Today I noticed a friend had posted a link to “Vote No” on The Muse’s levi referendum. It had sparked quite a bit of discussion on the issue. This was my two cents:

Unfortunately The Muse has no control over their rates to their consumers when they need to cope with inflation.

In order to remain a free publication for the student body The Muse needs to collect fees from the students and from advertisers (and semi-new by-laws prevent their biggest advertisers, like Molson, from advertising).

The Muse has been collecting a small $2 levi fee from students dating well back beyond the time when I started working there (2002). A lot has changed since then.

I remember the revenue from levi fees during my time was barely enough to scrape by. I can only imagine the financial struggle they have now.

If you do not like The Muse, don’t read it. But don’t actively seek to financially dissolve the only student paper over $2 per semester.

If you want to kick a fuss over fees for a service you do not use (I am speaking generally here) then kick a fuss over the mandatory $40 Field House Rec Fee. Most students don’t use it.

But most students do read The Muse, at least occasionally.

I think it would do you good to see the conditions many of these volunteer writers are working in. Drop into The Muse office on the second floor of the UC and check out their outdated computer systems and decrepit furniture. I know I wouldn’t find it very motivating. A few dollars could go a long way.

I also find “an increased budget will improve the quality of the writing” troubling. The students that do actually get paid at The Muse have to live and breath that paper day in and day out to keep it flowing on the stands. They have no time for other jobs and I know first hand how the workload can affect academics.

Their small honorariums have to go to pay for a meager cost of living. This is especially hard since in the past couple of years the cost of living in St. John’s has essentially matched the cost of living in a big city like Toronto.

On the flip side, these have become troubling times for print newspapers because of the internet’s overwhelming efficiency and speed in spreading news.

Many other publications are changing their business models to cope with the changing information world. I would like to see what initiatives The Muse has taken on in an effort to adapt.

If they do get the additional levi, I hope they have plans to do something creative and new as well.

Local News, Politics Referendum, The Muse

Everyone talks about how much they dislike Stephen Harper but few people take the initiative to do anything about it.

Someone created a Facebook Page for this onion ring and their social experiment is to determine if this onion ring can conjure up more supporters than Stephen Harper

I am proud to say that an onion ring has more fans on Facebook than Stephen Harper does. As I write this there are 30,136 people who are fans of Stephen Harper. There are 73,600 fans of this onion.

Politics, Wacky Facebook, onion, Stephen Harper

The Association for the Arts in Mount Pearl, AAMP, is currently accepting short films from local artists for their annual Frosty Film Festival. Here is the announcement:

On February 7th the Association for the Arts in Mount Pearl will be hosting the 5th annual Frosty Film Festival and I’m hoping to make this the biggest and best year yet. I’m reaching out to a few of my favorite artistic people to look for some help.

AAMP is all about giving local artists opportunities and while we try to have a few bigger names in our line up, we like to put a focus on first time filmmakers.

So, primarily I’m looking for any local film makers who you may know that have a short film that they would like played. If you do, please pass my name on to them and we can work on getting their film shown.

For info on AAMP, you can go to AAMP.ca or you can reach me at info@aamp.ca.

Also, if any of you have any ideas or suggestions on what we could do to increase knowledge of the event and, of course, attendance I’d love to hear about it.

Thanks for helping and I hope to hear from you soon!
Angela

To learn more check out the Frosty Film Festival section on the AAMP website.

Local News AAMP, Association for the Arts in Mount Pearl, Frosty Film Festival

On January 4th St. John’s began issuing snowclearing tickets as promised. They advertised on the radio and on television. I rarely pay attention to either, but even I was aware of the snowclearing date.

All the same, 300 motorists found themselves with hefty $45 snowclearing tickets the next morning.

Needless to say,  many were not happy.

You leave your vehicle on the road overnight when snowclearing is in effect and you deserve a ticket. I agree with this. Otherwise we have messy streets in the morning because plows were unable to maneuver properly through them.

But 300 tickets on a clear night? City Council is just going out looking for people to ticket needlessly. Random sweeps are fine. The odd ticket for a violator will prevent people from parking on the road overnight. Obviously if it snows, nail them with a ticket. Otherwise, frig off.

There is no need to ticket so many people on a night where there was no snowclearing and the weather forecast indicated no chance of snow.

But if the city must ticket absolutely everyone with a tire on the road, then why not put the money they make to snowclearing?

In one night of ticketing they raised $13,500.00. Take out the expenses for ticketing those violators and you have a significant profit from one night’s work. Surely this kind of cashflow could be put towards improving the city’s dismal snowclearing efforts.

If St. John’s put as much effort into actually cleaning the streets as they do ticketing parked vehicles we’d have wonderfully clean streets.

Local News, Rants, Service St. John's, Street Cleaning

I am not sure if this is a regular thing, but I logged into Twitter tonight to find a flood a updates from @thescopeNL regarding discussions during the St. John’s City Council Meeting. Real time updates of important issues as they are addressed.

Cool!

Local News St. John's, The Scope, Twitter

Last night while driving down Blackmarsh road we passed a car that had slipped on black ice and found itself stuck in a snow-filled ditch.

We stopped to lend a hand. We started by trying to push the vehicle while the driver gave it some juice but the front tires were only pushing away the loose gravel and digging a hole.

Before we even had a chance to evaluate the next best thing to do an Affordable Towing flatbed truck slowed down as it drove by.

The the employees jumped out and quickly hitch the lady’s car and pulled it out of the ditch.

The amazing part was she did not call the towing company. They simply helped her out of good will.

Until last night I considered all towing companies to be the same and I would have grabbed any random number from the Yellow Pages if I needed help.

I think if I ever need a tow from here on out it will be Affordable Towing.

Local News Affordable Towing

Remember when Hey Rosetta! got so big that they traveled to Toronto?

How long was I asleep that Apple eyed them?

They made an appearance this week on the Apple iTune’s homepage in the iTunes Preview pane under the category New Music Releases. Right in between The Killers and Britney Spears.

Congrats guys!

Interest, Local News Hey Rosetta!, iTunes

Last week Bill Cosby made an appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. During his appearance he made a reference to Newfoundland.

He mentions Newfoundland around 8 minutes in.

It is appropriate because on a few weeks ago Bill Cosby was talking about Newfoundland after an African-American man came forward with story about Newfoundland during World War II. This man was touched by Newfoundlanders treating him as equal despite his race. Rumour has it the story may spin a feature film.

Interest, Local News Bill Cosby, Newfoundland & Labrador

Finally!

People in and around St. John’s, particularly downtown, have undoubtedly seen or heard about the filming of the CBC program Republic of Doyle.

CBC is now presenting the trailer. It’s very in depth and looks amazing. I actually cannot wait to see this show!

From CBC: Republic of Doyle

Interest, Local News CBC, Newfoundland & Labrador, Republic of Doyle, St. John's

Is it just me, or is it silly that an election for an office of power for the next four years was determined by a coin flip?

I know it’s legislation and it’s only fair that the rules laid out be followed, but it seems like this particular rule was drafted under the impression it was an impossible scenario.

I know nothing about the mayoral candidate from Paradise, except that one is a 19 year old student and they other is a seasoned municipal politician, but I don’t think what happened in that municipality was fair to either candidate or very democratic.

For anyone unfamiliar with this case the mayor was literally chosen at random after a recount resulted in a tie. In Newfoundland that is how we resolve electoral recounts.

Costly as they are, I think that legislation needs to be upgraded to allow additional recounts or a tie-breaking election. If there were any discrepancies from one count to a second, coundn’t it also be possible that the recount was inaccurate?

Could you imagine if a hockey playoff match tie was determined by a coin flip? I suspect people would lose interest in hockey.

Local News, Politics, Rants Elections, Paradise