Does fooling around with numbers make you math-savvy? It must. I convinced myself—a grade 11 honours student—I just “couldn’t do” math. I’ve been using a calculator ever since and now, guess what? I actually can’t do math. My multiplication tables have been erased to make space for information I access more often (Dharma Sushi’s phone […]
Lowefiles
Posted inNews + Opinion
Bad Apple
I’m here. I’m not queer. But I am a PC user. Get used to it. I’m outing myself as a non-Mac addict. You got a problem with that? If you own an Apple computer, you probably do. I’m not Macophobic. If you want to love Apple computers, fine. Just quit being so pushy about it, […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Peep this
News on the stale Easter candy front: those five Marshmallow Peeps hardening on your kitchen counter aren’t the last of this year’s flock. The little fellas left millions of sickly sweet brothers and sisters back at the factory. And here they come now. Marshmallow Peeps—the toxic-yellow sugar-encrusted baby bird-shaped candies—are no longer hatching just at […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Out to lunch
Joan Parks-Hubley is my hero. It’s not a title that usually goes along with being a government employee. But Parks-Hubley’s got my nod. The Healthy Workplace program coordinator with Nova Scotia’s Public Service Commission is regularly bolting out the office door. It’s not quite in the spirit of “take this job and shove it,” but […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
International blend
Stock market virgin Tim Hortons swept onto the Toronto and New York Stock Exchanges last Friday like a debutante at a caffeine cotillion, raising a cool $780 million smackers with one swish of her sugar-coated petticoats. With that kind of dough rolling around, plus the way the corporate giant has managed to knead its products […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Claiming the games
Question: what does Halifax have on its Commonwealth Games bid checklist that the other cities vying for the 2014 games don’t? Answer: a blog. www.Halifaxnoway.com is a Halifax anti-games site with links to local and national news stories and editorials that flip the bird at the Commonwealth Games. Unaudited Halifax bid figures, planning secrecy, nonexistent […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Cringe festival
Canadian Tire Guy—every Canadian television-watcher’s next-door-neighbour from hell—has picked up stakes and left town. Or been run out. It’s difficult to tell when so many people are screaming at their TVs: “Don’t let the garden gate hit your ass on the way out!” Hatred of this ad icon and his Simoniz Pressure Washer-hawking wife, Mrs. […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Seasonal disorder
The best one can say about winter, it seems, is a backhanded compliment. Seventeenth century American poet Anne Bradstreet wrote, “If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant….” Percy Bysshe Shelley couldn’t muster much better in “Ode to the West Wind”: “If winter comes, can spring be far behind?” The penguins […]
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Wax and wane
Ladies, pull up your pants. Brazilian wax jobs are going out of style. In case you’ve managed to miss this decade-and-a-half-old trend in pubic hair management that hit its height in the late ’90s, or if you’ve never been plucky enough to ask someone the ins and outs, here goes: You lie naked from the […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Negative Energy
So long Monte, we hardly knew ya. Monte Solberg – newly minted Harper cabinet minister and long time Reform Alliance Conservative MP — is ditching his blog at www.montesolberg.com after a paltry year and four days in the blogospheric fray. Solberg’s a zippy writer; he spent 17 years as a broadcaster. His blog was a […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Branding Canada
Canadian tourism is down. Mounties, moose and mountains are to blame. So says Rod Seiling of the Greater Toronto Hotel Association, anyway. Bruce MacMillan of Tourism Toronto puts a finer point on it: he says Canada’s got a reputation as dull. (Toronto: such a happy place. Filled with such positive people.) The brunt of the […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
How the West was numb
The Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus went up in flames Saturday at the hands of protesters angry about a dozen caricatures of the prophet Muhammad making the rounds in the European press. Demonstrations also took place in Gaza City, London and Lahore. Protesters were shot to death Monday in two Afghan cities, more Tuesday. […]