two minutes, 11 seconds—that's how long." Over the space of 20 minutes, Joshua watched this bird dive after, catch, and swallow three flounder. "Twice,...

Springtime roadside giveaway

Cape Breton musician Victor Tomiczek's ode to Heavy Garbage Day: There's our old mattress, that we shared for years Wet from the rain, or from her tears Guitars, vocals: Victor Tomiczek; Bass: Donny Calabrese; Photos: Lindsay Uhma; H/T: Ashley McKenzie.  ...

Stirrings

A lazarus seabird expands to Nova Scotia

The canonical list of Nova Scotia birds got a new entry this month when ornithologists aboard a US research vessel south of Cape Sable Island spotted the first Bermuda Petrel ever observed in Canada. Michael Force and Nicholas Metheny, both contract Seabird and Marine Mammal Observers aboard the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration ship Gordon Gunter, spotted the endangered seabird while cruising across George's Canyon, on the eastern edge of George's Bank, in Canadian territorial waters. Fun facts about the Bermuda Petrel: On Bermuda, the once abundant nocturnal bird is known as the Cahow, a name derived from its eerie cry, a sound so haunting it...