This column comes to you from Shanghai because I’m still on vacation. I am embedded deep in the pearl-encrusted, dragon-swarming mists of the Far East. Of course, while old Western beliefs about the yellow horde no longer hold, new peculiarities have taken their place.
Opinion
Opinions from our editorial board and contributors.
WET PAINT: Baby and Balanciaga
As we have probably all noticed at some point, current fashions often conflict. While everyone is still flapping about flats and their newly wistful attitude to life and walking, Pam Anderson-inspired monstrosities are somehow attaching themselves to all my friends’ feet.
INFORMATIONATION: Privacy lost-browsing in the fishbowl society
I offer you questions, not answers. Privacy is a complicated issue, with many problems dwelling at the collision of our various human values. We feel differently about our information being in the hands of others depending on who they are. Information in the hands of stalkers is creepy and possibly dangerous.
OFF THE BOARD: Smart people have never been so stupid
I work at a record store and we have a listening counter on the basement level: a broad semi-circular counter with a half-dozen control panels and headphones jutting out of it at two-foot intervals. Customers stand about shoulder-length apart, skimming through the liner notes of a potential purchase, bopping their heads rhythmically.
EDITORIAL: The 4Floors conundrum
When an issue is too divisive for our editorial board to reach a consensus on it, we feel that our readers are better served by two competing editorials that look at all sides of the debate. With that in mind, we tackle the party everyone loves to hate: 4Floors-should it stay or should it go? UNLEASH THE POTENTIAL McGill students are spoiled.
UNCOMMONLY THOUGHTFUL: Oral sex is great
Warning: The following column is written with a heterosexual audience in mind (which is something I wouldn’t normally do), but generally I think the queer community is much more open to the joys of oral sex and doesn’t need a talking to on the subject. Why has performing oral sex become a derogatory thing? Why do the media, music industry and porn (okay, bad example) make it out to be all about power for the person receiving it? I think it’s about power for the person giving oral sex.
EDITORIAL: The CRTC shouldn’t tangle with the Web
Back in 1999, in a rare and uncharacteristic display of good sense, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission announced: “Our message is clear. We are not regulating any portion of the Internet.” Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end.
EDITORIAL: A dollar for the DPS: a worthwhile investment
No matter how you feel about the Daily Publications Society’s editorial politics, a “yes” vote is the sensible choice on their proposed fee increase. Newspaper advertising is in the toilet – the Tribune’s advertising revenue has been cut in half in the last two years – and printing costs are steadily increasing.
OFF THE BOARD: My first mugshot
As a recent martyr for student journalism, I can say that getting arrested sucks. I attended the 14th annual March Against Police Brutality on March 15 with two other Tribune photojournalists to get some shots of the inevitable violence and rioting that occurs during the event.
PIÑATA DIPLOMACY: Obama’s declining support
From the time I arrived on campus in August 2008 to the U.S. presidential election that November, I didn’t meet a single John McCain supporter. I don’t think this was because I had a disproportionately Obamaniacal group of friends. Nor was it because we viewed him as somehow the lesser of two evils – the tone of his supporters during the campaign was hardly reflective of that kind of aw-shucks-he’s-the-best-we-have mentality that you get with someone like Michael Ignatieff.
