Editorial

A typical day for my laptop and me starts with checking the news via RSS over breakfast. Then we head to the office, plug in to IM, LAN, email, etc., and do battle with work and everything that comes up at work. Whenever the business day ends, it’s off to home, where Lappy provides dinner […]

So why am I not surprised that Halifax’s biggest bar is doubling the number of spy cams and giving police full access to its surveillance pix? Well, I’d say it’s another sign of the times. Downtown Halifax is already bristling with spy cams, many operated by private firms and others—such as those at Pizza Corner, […]

A friend flying from Toronto to Halifax on Boxing Day told me about an article in that day’s Star. “Everyone was reading it on the plane,” she said. No surprise. The piece—headlined “Will Halifax get its groove back in 2008?”—put its finger on local angst about what it called “a year of missing out on […]

Ah 2007, ’twas the year when two right-wing blowhards got their comeuppance. First, after a four-month trial in Chicago, former media tycoon Conrad Black was convicted in July of stealing millions from shareholders, sentenced to six-and-a-half years in the clink by Judge Amy St. Eve in December and ordered to report to jail without passing […]

Christmas, a time to celebrate peace and to thank our beneficent military for supporting Canadian universities. Last year, I wrote about how Dalhousie’s Centre for Foreign Policy Studies was one of 11 similar academic outfits generously supported by DND, the Department of National Defence. Now, I’ll point to the King’s Journalism School, where budgets are […]

I visited China a few years ago, and heard a tour guide sum up the nation’s major cities in a sentence. “Beijing is five years behind, Hong Kong is now,” he said, “and Shanghai is five years ahead.” It was a lesson in urban planning—not to mention an ad for Shanghai—that stuck. A good city […]

Dianne Swinemar leans across the desk in her Spartan office at Feed Nova Scotia. She’s just been asked how she’d assess the food bank’s success in meeting its goal of eliminating chronic hunger and alleviating poverty. “Oh, we’ve failed,” she answers with a bitter laugh, adding that she was hired as executive director in 1991 […]

I’m happy to give up my cell phone while behind the wheel, as long as everyone else has to. Not that the simple act of placing a call interferes with my wonderful driving abilities—which are only seriously pushed by the demands of texting and playing DJ with a 3,245-song iPod—but it sure makes other drivers […]

“I know something about crime,” said judge Joseph Kennedy in a low, gravelly voice. “I have seen the situation change in Halifax in the last 10 to 20 years.” Kennedy was addressing the Mayor’s Roundtable on Violence last week at City Hall. There was dead silence in the council chamber as he spoke of “mindless, […]

You could almost hear the wheels turning when Stephen Harper announced the Canada ecoTrust fund earlier this year. “I don’t want to deal with global fucking warming,” would be the prime minister’s thinking. “Let’s punt it to the provinces. They’ll grovel for a few crumbs and I’ve got someone to blame when the world doesn’t […]

In his bestselling book, “War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning,” the veteran American war correspondent Chris Hedges writes about “the cold and brutal efficiency of industrial warfare.” After describing the “impersonal slaughter” of fleeing Iraqi soldiers in the first Gulf War, Hedges writes it’s no wonder the world’s richest countries “live in such […]

Never doubt city council’s ability to suck. Last week’s meeting—the same one where the crazy cat by-law was passed—hit a new low when council voted to consider bringing back licences for bicycles. Councillor Krista Snow floated the idea, suggesting that licence fees could help pay for cycle-centric spending like bike lanes, and a majority of […]