Impr int The university of Waterloo’s official student newspaper
Friday, July 25, 2008
vol 31, no 7
imprint . uwaterloo . ca
Constructing theatre in Cambridge, page 18
Seeds of change
photos by Maggie Clark
Maggie Clark editor-in-chief
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estled alongside crops of asparagus and strawberries, butternut squash and edible weeds, Jason Rochon, CampusTech employee and prominent member of the UW Gardeners, is growing wheat on north campus, just behind Columbia Lake. The three trial crops are only yielding a few stalks this year, but Rochon is taking this year’s planting lessons to heart for crops to come. The same could be said for the UW Gardeners’ projects as a whole — an ongoing experiment in local food production, community co-operation, and increased environmental sustainability on campus. Operating on a “work together, reap together” basis, the group joins UW staff and students in
growing fresh herbs and vegetables from spring through fall, with their harvests ending up in student or community hands. UW Gardeners has a long-standing agreement with Food Not Bombs, the WPIRG-sponsored free food initiative, to provide food so long as volunteers are able to pick it up. UW Gardeners is also now working with the UW Farmers Market, which runs on Thursdays (through July 31) in the Student Life Centre. The group’s main harvest season runs through the offmonth of August, but Rochon says a late harvest this year means Fall 2008 students should also reap the benefits of the group’s work. But most significant for UW Gardeners this summer is another new venture Rochon, along with co-ordinators Ian and Candice Wormsbecker, has spearheaded for the group: Arranging compost pick-ups with Food Services. While UW Gardeners originally used campus compost, this
compost pile includes sweepings from around campus — which, according to Rochon, can include everything from broken beer bottles to old batteries. “You’d be surprised how little cadmium in the soil it takes to make people sick.” Rochon also spoke about the benefits of providing a tighter life cycle for food on campus: “We’re getting our compost from Village 1 right now, and ideally at the end of the year we’d like to be handing food back to the students, as if to say, ‘Here, you give us your waste and look what it becomes.’” UW students are a mainstay for the UW Gardeners, which was originally conceived by Emily Chatten as an environmental studies project in 2000. Now the group, which meets every Wednesday on north campus from 5 p.m. until dusk, and Sunday at 2 p.m., is comprised of students and staff from all across UW.
Clockwise from left-most photo: One, wheat stalks grow in one of three plots mostly overgrown with weeds; this year’s wheat crops won’t yield bread, but it’s a start. Two, earth sciences PhD student Maddy Rosamond does some weeding before a group of new recruits comes to pay the gardens a visit. Three, UW’s community gardens extend to meet Columbia Lake, just opposite main campus. Four, compost collected from Food Services provides for the garden’s dietary needs.
For more on sustainability at UW, “How green is my campus” wraps up on pages 12 through 16
News Proceeding with caution
Imprint, Friday, July 25, 2008 news@imprint.uwaterloo.ca
Renison now a university
CKMS proposal gets yellow light from Feds Maggie Clark editor-in-chief
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hat constitutes student support? Do we vote on campus projects solely with our wallets, or endorse initiatives on the basis of other factors as well? And if there are other ways for students to support new initiatives, how do we quantify them? If we’ve already voted with our wallets, how do these other methods measure up? The Federation of Students’ council meeting on Sunday, July 20 was abuzz with such underlying issues when CKMS board president Steve Krysak and student funder liaison Cole Atlin introduced a possible future for the radio station. As detailed in Imprint’s May 30 issue (“Working out a new sound at CKMS”), the 100.3 Sound FM initiative aims to unveil a completely revamped programming schedule as of August 1, 2008, and to commit more aggressively to providing an on-campus presence for the radio station. Underlying this proposal is an effort to continue using the Bauer Warehouse, situated on the north end of UW’s Research & Technology Park. According to Atlin, to extend their lease for at least one more year, CKMS needs Feds support before moving forward to negotiations with UW administration. But are students ready to give their old campus radio station another chance? While Feds executive members approached the issue with initial caution, the motion — forwarded by Dan DesRosiers, councillor for environmental studies — passed at a resounding 18 for, 0 against, and only one abstention (VP administration and finance, Del Pereira).
Religious College History @ UW 1865
St. Jerome’s College is formed by the Congregation of the Resurrection in an attempt to fill a need for higher education in Waterloo County.
1959
St. Jerome’s College receives official independent university status, thanks to an act of the Ontario Legislature, which allows the institution to grant degrees to deserving students. Renison College is conceived by the Anglican laity in Kitchener and Waterloo, under the direction of the Synod of the Dicocese of Huron.
“A lot of the councillors who were against it are now for the station’s new direction.”
1961
Conrad Grebel University College is established by Ontario Mennonite leaders in response to a trend of young Mennonite adults attending secular instutitions for post-secondary education, on account of such specialized training not being otherwise available from traditional Mennonite colleges or Bible schools.
— Cole Atlin, Sound FM “Sunday’s decision demonstrates a belief that the opportunity that a radio station provides, if run appropriately, is worth keeping CKMS on campus,” said Feds president Justin Williams. “I will be clear, however, in that this support comes with limitation and strings attached.” Atlin herself referred to the numerous appendices to the proposal, all of which pertain to such strings: “These appendices deal with our programming, our connections with students, and above all, with our governance practices. Under this new proposal I’m the go-between, so Feds is going to get direct, monthly updates from me about how the station is doing. They want a pulse on what’s going on.” According to Atlin, under the proposal Feds will monitor all CKMS AGMs, and receive copies of the station’s minutes after each meeting. “I was really worried about the outcome going in,” said Atlin, “but a lot of the councillors who were initially against it are now for the station’s new, more student-focused direction.” Atlin says this list includes councillor Sam Andry, who initially forwarded the motion to put the CKMS fee to referendum in the winter term. “Now he says he might even be interested in doing a show,” said Atlin. Sound FM is currently still looking for more student programs, and Atlin recommends getting involved in August, in preparation for the Fall 2008 term. More information is available at http://ckmsfm.uwaterloo.ca . editor@imprint.uwaterloo.ca
1962
St. Paul’s College is founded by local members of the United Church of Canada, Waterloo Presbytery. It is built immediately on the university’s main south campus.
Maggie Sagounis
Renison college deemed a university college in an effort to improve the international image of its academic, degree-level education Maggie Sagounis intern
U
W-affiliated Renison College has recently been recognized with the “university college” title in hopes that it will receive more international acknowledgment under this label. This change was made in light of a recently increasing trend in academic activity at the institution. The term “university college” refers to an institution that can offer college diplomas and undergraduate degrees. “University college” is usually used when an institution is not fully a university but can teach at a degree level. Here at UW there are four schools and three of them have now added the colloquial “U” to their application. “Prospective students might think they are applying to a Community College,” said Dr.
Rosehart [above], the principal of Renison University College, “but now that we’re a university college we will be recognized more as an affiliation to UW.” With 75 per cent of the activity at Renison revolving around academics, the institution has tried to make their school the best it can possibly be for their students. There are approximately 1,200 students learning English as a second language at the university college, and now with the ‘U’ under their belt, the administration has high hopes for more international applicants. “We build a sense of community,” explained Dr. Rosehart. “It’s hard to get that community feeling within a large institution, but we offer a strong sense of community at our school.” Dr. Rosehart believes it was a great idea to change the name, and it will give the school a
chance to build on their largest and most popular academic areas, Social Development Studies, Bachelor of Social Work, East Asian Studies and English Language Institute. “Internationally, the word ‘university’ is a lot more recognizable and gets a lot more recognition than the word ‘college’ alone,” said Dr. Rosehart. “That’s why we believe it was a great move. Potential students will see the name and give it a second look as opposed to only having the word ‘College’ up there.” Two of the other three schools, Conrad Grebel and St. Jerome’s, have already joined the ranks of being called universities, while St. Paul’s maintains its title of “United College.” “All four colleges mature and evolve,” said Dr. Rosehart, “some just faster than others.” msegounis@imprint.uwaterloo.ca
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News
Students learn life at UW
Imprint, Friday, July 25, 2008
Afro Festival Friday July 25 to Sunday August 17 12 pm to 11 pm @ Waterloo Park West Free A full day of fun is planned for everyone to celebrate African and Caribbean cultures. Live musical entertainment, children’s activities, games, races, balloon creatures, facepainting and a children’s carnival parade, and more, is scheduled. In addition, attendees will have a cahnce to win a ticket to Jamaica. Pirate Festival August 2, 17 10 am to 5 pm @ Country Heritage Park, Milton $12, $8 senior/child Pirates, a swashbuckling good time of massive booty, and a sword fight or three. Dancing, comedy and music is sure to be fun for the entire pirate family, y’arrrrrrrr. A Day in the Life: 1914 Until August 31 10 am to 4:30 pm @ Doon Heritage Crossroads, Kitchener $7, $5 student/senior, $4 child, under 4 free Help farmers and villagers with their daily chores throughout the day, in the style of 1914 life, pace and work ethic. Iraq War Resister Public Information Night Wednesday, July 30 7 to 9 pm @ Exhibit Cafe, at Children’s Museum, Kitchener Free An evening dedicated to focussing on the issue of the Iraq War including a film screening, guest speakers and discussion. Hosted by the K-W Chapter of War Resister Support Campaign. Kitchener Chess Festival Friday, August 1 @ Kitchener City Hall A giant celebration of all things chess. Come encourage participants in a Canadian Amateur Tournament and other keynote events. Bayfield Antique Fair Friday, August 8 7 to 9 pm Friday, 10 am to 5 pm Saturday, 10 am to 4 pm Sunday @ Bayfield Arena, Bayfield $8 Friday, $5 Saturday, $5 Sunday Come visit over 30 professional antique dealers from across Ontario. Products include antiques and collectibles such as pressed glass, Canadiana furniture, books, porcelain, ironstone, silver, estate and costume jewelry, antique toys.
Daniel Lewis
Student Life 101 attracted masses of future UW students on Saturday, July 19 to Waterloo campus. These students were treated to a full day orientation program, care of a group of 200 UW student volunteers and four Student Life 101 directors. The keynote presentation of the event was Student Life at UW, which included information pertaining to the wide range of services and resources available to UW students on campus. Throughout the day, new students, along with their parents were able to learn about a variety of programs for students, such as the English language proficiency program, and the student health plan. A presentation for each faculty also provided individual sessions about the specific support available to each student in their first here here at UW. Above, Brandon DeHart directs new recruits in the PAC.
Eden Mills Writers’ Festival Submissions for Fringe Friday, August 22 @ Eden Mills For writers previously unpublished in book format to read at The Fringe portion of the festival in September; submission deadline: July 30.
News
Imprint, Friday, July 25, 2008
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Globally enterprising students officially recognized Ashley Csanady staff reporter
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W students who spend a co-op, study, or volunteer term abroad will soon have the chance to earn a Global Experience Certificate to accompany their undergraduate degree. Along with the completion of a term abroad, The Daily Bulletin reported June 26, these students will be required to complete two courses in a modern language that is not their native tongue, a credit course from a list of over 100, and volunteer in a “cross-cultural experience” of some capacity for at least 20 hours. The certificate is available in all faculties and disciplines, and all students have to do is inform the registrar’s office of their intent to earn it. The enrolment process is not yet determined, but registration will likely be online. And, while the program would ideally be entered in first year, upper years are welcome to register as well. “I think it is a good way to formally recognize the skills and knowledge gained by combining academic work and practical experience,”Andres Fuentes, vicepresident of education for the Federation of Students, told Imprint. The move is a part of the university push to further internationalization efforts in accordance with the university’s Sixth Decade Plan. And, according to Gail Cuthbert Brandt on the Bulletin, it is part of a university-wide effort to push students “to be global citizens by inculcating broad diversified awareness and creating learning opportunities for them in international settings.”
She also said that the university hopes “the certificate will attract students with a passion for global issues.” According to the same article, the decision to make it an official credential came from the desire to help students present themselves to future employers as having undergone formal preparation for a position abroad. The rise of multinational corporations and their desire for graduates with this kind of experience provide further cause for Cutherbert-Brandt, as bilingual people with previous travel experience can be sent abroad more economically and quickly than those without the same experience. For Fuentes, the certificate “is an opportunity to recognize student work outside of the classroom and provides an opportunity for students to explore different learning experiences.” Other Canadian universities offer globally-minded programs, but this reporter could find none that were anywhere near as easy to earn or as universal as the Global Experience Certificate. Trent has a “Global Emphasis” option, but it appears that it is only offered to one faculty, and is more akin to a minor as it requires 6 credit courses. Many universities like York and Laurier have undergraduate degrees offered in global or international studies, but no similar experience-based certification. The program is intended to begin in the fall. If you are interested in enrolling, keep checking with the registrar’s office as to how to register. acsanady@imprint.uwaterloo.ca
Joyce Hsu
Chinese protest, Bosnian war leader arrested and Hurrican Dolly wreakng havoc in Texas Casey Song staff reporter
China to set Olympic protest zones Three designated city parks will be set up as special demonstration zones in Beijing, China. According to the Chinese government’s demonstrating a more relaxed attitude towards protesters than in the past, by allowing protests during the Olympics next month. All of the designated city parks are miles away from the main Olympic stadium. The purpose of this decision is to allow people to protest and express their opinions without disrupting the Olympics games. Demonstrators need to obtain permits in advance and abide by Chinese laws, to avoid violence, and flooding of organizations and groups protesting during the games. This decision also demonstrated the authorities’ strong wish to celebrate Olympics with the world as a friendly, modern China.
Bosnian Serb wartime leader arrested Radovan Karadžić — one of the world’s most wanted men — was arrested on July 18 at 9:30 am., after hiding from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for nearly 13 years.
According to BBC News, Karadžić, the infamous fugitive, was a former Bosnian Serb politician and wartime leader. He accused of responsible for numerous war crimes committed against non-Serbs. In his role as supreme commander of the Bosnian Serb armed forces and president of the National Security Council of the Republika Srpska, he commanded Bosnian Serb forces to initiate the “Siege of Sarajevo” and carried out numerous massacres across Bosnia. Tens of thousands of non-Serbs were killed in the massacres, while hundreds of thousands were driven from their homes. Thousands more were imprisoned in concentration camps. Karadžić is accused of ordering the Srebrenica massacre in 1995, one of his most notorious charges that involved the killings of as many as 8,000 Muslim men and boys, directing Bosnian Serb forces to “create an unbearable situation of total insecurity with no hope of further survival of life” in the UN safe area. In addition, he is accused of ordering that United Nations personnel be taken hostage in May-June 1995. The Serbian fugitive, long charged with war crimes, was living with a new identity as Dr. Dragan David Dabić under the company name of “Human Quantum Energy” in Serbia’s capital. He had been working at a private clinic in Belgrade specialising in alternative medicine and psychology. Karadžić was so confident in his disguise that he handed out business cards, ran his own
website, and occasionally gave lectures to hundreds. According to BBC News, Karadzic is accused of genocide, complicity in genocide, extermination, murder, wilful killing, persecutions, deportation, inhumane acts and other crimes against Muslim, Croat and other non-Serb civilians in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the 1992-1995 war.
Dolly hits South Texas A Category 2 hurricane named Hurricane Dolly has hit the Mexico-Texas coast. According to Yahoo News It is the fourth tropical cyclone to form during the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season. Dolly blew ashore with winds up to 100 miles per hour, making landfall on South Padre Island, Texas. It caused thunderstorms reaching as far as Houston, hundreds of kilometres up the Texas coastline. After about 20 cm of rainfall, Dolly weakened from a Category 2 to a Category 1 hurricane. Around 12,000 Texas residences’ were left without electricity. Towns and cities located in the Rio Grande Valley were put on alert and urged to move away in the meantime, in case the rain causes flooding. —With files from Yahoo News, CNN, Globe and Mail, BBC News, New York Times
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News
Imprint, Friday, July 25, 2008
Peaceful politics in SLC’s Great Hall
photos by daniel lewis
The Student Life Centre’s Great Hall became a temporary art gallery as painting and politics commingled in “Peace, Tolerance, and Truthfulness,” an art exhibition put on by the Falun Gong Club at the University of Waterloo. From July 14 to 16 a wide array of paintings conveyed the spiritual principles of Falun Gong, as set against Chinese oppression. Dean of Arts Ken Coates , as well as Waterloo Mayor Brenda Halloran, attended and spoke at the opening ceremonies. Traditional dances were performed later in the week, while volunteers stood at the ready to explain the significance of the paintings. Falun Gong is a practice based on meditation exercises and the cultivation of personal virtue.
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Opinion
Imprint, Friday, July 25, 2008 opinion@imprint.uwaterloo.ca
The real public watchdog Friday, July 25, 2008 Vol. 31, No. 7 Student Life Centre, Room 1116 University of Waterloo Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1 P: 519.888.4048 F: 519.884.7800 http://imprint.uwaterloo.ca Editor-in-chief, Maggie Clark editor@imprint.uwaterloo.ca Advertising & Production Manager, Laurie Tigert-Dumas ads@imprint.uwaterloo.ca General Manager, Catherine Bolger cbolger@imprint.uwaterloo.ca Sales Associate, Laura McQuinn Systems Admin. vacant Distribution, Christy Ogley Board of Directors board@imprint.uwaterloo.ca President, Jacqueline McKoy president@imprint.uwaterloo.ca Vice-president, Sherif Soliman vp@imprint.uwaterloo.ca Treasurer, Lu Jiang treasurer@imprint.uwaterloo.ca Secretary, vacant secretary@imprint.uwaterloo.ca Staff liaison, Peter Trinh liaison@imprint.uwaterloo.ca Editorial Staff Assistant Editor, Dinh Nguyen Lead Proofreader, Ashley Csanady Cover Editor, Michael Gregory News Editor, Andrew Abela News Assistant, Jamie Damaskinos Opinion Editor, Guy Halpern Features Editor, Tina Ironstone Arts & Entertainment Editor, Emma Tarswell Science & Tech Editor, Adrienne Raw Sports & Living Editor, vacant Photo Editor, Daniel Lewis Graphics Editor, Joyce Hsu Web Administrator, Sonia Lee Systems Administrator, vacant Production Staff Rosalind Gunn, Mohammad Jangda, Wael Elsweisi, Janice Wong, Paul Collier, Ryan Lee, Samantha Eisleb-Taylor, Angela Gaetano, Alicia Boers, Peter Trinh
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arch 16, 1968. Quang Ngai Province, Vietnam. Two days earlier Charlie Company lost a beloved sergeant, among other casualties, in a skirmish with the Viet Cong. My Lai was the company’s next target, and at 7:22 a.m. Charlie Company descended on the hamlet’s some 500 inhabitants. One man was thrown down a well, a grenade following after. Some 20 women were shot execution style as they prayed at the village temple. And soon after 8 a.m. Lieutenant William Calley left 80 men, women, and children in the hands of soldier Paul Meadlo: “You know what I want you to do with them.” Ten minutes later Calley returned, and finding the Vietnamese still standing, reportedly said: “Haven’t you got rid of them yet? I want them dead. Waste them.” Calley and Meadlo then proceeded to open fire into the pit. After the village was destroyed, soldiers reported there wasn’t a single military-age male in the entire casualty list. It took the American public a year and a half to learn of this atrocity. Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes had Lt. Calley on to talk about the incident. Seymour Hersh published a Pulitzer-prize-winning series about the massacre, based on extensive interviews with the military. Ronald Haeberle, the army photographer in attendance, had photos of the mass murdered feature in Life magazine. The world was in uproar over this attack on a civilian population, while support for the U.S. conflict in Vietnam plummeted on the home front. Watching the recently-released video of Omar Khadr’s interrogations — and especially noting how his demeanour shifts from excitement and relief at the presence of Canadians to utter despair when he realizes they’re not there to help him — I’m reminded just how important the development of the media has been for raising awareness of what war really entails. Because after all,
Next staff meeting: Friday, July 25 12:30 p.m. Next board of directors meeting: Tuesday, July 29 11:00 a.m.
and despite how much news media increased audience numbers for their work delivering the truths of that horrible event, the whole massacre might have been lost forever if not for the due diligence of one man: Ron Ridenhour. Also a Vietnam veteran, Ridenhour wasn’t a part of Charlie Company, but he gathered information from eyewitnesses and participants in the massacre, and sent a letter detailing his findings to members of Congress and Pentagon officials. Representative Morris Udall then urged a full investigation into the incident, and what might otherwise have been quietly dealt with within the army instead received full, public disclosure. There is so much fervour surrounding New Media and citizen journalism that it’s easy to believe a world without YouTube and Google, camera phones and Blackberries, couldn’t possibly achieve the same level of community engagement, but history proves this just isn’t so. While there will always be a need for news-gathering institutions, there will always, similarly, be a need for an active, responsible citizenship to keep all spheres of democracy in check. So whether your medium is letters to your local MP, a political blog, grassroots rallies, or initiatives for community change, remember how dearly people with consciences are needed in these difficult, often convoluted times. If the internet age has taught us anything with all its widgets and advancements, its flashy technological updates and open access, it’s only a universal truth: that one person can — and has always been able to —make a difference by standing up for their beliefs. editor@imprint.uwaterloo.ca
Days since Kambakhsh’s arrest, as of the dateline: 244 Days since Kambakhsh’s sentencing: 157
Some things are never justifiable
Graphics Team Sonia Lee and Yushi Hu Imprint is the official student newspaper of the University of Waterloo. It is an editorially independent newspaper published by Imprint Publications, Waterloo, a corporation without share capital. Imprint is a member of the Ontario Community Newspaper Association (OCNA). Editorial submissions may be considered for publication in any edition of Imprint. Imprint may also reproduce the material commercially in any format or medium as part of the newspaper database, Web site or any other product derived from the newspaper. Those submitting editorial content, including articles, letters, photos and graphics, will grant Imprint first publication rights of their submitted material, and as such, agree not to submit the same work to any other publication or group until such time as the material has been distributed in an issue of Imprint, or Imprint declares their intent not to publish the material. The full text of this agreement is available upon request. Imprint does not guarantee to publish articles, photographs, letters or advertising. Material may not be published, at the discretion of Imprint, if that material is deemed to be libelous or in contravention with Imprint’s policies with reference to our code of ethics and journalistic standards. Imprint is published every Friday during fall and winter terms, and every second Friday during the spring term. Imprint reserves the right to screen, edit and refuse advertising. One copy per customer. Imprint ISSN 0706-7380. Imprint CDN Pub Mail Product Sales Agreement no. 40065122.
there is no such thing as a good, clean war: there will always be civilian casualties, gross human rights violations, damaged civilian holdings, rapes, thefts, mutilations of the dead, and acts of desperation up to and including suicide attacks. While necessary in some circumstances, war is an invariably horrendous business. The difference that diverse media makes is in bringing these injustices home to us — and the more ways the media has to convey these injustices, the better their impact. Photos devastate us in ways that the written word can’t always, while video feed provides us an immediacy no still shots could ever reproduce. Even the distilled strain of human panic that an audio recording conveys can unite us more fully with situations happening halfway around the world. And so yes, it is important to be incensed about the brutality of war when we encounter media reports like these; it’s important to put faces and voices to situations happening across the globe, where members of our nation, fighting ostensibly on behalf of our collective values, are engaging in ethically grey or black areas to secure their aims. A sense of relief washes over me every time news media reminds Canadians that, yes, we’re in a war, and yes, we’re dying in this war, and yes, horrible things are being done in the name of higher values in this war — because without these constant reminders it’s so grotesquely easy to forget. But while it is also so much easier to get outraged by the findings of diverse media — to feel more indignant after watching a video, say, than when reading a story about injustices around the globe — the My Lai Massacre reminds me that the flashiness of a story, and the medium through which it’s covered, only goes so far in ensuring its underlying message is heard. Why? Because despite how much of a career-booster My Lai was for journalists like Hersh and Wallace,
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t was a tragedy seven years ago when planes over America fell from the sky, taking thousands of lives and leaving innumerable others forever changed. It burns our minds every time we hear of another hostage taken or killed, or when others fall victim to a suicide bombing. Senseless violent acts, all of them, and the question is how can they be stopped. In fighting the “war on terror” with its global allies, America has been accused of torturing captured insurgents. The New York Times reported this week that Britain’s Foreign Affairs Committee suggested that American assurances that detainees were not tortured could not be believed, as they still admitted to using waterboarding, a technique in which the victims are made to feel the physical effects of drowning. The unpleasant events that occurred at Iraq’s infamous U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison could only be described as “abuse, which I believe technically is different from torture,” said then U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, in 2004. The acts, however you choose to label them, are committed under the pretense of preventing further deaths, of providing information to save innocent lives and, of moving the world towards peace. The ends, unfortunately, can never justify the means. It is ironic that a country as religious as America does not seem to be practicing Je-
sus’ much extolled advice to “turn the other cheek,” instead aiming to take an eye for an eye — making the world blind to the line between good and evil, right and wrong. Must we be reminded of the many layers of fruitlessness that torture bears? In his opinion piece, “Torture’s Terrible Toll,” presumptive Republican Presidential nominee John McCain speaks of his own experience being tortured as a POW by North Vietnamese: “In my experience, abuse of prisoners often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear — whether it is true or false — if he believes it will relieve his suffering.” He goes on to reveal how, when pressed for the names of his flight squadron members, “I gave them the names of the Green Bay Packers’ offensive line, knowing that providing them false information was sufficient to suspend the abuse. It seems probable to me that the terrorists we interrogate under less than humane standards of treatment are also likely to resort to deceptive answers that are perhaps less provably false than that which I once offered.” Causing an individual to suffer — demanding information to make it stop — does not guarantee the accuracy of my information gained. In courts, testimony gained through duress is ruled inadmissible. Could one ever
trust that the information gained from torture was not false information given solely to end the suffering? Can there be any justification for giving countless rights, freedoms, and protections to Paul Bernardo, but to withhold them from a “terrorist” such as Omar Khadr, left as a boy among insurgents and accused of killing a U.S. soldier with a grenade at the age of 15? Both are Canadians, and yet Harper’s reason for not pressuring the U.S. to relinquish Khadr to Canada (something both the U.K. and France have successfully done) is simply that the previous Liberal government did not make the request while in power, unmoved that Khadr has spent more than half a decade at Guantanamo Bay being abused. Does it seem right that movie patrons were made to sympathize with child soldier Dia Vandy in Blood Diamond, but we seem to view child soldier Omar Khadr in a completely different light? We have failed to reach out to other cultures, and our isolation has left us without resources. The inhumane treatment of detainees in this war is not likely to make any people more supportive of our cause or way of life. It must not be tolerated or accepted, as it only distances us from those we try to help, and brings us closer to being the evil we are trying to defeat. addodds@imprint.uwaterloo.ca
Opinion
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Imprint, Friday, July 25, 2008
commentary
Boycotting Beijing as a last resort
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hile discussing world politics over lunch at the Bomber, I discovered that at some point over the summer I’d decided to boycott the Beijing Olympic Games. These gut feelings have a way of sneaking up on people; it wasn’t until my lunch party put the question to a vote that I realized the overwhelmingly negative coverage of China’s preparations had reached a turning point in my mind. What tipped the scales? Was it the Chinese government’s handling of Tibetan protests? The prolonged history of human rights abuses? No, not really: These were pre-existing conditions when the International Olympics Committee (IOC) selected Beijing over Toronto to host the 2008 Summer Olympics. Moreover, Canada has its own minority protests to deal with: Until we’ve found a respectful solution to ongoing Aboriginal disputes (and done better by those immensely impoverished communities in general), and until we’re held fully accountable for our part in human rights abuses in Afghanistan, it’s a little difficult to boycott the Beijing games on those factors alone. So what about environmental concerns? As the U.S. prepares “top secret� masks for its 600 athletes to wear at the games, and Science News warns spectators that Beijing’s dirty air may trigger heart attacks and strokes for those in attendance, it seems mystifying that the Olympic games would ever grace a city with the worst air quality in the world. That, however, was the IOC’s decision, and regardless of my or your viewing habits this summer, the committee will likely be chastened for that choice when the world’s top athletes, for wont of a better oxygen supply, under-perform in every category. Rest assured, moving forward the IOC should select its Olympic cities with much more consideration for their environmental impact on athletes. As for China itself, it can’t be entirely faulted for putting Beijing forward as an Olympic candidate despite its air quality. And after all, in the months and weeks leading up to the opening ceremonies, the city has been especially industrious in trying
to clean up its act. An ill wind might still make all their preparations for naught, if it pushes the filth right back into the city, but for now — by taking half of its 3.2 million vehicles off the road, closing factories, and halting construction efforts — Beijing can’t be faulted for trying to improve. However, it’s in the name of a different “cleanliness� that my misgivings with the Beijing Olympics really sink in. I’m referring to the crackdown on all potential protests, the closure of local businesses that clutter Beijing’s streets or sell goods Beijing doesn’t want tourists to see, and the clearing out of non-Beijing residents (according to ABC News, to protect against protests and to limit tourists’ exposure to poor migrant workers, who would tarnish Beijing’s reputation as a “modern metropolis�). This is going on in conjunction with numerous broken promises for journalistic freedoms, as well as some alarming restrictions for would-be tourists. Journalists expected some “forbidden zones� (off-limits geographical regions or topics, such as Tibetan policy) when China opened itself to foreign correspondents as of January 1, 2007. But over the last year and a half those forbidden zones have expanded, with some foreign correspondents suffering intimidation, beatings, and imprisonment for work questioning the government status quo. Broadcasting has also been severely limited in the prelude to the Olympic games, with correspondents permitted to broadcast only during set hours from Tienanmen Square. In short, media organizations around the world aren’t confident China will permit them to report any unforeseen developments at the games, if they should arise. Meanwhile, the situation for regular tourists doesn’t fare much better, with tighter visa restrictions requiring some travellers to produce hotel reservations and invitation letters before being permitted into the country. The fear? Protestors and terrorists, of course. Oh, and if you suffer from “mental diseases� don’t even bother trying for a visa: China’s nine-page “guide to Chinese law for foreigners coming to, leaving, or staying in China
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during the Olympics� refuses entry for such persons, just as it bans sleeping outdoors (“to maintain public hygiene and the cultured image of the cities�) or organizing a gathering without a police permit. The overwhelming consensus among North American media is that China is more concerned with how Beijing will look to viewers watching
decision to turn the TV off. But by consciously avoiding 2008 Olympics products, and by not adding myself to the Olympic TV ratings list, I’m still confirming a system of values that excludes endorsing actions such as those taken by the Chinese government in order to “clean up� all signs of diversity and dissent in its pursuit of world acclaim.
assessing can make, and that choice necessarily overlooks much of the complexity surrounding any international issue. So how does a distanced North American manage any sort of ethical decision on the matter of the Olympic games? Personally, I’m going to look into donating to local athletics organizations, separate from their involvement in the 2008 games.
“But what about Canada’s athletes, who will suffer Beijing’s air
pollution throughout August to represent the best of us? And what about the many Beijing citizens who have worked so hard under Chinese mandates to participate at last on the world stage?
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abroad — stately, cultured, clean, and modern — than with throwing the kind of party for its guests and citizens that the world is accustomed to seeing at these events. And this is precisely where the matter of boycotting comes into play. After all, it’s safe to say I wasn’t going to buy a ticket to the Olympic games in any case, so no revenue is lost from my
But what about Canada’s athletes, who will suffer Beijing’s air pollution throughout August to represent the best of us? And what about the many Beijing citizens who have worked so hard under Chinese mandates to participate at last on the world stage? Passively boycotting anything is a privileged choice only those far-removed from the circumstances they’re
And I’m going to make a promise to myself, to visit Beijing some time long after the Olympics are over; when the cultural clean-up has passed, and the true spirit of the Chinese people — the good, the bad, and ultimately, the human — is again permitted to flourish. — Maggie Clark
Letters Had a reaction to one of our articles, editorials or columns? Write a letter to the editor at letters@imprint.uwaterloo.ca for publication online over the August break. Re: “The Golden Rule� — July 11, 2008 Monica, this column reminds me of every other one of your pieces which I have read: it is illogical, factually incorrect, self-contradictory, and offensive to the intellect. Beyond the parable, which I enjoyed, we get to your description of the golden rule and its supposed incorporation into the yes or no “God checkboxes� that determine entrance or repulsion from the mystical gates of heavenly wonder. Ignoring for a moment the philosophical issues with our ability to determine an absolute moral code, or even the existence of one, let us have a look at your analogy with relationships: “they can be the difference between overcoming your problems or living in your own personal hell.� Well from these kinds of statements I’m going to assume that you have always had completely healthy, conflict free relationships, which I’m going to say based on personal experience is not the norm. Loving and helping other people does not always lead to a feeling of heaven, and very often can backfire, causing more problems for everyone. Human interactions and relationships are not as straightforward and simplistic as you would like to believe. This is of course rather irrelevant to what I consider to be your main point, that if you follow the “golden rule� you will get into heaven regardless of religion; this is so blatantly contradictory to the teaching of many religious leaders and texts that I can’t even begin to determine where your deluded comprehension of reality originates. Let us take a few quotes from the most widely distributed monotheistic religious texts: the Quran and the Bible. From the Quran, “those who reject Faith and belie Our Signs, they shall be companions of the Fire; they shall abide therein�, and how about another, “Verily Allah has cursed the Unbelievers and prepared for them a Blazing Fire.� Now for good measure, we shall take a quick glance through the Bible and find such quotes as, “[but] the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.� Clearly through a literal reading of these religious texts, if I simply do not believe in a particular religion, it is immaterial to God whether or not I follow your conjured moral golden rule because I have not abided by his long list of prescribed dogma. This
dogma varies widely from religion to religion and no matter how “moral� of a life I lead, whatever that really means, I will not be satisfying the criteria for admission to heaven in all religions, as you seem to want everyone to believe. I do not have the space here to dissect all of the internal moral contradictions within the religious texts nor to illustrate the differences between them, nor to explain to you the lack of necessity of religion for the creation of a moral standard, so I hope that you, and whoever reads this response, will do some research on their own. Now, moving on, we’re still not at the end of your column; here you start talking about selfishness and lack of respect as the cause for all of the ills of the current world, implicitly stating that were we all to follow religious code, the world would be a much better place. Let us for the sake of your argument ignore the large sections of the monotheistic religious texts that preach hatred, murder, torture, death, imprisonment, bigotry, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and other scary words, and assume that they actually provide something of a coherent moral guide to daily life. Now, it should logically follow that we find in religion a shining example of compassion, tolerance, and benefit to mankind. A briefest reading of history will clearly show this not to be the case as we flip through the persecution, the crusades, and the hundreds upon thousands of other religious battles and conflicts throughout the ancient times to the present day. Religion has indeed provided many instances of compassion and benefit, but is also the cause of a large proportion of the current conflicts in the world and the oppression and deaths of an uncountable number of people; “not following the golden rule� is a sad attempt at glossing over the complex determinants of today’s situations and an attempt to create a black and white picture of a world that is made up of shades of grey. If you are going to write coherently about religion, morals, and society, you need to do a lot more thinking, a lot more reading, and a lot less fluffing. Daniel Lewis 2B Nanotechnology Engineering
Opinion
Imprint, Friday, July 25, 2008
9
Closets: not built for two
S
o you’ve met the man of your dreams. He’s got arms as big around as a two litre pop bottle, he’s sweet, sensitive — while still maintaining a firm grip on his masculinity — and you even have matching CD collections. Sounds like a match made in homo-heaven. But there’s a catch – there’s always a catch. Your dreamboat isn’t out of the closet. So what do you do? We covered last week the many reasons why someone may choose to go incognito in the workplace or in new social situations, but there are also many reasons why your guy may
not be ready to tell the truth (that his number one squeeze is none other than you, a boy) to his friends or family. If you haven’t figured it out by now, gay life is filled with these unique complications and more: who picks up the tab at the end of dinner, who proposes to whom, and how to react to the perfect man who isn’t ready to own up to his lifestyle. There is no simple way to react to this; of course you aren’t going to be happy, and you have every reason to fly off the handle wire-hanger style, but before you pull a Faye take a step back and examine the sitch.
First off, acknowledge what it is that will piss you off. Your man can’t own up to his sexuality and lifestyle, and therefore he can’t own up to his relationship with you by proxy. Nobody likes to be treated like a goodtime girl on the side, and if he’s pledging his devotion — and anytime access to his flawless wardrobe — to you he should be able to share this with his friends, co-workers and family. By not sharing you, he’s treating you like you aren’t worth bragging about, or that you’re something to be ashamed of. If he is adamant that he’ll tell them eventually, but he’s not ready yet, don’t expect it
Missions can be forces of good
T
he definition of a missionary is someone who tries to convert others to a program or particular doctrine. The most common type of missionary is one who tries to convert people to a religion such as Christianity. While the purpose of a Christian missionary is definitive, how they go about completing their purpose can lead to visions of beating children with Bibles, or the more comical vision of a white British explorer type boiling in a cauldron while waving his Bible at hostile natives. The history of missions and missionaries makes some of these stereotypes justifiable: cultural ignorance, arrogance, and pride can ruin the potential of anything. In 2001, Pope John Paul II publicly apologized to the aboriginal people of Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific islands for the actions of missionaries. Even in Canada, Christian missionaries were responsible for removing almost 150,000 native children from their homes where they were taken to Canadian Residential Schools. In these schools, children were often abused and even died — but regardless or this, the forced assimilation is unacceptable. With the last of these schools closing in 1998, Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently offered a formal apology to past students of Canadian Residential Schools. Not all missions and missionaries end with apologies though. Mother Teresa was a missionary who founded the Missionaries of Charity in India, which has opened schools, hospitals, and orphanages all over the world and vows to help the “poorest of the poor.” In 1979 Mother Teresa was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for her humanitarian work. International Teams is another missionary organization which focuses on bringing
education and basic necessities such as food, clothing, shelter as well as “Christian spiritual development” to “refugees, kids and the urban poor.” The humanitarian works of missionaries are often criticized and distrusted because of their ultimate goal. It is often thought that the help and aid provided by missionaries is only given if the receiver converts to Christianity. It is easy to see why this is such a popular misconception. If your goal were to covert people to Christianity why else would you feed, clothe, and help the poor, hungry, and sick unless it was at the cost of conversion. It would be ridiculous to deny that this happens, but it would also be just as unfair not to discuss why and how the humanitarian work of missionaries can have ultimately good intentions with no hidden agendas. The true spirit of Christianity is one of love and community. In this spirit people are compelled to help those who need it. For many Christians, learning about the Gospel can be as comforting as food and clothing — thus also teaching about Christianity while doing humanitarian work. This does not mean that people are under the obligation to convert. Missionaries of Charity provide their services to anyone who needs it, regardless of their religion or social status. There are also Christian humanitarian organizations that have no missionary agenda. Habitat for Humanity is a Christian organization that helps build affordable homes in an attempt to break the cycle of poverty. The difference between Habitat for Humanity and a missionary organization is that they do not teach about Christianity. One of the reasons for this is simply that they can build more houses that way.
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Whether or not a mission or missionary can be helpful or harmful lies in their intentions and mentalities. Wanting to help and share something that you feel is positive in your life can bring aid and hope. The idea that there is only one right way of thinking and that everyone should be forced to follow it leads to apologies later. It is this arrogance and ignorance of the second mentality that is what is dangerous about missions and religious people. Ironically, it is a message of love and community that is being tainted by a delusional sense of moral superiority. While actions are the most important consequence to consider, intentions are a significant influence in the outcome. Like everything, there will always be people who ruin something for everyone but you should be able to recognize when it is people that ruin something, and when something is fundamentally flawed. While no one can defend the terrible actions of people who call themselves missionaries there is still potential and sincere good that can come from missions and missionaries. No matter how you feel about God or religion you can’t deny the positive impact it can have in people’s lives or condemn people who want to share God and Christianity with others for this reason. mharvey@imprint.uwaterloo.ca
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to happen anytime soon. Camilla being the obvious exception, you’re being treated like the mistress forever waiting for her man to get a divorce and marry her. But before you round up that drama, little mama, we have to see things from the perspective of your man. He might lie when he says he’ll do it some day, but he’s telling the truth when he tells you that he isn’t ready to do it. What he doesn’t need from you is the constant push to do it. He may come out in his own good time, but it isn’t your responsibility to force him through his gay milestones, and no one wins when you pick at that scab for the duration of your relationship. Unfortunately for you, a strong confident gay man who won’t stand for hiding or games, this revelation may take Mr. Perfect to the level of Mr. Passé pretty fast. The question is: is it possible to maintain a happy relationship when one half can’t even admit that they would be in
such a relationship? The truth of the matter is that if he isn’t comfortable with the situation, it will only lead to problems in the future. Are you ready to deal with never meeting his friends, being introduced as his buddy from school at his family’s Thanksgiving, and being left home while he goes to office parties? Although on the surface it may not seem like its your problem, it will become yours pretty quickly, and although he may be perfect in every single way, you might have to leave him be until he gets his shit together. It might feel like a loss, but in the end, wasting that much time for someone who isn’t ready to show you the ultimate respect of being himself for you is a larger loss in the long run. But don’t stay down, babe: there will be another Mr. Perfect next week. There always is. tmyers@imprint.uwaterloo.ca
Write us a column, for your own good. Submit three samples by September 1 2008 to editor@imprint.uwaterloo.ca
Features
Imprint, Friday, July 25, 2008 features@imprint.uwaterloo.ca
Understanding stress
Treatment Christina Ironstone staff reporter
S
tress, stressful, and stressed out: these words are all too familiar to students. Really, How often have you used the ‘s’ word? How often have you heard a friend use it? Stress plays a huge part in student lives. The trick is not to ignore it but to find a way to cope with it. Ignoring the fact that you are stressed out will only lead to a mini-breakdown, where it will all come crashing down around you. It is always best to deal with a problem head-on
coffee, alcohol, or smoke more. You begin to develop more physiological and psychological symptoms such as: anxiety, memory loss, and a compromised immune system. Hopefully stress has been worked out by this stage. In stage three the demand for energy becomes too great as your body cannot produce as much as it needs. More psychological symptoms begin to manifest, such as errors in judgement, insomnia and even changes in personality. At this stage you are more likely to eventually get heart disease and possibly become mentally ill. By dealing withstress head-on, it is less likely
Be preventative and take a proactive stance at minimizing stress. All students experience stress but it is the smart ones who manage their stress and stress is very much a pesky problem we all have to deal with occasionally. Common symptoms of being overstressed, according to Health Canada, include: Feelings of irritability, sadness or guilt, change in sleep patterns; change in weight or appetite; difficulty in concentrating or making decisions; negative thinking; loss of interest; enjoyment or energy in something you used to enjoy; and restlessness. Experiencing any of these symptoms could mean that you are overstressed and need to relax. Mind you not all stress is bad: some can even motivate us to get things completed that we may not have completed otherwise. However, after much time dealing with stressful situations it is easy for your body to become susceptible to illness and disease. According to Health Canada, when a stressful event occurs, your body goes through three stages. Stage one is when your body mobilizes energy, increases breathing, and you get an adrenaline rush. Stage two occurs after your body has remained in stage for a while. It signals a release in stored energy and fats, so while at first you feel driven and pressured, you soon begin to experience fatigue and seek something to soothe or energize. Some people drink
Joyce Hsu
that one might end up in stage three. If stress management is not something you are good at, you’re in luck because UW Counselling Services can you manage stress better. Each term Counselling Services offers a six-week program that helps students deal with stress and the consequences that follow. Each weekly session is two-hour long. According to the counselling services website the program is designed to maximize personal, interpersonal and academic coping skills, enhance concentration, and learn effective strategies for depression and anxiety. Also mentioned on the site is that you will also learn about walking and sitting meditation, awareness of thoughts and feelings, gentle stretching, body scanning, and breathing exercises. To wrap up, be preventative and take a proactive stance at minimizing stress. If you feel that stress is corrupting or wreaking havoc on your life; make sure that you take steps to work through it. All students experience stress but the smart ones learn how to manage their stress — whether it’s by themselves or through school-based programs. support cironstone@imprint.uwaterloo.ca
Tactics Phuong Tram reporter
S
tress can be caused by anything. You may feel pressured, worried, tense, upset, sad, and angry or a mixture of uncomfortable feelings. There are daily routines that can make you feel this. For example, your school work may pile up, preparing for exams may seem impossible, or have problems with professors. At home you may be arguing with parents, siblings, close friends, or roommates. Your attitude
1. Task-oriented: you may feel comfortable analyzing the situation and taking action to deal directly with the situation. 2. Emotion-oriented: you may prefer to deal with your feelings and find social supports. 3. Distraction-oriented: you may use activities or work to take your mind off the situation. If you feel so down that you think about dropping school, running away, or harming yourself, or feel that stress
There is no right solution for coping with a given stressful situation. Individuals must figure out what works best for them toward these situations determines your response. According to the Mental Health Information Guide, everyone has their own way of responding to stress. Stress can be emotionally, mentally, and physically harmful. The body is designed to cope with stresses such as danger, illness and emergencies. This is the “fight or flight” instinct, where hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol prepare the body to cope with immediate stressful situations. For example, if you accidentally step into the road when a car is coming, adrenaline will pump around your body enabling you to jump out of the way of the car; this is your “flight” instinct coming into play. However, your body is less able to cope with longer-lasting pressures. This can make you feel tired and go off your normal routines such as eating and sleeping. There is no right solution for coping with a given situation. Individuals must figure out what works best for them. That will depend, in part, on the coping style; some people may have one while others might have a mixture based on their circumstances. The Canadian Mental Health Association has identified three types of stress coping styles:
is affecting your health, you should get help. Feeling sad, tearful, or that life is not worth living; or losing appetite and fhavinh difficulty sleeping; continuously having worries, feelings, and thinking thoughts that are hard to talk about because you feel people won’t understand you or think you’re weird are also signs of stress affecting your health. There are several things that you can do to help yourself cope with stress. For things that happen every day, it can be useful to think of the stress as a puzzle to be solved: first, think about the situations that are stressful to you, and how you behave. Second, consider how you could behave differently in these situations, so that you would feel more in control. Third, imagine how other people might behave if you acted differently. Finally, list all the things you can think of that can make life easier or less stressful — write them down on a piece of paper. This can help you sort things out in your head. Remember to tackle one thing at a time — Don’t try to do too much at once. Don’t try to be perfect and ease up on criticism of others. Don’t be too competitive, make the first move to be friendly and have some fun. Laugh and be with company you enjoy.
Canadian Mental Health Association advised individuals to look at their lifestyle and see what can be changed -- in their work situation, family situation, or work schedule. - Use relaxation techniques - yoga, meditation, deep breathing, or massage. - Exercise: Physical activity is one of the most effective stress remedies. - Better time management and healthy diet: alcohol, caffeine, sugar, fats, and tobacco all put a strain on your body’s ability to cope with stress. A diet with a balance of fruits, vegetables, whole grains and foods high in protein but low in fat will help create optimum health. - Get enough rest and sleep, talk with friends, professional counsellors, support groups, or relatives for advice, support, comfort etc.. - Help others, volunteer work can be an effective and satisfying stress reducer. - Get away for awhile: read a book, watch a movie, play a game, listen to music or go on vacation. Leave yourself some time that’s just for you.
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Comics & Distractions
POSTSCRIPT
IMPRESSION, BY JIM & LAN
GUEST COMIC BY KURTIS ELTON
Imprint, Friday, July 25, 2008
BY GRAHAM MOOGK-SOULIS
BY PETER N. TRINH
How green is my campus? A six-part series on environmental sustainability at UW
Joyce Hsu
Part 1: The Way We Eat
Part 2: Spaces We Inhabit May 30, 2008
Part 3: Stewardship and You
May 16, 2008
June 13, 2008 Part 4: Human Communities June 27, 2008 Part 5: High Tech, Low Impact July 11, 2008
Part 6: Growth for the Future July 25, 2008
Sustainability is... 1. The measure of how and what we consume, and the impact those choices have on our ability to maintain present practices indefinitely. 2. How we inhabit buildings and similar surroundings — are we building for today and tomorrow? 3. How we share communal spaces — are we protecting the longevity of natural resources, flora, and fauna? 4. How we interact and build social networks together, to spread awareness and to entrench more environmentally-friendly living habits. 5. How we develop and treat new technologies, as well as other consumer goods — are we enhancing our society in ways that reduce waste and promote habits that can be sustained over time? 6. How we plan for tomorrow — are we learning from the past and leaving a better mark for generations to come?
HOW GREEN IS MY CAMPUS? Part 6 of 6: Growth for the Future
Sustainable Development: Then and Now Guy Halpern staff reporter
S
ustainable development is not a simple concept to swallow. Some environmentalists consider it just another example of the corporate world getting one over on the rest of us – a way to legitimize the publicly unpopular face of economic expansion. To those critics, it’s an oxymoron on a grand scale: those two words by nature cannot work together, because development implies increasing economic activity and further resource consumption. A search for sustainable development reveals that nearly every city, company, township, country, and university has a website touting their commitment to that new messiah – a fact which, in its own way, has inspired further criticism from environmental crusaders. For as long as “sustainable development” has been a mainstream buzzword, there have been those who accuse it as simply a soft front; in short, nothing more than greenwash. Coined in 1986, “greenwashing” generally refers to the act of misleading the public into believing exaggerated claims about the environmental aspects of a given product or service. Those who suggest sustainable development of being modern-day snake oil see sustainable development as the most public face of greenwashing. Like any idea, sustainable development is only worth as much as the intentions behind it, but to suggest the entire endeavour is faulty because some hijack its meaning is a gross exaggeration. The 1983 Brundtland World Commission on Environment and Development defined it as development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Even in this untainted, principle-based format, people still find beef with it. With finite resources, how can we continue to expand and
develop in an economic sense? Thus, the inoffensive statement finds its detractors amongst the neo-malthusiasts advocating a zero growth future for humanity as the only “sustainable” route. Zero-growth is not a realistic concept, not as the situation stands today. It’s all well and good to say that economic growth is unsustainable because of the limited resources of our earth, but our economic system is not going to change overnight. A skeptical approach to any new concept is healthy and constructive when it leads to improvements, but when it simply slides into cynicism there are few positive benefits. One of the more visible manifestations of sustainable ideals making their way into the public sphere is the increasing sophistication of environmental assessments in Canada. The federal and provincial governments are mandated by law to determine whether new developments pass certain tests of environmental and economic sustainability. By applying criteria that takes into account more than just the short-term economic gains of projects such as mines or refineries, decisions can be made that balance environmental, social, and long-term economic benefits in ways that most help the community. Ideally, sustainable development shouldn’t be a burden, economically or environmentally. In order to pass muster, new projects should provide multiple, multi-faceted, enduring benefits. This sort of thinking can be used widely – simple principles that apply to everything from forest management to bridge building. Part of this is just classic resource management, but it involves a deeper shift than just trying to increase the longevity of a given income source. If those three principles are followed, economic, social, and environmental development can work together to positively impact each other. ghalpern@imprint.uwaterloo.ca
Sixth Decade Plan; A place for sustainability Rosalind Gunn Staff Reporter
U
W’s Sixth Decade Plan was approved by both the Senate and the Board of Governors about two years ago. This plan outlines the overarching goals and values of the University of Waterloo, which are to be met within the following ten years of the plan’s inception. It describes as the university’s overall priority, not surprisingly, academic excellence. This excellence is achieved through “the commitment of the university community to the highest quality teaching, research, scholarship, and services which support the academic enterprise,” according to the Decade Plan’s web page. The detailed plan also discusses teaching and research as being “mutually supportive activities” that fulfill “equally important complementary roles in the [u]niversity.’’ The two activities are “fostered and augmented through a diversity of scholarship and teaching styles.” The plan discusses how it will measure UW’s success at reaching its goals. The benchmarks are all to do with our academic ranking in North America. For instance, “at least 12 academic programs will be the best in North America,” and all departments will rank in the top 25 per cent in Canada.” The Plan is virtually devoid of any mention of sustainability or of a desire to strive for it. While academic excellence is surely a logical first priority, one wonders whether it should be the only priority, as it seems to be — at least according to the Decade Plan — of this university. Given ever-increasing awareness around campus of the dire need of creating a more sustainable environment, this lack of attention to the subject is both discouraging and disappointing. The Plan is seemingly not very up-to-date with societal needs and desires, as it says it is.
Open to interpretation, the Plan does state, under “Relevance and Connectedness,” that it will introduce “new academic programs in response to long-term societal needs” and it will encourage and support “innovation and accept the collateral risk(s).” It does not specifically mention environmental initiatives, but perhaps we can read that into the statements. When asked to comment on the plan and how it does not entail sustainability as a priority, Lois Claxton, secretary of the university, stated that “The Sixth Decade is a framework and living document. Sustainability concepts and practices can be introduced, as appropriate, as components of the plan are executed.” So, in this view, the plan is to be used as a general outline for the university to work with. Whether the modes of reaching the goals set out by the plans are done environmentally conscious is up to each faculty to ensure. Martin Van Nierop, director of communications and public affairs, states that “while sustainability is not specifically mentioned in the Sixth Decade Report, the university places high priority on this area. It’s basically factored into the whole operation and DNA of the campus. UW has always been a university/industry leader in terms of sustainability.” Nierop also said that his department (CPA) “is currently building a new sustainability website that will be featured prominently on the university’s home page so the world can see the various initiatives being developed here in one handy place.” Faculties are indeed taking sustainability into their own hands as they add new courses to syllabi. As made evident by interviews previously published in Imprint with deans of various faculties, courses are being created with sustainability as an underlying theme of numerous programs. Success in one faculty can be found in a recent news release, viewable on the UW website, where UW’s ES
department is cited as a leader in sustainable business programs. The news release states that UW “has finished first in several categories that rank the ‘planet friendliness’ of various academic programs, including one dominated by universities with a school of business.” Further, this success would suggest that, despite the vagueness or complete absence of goals of sustainability in the Sixth Decade Plan, faculties and Plant Operations are nonetheless placing them near the top of their priority lists. Regarding the physical expansion of UW, in accommodation of the increasing numbers of students being enrolled at the university, Plant Operations project co-ordinator Byron Murdock states that, when drawing up plans for construction, “environmental concerns are of high value to [them] and [they] take all measures for conservation.” Even if not officially drawn into the plan for improving the university, students can be comforted by the fact that our architects are mindful that expanding facilities can be done using viable environmentally safer options for materials. Over the past five weeks, we’ve learned that there are, in fact, initiatives all over campus, aimed at creating a more sustainable campus. Many faculties are implementing grassroots changes in the form of added classes; Plant Operations is further developing recycling and energy-saving initiatives; campus shops are doing their part with recyclable bags, among other green changes, and, given the weekly polls, students appear to support the idea of maintaining and improving a campus built to prosper sustainably. While the value of the environment is not officially built into the Sixth Decade Plan, it seems UW is nonetheless maintaining it as a priority with faculty, staff and students alike fostering sustainability. rgunn@imprint.uwaterloo.ca
joyce hsu
Green thoughts from students and staff in...
Mathematics and Science Environmental sustainability is very important. but [the] physics department should invest on the facilities more. — Chulho Hyun, Science I can’t think of anything specifically for the science faculty but for the university, I think that motion detectors should be installed in buildings so that we can conserve more energy for lighting. — Jessica Leung, Science Eventually everybody is going to face [the] “environmental sustainability” question. — Shehnam I’m in Math. Unless it has something to do with counting birds or worms, mathematicians can’t help in sustaining the environment. — Sahi, Math
Number of respondents, by willingness to support environmental initiatives (Yes, No, or Indifferent) in their faculty financially.
Emvironmental sustainability is important, but the equipment in labs is more important. — Prity Patel, Science
On a scale of one to ten, with “ten” being very important, how important do you feel environmental sustainability should be to your faculty? And are you willing to see more of your faculty’s financial resources dedicated to environmental sustainability?
Cait Davidson
Where “ten” means students think environmental sustainability should be very important to their faculty.
Talking “Green” with members of the faculty of mathematics Cait Davidson Head Reporter
Kevin Lamb (KL), department chair of applied mathematics commented: “Sustainability efforts seem to be non-existent in our faculty, apart from the recycling program.” Jack Rehder (JR), executive assistant to the Dean of Math commented: “Here are the answers that I have. They’re not very encouraging, but that’s the reality I see.” Math has a difficult time fitting into the rubric of sustainability at UW. Comparatively, the engineering and environmental studies faculties have sustainability more intrinsically integrated into their programming (seeing as they are more practically focused) whereas the bulk of the mathematics curriculum deals with the abstraction of numbers and number relations. This in mind it would not be fair to hold the mathematics faculty to the same standards as more concrete programs at the University of Waterloo. However, by quantifying just how extrinsic the principles of sustainability are to the teachings of the mathematics faculty we can gain a better understanding of what factors hamper our capacity as a unified whole to confront environmental issues on the UW campus. 1. Within your faculty are there any courses, or course elements, that address environmentalism in any capacity? KL: No. JR: Not as far as I am aware. There might be something in Applied
Math. This is better directed to Applied Math, I think.* *This redirection might have something to do with courses ME 571 Air Pollution or Macro and Micro Economics.
*Referring specifically to the Mathematics Faculty Computing Facility or the Computer Sciences Computing Facility. Computer Sciences could not be reached for comment.
2. Are you aware of any initiatives within your faculty – that address environmentalism in any way? KL: No. JR: Nothing I am aware of.
7. Does the faculty actively raise awareness with regard to environmental issues, or to encourage energy efficiency? KL: Not particularly. JR: Not to my knowledge.
3. Are there any plans in the works to broaden the scope of environmentalism within your faculty? KL: Not as far as I am aware. JR: Not as far as I am aware; again, [this]might be a question for Applied Math, or maybe CS. 4. How much do you feel students expect of your faculty, with regard to sustainability efforts? KL: No idea. JR: We have no dealings with students on this matter; no way to gather this information. We do not survey them or ask them about their expectations. 5. What are you currently doing to manage your resources and waste effectively? KL: Nothing beyond the standard recycling. JR: This is not a faculty issue. Waste management is central. 6. Are there energy-reduction initiatives at work in the faculty? KL: Not that I am aware. JR: Power management is mostly central, and is not a faculty issue. Math is not a big “power user” other than infrastructure (lights, heat etc) which we do not control. We do not get a “hydro bill” showing our consumption, so we have no measures to control this, or if we did, we wouldn’t know what effect we were having. The one exception may be in our computing.*
8. Does your faculty plan to increase sustainability awareness or initiatives in the future? JR: Not [well] to my knowledge. 9. How well versed do you feel your faculty is with regard to the environmental initiatives of other faculties? JR: Not to my knowledge. 10. With regard to campus-wide sustainability initiatives, are you satisfied with the timeliness of their implementation, and your own faculty’s role in their development? JR: Not to my knowledge. Though the faculty doesn’t seem to provide its students easy access to sustainability initiatives, we need only look as far as WPIRG, UWSP, and similar community groups to find students of the mathematics faculty expressing their desire to make a positive impact on environmental issues that plague UW. This in mind the question we are necessarily left with is whether or not ones faculty should always be foremost, providing a students the tools they need to apply the principles of sustainability to everyday campus life. The answer to this, we leave to you. cdavidson@imprint.uwaterloo.ca
I feel that the Mathematics faculty has a limited number of resources. If it continues to invest in improving the education of its students this may result in high calibre graduates who may be able to begin start-up companies that improve the environment. — Tuhin Maitra, Math
Green thoughts from students
Across Campus: Survey Summary 1) On a scale of one to ten, with “ten” being very important, how important do you feel environmental sustainability should be to your faculty? 2) And are you willing to see more of your faculty’s financial resources dedicated to environmental sustainability?
Number of respondents, by willingness to support environmental initiatives (Yes, No, or Indifferent) in their faculty financially.
A guide to reading the graph below, for the terribly confused: The numbers one to ten indicate each student’s response to question one. Then you can find all the responses to question two grouped by how respondents answered question one. This way you can see if, say, students who feel environmental sustainability merits a “ten” agree, disagree, or are indifferent to seeing their faculty dedicate more financial resources to that end. Hope that helps!
Cait Davidson
Where “ten” means students think environmental sustainability should be very important to their faculty.
Environmental Evaluation Cait Davidson Head Reporter
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hroughout the last five issues, Imprint has been addressing sustainability on campus, in this How Green Is My Campus section. While we’ve been addressing what the faculties are doing for sustainability, and naming a few ways students can get involved, we can only talk so much. Beyond this section, it is the students responsibility to take the initiative to continue working toward a sustainable future on this campus. On Wednesday, July 23, there was a lecture by Marc Xuereb from the Region of Waterloo Public Health on working “Toward a Healthy Community Food System in Waterloo Region.” When asked how people could get involved concerning sustainability in the coming months, there were two initiatives brought up right away. The sixth annual “Local Motion Car Free Festival” runs from Sunday, September 14 to Friday, September 19. Brought to us by WPIRG, this initiative is in the spirit of International Car Free Day, the six day festival will include bike auctions, bike repair workshops, speakers, a film screening on public transportation issues, corn roasts, a children’s play area, a skate park, Bus and
Bike demonstrations, displays, and live music. Other than this festival the other initiative stressed was the community food garden. The community food garden at North campus is run by students, faculty, and staff that meet twice a week during the growing season to work in this garden. Now in its third year of operation, this garden also supplies food to the UW Farm Market. A new initiative this year sponsored by LSPIRG (Laurier Students’ Public Interest Group) is Urban Harvester – which is about making the urban environment of Kitchener-Waterloo a source of food. Through this first year, students in the Waterloo region from Laurier and UW began in early spring growing and gardening in donated lawns and gardens. Taking previously unused spaces and making them into “sources of life and nutrition,” this group has grown throughout the year. For more information on this initiative check out http://kw-uh.wikidot.com/ or KW Urban Harvester on Facebook. UWSP (UW Sustainability Project) also had an event on July 23, their Reuse Fair, which ran from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.. The point of the event was to exchange, give and take items that you and other people aren’t using. UWSP has initiatives throughout the
year; more information is available at www.uwsp.uwaterloo.ca. Similar to that initiative Trash 2 Treasure, a WPIRG sponsored program that takes things students would typically throw away when they’re moving or leaving and reselling them at discounted prices, using the proceeds to fund the program itself. Finally, I cannot mention sustainability initiatives without mentioning the initiatives in engineering. As discussed by Dr. Rothenburg in Part Five, the student initiatives in engineering are numerous. From design competitions, to alternative fuels — including the Midnight Sun project, the Great Northern Concrete Toboggan, Engineers Without Borders, and the architectural engineering project, Team North. While the school is decentralized in their sustainability initiatives, the student body is still able to unite in the drive to making our campus greener. Through these initiatives, through increased knowledge and more positive attitudes toward the issue of sustainability, our campus really will become Green with innovation. caitlindavidson@imprint.uwaterloo.ca
Arts & Entertainment
Imprint, Friday, July 25, 2008 arts@imprint.uwaterloo.ca
DOING DRAMA: PART 3 OF 3
Raising the Curtain Brian Gashgarian special to imprint
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our heart is fluttering, beating out a unique time signature as the room hushes with anticipation; the lights have gone down, the pre-show music has stopped; it’s showtime, and all the hard work of the past few months is about to be put on the line. I’ve tried to give a snapshot of what goes through my head on opening night. We recently had ours for KWLT’s production of The Three Musketeers, a “swashbuckling, sword-filled romp” in which we try to capture on stage the essence of Dumas’ classic: cheesy but inspiring dialogue, the buckling of swashes, colourful characters, and a general feeling of awesomeness as rapiers clash and villains chortle. In a production, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that someday, in the near future, you are going to be performing all the things you’ve been rehearsing in front of a full house. However, when the “two-weeks-to-show” mark hits, the realization smacks you in the face with all the activity of the week itself. The weekend before show week is normally “tech weekend,” when the actors and crew spend essentially all day Saturday and Sunday putting together the technical aspects of the play. In our case, that involved building the extension (a.k.a. “thrust”), which essentially took all day Saturday, leaving us with Sunday to do what’s called “cue-to-cue:” a very stop-and-go process in which lighting cues, sound cues and other crucial bits are figured out. This whole thing can be very exhausting as actors will be cut off mid-line to be told, “Ok... back up to [insert line here] so we can get the lighting,” or something along those lines. Monday was the first dress rehearsal — an interesting time, as the characters we have been playing for weeks come to life visually with the aid of costumes. With another dress
rehearsal the night after, having nothing to do on Wednesday night comes as something of a shock. Then, it’s showtime With an 8 p.m. curtain and a 6 p.m. call, the reality of the play begins to set in at an alarming rate. The general murmur of voices as the audience files in is like a jolt of adrenaline in and of itself. As we get ready, sometimes splitting off into group to do vocal warm ups such as “The tip of the tongue and the teeth and the lips,” and, “She stood upon the balustrade of her balcony, inexplicably mimicing him hiccuping and amicably welcoming him in.” Say that five times fast, I dare you. However, despite all of the vocal warm-ups, and all the rehearsals in the world, accidents do happen. A missed piece of choreography, a forgotten line; these can be potentially disastrous, except that we try to prepare as much as we can for them. In the case of fight choreography, if a move is forgotten, we are told to skip ahead to the next one; however, if that move is important — e.g. a disarm, then the actors will pause, reset, and start from a previously agreed-upon point. In the case of a forgotten line, it’s up to the other actors to improv a line which makes their fellow actors lines make sense. Most times, the audience won’t even be aware of mishaps happening on stage. On our opening night, between our final fight scene and the end of the play, a fuse blew, knocking out half of the stage lights, and causing the techies to run around trying to fix the problem whilst we continued with the show and the audience wondered if we were going for mood lighting. Honestly, it’s little quirks like this that make theatre different then film; when you watch a movie, no matter how many times you re-watch it you will always see the exact same thing. A well-staged play, however, is a living thing; subtly different from one night to the next as actors adjust to audience reaction and errors, both technical and acting-wise. As it is said, “Television is furniture; film is art; theatre is life.” sonia lee
Chora: Daedalus and the Labyrinth
courtesy of the school of Architecture
Cait Davidson staff reporter
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he fire in the eyes of the creator, the intense joy of a working piece; the practical application of hard earned knowledge. Architecture courses are known to be some of the more work intensive programs available at UW — at its satellite campus in Cambridge. When the final show comes together as an innovation of architectural and dramatic narrative, Chora: Daedalus and the Labyrinth will show the imagination of both the inventors, Daedalus, and those at the architecture campus who look to follow in his footsteps. One word represents each of the five scenes: murder, flight, labyrinth, dream, creation. Moving through the Cornerstone warehouse, the audience will be drawn in to watch from every angle, to witness the architectural and dramatic narrative from closer than the traditional perspective. This performance is for two classes — the architecture students 2B studio course and iconography courses. Every 2B class in architecture puts on a performance, for these two classes as a practical application of knowledge taught up until that point. In the past, performances have been traditional, while this year, the students are putting together a diverse combination of sound, light, and movement. Producer Shane Neill commented that set and construction are the catalyst for this story. In the first scene, the set itself is a balancing act, telling the story of the murder of Daedalus’s nephew, Perdix. Written and directed by students, the tale weaves
together myths and Homer’s stories of the innovator and architect Daedalus. While there have been challenges in co-ordinating 80 people to put this project together, Neill was encouraged by the leadership and determination of students involved. Citing that the lines of leadership and roles of responsibility were beginning to blur, students were coming together to put the project together to completion five doing whatever needs to be done. Just a few weeks ago, the students were spending 24/7 in the architecture building for another studio assignment, Neill and one of the student director’s, Adam Schwartzentruber, commented that they were gearing up to do the same thing for this production. Neill noted that some of the challenges with the production were finding time, organizing 80 students, and finding a venue that would serve their needs. A traditional theatre would not suit the needs of this performance. Each scene is set up simultaneously, having the audience move through the large industrial space to move through the story itself. Typically, Millwork has a good relationship with the architecture campus and the students would use their space, but since Millwork is currently undergoing construction the students were forced to look elsewhere. Cornerstone Home Interiors have recently renovated their warehouse space and allowed the students to use it for their production. With the venue set, the students just had to come through with the production. Another student, Virginia Fernandez, brought up the fact that this was the first project they, the students, put together that went beyond the drawings, all the way to building the set and working
with a budget. With a public to impress and such a large group it led to some difficulties in organization. With 80 students in the classes, they had to organize their thoughts and ideas, splitting into five groups of around 15 to 16 students each; each group was given one scene to take care of in the production. This delegating allowed each student more input in their separate scene. Each of the five scenes was developed autonomously, creating a diverse and dynamic atmosphere of contrast. Writer/scene director Richard Kim commented that the project allowed students to show aspects of their personality that they hadn’t shown before, creative genius in areas other than architecture. Kim went on to say that the assignment encompasses philosophy, lighting, sound, environment of the people, creating a community in Cambridge and the greater architecture community. Running on August 1 and 2, with two showings a night, 8 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., Neill and Schwartzentruber are excited to encourage students from main campus to come down and see the production. Ticket prices being $5, the production team is working as hard as they can to make the show accessible to the students. Following the final show there will be a reception in the atmosphere created by the play, and the students are also working on getting a licensed bar for after all of the performances. The show will be at 90 Main Street, close to the iXpress bus terminal. For more information on the show check out www.studentarchitecture.com, or email them at chora@studentarchitecture.com. cdavidson@imprint.uwaterloo.ca
Arts & Entertainment
Imprint, Friday, July 25, 2008
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The Sounds of studying
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fucking hate studying. I hate final exams, and I hate the fact that I lose all motivation by the last one. With my luck, I often find my last exam to be the class where I am “successfully challenged” with respect to grades, while the registrar’s office decides to seek revenge on me by conveniently placing my final on the last day of examinations in the last possible timeslot. Despite my anger and bitter hatred for academia during the last two weeks of school, the most exciting events during this time are
crafting and listening to the ultimate study-oriented mixtape. There is a fine and gentle art to crafting a perfect study mix. For those of you who don’t study with music, it’s probably because you have Jack Johnson, Soulja-Boy, and Rush on your iPOD playing in that order via shuffle. Bad music aside, if one can master their ability of spawning a study mixtape, proficiency, improved grades, and euphoria are but a few things that will result. Now before you accuse me of contemptible deception
or flat out bullshit, one must recognize that music is a subjective and personal matter so there is no definitive mixtape entitled the “Universal Sounds of Studying.” Despite this universal truth, there is however an avalanche of sounds, styles, and genres of music to fill one’s musical palette. The first obstacle one must acknowledge when producing a solid study tape is to be cautious by avoiding musical features that are overtly memorable — lyrically driven with respect to length. Ideally, you should shy away from any music that can be found on a ringtone or the top 40 charts. Seriously, who can study to Lil Wayne’s “Lollipop?” Next, avoid Shoppers Drugmart’s special “Sounds of the Ocean” or whatever idiotic nature oriented disc they have on display next to the vacuous gossip magazines and other impulse purchase items. If you want quality, you’re going to have to do the dirty work yourself and make your own mix. By neglecting these forms of music, you can rest assured that you won’t be preoccupied with musical distractions and singing “She lick me like a lollipop” to the librarian at Dana Porter. As mentioned, there are several music genres that can enhance your ability to study based on the type of exam you’re studying for. For example, if you are an environmental studies student preparing for a geography final, the ethereal sounds of Icelandic post rock group Sigur Ros mixed with the cathartic sounds sonia lee of Scotland’s
Book Review Demo Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan DC/Vertigo
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collection of Wood’s and Cloonan’s revered 12-issue comic has been on my wishlist for the past several months, so I was excited to find out that the series was merged into one book earlier this July. After hearing much hype about this series from sources like Boing Boing, IGN, and various comic-fan circles, I decided to spend the twenty or so bucks and have a read. Fortunately, it was something enjoyable and unique. The trade paperback volume revolves around 12 different storylines about teenagers reaching a point of decision. The hardships of superheroes are very prevalent; all of them have abilities that are unique, whether they are superhuman or unnatural, and they are only trying to find peace in the
world. From a medicated girl and her lover trying to escape from their hometown to an honest guy with dishonest friends, each one of these stories adds to the concept of “coming of age.” Compared to the previous volume published by AiT/Planet Lar, the quality of the DC/Vertigo book has improved it immensely. The paper is of high quality, the pages and artwork are full-size, and it includes a nice set of extras such as sketches, storyboards, character artwork, and the cover artwork of every issue during its serial publication. Along with Cloonan’s eclectic use of artwork in each storyline, Wood writes a convincing and intense storyline in each chapter. I’d highly recommend this comic to anyone: superhero fans, drama nuts, and people who love a number of intense story twists and wellrounded, realistic characters. — Peter Trinh
Mogwai, and the epic sounds of the uber-indie instrumental band Explosions in the Sky are some artists who could redefine your scholastic aesthetic. To top it off, you could throw in the early sounds of Broken Social Scene, with a few tracks from the French group M83’s new album, or some Godspeed You Black Emperor! to lengthen your mix. By the time you’re done, you will have a mixtape that is not only ubiquitous in sound from front to back, but cosmopolitan with artists, music, and sounds from all over the globe which is fitting for that geography final. Understandably, if you are someone who can’t appreciate the cerebral sounds of post-rock and are more of a traditionalist, classical music could very well be your musical steroid. The genre of classical music is based upon structure, dynamic arrangements, and various time signatures, which seems almost too appropriate when studying matrices, logarithms, pi, and all the other things I didn’t get in high school calculus. So start off with some Tchaikovsky, a bit ofMozart (anything from his Vienna years), followed by some Bach and Vivaldi and voila, you have yourself a mixtape that is not only two hours long, but filled with as much brilliance as a Mensa convention. Engineers… You academic scholars often lack sleep, energy, and social skills. So it is only appropriate that your mixtape be based on the blues. Now, if you truly want a well-rounded mixtape, you will need to combine the sounds of southern, northern, new, and old blues. I would start off with soulful sounds of Blind Willie Johnson, followed by the popular Robert Johnson, and the shouting vocals of Big Joe Turner. Blend that in with a few tracks from Buddy Guy, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, and some B.B King and my dear engineers, you will truly experience a study session that not only depicts your emotions from a musical perspective, but educates you in many ways that a textbook or lab never will.
Okay, so you think post-rock is anti-climatic, blues too blue for you, classical music as useful as tits on a bull. In this case, one should try listening to downtempo electronic music or Trip hop. Artists such as Portishead, Massive Attack, Thievery Corporation, and the Sneaker Pimps create music that possesses melancholy aesthetics and lambent beats. While this music has often been seen as sensual and phenomenal for love making, it is soothing and nocturnal in sound, which is perfect for lucubrate study sessions. Now, if every genre aforementioned has failed, like a true connoisseur the best is always last. If you find yourself unable to study to any form of music or are easily distracted by certain styles or sounds, one should attempt to listen to a jazz mixtape. Jazz, in this writer’s opinion, is the most neglected and underrated genre in existence and works wonders for study sessions of any length or academic discipline. Personally, I always start off with Chet Baker followed by a bit of Mingus, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald. From there, I suggest a blend of Billie Holiday and transitioning with music from Thelonious Monk into some classic John Coletrane and Miles Davis. Ultimately, creating a mixtape that transcends all aforementioned mixes and guaranteeing you an “A” for musical taste and an enjoyable study session if not an “A” on your final. With the right mixtape, studying for your finals can be almost as enjoyable as a random lay on the seventh floor of Dana Porter at one in the morning on the Friday night before your last final. However, by indulging in public exhibitionism you a. may get caught, b. fail your final, c. catch a disease. So to be in on the safe side, make a mixtape that suits your musical tastes, cram your ass off, and by no means buy the new Miley Cyrus record, despite how hot or talented you think she is…By the way, she’s only 15-year old. hcolosimo@imprint.uwaterloo.ca
Don’t Forget To Buy Your Student Discount Membership In September!
Student Discount Memberships Give You Half Price Movies All Term Long!
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Arts & Entertainment
Imprint, Friday, July 25, 2008
The Dark Knight Chris Nolan
movie reviews
Warner Bros.
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Courtesy of IMdb.com
As Harvey Dent, Aaron Eckhart portrays Gotham City’s White Knight.
hen the Joker speaks he darts his tongue out to lick his cracked lips, sucking breath in past layers of caked, rotting makeup. With greasy fingers wrapped about a knife he slicks back his yellowed, stringy hair — his speech surprisingly sibilant despite its sharp and gravelly edge. When he looks up from an interrogation chair, slumped over, arms slack, his eyes lift from the sunken hollows of black face paint, and for both mutilated ends of his perpetual smile it’s the implacable vacancy of his expression that grips you to your seat and compels you to keep looking. This is the world of Batman — like you’ve never seen it before. Batman himself (Christian Bale) takes a back seat to the development of both adversaries in this sequel to Batman Begins, which starts with the Joker introducing “a new class of criminal” — namely, himself — to a Gotham City whose criminal element has been castrated by Batman’s brand of vigilante justice. What emerges over the course of the next two hours are three striking character studies: Heath Ledger’s staggering portrayal of a villain who creates terror for terror’s sake; the metamorphosis of a hero into a villain under the agony of personal loss; and the character of a whole population — us, really
Journey to the Center of the Earth Eric Brevig Warner Bros. Picture
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Courtesy of IMdb.com
Brendan Fraser stars in this 3-D film adaptation of Jules Verne’s classic of the same name.
have never been a fan of the 3-D movie genre. They always have a tendency to put form above function, choosing to cram in as much CGI as they were able to while neglecting other key aspects that make up a good movie. This usually means that every single thing that moves will fly at your face at some point or another. Nonetheless, Journey to the Center of the Earth still manages to be worth a look. Based on one of the many famous novels by early sci-fi author Jules Verne, the movie revolves around a group of three people who, through a series of highly improbable events, manage to find themselves in the deepest bowels of our planet. There, they stumble upon a fantasy land where prehistoric plants and creatures are still much alive and well. Fighting against intense heat, treacherous environments, and the occasional bit of sexual tension, they must find a way back to the top to cash in their diamonds and gloat to their peers. As I said before, being a 3-D movie takes a toll on many things, perhaps the greatest being on Mama Mia! Phyllida Lloyd International Filmproduktion Richter
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Courtesy of IMdb.com
Meryl Streep and her back-up duo want a man after midnight.
hate ABBA music, but I love musicals, especially movies adapted from musicals, so when I heard that Mama Mia! was becoming a film I was hesitant to see it. I, of course, still went as I am unable to resist the call of a girly musical, the Greek Islands, and Colin Firth. First of all, I need to make something very clear about this movie: it is cheesy, and I’m not talking a little cheese, I’m talking so cheesy that there is no possible way that the actors are taking the film seriously. Luckily, this works. ABBA music is cheesy, it’s bubble gum, disco pop at its worse, so a film that is just like that makes perfect sense. Saying that, I will admit that I probably have not had this much fun at a movie in years. Mama Mia! takes its audience to the Isles of Greece, where 20 year old Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) is preparing for her wedding. For her wedding she has one wish, that is for her father to walks her down the aisle. The only problem is that she doesn’t know who her father is, and there are three possible contenders (Colin Firth, Pierce Brosnan, and Stellan Skarsgard). She invites all three to the wedding, posing as her mother (Meryl Streep) without letting them know that they could all be a father. Hilarity of course ensues, with lots of musical numbers and poorly cheorographed dance numbers.
— which scrambles in moments of sheer horror to find some thread of common good. Director Christopher Nolan has at his disposal a pitch-perfect script, which he develops into a feast for the senses, as well as tremendous food for thought. Not one actor under-performs in this piece, though Maggie Gyllenhaal’s portrayal of love-interest Rachel Dawes is necessarily (even refreshingly, for those who tire of standard love plots) subsumed by the immensity of the characters around her. Balancing philosophy and fresh plot-twists with cool Bat-gear and intense action sequences, The Dark Knight is a rush of groundbreaking graphic novel cinema that pushes into terrain rarely even broached by other films of its genre. Why are we as a culture so fascinated by the hero/villain paradigm? What tensions are at work which make the struggle of good versus evil operate on two different levels: the level of public perception, and the underlying reality of who our enemies and allies truly are? And at their core — at their darkest, most frantic moments — do regular people gravitate towards good or evil? The Dark Knight starts a conversation like no other graphic novel film ever has. And with Alan Moore’s The Watchmen looming on the horizon for 2009, Nolan’s The Dark Knight sets the standard breathtakingly high for all such films — not just comic books any more! — to follow in its wake. — Maggie Clark
the script. The film does benefit from being an adaptation of a well-written novel, providing a thought out and every-so-slightly believable story. But the dialogue is a different matter. An experienced actor such as Brendan Fraser is still able to provide a convincing performance, and is the source of most of the humour — something the movie really needed. The same can’t be said about Josh Hutcherson, whose character seems to be as lost in his head as he is on the map, constantly switching between brave and panicky, adventurous and cowardly. As for Anita Briem, the last to join the team, nothing really stands out about her; good or bad. Still, this movie manages to deliver where it matters most, in the action/adventure department. This is, after all, the major theme of the movie, and is thankfully not lost along with the other things. Although intended for a younger audience, a more mature group may still be able to enjoy it, given that they are able to shut off their brains for a while and just go along for the ride. Who knows, with final projects and exams coming up, that does not sound like such a bad idea. — Rajul Saleh
From the very beginning there is one obvious thing about this movie: all the adult actors are in it for a good time and aren’t taking it too seriously. Meryl Streep sings and dances with her on screen best friends who continuously use bad props and often act out the words they are singing. Usually, I would find this terrible, hower, because of the nature of the movie it works. The choreography is very much reminiscint of a high school musical — there are one or two performers throughout who can dance, but the rest stumble through the moves. In Mama Mia! many of the actors fall into the latter group. As for singing, most of the actors do have decent voices, and it’s obvious that some have had some training and have possibly sung onstage before. The exception in this movie is Pierce Brosnan, who spends most of his solos bumbling through the lyrics like a drunken karaoke bar singer. Seyfried and Dominic Cooper, her onscreen fiancé, both have talent when it comes to singing and dancing. Obviously these two still have something at stake in their career, and have yet to reach a point in their career where having fun is the key, and the paycheque is secondary. If you are watching this film for quality, you’ll be sadly disappointed. But if you venture to the theatre knowing that this movie is not an artistic endeavour, you will have a lot of fun. — Emma Tarswell
Arts & Entertainment 21 Sometimes, it’s all in black and white
Imprint, Friday, July 25, 2008
UW students and faculty show off their talents
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was looking through some of my old column entries, and I started to reminisce on the interview I had with UW alumnus and once Imprint comic artist Dan Kim. His work (www.manga. clone-army.org) always impressed me because of the amount of high contrast that he uses with black and white inking via Photoshop, along with the occasional red accents and strokes he applies to add a nice exclamation point to his art. One factor that is usually debated amongst comic artists, including webcomicists, is whether the comic should be coloured or in black-andwhite. When the latter is chosen, it isn’t simply done to save time and finish the comic earlier
Daniel Lewis
The UW student and faculty orchestra played a lunch time concert in the SLC Great Hall on July 17.
Michael Seliske
At Bomber on July 23, students danced, sang, and played instruments for TalEng, an engineering faculty talent show.
Oh, those summer nights Free music and movies in the park Maggie Seounis imprint intern
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hy would you spend your summer night inside a stuffy movie theater or concert hall listening to music when the world can be your concert hall? The Beat Goes On, Princess Cinemas and the City of Waterloo have partnered to make your wishes come true with Music & Movies in the Park festival. The event running from July 10 until August 21 in the bandshell at Waterloo Park, will bring you five great films on a huge outdoor screen after a wildly entertaining live musical act. After being a part of last summer’s event, Eli Makrokanis, a second-year student at Conestoga College, said, “It was such a refreshing way to spend a summer night. It was my first time attending it and I remember thinking it would be some lame community event, but I loved it. I can’t remember when so many people sat around in a park just because they felt like it. It brought back a lot of childhood drive-in memories. I’m definitely going to go again this year. And who knows, maybe I’ll bring my guitar and rock out at the same time.” With local bands starting off the shindig, the Latin band Zorba will be taking the stage for their third year. Zorba front man Cuneyt cannot be happier with having the opportunity for the third year in a row. “We’ve played for Music & Movies in the Park for the past two years and it’s been a great experience. We really enjoy it because the audience is always
so responsive.” When asked on his thoughts about the event, Cuneyt said, “Having a free event like this is so important to build community spirit … It’s a great initiative and something that we’re proud to be a part of.” Going stronger than ever into its third season, this event is “a great way to build community” as described by its creator and president of The Beat Goes On music chain stores, John Rocchetta. “It’s what summer’s all about; family, friends on a summer night listening to some great music.” With its first year supported by charities like the Food Bank of Waterloo Region, the whole night is free; however, they do ask that you bring a non-perishable food item as admission. During their first night on July 10, 2008 ,the festival brought in 900 pounds of donated food and Rocchetta explained “by the final screening, on August 21, it would be great to have collected 4000-5000 pounds of food”. The 2008 edition kicked off with the classic musical Grease as well as the musical performances of The Slacks. The final night will have a performance by Waterstreet Blues Band and the screening of Nim’s Island. The three nights in between will show Horton Hears A Who, Blade Runner and the classic beauty Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast At Tiffany’s. It’s a perfect way to spend a summer night; under the stars. Musical acts begin at 7:30 p.m. while the movies begin at dusk. Don’t forget your blankets.
bold lines and digital shading of greys to highcontrast black-and-white inking. With that, you can see the difference in black-and-white. I recently got hold of Brian Wood’s and Becky Cloonan’s DEMO — a volume of twelve shortstory comics about the lives of abnormally-gifted teenagers. Cloonan’s artwork is all over the place; in each story she uses different styles of illustration from manga-inspired screentones to high-contrast inking to rough sketches and detailed brushstrokes. Each story has its own mood thanks to how they’re all illustrated. Not every comic out there depends on a fullout black line-art either. Some webcomics thrive
Like colour comics, black-and-white comics can have an effective style of depth, usually with an even stronger impact than from colour images. than usual — even if conservation of time in fact happens from time to time. Like colour comics, black-and-white comics can have an effective style of depth, usually with an even stronger impact than from colour images. Even the simplest of colour strokes placed on the greyscale can add impact. For example, Frank Miller’s Sin City, had nice strokes of red and yellow. At times it makes you uneasy, but it always gets you more involved in the art. Examining the artwork in Chris Hasting’s and Kent Archer’s The Adventures of Dr. McNinja (www. drmcninja.com) gives a good illustration on how different other styles of black-and-white comics can be. Taking a look at the transition of style from pages four and five of the chapter “Punch Dracula,” you can see how the artwork goes from
off a unique, pencilled look. Right now, the only ones that come to mind are Fred Gallagher’s Megatokyo (www.megatokyo.com) — which has recently gone into being pencilled digitally since page 1110 — and Chris Hazelton’s Misfile (www. misfile.com). I’m sure there are a lot of other great pencil-styled comics out there, but I don’t know of many. If any of you readers know of any, make sure to give me a shout. So should the greyscale form be considered inferior to the wonderful world of colour? I would say no, emphasizing that at times black-and-white comics can actually be superior to colour comics. All it takes for a great duotone design is a creative and atmospheric approach. ptrinh@imprint.uwaterloo.ca
Science & Technology
Imprint, Friday, July 25, 2008 science@imprint.uwaterloo.ca
Science and Technology Research at UW, part IV
Computing the science of community Aletheia Chiang staff reporter
“A
s far as your personal requirements are concerned, the ideal is to have fewer involvements, fewer obligations, and fewer affairs, business or whatever. However, so far as the interest of the larger community is concerned, you must have as many involvements as possible and as many activities as possible.” This statement, uttered by 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner and 14th Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso defines the underlying principle of Georgia Kastidou’s research at the University of Waterloo. Kastidou’s primary work, however, is not with communities in rural areas, Third-World countries, or even her hometown in Greece — it’s with the communities that pervade the entire World Wide Web: online “e-communities.” A PhD student in Computer Science, Kastidou summarized her research objective in an interview with Imprint: “[To improve] the performance of [online] communities by motivating the users to contribute.” To illustrate what she meant by participants “contributing,” she used eBay as an example of an online community whose “services are based on what the participants offer.” Arguably the most successful online auction market, eBay enables its users to buy and sell goods and services worldwide. Here, Kastidou said, contribution is necessary on both the buyers’ and the sellers’ part. “Say [you’ve bought] something from there for example, and it was a good product, [then I want you to] provide a good review. If the product was just ‘OK,’ then provide an ‘OK’ review.” “If you’re a seller,” she said, “I’m trying to motivate you to sell good products and at good prices — or at least to be honest about the description of the product.” On one hand, Kastidou is trying to encourage users to contribute; on the other side, she is simultaneously aiming to find an active way to discourage them from “just going there to ‘get stuff.’” In her field, she said, they coin the latter users as “free-riders.” These users are a problem, Kastidou said, “[and] we want to deal with this problem. “The idea is that if we have different communities, and we allow them to share information about how the participants behave, then it’s going to be easier for them to discourage participants with low contribution,” Kastidou said. “We want this information to be spread because then participants might change their bad behaviour if they know they’re being monitored.” Kastidou acknowledged that some users might dislike the approach because of its tendency to impose potential consequences. But, she indicated, the reverse is true of the potential benefits. “If you have a great contribution with this community, […] you can join pretty much any community you wish using this good reputation,” she said. “Maybe, just on the spot, you can get in a good position to be a gold member in that community. And that’s something you might like.” To reap such benefits, Kastidou said, the price is relatively small to pay. For a peer-to-peer network, she urged users to “just contribute one file,” or for an online marketplace like eBay, “provide a product review.”. At the user level, it sounds simple enough. But the real difficulty comes with the consideration of the communities themselves. To help demonstrate her point, Kastidou drew diagrams on a whiteboard of “Community A” and “Community B.” “The thing is these communities are competitors,” she pointed out. “If a ‘good’ user from Community A wants
to join Community B, this user will have to share his or her time between these two communities. [If you’re Community A], at one time [this user] was devoted to you; but now he has to spend time to the other [Community B]. So it’s not in your best interest in some cases to share this information about this good user.” What, then, is her proposed solution? Virtual currency. “The thing is, how can we arrange some kind of payment [such that] that if you provide information, you get paid and can then use this money to buy information from other communities? “We’re talking about a virtual currency here; we’re not talking about real money,” Kastidou emphasized. “So we’re trying to set up a system in such a way that communities can exchange information based on an economic model.” In addition, because communities are “self-interested,” that is they only interact with communities that meet their own needs, there has to be a trust entity (an authority in control of the virtual money) that would be specific to each umbrella of communities. Kastidou added that there should be a parallel between the accuracy and quality of the information provided, and the money that gets paid out. Other topics of concern that arise are different standards of ratings between different communities and privacy issues. For Kastidou, whose research with the Artificial Intelligence Group is supervised by Dr. Robin Cohen, Computer Science professor, these puzzles form the basis of her current work. “I’ve explained [my work] to you in such a way that you might think it’s a game,” Kastidou said. “But there’s math behind the system that will show the probabilities.” She revealed that members of a society are not isolated, and that the actions of one user affect the entire intricately woven web of users within that community. With regards to the “CS” portion of her work, Kastidou explained: “This is a multi-agent system. It involves trust and reputation modeling; there are probabilities related to lying, its contribution and its influence on the network. There are economics involved: How much should I ask? How much should I pay? Is it a lie or is it a truth? This is the game theory. Everyone wants to maximize their own benefits and at the same time, maintain privacy.” Kastidou likened the economics of her model to the current stock market. She told Imprint that there are mathematics behind how much money should be paid out, and how to factor in fairness and honesty. Kastidou said her work involves solving problems, and developing algorithms — logic and math. “In computer science, we design a mechanism, and that mechanism is based on a set of rules,” she explained. “And I can show you that if you follow these rules, then you will be guaranteed such and such incentives.” But, she maintained, “you have to prove Everything by math.” Ultimately though, for Kastidou, it all boils down to a condensed version of Dalai Lama’s statement: “get and give.” It’s this type of reciprocal relationship, Kastidou believes, that makes a difference in the growth and prosperity of a community. “The communities are going to grow better if everybody gets and gives,” she underscored. “And that’s in every community, even in real life.” An international student hailing from Greece, Kastidou can say that from experience. While her primary research objective concerns improving online communities, it was Kastidou’s work with her hometown back in Greece that landed her as a finalist for this year’s Google Anita Borg Scholarship. The highly competitive scholarship given out by Google aims to reward female students enrolled in technical field majors who are “active role models and leaders” in the dismantling of barriers that keep women and minorities
from entering computing and technology fields. As an undergraduate computer science student in Greece, Kastidou revealed that she skipped labs altogether during the first month of school — because she couldn’t figure out how to log in. “It was just embarrassing,” she said simply. “And even if I did figure it out, what then? What would I do next?” Recounted Kastidou: “The first day of class, the professor started talking about the World Wide Web. And we all just looked at him.” Remember, said Kastidou, this was 1998. She explained that back then, the notion of technology and computers was foreign, even intimidating, to the Greek students. “This feeling that we can’t start this machine prevented us from being confident [with our learning].” She also pointed out that the value system in Greece was a contributing factor to the students’ apprehension. “In North America, everybody has a laptop. A laptop is a laptop,” Kastidou said. “At that time back home, a computer was something very expensive, and [therefore] very valuable.” Though different today, she explained that at that time in Greece, the risk of breaking such a costly machine created higher levels of stress on the Greek students, which in turn increased their fear of experimenting hands-on with the computer. Eventually though, Kastidou said she told herself that there was no other way but to sit down and start fiddling with the machine. “I started playing around, installing stuff, then continued playing around.” The resulting impact on her confidence was tremendous. “I started doing better in school because I was finally getting it,” Kastidou said. To help others overcome the cultural and psychological barriers that she faced, Kastidou decided she would run a seminar at the School of Computer Science, University of Ioannina, where she did her undergraduate degree. Her target audience was mainly first-year Computer Science undergraduate students, but the seminar was also open to any other university student interested in attending. “[During the seminar, we took] them from level zero and [guided] them through every step,” Kastidou described. “How to install an operating system, how to install a second operating system, how to format a disk, how to partition a disk, how to safely connect to another machine, and how to open the computer, take everything apart, and put it back together.” Kastidou qualified the seminar as “hand-holding.” To this day, the event still takes place at the University of Ioannina, and attracts about 70 to 80 men and women annually. “That’s the most rewarding part,” Kastidou smiled. “When you begin something and you see it being continued afterwards.” achiang@imprint.uwaterloo.ca
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To read more about Georgia Kastidou’s research, visit her website: http://www.shoshin.uwaterloo.ca/~gkastidou You can also contact her via email (and ask her about her all-expenses-paid trip to Google in New York!): gkastidou@cs.uwaterloo. ca joyce hsu and sonia lee
Science & Technology
Imprint, Friday, July 25, 2008
23
Do it for your transcript What sleep deprivation can mean for your grades
W
ith exam time rushing toward us, some students are already beginning to sacrifice sleep for study time. Although the logic linking increased studying to better grades may seem almost instinctual, research shows that nixing the nap time may actually impair not only your academic performance, but also your health. Sleep deprivation and poor quality sleep is an alarmingly common problem for university students. In one study, 71 per cent of students complained of sleep problems, in comparison to a still concerning, but significantly lower 58 per cent of the general population. In a different study, out of Stanford University, students complained of a variety of sleep-related issues, with 6.3 per cent reporting non-restorative sleep, 9.7 per cent reporting difficulty maintaining sleep, 5.6 per cent reporting difficulty getting to sleep at least three nights a week, 27.2 per cent reporting moderate to severe daytime drowsiness, and 17.9 per cent reporting sleep durations of less than six hours. Some researchers have postulated that the university years take place during a unique developmental period, “emerging adulthood,” during which young adults strive to separate themselves from their families and create a unique identity while also dealing with new social arrangements and academic responsibilities. Research has extensively linked high levels of stress to sleep problems, which may explain the problems that students have with sleep during this unique and challenging part of life. Students may add to their stress, and consequently, their sleep issues, by loading up their schedule with many commitments. Research has shown that
students who were involved in 10 or more hours of extracurricular activities a week, including employment, were even more likely than other students to suffer from sleep deprivation. Reduced quality or quantity of sleep is a serious problem because of the important contributions to mental and physical performance that sleep provides. Some experts believe that sleep gives neurons used while awake a chance to shut down and repair themselves, with the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke Brain Basics suggesting that, “without sleep, neurons may become so depleted in energy or so polluted with byproducts of normal cellular activities that they begin to malfunction” and that “sleep may also give the brain a chance to exercise important neuronal connects that might otherwise deteriorate from lack of activity.” Furthermore, a specific stage of sleep, the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) stage, appears to be responsible for a variety of functions, including learning and memory. Studies have shown that people who were taught a skill and then specifically deprived of REM sleep could not recall the skill they had learned afterward. Some believe that REM sleep is integral to the brain’s ability to interpret and organize information that is encountered during the day. Research into sleep deficiencies gets even scarier when you consider experiments involving REM deprived rats, which normally live for two to three years. The rats lived only fiveweeks when deprived of REM sleep, and only three weeks when deprived of sleep altogether. Although research directly linking
Correction In the July 11, 2008 issue, in Angela Gaetano’s column “Are you what your playlist says you are?” a mistake was made in the following sentence: “Rentfrow and Gosling consolidated a list of 14 music genres that covered eight per cent of music collections...” The study actually covered 89 per cent of music collections. Imprint apologizes for the error.
Taylor Helferty staff reporter
Facebook too creepy for the workplace
According to the Wall Street Journal Businesspeople are claiming that the popular website Facebook is too creepy and childish for the workplace. Even Bill Gates has quit his Facebook addiction while his company has a $240 million investment in it. The main reason for this reaction is due to privacy. A social website where you make a profile about yourself can lead to many pieces of private information being released onto the web. This especially includes information regarding your whereabouts or sensitive information about your personal life that can be used against you by competitors or rivals. Another reason is because of its maturity level. Where the vast majority of users are youths with unprecedented quantities of applications decorating their profiles and the ability to create groups about whatever they want, downright immaturity turns the professional businessperson away from the site. Could you imagine the
prime minister signing onto the mob wars application? Let this be a warning to you: if you’re a Facebook addict and expecting to get into the big business world, I’d start looking into ways to kick that habit. Here’s a starting point: use a phone to contact your friends. New Trojan “guaranteed” to avoid detection
Keep your eye out and your anti-virus software updated, as a new Trojan named Limbo 2 has been promoted by its designers as completely undetectable. Hackers are selling custom-designed versions of the malware making it hard to detect. If the Trojan is detected, it can quickly morph into a new undetectable variant. Limbo 2 is also said to be able to put up fake information boxes when you navigate to a logon page that it finds interesting. For example, if you go to a bank website, the Trojan can put up a fake box asking for your credit card number, then send that number (along with personal information on your hard drive) to the source. Don’t let all this worry you too much, however. It usually doesn’t take too long for anti-
poor sleep to poor academic performance is slim, it has been repeatedly reported that sleep deprivation is associated with diminished prefrontal cortex functions, such as verbal fluency, dealing with new information, and flexible thinking, all of which could very negatively affect students’ efforts at school. The list of additional mental effects of sleep problems includes fatigue, lack of motivation, irritability, increased rates of careless mistakes, difficulty concentrating and paying attention, and slower reaction times, are further discouraging when considering the potential effects of sleeplessness on grades. As the calendar begins to count down to exams, students may find the academic pitfalls of late nights both familiar and frightening, but they may find the effects of long-term sleep deprivation even more terrifying. Extended periods of sleep deprivation have been linked to hallucinations and depression, and when followed over the long-term, weakened immune systems, and increases in the chance of developing diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity. With the list of siesta-less symptoms piling up, science provides empowering tips for avoiding the nasty effects of sleep problems. Firstly, figure out how much sleep you need. Although the average adult needs about eight hours of sleep a night to feel good during the day, individuals may vary, requiring anywhere from 5 – 10 hours to be at their best. Knowing yourself, and leaving yourself enough time to sleep every night — even with all that studying — is a good first step to healthy sleep patterns. When you sleep is also an important consideration. It’s true that some people are “night owls” and “morning people” — falling into regular patterns of sleep during certain times of the day. The pattern of sleep and wakefulness is a “circadian rhythm,” a schedule that is set by our bodies to regulate not only drowsiness, but also other functions, including deep body temperature and cellular mitoses. Because all of these
rhythms are connected in a sort of biological drum circle, disrupting your normal sleep cycle by more even two to four hours may be responsible for some of the side effects of sleep deprivation, such as the attention, performance, and concentration deficits that many long-distance travelers experience as “jet lag.” A literature review into sleep rhythms has suggested that finding the right fit between your own patterns and your class schedule may be important to academic success — unsurprisingly, if you’re apt to be up all night and sleep until noon, taking an 8:00 a.m. class may be a bad idea. Irregular sleep patterns have also been linked to poor grades, so switching it up between all night classes early in the week and night classes later in the week is also a bad idea. Setting up a regular sleep pattern, even on weekends (yes, you might want to stop sleeping in), is an oft-repeated tip for getting better sleep, and as an at-risk population, students would do well to heed it. Another healthy sleep tip is to avoid common “vices” — cigarettes, coffee, and booze! As a stimulant, caffeine will keep you up, and smokers often sleep lightly and often wake up during the night due to nicotine withdrawal.
virus software to update and block new malware. Just beware of websites and downloads and keep your anti-virus updated.
then reflects that light through a hole onto the display. The only detriment in these early stages of development is the contrast, current contrast ratio being only 20:1 (LCDs average at 700 or 800:1). With future prototypes, however, this is expected to change to match LCDs.
End of the line for LCDs?
With LCD monitors able to reach high definition quality and such small sizes, you’d think they’ve peaked on the monitor front. Except they haven’t. Instead, they raised the bar. LCD monitors only actually transmit 5 – 10 per cent of the backlight illumination available, and on a laptop can be blamed for 30 per cent of the power use. According to ZDnet News, now Microsoft researchers have found another form of display technology: telescopes. A telescopic pixel can transmit 36 per cent of the backlight to the user — quite a jump from liquid crystal displays. With design improvements, this could even reach 56 per cent. That could improve a laptop’s battery life by 45 minutes with brightness at full. The telescopic pixels use two opposing mirrors that change shape, depending on the voltage applied. When the pixel is on, the light is focused through the first mirror onto the second, which
Alcohol also affects REM sleep, and the tale of those poor, unfortunate rats is enough encouragement to put down the bottle. Additionally, some antidepressants and other drugs can affect sleep, so a doctor should be consulted if you are on medications and having difficulties at bedtime. Daily exercise has also been linked to better sleep. However, exercise can give you a short term perk, so it should be avoided within five to six hours of hitting the sack. Alternatively, seek out a relaxing atmosphere in the bedroom. Setting up a regular decompress routine can help with sleep by training your body to associate certain activities (like a warm bath, or reading) with sleep. To keep your sleep zone stimulant-free and mellow, keep TVs and computers out of the bedroom, and only use your room for sleep (and, for the sake of your roommates, the occasional snog). These, and many other healthy sleeping tips are widely available online. To start, try checking out healthysleeping.com, and ensure yourself a well rested and successful final exam period! agaetano@imprint.uwaterloo.ca
yushi hu
Teach English Overseas
Solar panels in your window
Natural lighting is a great way to reduce a home’s ecological footprint. Lots of windows provide light as long as there’s light outside. Now what if you could harvest all that sun to power all the other electronics in the house? MIT researchers have just developed a glass that can do exactly that. Using mixtures of two or more dyes, the glass absorbs the light at one wavelength, and then sends it through the glass in another wavelength to solar cells along the sides, generating power. This glass could become part of the mainstream in home design very easily and give a much needed boost to the renewable energy front. Not to mention having coloured glass in your homes is always a pretty sweet touch.
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Science & Technology
Imprint, Friday, July 25, 2008
Love is a chameleon on dopamine
M
y boss at work is a 40-something year old husband of three, a great guy with a cynical streak that often catches me off guard. When I tell him how surprisingly fresh and romantic my now two-year-old relationship with my boyfriend is, he smacks me in the face with a depressing outlook on the future. Like last week, after confiding in him about the strength of the relationship with my partner, he said, “just wait until you get married,” at which point my boyfriend is supposed to go through a Jekyll and Hyde transformation, soon after which I would vomit at the mere proposition of seeing a movie together. While matrimonial bells still send me running faster than a road-runner, it is the idea of the momentum of my relationship fading that makes me feel truly sad and helpless. And my boss’ routine would be hilarious if he didn’t make the same grim jokes every time I go to work.
yushi hu
His words got me thinking: how long is it possible to keep a relationship at its emotional and physical peak (or, at least, out of a pill-popping crisis)? Are chemical factors involved or do the rates depend solely on character? The phases of romantic relationships have long since been traced by scientists — their mystery unraveled by the predispositioned transitions of lust, attraction, and attachment. Lust, being the first phase, is characterized by an increased sex drive in both genders with the help of testosterone in men and testosterone and estrogen in women. This period is characterized by boisterous sexual attraction between partners and an endless supply of passion. The second period, attraction, is easily recognizable, as people in this phase are at the emotional peak of their love — they may lose appetite, sleep, or even a sense of identity without the presence of their loved one. This accompanied by elevated levels of norepinephrine and dopamine, and lowered serotonin, the latter being the same ingredient in obsessive compulsive disorders. Norepinephrine, also known as adrenaline, is responsible for sweaty palms, a racing heart and a sense of excitement. According to Helen Fisher, an anthropologist from Rutgers University, dopamine levels soar when an individual is exposed to cocaine…or love. She says that because of dopamine, romantic love is even harder to control than the sexual drive. However, this chemical insanity only lasts between one and two years, before their levels return to normal. My girlfriends always say, “If you can make it past two years, you’re set for life.” I scoff at this overstatement, but scientific research shows there is actu-
ally truth behind it — after a relationship lasts two years, another set of chemicals is activated to replace the lust ensemble: those associated with attachment. After the rush of the first two phases, couples enter a bonding period during the attachment phase which is orchestrated by oxytocin and vasopressin, both of which are important for social attachment. Oxytocin is a neurotransmitter released by the hypothalamus during birth as well as orgasm to help bonding. Theoretically, the more sex a couple has, the more oxytocin will be released by the hypothalamus and, consequently, the stronger their relationship will become. As discovered by a team of researchers at the University of Pisa in Italy, it is oxytocin that replaces the spark of lust found in early stages of the relationship. This is good news, because they also found that the bodily chemistry that makes people initially sexually attracted to partners lasts two years at most. According to Dr. Petra Boynton, this research is paramount in both a scientific and social sense, as people often assume that “what happens first [in relationships] is the best bit — and that isn’t true.” So, nature takes care of that. Or does it? With the whopping divorce rates in America and Canada, perhaps chemicals are simply a parachute engrained by evolution to steer relationships towards success. Together through thick and thin: a multinational picture of long term marriages, released in 2000, is a comprehensive study of over 400 couples in
eight counties, focused on discovering the keys of long-lasting marriages. This book was compiled by researchers Shlomo Sharlin, Florence Kaslow, and Helga Hammerschmidt. The reappearing characteristics in those couples who were satisfied in their marriage were love, mutual respect and trust, shared value systems, shared love for children, the ability to give and take, sensitivity to the needs of one’s spouse, and flexibility. Their study also reaped research indicating that “a decline in marital satisfaction does not consistently lead to a decline in commitment to the marriage.” Perhaps we as a society, have the wrong view on relationships, measuring their success on sex drive. I think sex is only a factor, not the goal, in any relationship; in aged couples in particular, it is a sphere tightly entwined with other measures of the health of a relationship, many of which are listed in the previous paragraph. My attraction to my now boyfriend when we first met five years ago was immediate, and thankfully the attraction was returned. We began dating seriously two years ago, and I still feel we go together better than peanut butter and jelly. I have to admit our relationship is still stuck in the attraction phase, most of my actions clearly driven by dopamine. But I’m loving every second of it, and if I worry too much about what happens next, I’ll miss the beauty of what I have right now.
Wael Elsweisi
of preventative alternatives such as insecticides and bed nets and the continued development of an effective vaccine.
reporter
Linking asthma with bellies
A bacterium taking residence in the stomach has long been associated with the development of peptic ulcers and gastric cancer in adulthood. A recent study, however, suggests that the bacterium, known as Helicobacter pylori, may be protective in children. The study was performed at New York University (NYU) Langone Medical Center and involved testing children ages 3 – 13 for the presence of H. Pylori. Those testing positive were 59 per cent less likely to have asthma and 69 per cent less likely to have hay fever or other childhood allergies. If the bacterium is protective in childhood but possibly infectious in adulthood, “physicians may give children a mix of H. pylori strains to optimize their health early in life, and then use antibiotics to eradicate the organism in a patient’s 40s,” said Martin Blaser, an NYU infectious disease specialist. This study is reported in The Journal of Infectious Diseases. Malaria drug blamed for bacterial resistance
Chloroquine is a drug widely used in treating the spread of malaria. A recent study, however, has linked the drug’s use with an increase in bacterial resistance to the antibiotic ciprofloxacin. What’s surprising is that this resistance was detected in bacteria residing in the digestive tracts of villagers in remote areas who were never exposed to the antibiotic, making the finding the first of its kind. “In fact…ciprofloxacin-resistant E. coli were even more widespread in remote Guyanese villages than in U.S. intensive care units ‘where every second person is on antibiotics,’” said Michael Silverman, an infectious disease specialist at Lakeridge Health Network in Ontario on Scientific American. Note that ciprofloxacin is actually a close cousin of chloroquine as it is one of the byproducts of chloroquine synthesis, but the drug’s ability to confer antibiotic resistance was never thought possible. Ciprofloxacin is used around the world to treat pneumonia, urinary tract infections, and sexually transmitted diseases. The study’s findings encourage further use
alomako@imprint.uwaterloo.ca
Chocolate is facing a rough time
The world’s chocolate supply is being threatened as cocoa bean trees continue to battle numerous diseases. To tackle the issue, a joint effort between the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Mars Inc. has recently been launched. The five-year project aims to analyze the more than 400 million parts of the cocoa bean’s genome in an attempt to not only combat and deter pests, but to also further improve the taste of chocolate. It is estimated that fungal diseases alone cost cocoa farmers US$700 million annually, with 70 per cent of the farms located in Africa. According to the U.S. Market for Chocolate, chocolate in 2006 set a record with US$16 billion in sales. In Canada, sales totaled CAD$1.3 billion, according to the Confectionery Manufacturers Association of Canada. Alzheimer’s: good and bad news
Continued research in the treatment of Alzheimer’s has brought an old drug back to life. Originally developed as an antihistamine, the drug Dimebon was tested on 120 patients and was found to considerably improve patients’ cognitive abilities when compared to other drugs. With continued use, it was also found to be the first drug to improve the symptoms of the disease over time. The study is published in The Lancet and was led by Rachelle Doody of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. A study published in the same edition of The Lancet experimented with a vaccine that targets the protein plaques responsible for some of the typical symptoms of this disease such as memory loss and mental deterioration. Findings reveal successful clearing of plaques, but with no alleviation of symptoms. “The plaques probably initiate the whole cascade of events that cause disease, so removing preexisting plaque is too late,” said leading author Clive Holmes of the University of Southampton, UK. — with files from National Geographic News, Newscientist.com, and Scientific American
Science & Technology
Imprint, Friday, July 25, 2008
A look into female infertility Janice Wong reporter
I
t would only be fair to investigate the issue of female infertility as a continuation of last issue’s article on male infertility. To recap: infertility is defined as the inability to conceive after one year of regular intercourse without using contraceptives. Female infertility is the condition in which factors of infertility are associated with women rather than men. Similar to male infertility, it contributes to around 40 per cent of the cases of infertility, with the remaining 10 to 20 per cent due to unknown causes, according to the parliamentary research branch in the Canadian Library of Parliament. What causes female infertility? As you would imagine, anything affecting the reproductive organs and the menstrual cycle would have an impact on fertility. The organs involved in pregnancy include the ovaries, which releases an egg every month; the fallopian tubes, in which fertilization occurs; and the uterus, where the baby develops. The menstrual cycle lasts approximately 28 days — from the first day of one menstrual period to the day before the next. Some women may have shorter or longer cycles, ranging from 21 days to 35 days and that is completely normal as each woman is unique. The cycle is controlled by subtle changes in levels of many different hormones. What is important is monitoring the regularity of this cycle. Unlike males, fertilization occurs only when the egg is actually
present and with all the right conditions. Factors such as the position of the egg and the condition of the endometrial lining affect the chances of pregnancy. Because there are so many variables in a woman’s body involved in pregnancy, wrong timing in the cycle and even old age may account for infertility. According to the U.S. National Women’s Health Information Centere (NWHIC), issues relating to menstruation and ovulation disorders would be responsible for infertility in most women, and the most common reproductive syndrome leading to female infertility is Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, affecting 5 – 10 per cent of
most remain small and harmless without treatment. It is unknown why they develop. However, it would be a good idea to get a physical check up if you are deciding to get pregnant to make sure they are harmless. Another cause of uterine abnormalities is endometriosis, in which the endometrial lining grows in other areas of the uterus, causing severe pain in the lower abdominal and pelvic area that may be associated with a woman’s period. Hormonal influences by disorders such as hypothyroidism would indirectly affect the hormones involved in ovulation and the menstrual cycle. Sexually trans-
the occurrence of birth defects. This influence has been proven by different experts in the Collaborative on Health and the Environment in the U.S. It is important to keep this reserach in mind to avoid such risks. Currently, the most common and effective treatments combine the use of fertility drugs with artificial fertilization. Fertility drugs are designed to change the hormone levels to tell the ovaries to produce eggs. Ongoing studies are also very promising and exciting in advancing and developing new techniques of artificial fertilization. How can we prevent infertility and be more aware of our reproductive
Changing to and maintaining healthy lifestyles right now can have long term benefits for the future when you want to start a family. women of childbearing age (between 20 – 40 years old). It happens when cysts (small growths) develop on the ovaries, preventing their normal functioning; a common warning sign of this condition is irregular menstrual cycles. Women with disorders such as anovolation have trouble producing healthy, normal eggs, and therefore have problems with normal fertilization. Different issues relating to the reproductive organs may also affect fertility, such as the development of fibroids, which are harmless tumours growing on the outside or within the walls of the uterus. This may sound scary but fibroids are common and
mitted infections (STIs) also damage the health of the female reproductive organs. Other temporary or chronic illnesses such as diabetes or cancers in women — predominately breast and ovarian cancers — lead to heightened levels of certain hormones such as estrogen, producing a negative feedback to decrease or stop ovulation. Previous surgeries and infections from STIs may leave behind scar tissues that affect the normal anatomy of the reproductive organs. Environmental elements such as toxic chemical agents, household cleaners and most significantly radiation and pesticides, lead not only to fertility issues, but are related to
Campus Bulletin CHURCH SERVICE
ANNOUNCEMENTS
St. Bede’s chapel at Renison College offers worship on Sundays at 10:30 a.m. Come and walk the labyrinth the second Thursday of each month, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. For more info contact Megan at 519-884-4404, ext 28604 or www.renison.uwaterloo.ca/ministry-centre.
$25 for showering! UW master’s student seeking participants for a showerhead efficiency study being conducted at CIF on campus. If interested, go to www.fes.uwaterloo.ca/u/kelton and fill out the survey. Thank you!
The Grand House Student Co-operative is a non-profit housing co-op comprised of architecture students from UW, community members and professionals. Workshops are being organized on environmental techniques, solar power, non-toxic materials and more. For info/registration visit the website at www.grandhouse. wacsa.org.
Un-Classified
Thomas ‘Graham’ Tuckwell is, according to his resume, a Master’s student at the University of Waterloo. In August 2007 he beat out a field of hundreds of other qualified hopefuls and was offered a competitive co-op marketing position in an internationally revered media company. That was almost a year ago. “The last time we saw Tommy was at a co-worker’s wedding on May 18th of this year”, said a fellow employee. “He was having a really good time, bumming cigarettes and drinks off other guests, hitting on the bride, normal student stuff.” Needless to say, his unexplained absence has resulted in many delayed staff lunches. Concerned e-mails remain unanswered. Understandably, the company and clients would like to know his whereabouts and are extending a call for help to Waterloo’s staff and students in an attempt to locate the elusive Mr. Tuckwell. One co-worker commented, “I want to know if he is coming to our marketing lunch.” A popular guy. Over the course of the year, Tuckwell impressed co-workers and clients with his enthusiasm and innovative, efficient output and ridiculous skill at EA NHL 08. Often offering to play a bad Junior A team against the team of our choice. “By all accounts his interview was impressive” said a co-worker. Another co-worker lamented, “He still owes me ten bucks for Pez dispensers and sidewalk chalk.” Tuckwell is 24 years old, approximately 5’9, 150lbs with blue eyes and brown hair, which was often concealed under a pink Jets toque – a gift from the company owner. “We know he’s alright, of course. We just need to reach him, and don’t want to have to call his Dad to check up on him”, a company representative said, “at this point there is a pile of work on his desk and we just want to know when he is going to get to it. Subsequently the pile of work has also created the need for additional co-op students.” The company is growing and would like to hire additional students to join the team. Interested co-op applicants should be reliable, efficient and have a thorough understanding of how to use major forms of communication such as phones and e-mails to respond to queries – especially those pertaining to their own whereabouts. Anyone who has any information on the location of Tommy Tuckwell or if you feel you can crest the lofty level set by our last co-op student, we urge you to visit www.whereistommytuckwell.com to learn more. The company is offering a case of beer for the first confirmed sighting of Tuckwell. The 24 can be picked up from Tommy himself. The company promises to reimburse him at a later date.
health? The fantastic news is that many of the conditions described above may be detected early on by routine checkups and Pap tests. Sadly, a lot of women do not visit the doctor for such tests for various reasons. It is very important for us to be aware of the benefits and the importance of regular examinations and encourage each other to go for yearly check-ups. Blood tests, pelvic examinations, and ultrasound technology are available to check for abnormal hormone levels and the size and shape of the reproductive organs. Keeping track of medical histories and noticing any irregularities and issues in your menstrual cycle would be a simple
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first step for women to do. Another very important issue that relates directly to female fertility are eating disorders. Dr Bates, a scientist in the field, found that many women with unexplained infertility restricted their calories “to maintain a fashionable body habitués.” Your diet and weight directly relate to fertility, since there is a minimum weight corresponding to height necessary for the onset and maintenance of ovulation and normal menstrual cycle. Anorexia also contributes to many fertility issues. It cannot be stressed enough that each woman should maintain a healthy body image of herself. If you are currently struggling with an eating disorder, recognizing the dangers of your behaviors may be frightening, but University of Waterloo Health Services offers great support and would patiently help you through this. Embracing the wonder of your changing body can be a very fulfilling experience. Needless to say, unhealthy lifestyles and diets such as smoking, living in high stress conditions, excessively exercising and having large quantities of alcohol and caffeine on a regular basis is bad for fertility. Using street drugs such as cocaine and marijuana disrupts the normal chemistry of our brains, and can affect the regulation of different hormones involved in pregnancy. Infertility in both males and females is an interesting topic to keep in mind and understand. Changing to and maintaining healthy lifestyles right now can have long term benefits for the future when you want to start a family.
ads@imprint.uwaterloo.ca Your garbage can be very worthwhile! UW Community Garden (behind Columbia Lake on north side, behind a row of tall hedges) needs any compost items that you might regularly throw away such as coffee grounds, egg shells, oatmeal, veg or fruit bits or garden waste such as dead leaves, etc. Meetings on Wednesdays, 5:50 p.m. and Sundays 4 p.m. For further info/questions, e-mail cwormsbe@ gmail.com.
STUDENT AWARDS FINANCIAL AID
2nd floor, Needles Hall, ext 33583. Please refer to safa.uwaterloo.ca to view a full listing of scholarships and awards. August 8 – recommended last submission date for Continuation of Interest Free Status forms for this term. Recommended last day to pick up loans for this term.
Classified HELP WANTED
Weekend counsellors and relief staff to work in homes for individuals with developmental challenges. Minimum eight-month commitment. Paid positions. Send resume to Don Mader, KW Habilitation Services, 108 Sydney Street, Kitchener, ON, N2G 3V2. Office Manager required – contact bestfabrics@live.com for more information. Distribution workers needed for fall term at Imprint Publications to deliver the newspaper every Friday beginning August 29. Hours range from 6 a.m. to 12 p.m. Please email ads@imprint. uwaterloo.ca or call Laurie at 519-8884048 for more info.
HOUSING
Attention Cambridge School of Architecture students! Live conveniently and comfortably right across the street from school in this beautifully renovated apartment. 4, 8 and 12-month leases
available with excellent signing bonuses and rental incentives! Call Darlene or Joanne at 519-746-1411 for more details. Room for rent for a quiet individual in a detached house near both universities. Parking and all amenities. Please call 519-725-5348. Spacious, well maintained house available to rent at 11 McDougall Road. Only five minute walk to UW campus. Utilities and internet included in rent of $395/month. Contact 519-893-2000 or rooms4students@gmail.com. 193 Albert Street, Waterloo – shared accommodations, $490/month, June to August 2008. Call Haney PM 519-7461411 for more info. Montreal work term? Roommates needed for condo in Montreal September 1. Fully furnished, TV/DVD, five minute walk to Snowdon subway, groceries, shopping. $395/month, heat, hydro, internet included. Four, eight or twelve month lease. Call 514-270-1057 or terry_higgins@sympatico.ca.
Deadline to put your Campus Bulletin announcements and Classifieds in the Frosh Issue, August 29, is Monday, August 25 at 5 p.m. Happy Summer!!
Sports & Living
Imprint, Friday, July 25, 2008 sports@imprint.uwaterloo.ca
Sounds like Warrior Spirit
Daniel Lewis
King Warrior evokes a roaring abundance of school spirit during this year’s Student Life 101 event, as new students prepare to join the Warrior fold.
Varsity weight room waiting? Shining light on a student rumoured varsity-only PAC weight room Dinh Nguyen
assistant editor-in-chief
T
here is much discussion and dismay among regular weightlifters at the PAC conditioning centre (also known as the PAC weight room). Rumour has it that the conditioning centre will be transformed into a varsity-only weight room with public hours, come fall 2008. UW Athletic Director, Bob Copeland, said that this rumour is “not entirely true. “There is no intention of turning the space into a varsity-only weight room; it has nothing to do with exclusive spacing,” said Copeland. “We’re just looking at how we can efficiently program the facility to better suit the students’ needs.” According to Annette Denny, Campus Rec clubs, Conditioning & Special Interest co-ordinator, come this Fall the conditioning centre will only be open to the public during peak hours when it has the most traffic. During non-peak periods the weight room will be made available for group bookings only. Peak hours are determined by student traffic and decided by UW Athletics. “For at least the last four years, we’ve been taking stats [of student traffic] every half hour at the conditioning centre, as well as [keeping track of] input from students and members,” said Denny. Denny believes that these changes will also create a safer environment in the PAC conditioning room. As it stands now, Athletics does not have enough resources to staff certified supervisors in the weight room at all hours of the day. Only peak hours are supervised. “Any group booking will have to be supervised by someone [with the required safety trainings] and that will be determined by the UW Athletic staff,” said Denny. The rumour, known by many as the UW Athletics’ “worst kept secret,” also claims that
UW football coach Dennis McPhee is heavily pushing for these changes. However, both Copeland and former Athletics Director Judy McCrae, have firmly stated that McPhee had nothing to with the upcoming changes. “He wasn’t even invited to the meetings,” said McCrae. Present at the meetings to discuss changes to the PAC conditioning room and CIF fitness centre, were McCrae, Denny, Interuniversity Sport Manager Beth Ali, and Facilities Manager Chris Triantafilou. According to McCrae, UW Athletics hopes to turn the PAC conditioning room to a place focused only on heavy-weightlifting activities by moving some of its cardiovascular machines over to the CIF fitness room. The number of machines was later clarified by Denny to be six to eight, but excludes cardio-bicycles used for warming up before and cooling down after a weight lifting workout. By doing so, UW Athletics hopes to keep heavier weightlifters in the PAC conditioning room and cardio users and beginner weightlifters in the CIF fitness room, creating a less- intimidating environment in both facilities. “We don’t want anybody to feel intimidated, so separating users is a good thing.” said McCrae. “What we’re trying to do is to not have two centres that are duplicates of each other. Both the weight room and the fitness centre will likely change,” Though UW Athletics is hopeful, and sees the upcoming changes as a positive thing, many students and users of the conditioning centre disagree. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. You can’t get to all the machines as it is. Everyone has different hours and the size of this gym isn’t very big,” said applied health sciences student Mac Fallis. “That’s going to be hugely detrimental to the regulars here. Already we can’t move in here during peak hours, If they cut it down it will be even busier” said Colin Zamecnik, another UW student
Athletics is well aware of these concerns as they have been brought to their attention by many students. They hope to solve the problem by allowing specialized groups such as the Women’s Strength Training group to book time during non-peak hours. They also hope to create new groups such as a Heavy Weightlifter club, which is geared towards both advanced weightlifters and novices who wished to learn. “Our intention is to spread out the user times. There will be specialized groups, so the odds of people wanting to work out again [is slim]. We want to relieve the volume during peak hours.” said Denny. So far nothing has been made official.
“This is a pilot project that we’re experimenting with for the Fall 2008 term. Nothing is set in stone; were just trying to utilise our facilities, space and time to better optimize every student’s experience,” said Denny. “We’re making small changes everywhere [PAC and CIF] to cater to everyone’s needs. We want to see how it goes for the fall term, and will be accessing and evaluating the changes for their effectiveness.” A detailed listing of the changes and schedule will be available and posted at the beginning of August. dnguyen@imprint.uwaterloo.ca
Dinh Nguyen
Some of the six to eight of the cardiovascular exercising machines that may be transferred to the CIF fitness centre come the Fall term of 2008.
Comics & Distractions
Imprint, Friday, July 25, 2008
Crossword
Ashley Csanady
Across 1. The solid remains of fire 4. Colloqualism for an uncoordinated individual
1
2
13. The only one
5
6
7
8
12
13
14
16
17
18
19
20
24
14. To depart
42
16. An intoxicant
46
37
29
38
39
30
10
11 15
23 27
31
32
40
33
34
35
41
43 47
9
22 26
28 36
21
25
8. A Greek cheese 12. Tom Petty’s tenth studio album
4
3
44
How do you plan to deal with the fence around the B2 Green? by Daniel Lewis
45
48
27
49
17. Isn’t is 18. To remove a peg
50
51
19. To receive
54
20. Acronym for a formally common and now banned pesticide
60
21. A craft or trade with specific parametres
68
23. Vast area covered with sand 24. A compostion in prose 26. Japenese currency
61
62
52
55 63
69
73 76
53 56
64 70
65
57
66
71
58
59
67 72
74
75
77
78
28. You do this to your whistle 30. Acronymn for the scientific name of mad cow disease
77. Female gametes
32. Belongs to
78. The letter “s”
36. A very dry person
between the faceoff circles and in front of the goalie
“Tunnel under it.”
Down
36. Britney Spears’ debut album, ...____ One More Time
Masters student
39. Robust or vigorous
1. Plowed or sown fields (archaic usage)
37. To stare
41. Popular handsoap brand
2. Closes
38. The source of a problem
42. A long long time ___
3. Slang for a motocycle
40. A vessel in first class condition
43. ______, mine, and ours
4. Gliding in the past
44. Pigpen
45. 1982 album by Duran Duran
5. To move with the movement of a horse’s trot
47. Established in 1947 under the reign of Rear Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter
6. Form of the given name Anna
49. PETA says it’s murder
7. Greek letter z
51. A sometimes conjunction
8. Used to drink champagne with
53. Accronym for an Operating Efficiency ratio
46. NAFTA created a trading _____ 48. A drink without ice 49. Childhood craft material 50. A.k.a. the Abominable Snowman 51. An affirmative, or a British 70s rockband
9. Even in Cockney 10. A narrow strip used for binding
52. Pronoun for the second person singular or plural
11. To allege a fact in legal proceedings
54. He is, but you
15. To goad, to ____ on
56. Mistake
20. To colour a fabric
60. A geneological term
22. Pumpernickel’s base
63. Source of funds
25. Airline code for the now defunct America West Airlines
65. 1983 U2 album 67. The night before 68. To decorate one’s self 70. The Illiad or Odyssey 72. Many dollar bills 73. Guardian spirits in Roman mythology
12. FM 102.1 The ____
27. Biblical land where Cain was banished 29. Possesive of thou 30. Predecessor of rock 31. French conditional for “to be”
74. Descartes’ first name
33. Popular HBO show that just completed a five year run, The ____
75. To borrow for a fee
34. To make fast
76. To elaborate on a point
35. The area on the hockey rink
Sudoku
Maggie Clark
Allen Gesige
“Just go with the flow.” Desmond Leung 2A Mathematics
55. Wives of rajahs 57. Good salad dressing brand 58. Places to bake 59. A pause in a piece of music 60. Founded in 1933 to break the studio system and assert actors’ rights (acronym) 61. 1968 Beegees album 62. Issued by governments, often to raise money in times of war (singular)
“Ugh. I just want to blow it up.” Erica Bishop 3A Environmental Studies
“Just keep swearing at it.” Imran Khimji
2B Nanotechnology Engineering
Editor’s Note: Probably NOT a threat to campus security.
64. Mom in French 65. An end of the political spectrum 66. Points won off the serve in tense 69. To be free of 71. Piece in Cribbage 72. One hundredth of a Swedish krona
July 11 solutions
editor@imprint.uwaterloo.ca “Climb over it, run to where I need to go, and... climb it again.” Sarah Noonan 4A Arts
“Talk to a civil engineering class and build a bridge over it.” Michael Seliske
1B Computer Engineering
“Blaze my own path through with a pair of bolt cutters.” Spencer McEwan
2B Electrical Engineering
“Pole-vault.” Sylvia Wu
1B Mechatronics Engineering
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Photo Feature
Imprint, Friday, July 25, 2008
Silos with beanie caps
Bass
Peter Kreze
Brad McCloy
C
ampus licks
Fireworks
C
Peter Kreze
Send your photos, along with the names of consenting individuals in the photos and a brief description, to photos@imprint.uwaterloo.ca.
Silver Lake, Waterloo Park
Jonathan Aycan
Thank you for your readership throughout Spring 2008. Imprint will be back on the stands August 29, 2008. Join us in SLC 1116 on September 8, 2008, at 12:30 p.m. when we elect members to fill upcoming staff positions this fall. Anyone interested in volunteering for Imprint in other capacities (reporter, photographer, graphic artist, or proofreader) is also encouraged to come out.