Ask yourself this: who doesn’t want to drive a suck-up truck? OK, OK, suck-up truck isn’t the proper name. Technically, it’s the Tennant ATLV. That stands for All-Terrain Litter Vehicle. City workers call it “the Tennant”—it’s an alien-looking sit-on vacuum the size of a Bobcat with a wide ground-level sucker on the front and a […]
Lowefiles
Posted inNews + Opinion
MJ’s gone, but the Thriller remains.
I wonder where the glove is. The original glove. From the earliest time Michael put it on and strutted out to grab his crotch and made people go (not for the first time and most certainly not for the last): “what the hell?” There are traces of his gloves on the ‘net, of course—one supposedly […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Question: Is Premier-elect Dexter cool?
Yeah, I’ll fess up to a little bit of Obama envy, sure. And Chronicle-Herald columnist Ralph Surette says I’m not alone. Surette told CBC Radio’s Information Morning last Wednesday that a voting majority of Nova Scotians are green for Barack, and that’s why we signed in our historic NDP-thick legislature June 9. No question—Nova Scotians […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Plastic bag lobby wants to stay disposable
Elly May Clampett could really work a paper dress. Elly May was patriarch Jed Clampett’s daughter on The Beverly Hillbillies, a 1960s sitcom about a family of nouveau riche hicks who move to a mansion in Beverly Hills after finding oil on their land. The Beverly Hillbillies finished production before I emerged from the womb […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Sleep deprivation, torture, and Continental Flight 3407.
Slate.com ran a story last week about sleep deprivation techniques used by US interrogators at Guantanamo Bay. While perhaps not Abu Ghraibian in their scandalousness—CIA agents forced shackled prisoners to stand for up to 11 days straight—it was enough for Slate columnist Brian Palmer to work to answer the question “Can You Die From Lack […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Terri Peace de-cups Tim Horton’s annual contest
“It’s about garbage on the ground,” says Terri Peace, “and throw-away stuff.” Peace is a community recreation programmer with HRM who coordinates the annual Pick up to Win Challenge. The rules are simple: participants—from youth environmental action group HEAT—have two weeks to collect as many littered disposable coffee cups as possible. Over three challenges, they’ve […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Hope, coloured blue
Susan Earle is sad. “Soon,” she says, “we’re going to be Hopeless.” And no, she’s not on about the economy. Earle is talking about the Hope Colour Processor in the Photography department at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University. The 10-year-old $30,000 beast that’s leaving the university at the end of this […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Legislating helmet safety
Dear provincial legislators: We are Canadian. You can force us to wear helmets when we ski and skate, if you want to. I’m not saying Canadians—as a people—roll over and take whatever’s coming. No, no. We are a strong, proud country. We resisted American invasion in the War of 1812 and we’ll continue our feisty […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Changing shirts
Is it rude or just cynical to say when I first heard about Haligonian David Nurse’s business idea to sell anti-bullying t-shirts to raise cash for Kids Help Phone I thought it was a bad idea? In any case, I did. Of course I’m no fan of bullying. And I’m all for the good work […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Holiday dispirit
Hey you! You with the wreath on the door! You, there, with the 30-inch faded plastic candle on the balcony! Your intentions might once have been good, but now, instead of spreading cheer, you’re killing us all. You’re putting the “Christ! Enough already!” back in Christmas. Get your damn holiday decorations down. Is it a […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Rodney MacDonald’s scrummy politics
Scrums—those huddles of microphone-thrusting reporters that you see on the news every night knotted like a rat-king around politicians or other high-profile news-makers—are all about control. When Rodney MacDonald’s gang of election-prepping Tories decided January 29 to shift weekly cabinet scrums from a hallway into the legislature’s shiny new media room—where they stuck the premier […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Halifax’s hidden racism
It’s almost impossible to see signs of racism in Halifax. Not because they aren’t there—because they’re hidden in plain sight all around us. Sure, we can convince ourselves everything’s just tickety-boo. We’re a cosmopolitan city with a healthy respect for Charter rights, aren’t we? Lynch mobs, last I checked, don’t roam the streets. So on […]
