The deniers have some explaining to do: The Weather Underground reports that the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA's) National Climatic Data Center rates last month as the warmest June since record keeping began in 1880, while  NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies calls it the third warmest (behind June 1998 and June 2009). Both NOAA and NASA rated the year-to-date period, January - June, as the warmest such period on record. Moneyquote: A withering heat wave of unprecedented intensity brought the hottest temperatures in recorded history to six nations in Asia and Africa, plus the Asian portion of Russia, in June 2010....

18 July, 2010

The scale is deceptive. This is not the ordinary crab we're used to, but a giant Japanese spider crab (Macrocheira kaempferi), whose leg span (3.8 meters or 12.5 feet) and weight (up to 19 kg. or 41 lb.) make it the largest arthropod in the world. This time-lapse video was shot over a 6-hour period. Hat tip: Enoshima Aquarium, Fujisawa, Japan, via Daily Dish....

27 June, 2010

In light of tHe the Deepwater Horizon blowout, the GOOD company has produced an infographic:  Click here for a larger image. Hat tip:JLDB...

17 June, 2010

One of more than 300 self-service Bixi bike rental stations in Montreal. From April to November 30, the city will rent you a sturdy, well maintained, three-speed bike for $5 a day (or $28 for 30 days; $79 for a full year). A swipe of your credit card produces a five digit code to unlock one of the 5,000 available bikes; Return your bike within 30 minutes to one of the ubiquitous rental stands and there is no charge. It is a fast, easy, practical way to get around this bustling city, and the Bixi bikes are everywhere. The city-owed system recently...

14 June, 2010

Most of the dignitaries had cleared out by the time Contrarian showed up for an inaugural stroll along Louisbourg's freshly opened Lighthouse Trail Saturday. The footing is sure, the viewscapes sublime. The eponymous lighthouse, near the site of the original 1731 structure erected by the French, is down at the heels. Commemorative plaques placed on the lighthouse by the Historical Sites and Monuments Board of Canada display a curious bit of  politically correct non-evenhandedness: The French displayed "valour and endurance against overwhelming odds." The British? They were "commanded by Gorham and Wolfe." C'est la Guerre!...

06 June, 2010

The Boston Globe has 40 heart-wrenching photos of the Gulf oil spill. A sampling: Thirty-six more here. Hat tip: Elaine Gibson....

12 May, 2010

Hannah Fairfield of the New York Times plots the number of miles driven by US drivers, both private and commercial, against the retail price of gasoline from 1956 to February, 2010. The horizontal axis represents miles driven, while the vertical axis shows the price per US gallon (3.79 litres) in current US dollars. The drawn path represents the passage of time. Note that sharp spikes in gas prices coincided with reductions in miles driven in 1973, 1978, and from 2005 to 2010. Click here for a larger image with interesting subgraphs and embedded commentary....

12 May, 2010

This big: [Correction appended.] Google Engineer Paul Rademacher has produced a tool that will put a shadow the size of the Gulf oil spill anyplace on earth. (You may need to install the Google Earth Browser Plugin, which Rademacher developed, in your browser.) If the spill occurred off Sambro Island near Halifax, the slick would extend from Rose Bay, Lunenburg Co., in the west, to Port Bickerton, Guysborough Co, in the east: Here's how it would look on Sable Island, where Shell Oil's Uniacke G-72 gas well blew out for 13 days in 1984: Here it is on George's (!) Bank, where Canada...

09 May, 2010

Polish filmmaker Bartosz Konopka recounts the history of the Berlin Wall from the perspective of rabbits trapped in the no-man's land created by the structure. Freed from hunting pressure, they multiplied and prospered. After all, no one was shooting at them. Such structures, known to biologists as "exclosures," often belie their brutal genesis with an unintended beneficial impact on wildlife. After all, they exclude the most destructive of predators: people. The DMZ between North and South Korea is said to be teeming with otherwise endangered wild animals. Until the cleanup began last summer, the fenced-off Sydney Tar Ponds was...

27 March, 2010
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