Remember when Harbor Port Development Partners (HPDP) changed its name to Sydney Harbour Investment Partners (SHIP) and pressured CBRM council into extending its contract with the municipality for five years? It was last December, seven months ago, when the port file was so hot, what with terminal operator Ports AmericaRead More

At nearly the eleventh hour – 10:47:53 A.M. – on Friday 7 July,  122 states, two thirds of the UN General Assembly, voted to adopt a Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, a dramatic step which may prove instrumental in determining the fate of the planet. The Netherlands, theRead More

Have you ever asked yourself why the world is the way it is? When I ask this question, I don’t mean to refer to what we consider to be scientific truths, such as the law of gravity or the existence of neutrinos; I mean questions like: Why are some peopleRead More

News the Vatican has banned the use of gluten-free hosts in the celebration of the Eucharist hit like a bombshell this weekend, but the rules re: gluten-free hosts go back at least to Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVl) who in July 2003 declared gluten-free hosts “invalid.” In MarchRead More

What to do this week It’s time to pick those garlic scapes, so let’s talk about that, and other timely harvesting tips this week. Garlic puts up a flower stalk, something that is very expensive for a plant. If you pick that stalk before it develops, the plant will putRead More

Weapons of Math Destruction Ever since researching my stories on PowerSchool, the data gathering software used by the NS Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, I’ve been curious about the uses and abuses of Big Data. The goal is not simply to gather and store information but to mineRead More

In the world of the start-up digital publications, $3,000 is a lot of money. Had I $3,000 burning a hole in my pocket, I could walk into Connors Basics on Charlotte Street and come out with a new desk, a new office chair, a lifetime supply of roller ball pens,Read More

I just spent a wonderful couple of hours exploring the history of Nova Scotia’s branding policies from 1982 to the present courtesy, once again, of a completed freedom of information/access to information (FOIPOP) request. Thank you, unknown member of the public!   Helvetica It begins with a manual from 1982, whenRead More

On July 28, 1917, the left-wing British newspaper Workers’ Dreadnought (founded as Woman’s Dreadnought by the suffragette leader Sylvia Pankhurst) published an Open Letter from an unlikely source: the highly-decorated, reputedly-fearless Infantry Officer Siegfried ‘Mad Jack’ Sassoon. Recuperating from a throat wound, and nursing secret doubts about the nearly three-year-oldRead More

David Wells, Conservative senator for Newfoundland and Labrador, has every right to his opinion that no change should be made to our national anthem. Wells is one of 20 senators who have tied up Bill C-210 — which would change the lyrics from “in all thy sons command” to the gender-neutralRead More