The surprisingly (to me) young audience that gathered Thursday night at Empire's Park Lane Cinema in Halifax to see a simulcast of the American Public Radio program This American Life. The slightly older audience that gathered for the actual show at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts in New York City: Given the affection for radio among Canada's chattering classes, I'm surprised at how many Nova Scotians have never heard of This American Life, a superb one-hour program produced each week at WBEZ in Chicago. A typical episode features a collection  documentaries, essays, readings, memoirs, and found footage loosely grouped around a single...

11 May, 2012

Our friend in New Brunswick has been channeling Pat Boone: Dear Aliant, It’s not me, it’s you. We’ve been through a lot together. Land lines and cell phones. Dial-up, high-speed, wireless Internet sticks and now, fibre-op. I’ve treated you well. Sent you hundreds of dollars every single month. Tried to keep the lines of communication open. We’ve talked and talked – never more than during my recent move to New Brunswick. In fact, we just got off the phone with one another, marking our tenth call related to my move from Nova Scotia. I called you just now because I was alarmed to receive...

07 May, 2012

A Chinese engineer, on his first trip to the United States, a work assignment for his company, snapped this photo, reproduced today on James Fallows's blog. Fallows asks his readers: Why did he take the photo? What happened next? For the answers, go here....

07 May, 2012

[Update below] A Canadian Internet civil libertarian has named South Shore Regional School Board Superintendent Nancy Pynch-Worthylake "Authoritarian High School Superintendent of the Month" for placing student William Swinimer on five days suspension for wearing a shirt that read, "Life is wasted without Jesus." University of Waterloo computer science professor Jeffrey Shallit announced the tongue-in-cheek award on his Recursivity Blog, but his denunciation of Pynch-Worthylake's overreaction was anything but tongue-in-cheek: North American high schools are not places where free speech and criticism of authority are welcomed. Instead of teaching lessons about free speech, free expression, the Bill of Rights, and the Charter of...

04 May, 2012

Blues belter Matt Anderson and subtle folkie Dave Gunning seem like an odd pairing, but they played together beautifully last night before an appreciative audience at the Halifax Chamber of Commerce annual Spring Dinner. They were consistently funny, too. "I felt a bit nervous at the prospect of playing for such a high-powered crowd," Anderson said. "So I asked who played last year." "Jane Goodall."...

03 May, 2012