OK, I’ll admit it: I’m a procrastinator. When I’ve got work to do, I like nothing more than imagining its potential brilliance in my mind for days on end. Of course, by the time I actually have to sit down and get something done, I’m not only strapped for time (having left everything to the […]
Education
The truth about your T.A.
The first time I saw someone actually write down something I said in class, I nearly laughed out loud. “No no no,” I wanted to say, watching a student dutifully record something I’d spit out unthinkingly from my post at the front of the room, “I’m just your T.A. I don’t actually KNOW anything.” Which, […]
Outstanding in Their Fieldwork
Glen Hougan Design, NSCAD “I’m not just in making stuff, I’m interested in making stuff happen,” says Hougan, over the phone from Michigan, where he’s both on vacation at a cottage and working with furniture design companies. Hougan has done work with design for senior citizens and is probably best known for his “Empathy Suit,” a […]
International Relations
For the student suffering acute big-wide-world curiousity, a passport is the most useful tool to carry into this school year. Earth Sciences your thing? Why not travel to the Bering Sea to study its subduction zones? Want to know more about living under communism in Latin America? There’s a Cuba program for that. Still not […]
How to be Halifamous
Haliwood celebrities are your baristas by day, musicians by night. Due to an overwhelming urge to celebrate our community, Haligonians crown any talented about-town figure “Halifamous”, unnecessarily defined by Urban Dictionary as “a person who is considered famous within Halifax.” Plenty of the Halifamous aren’t even from here. If you’re creative but lack the posse, […]
College comedies
A Chump At Oxford (Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, 1940) The classic comedy duo play a couple of deadbeat ninnies so down-and-out they resort to temping as street cleaners. Fortuitously, they foil a bank robber by neglecting to pick up banana peel. The grateful banker then fulfills their dreams of getting an education, but before they […]
Can social media be an agent for change?
What if Facebook wasn’t just for gawking at pictures of now-pregnant acquaintances from high school? Or your Twitter feed wasn’t just for following Tracy Morgan’s day-to-day musings? What if the internet and its addictive spawn, social media, could be harnessed for loftier purposes? That’s the sentiment behind ChangeCamp Halifax, a one-day “unconference” bringing together creative […]
Doolittle, Darwin and the Deeply Dumb
[Editor’s note: this story is one of five Coast articles selected as finalists for the 2010 Atlantic Journalism Awards. All five stories are collected here.] Because it is both the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species and the 200th anniversary of author Charles Darwin’s birth, 2009 has been dubbed the Year […]
Halifax celebrates Darwin
Biologists, philosophers and historians from around the world will gather in Halifax from Wednesday, October 14 to Saturday, October 17, for a four-day workshop on Charles Darwin. Most of the discussions are academic in nature and by invitation only, but each night there is a free public lecture or event. Check them out below. [Disclosure: […]
A creationist primer
Realizing that my Canadian audience may not be much familiar with the American creationist movement, I’ve compiled some videos to give you the rough idea. Peanut Butter, The Atheist’s Nightmare! This is apparently a real creationist, showing that your typical jar of peanut disproves evolution. Banana: The Athiests Nightmare Creationist Ray Comfort shows that bananas […]
Meeting people is easy
The student population in this city is more than half the size of the entire population on the peninsula, making casual run-ins a way of life. So whether you’re crushing on that cute boy in your Dinosaurs and Their World class or swooning over the server at a nearby cafe, the following hotspots will help […]
Where the eastern goths are
A strange scene is unfolding in a small dark room adjacent to a downtown Chinese buffet: Fortune tellers, clowns, scantily clad zombie girls, mimes and the devil himself dance happily together and swig cheap beer. Fluorescent lights reflect off skin wrapped in tight latex and leather, while eardrums absorb trance, EBM, goth-rock and industrial music. […]

