News
Views
Noticed
Government
在校园
In the harbour
Footnotes
News
1. Vigil
Photo: Halifax Pride/ Facebook
数百人出现在Halifax Commonlast nightfor the Vigil for Orlando.
2. Losing the forest — and the species — for the trees
Bobolink. Photo: audubon.org
Reporter Jennifer Henderson reviews the most recent report from Auditor General Michael Pickup, who criticizes the Department of Natural Resources for failing to implement legally required plans to save endangered and threatened species.
Click here to read “Losing the forest — and the species — for the trees.”
This article is behind the Examiner’s paywall and so available only to paid subscribers.Click here to purchase a subscription.
3.世界级的!
I’m convinced they write these press releases specifically to rub my nosein the language:
New Program Helps Businesses CreateWorld-classTourism Experiences
Tourism Nova Scotia announced today, June 13, the first participants in a new program that is following through on the Crown corporation’s commitment to change how it approaches tourism.
TheWorld-ClassExperience EXCELLerator program will help businesses develop tourism experiences that are authentic and differentiate Nova Scotia as a travel destination. The experiences are supported by market research that shows their potential to attract visitors from key markets.
“We’re excited to collaborate with Tourism Nova Scotia on our culinary kayak experience,” said Angelo Spinazzola, owner of North River Kayak Tours in Cape Breton and program participant. “By combining our expertise with Tourism Nova Scotia’s, we’ll build a unique,world-class访客将在一生中谈论的经验。”
[…]
Focusing onworld-classexperiences is a pillar of Tourism Nova Scotia’s strategy that outlines how it will help the industry meet the One Nova Scotia goal of doubling annual tourism revenues to $4 billion by 2024.
“World-class” is哈利法克斯的废话, brought to town initially by none other than Fred MacGillivray and used ever since by every grifter and schemer hoping to bamboozle the public.
Oh, and just a reminder: the $4 billion is a diversion.As I’ve explained before:
See what they did there? Yep, they included Nova Scotia residents travelling within the province in the total $2 billion figure in order to figure economic impact. This is a big no-no in economic impact reports.
If the new convention centre includes local meetings in its calculation of economic impact, it will be lying to citizens. If the Halifax Association of Disgruntled Journalists (HADJ) decides to hold its annual general meeting at the new convention centre instead of the Woodside Beverage Room, it doesn’t magically create new money in the province. Likewise, if I decide to spend the weekend in Canso instead of staying in Dartmouth, it might help the owners of the Canso Beverage Room (where I’d inevitably spend all my dough), but only at the cost to the owners of the Woodside Beverage Room. There’s no new money created.
So “doubling” tourism revenue to $4 billion might be achievable by simply getting people to knock off work early on Fridays and spending the day at the beer garden. The productivity loss would be far greater than the increase in beer sales, but tourism promoters could point to the increased beer sales and say the economy is doing great. Heck, if we give everyone Thursdays and Fridays off, we’d do that much better economically.
If we’re going to be remotely honest about this, what we should be seeking to double is not the $2 billion figure, but rather the $1.2 billion spent by people who come from out of province.
4. Ships on the cheap
朱迪·富特（Judy Foote）展示了加拿大新海军的能力。
“The federal government said Monday it will streamline its warship replacement program by purchasing an off-the-shelf design to save money and speed the process,”reports the Canadian Press:
Public Services Minister Judy Foote made the announcement today at Irving Shipbuilding‘s Halifax headquarters, saying a single competitive process will select an existing warship design along with the systems and equipment that will be integrated on the vessels.
5. Sidney Crosby
Future road sign thief.
Exhausted from the celebratory rioting, Cole Harbourites now say they want在Sidney Crosby之后重命名Forest Hills Parkway.
It’s a bad idea to name stuff after living people because no matter how much we admire them, the celebrityhood might go to their heads and their lives may go horribly sideways. And, it’s not a great idea to name stuff after dead people, either —that Stairs Street thingis beyond insulting, for example. What’s wrong with “Forest Hills Parkway”? It’s perfectly descriptive, and it’s unlikely the entire neighbourhood of Forest Hills will commit a mass bank holdup, or whatever.
And really: if we name a road after Sid, it’d only encourage him to start stealing road signs. He’s a Cole Harbour kid, after all.
Views
1. Marilla Stephenson
“Consider Marilla Stephenson, the long time Halifax Herald columnist who neatly timed her buyout-package two years ago with an 18-month contract to advise Premier Stephen McNeil’s One Nova Scotia Coalition on the Ivany report,”writes Stephen Kimber:
Last week, Stephenson won a competition for a newly invented civil service “leadership role”: managing director of corporate and external relations in the Executive Council Office. She’ll liaise with key players in various departments, including Laura Lee Langley, the former MITV anchor, now deputy minister in the Office of the Premier.
Kimber is looking at the astonishing number of ex-journalists landing in the McNeil government — Stephenson joins Langley, JackIe Foster, Laurie Graham, and David Jackson.
我不同意金伯（Kimber），他认为“新闻技能 - 研究，吸收陌生信息并清楚地传达出故事的能力 - 是宝贵的转移技能。”相反，政治工作人员需要良好记者所缺乏的党派效忠和Yessirism的结合。
We can argue about that, I guess; I’ll grant the point that the rest of the pack were very good journalists — I suspect they’re now having a hard time biting their tongues — but Stephenson? As a columnist, she always struck me as merely a Liberal Party hack, simply repeating mantralike from the neocon Bible about slashing budgets and government staff.
I find a particular irony in Stephenson’s January 31, 2013 Chronicle Herald column, an attack on the then-NDP government of Darrell Dexter headlined “Top 10 ways for N.S. to shed baggage, cut costs.” In the column, Stephenson rattles off predictable neocon solutions to supposed budget woes — privatize health care, attack teacher unions, kill the government-owned asphalt plant — but of particular interest given that Stephenson is landing a job at a newly created government communications position is point 2:
2.摆脱大约一半的通信机器和现在在政府管辖范围内运营的大量全职政府雇员。是的，有太多信息。
I guess so long as the half of the communications staff being shown the exit door aren’t connected Liberal insiders, it’s a good plan.
2.当天的胡思乱想的信
While on a recent Sunday walk in Victoria Park, I came across 15 to 20 owners with their pets out enjoying the sun and fresh air, on the upper trails. Of that total, I would guess five of the pets were on leash. Most were off.
In 2015, I had four, fairly serious incidents involving off-leash dogs. In 2014 I had three.
在一个案例中，一只较大的中型狗从远处向我和我的妻子起诉，正如其主人所看的那样。我对宠物主人大喊：“他友好吗？”她回答：“不，他不是。”
The dog ran to within 10 feet barking and growling, stopped and, then lunged forward, challenging. Meanwhile, my wife is shouting to the owner to “get control of her dog.”
Had this been a child or more senior individual I shudder to think of the consequences.
The verbal confrontation that followed with the dog owner was not pleasant for any involved.
Another time, a young man was approaching with an off-leash larger shepherd/collie mix. It was running up behind a female jogger and though the owner was calling, the dog was not responsive. After repeated verbal warnings it broke off and as we approached, the dog ran directly at us, which scared my wife. I warned the dog off with a loud verbal command. As I passed the owner I said, “Your dog should be on a leash.” The owner responded in an aggressive/sarcastic manner and what followed was a very serious verbal confrontation that was more like an uncontrolled road rage incident.
Those are but two examples of just my experiences.
Dog owners and dog walkers, this is not a dog park. It is a park where you can enjoy nature at its best. You are allowed to bring your “best friend” with you, provided it is kept under control and you clean up behind it.
I raise the issue and welcome comments from other park users to generate possible solutions, such as more signage and stern warnings/tickets from authorities to owners who refuse to “get it.” I am not anti-dog. I am, however, opposed to people who think they know their dogs but either don’t know how or won’t control aggressive moves toward unsuspecting citizens who are out and simply want to enjoy Victoria Park’s trails.
Raymond Lindsay, Salmon River
Government
City
City Council(1pm, City Hall) —here’s the agenda. I’ll be live-blogging the meeting via the Examiner’s Twitter account, @hfxExaminer.
Province
No public meetings.
On Campus
Dalhousie
魔方(11:30am, Slonim Conference Room, Goldberg Computer Science Building) — Robert Smith, a Master’s student in the Faculty of Computer Science, will speak on “Discovering Rubik’s Cube Subgroups Using Coevolutionary GP — a Five Twist Experiment” His abstract:
这项工作报告了一种使用遗传编程（GP）的3x3x3 Rubik Cube的直接策略发现方法（一种加强学习形式）。具体而言，提出了两种方法的合成：1）先前的组理论公式用于提出一系列目标，以开发解决整体任务不同阶段的解决方案；2）利用GP政策搜索的层次制定，其中适用于较早目标的政策被明确转移，以帮助制定下一个目标的政策。由此产生的策略等级组织明确证明了任务分解和政策重用。从算法上讲，该过程利用对一种常见方法进行递归呼吁，以维持多样化的GP个人，然后学习如何针对早期目标而开发的计划子集（策略）。除了这两个目标外，我们没有明确确定如何分解任务或标记重用的特定策略。此外，在进化结束时，我们返回的人口解决了目前正在使用的两个目标的17,675,698个不同初始立方体中的100％。
In the harbour
新斯科舍省左右的海洋，星期二上午9点。地图：marinetraffic.com
Tuesday
5:30am:Glovis Clipper，汽车承运人，从德国埃姆登到达自动驾驶
6am:Oceanex Sanderling, ro-ro cargo, arrives at Pier 41 from St. John’s
7:15am:Norwegian Gem，游轮，从纽约到达22号码头
10am:Oocl Kaohsiung, container ship, arrives at Fairview Cove from Cagliari, Italy
11am:Thalatta，RO-RO货物，到达英格兰南汉普顿的码头TBD
11:30am:Glovis Clipper, car carrier, sails from Autoport