Opinion

"Richer, fatter, and not much happier" was the headline of the Worldwatch Institute's annual report, State of the World 2004. The subtitle reads "Consumer appetite erodes quality of life for rich and poor".

According to the Ministry of Skills, Development and Labour in Victoria, adding another statutory holiday between Jan. 1 and Good Friday - a gap of 98 days this year - would cost employers in B.C. $175 million in wages paid for that non-working day.

For my birthday last year, my girlfriend eased my trepidation over turning 30 with an incredible gift – a brand new Sony NetMD MiniDisc player. Cobalt blue, if you’re wondering.

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear. — Edmund Burke The campaign slogan of Tom Daschle, the Democrat leader in the U.S.

With all the trouble and strife on earth these days it’s no wonder that we spend so much time looking to Mars.

On Monday of this week a Google search for "sustainability" came up with approximately 2,160,000 entries in .13 seconds. The next day the same search came up with about 3,220,000 results in .15 seconds.

Whether it’s a sign of a technology coming of age or merely a testimonial to how busy and last-minute holiday shoppers have become, online retailers are jingling all the way to the bank.

If spam was a four-letter word we learned to live with in 2003, OCOG may be the four-letter word of 2004, at least around these parts.

The holiday season is peaceful for a reason. The people who make the news go on vacations, leaving reporters - with deadlines and pages to fill - no choice but to look to the past and the future for stories.

In a year when we lost a lot of folks - the roll call includes Dave Sheets, Bev Switzer, Kel Fenwick, Phil Porteous, "Andy" An Ty Lin, Daryl Stevenson, Mike Benoit, Ed Elliott, Jamie Burnette (the last four all in the Rutherford Creek disaster), Jami