Lowefiles

Forget Gaza. Forget HIV. Forget global warming and the recession, too. It’s January. And that makes it time for the Western world to pipe up about what we really see as the greatest challenge of our time—the common cold. Or, more precisely: When are you bastard researchers going to find a cure for this mo-fo? […]

In 2008 we learned from studies that putting boiled water in plastic bottles speeds up the release of bisphenol A, that Canada is the world’s fourth largest source of spam and that Tasers might not be as safe as we think. My pitch for our most important study of the year? It’s the one that […]

I wonder as I wander: how does one qualify a love for Christmas? When you’re not religious, I mean. And when you hate the season’s plastic excesses to your angry little core. For people like that—like me—Christmas makes no sense. When Jesus ain’t the reason for your season and having to go to the mall […]

Apparently in Anglican circles the phrase “take me up to the choir loft” has a meaning other than its literal one. So says Halifax bass clarinetist Jeff Reilly, who, though he doesn’t identify himself as a Christian, has a habit of hanging around in churches. Reilly plays with cellist Christoph Both and pipe organist Peter […]

Lie detector tests reveal more about the organization giving the test than the person being tested.

I’m looking for a revolution here, people. Help me out, will ya? Here’s the hook: The end is supposedly nigh for my first-generation iPod Shuffle. A couple of months ago, I plugged its serial number and info about my (mis)use patterns into the iPod Death Clock (imechanic.com–but don’t go looking for it; the site’s been […]

Haligonians re-elected Mayor Peter Kelly with a 16-large margin over contender Sheila Fougere Saturday. And 100,000 bike tires went flat. See, Halifax may have opted for the status quo (actually, Halifax, perhaps, didn’t; the suburban and rural portions of the municipality did), but there’s something significant that will change around council. We can bid farewell […]

Broken windows Gee, thanks, Rudy. Rudolph Giuliani last week told Vancouver the way to clean up its act and decrease crime is to follow hislead in scrubbing graffiti and punishing petty crime on the streets of New York. (Funny, considering Vancouver’s violent crime rate is half New York’s, but I digress… .) It’s called the […]

Sleep tight. Or, at least, Todd Palin will. Republican vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin, in an interview with the Anchorage Daily News in May, said her hubby, Todd, “can go on just an hour or two of sleep a night. He says, ‘I can sleep when I die.’” Mr. Sarah Barracuda isn’t the only one […]

That’s what a friend of mine said recently. The opening ceremonies—with CGIed fireworks and a lip-synching nine-year-old—have just gone too far. The packaged event—in China, where the markets are open but based on the closed mouths of protesters it’s still clearly a Mao, Mao, Mao, Mao World—had too many folks throwing their arms up in […]

The harbour is a sewer. At least, that’s the connection my little brain can’t seem to shake after a lifetime of flushing my unmentionables down the tube.So, swimming there? My involuntary response to the idea of clambering over the rocks and clumsily tipping shoulder-first into the murky depths at Point Pleasant Park’s Black Rock Beach […]

I have this cell phone plan—free evenings and weekends and 300 daytime minutes a month. But I’ve recently come across a better offer. So I’ll ditch the cellphone—Motorola 120c, circa 2002—and buy, as a replacement, not the newest and holiest of holies, the iPhone G3, but, instead, a watch. You know? Tick-tock? Instead of the […]