Honey, I shrunk the groceries My mother, who pays better attention to these things than I do, has been pointing out to me for some time now how many of the products she buys have shrunk in size — although not in price. Curious, I did some reading and discoveredRead More

It’s been a while since I played a good old-fashioned game of “Okay, stop” with a written document, but last Saturday’s Cape Breton Post article about the Port of Sydney AGM cries out for a talking to. I’m going to cut the author, “political reporter” Ian Nathanson, some slack, becauseRead More

By a strange confluence of events, I had already decided to cover the subject of rail this week before I read the Scotia Rail Development Society editorial in Saturday’s paper. The editorial simply served to spur me on (no pun intended). Barry Sheehy and Albert Barbusci of Sydney Harbour InvestmentRead More

I ran across this ad for a CBRM Communications/Information Officer in the course of researching this week’s treatise on access to information. The closing date for applications is tomorrow — November 19 — so there’s still time for any of you not daunted by the list of 21 — TWENTY-ONERead More

Catch 22 “There was only one catch, and that was Catch-22.” Did you happen to watch the CBC-sponsored CBRM mayoral candidates’ debate on Wednesday night? I watched the whole thing and, given my obsession with all things port, was struck by Mayor Cecil Clarke’s assertion that the province was preparedRead...

Last week, PSA Halifax (formerly Halterm) took delivery of a piece of equipment that may signal the end of the Port of Sydney’s container terminal dream. The Singapore-based port operator — one of the largest in the world — received a Super Post Panamax (SPPX) crane ordered 18 months ago,Read More

The cruise industry has been hard hit by COVID-19, which is bad news for any port that has put all its eggs in that particular basket, like the Port of Sydney which counts on the industry for up to 85% of its revenues and has funneled $20 million in publicRead...

Ad nauseum Thanks to Tim Bousquet at the Halifax Examiner for pointing me to this article by David Roth (the one who used to write for Deadspin, not the one who sang “Jump”). It’s called “The infinite scroll” and it is an elegant though depressing exploration of the modern onlineRead More

Any port in a storm? Lisa Raitt was a guest on Canadaland’s OPPO podcast this week (OPPO is sort of like Crossfire for millennials, pitting left-of-center reporter/pundit Justin Ling against right-of-center reporter/pundit Jen Gerson to discuss Canadian politics.) You can listen to what Raitt had to say about why sheRead More

FOIPOP blues Since the dawn of the age of Big Data — hell, since the dawn of the age of Excel spreadsheets — tracking and collating information has become much easier for us humans. Data entry is boring but not difficult, and once entered (whether into a database or aRead More