Incite - October 2012

INCITE MAGAZINE VOLUME 15 ▪ ISSUE 2 ▪ OCTOBER 2012

INTERSECTIONS INSIDE ▪ X-RAY CRYSTALLOGRAPHY, LUCID DREAMS, AND BACON PLUS ▪ POETRY, PHOTOGRAPHY, CROSSWORDS, AND MORE

VOLUME 15, ISSUE 2 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ 1

ARTWORK BY MARK BELAN

EDITORIAL ▪ CROSSING PATHS Jeremy Allen Henderson & Kate Sinclair, Editors-in-Chief

2 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ OCTOBER 2012

- from the physical street corner to the metaphorical “fork in the road”. They have explored issues, ideas, and people, and the insights that emerge when you examine them in combination with each other.

Inside, you will find pieces on the intersec-

Creation does not “occur in isolation, but rather, at the intersecting points between different ideas and different thinkers.

“

T

he Ancient Egyptian hieroglyph for ‘city’ is a simple cross bounded by a circle. As unassuming as the image is, it is an elegant image, one that illustrates the centrality of intersections to our thinking about societies and progress. It combines the idea of crossing paths with that of circularity and enclosure, which, taken together, represent the city as a central locus of thought and activity.

The city continues to facilitate the union of artists, thinkers and politicians for the creation of dynamic societies. To trace the history of the West is to trace a history of its metropolises – Athens during antiquity, Florence during the Renaissance, Paris during the Belle Époque – the list is inexhaustible. In the modern era, technology and globalization have enabled everyday citizens to connect with ideas and thinkers around the world, via either a (relatively) short flight or a broadband connection. Altogether, the city has proven to be a revolutionary form of social organization, a common meeting place for great thinkers and great civilizations.

In this issue of Incite, our contributors have explored intersections of every kind

tions of sculpting and structural biology, small towns and big cities, and work and play. This issue demonstrates the significance of the ‘intersection’ or ‘crossroads’, which cannot be understated on either the personal or societal scale.

Today, the Ancient Egyptian hieroglyph for city could aptly be used to denote the modern university, which unites students, professors, and ideas within a self-contained, holistic community. The culture of the university, which facilitates the cross-pollination of disparate ideas, encourages creative and intellectual productivity in the same way that the Renaissance city might have fostered cultural achievement. While it is not likely that, after four years of studying at McMaster, you will emerge as a Renaissance Man (or Woman), the combination of our experiences might exceed that of a Pythagoras or a da Vinci. For this, we are indebted to the institution and the opportunities that it affords us.

In his TED talk “Where Good Ideas Come From”, author Steven Johnson argues that “chance favours the connected mind.” At Incite, we share this belief.

Creation does not occur in isolation, but rather, at the intersecting points between different ideas and different thinkers. We invite you to explore these junctures with us, and to celebrate thinking across disciplines and beyond boundaries.

CONTENTS The Editors 4 HAPPENINGS DIVISION TO UNITY Meg Peters 5 FROM TO ANONYMITY Matthew Bassett 6 KNOWN COMBINING TWO Safiya Wazir, Yardena 7 CULTURES Winegust Zainab Furqan 8 PHOTOGRAPHY THE LEFTOVERS OF TIFF Allen Henderson, 10 Jeremy Kate Sinclair BUILDING BLOCKS OF 12 LIFE Brianna Smrke

MARCH Maryann Ashley 14 TECHNOLOGY’S FUN THEORY Julie-Anne Mendoza 15 THE SPREAD Livia Tsang, Ianitza Vassileva 16 ART POETRY Dusselier, Peter 18 Sydney Gardhouse, Lucas Wilson THE INTERSECTING 19 PARALLEL Nigel Pynn-Coates AND DREAMING 20 AWAKE Nima Nahiddi CAMPUS KEYSTONE Julia Redmond 21 THE

LOOK BOTH WAYS Devra Charney, Kaila Radan with photography by Whyishnave Suthagar

22 IN THE CROSSROADS 24 LOST Udoka Gabriella Okafor 25 NETWORKING Jae Eun Ryu AT A CROSSWALK Brooke Hamilton 26 DEVILS ARK A FICTION Kate Sinclair 27 NOAH’S Nicki Varkevisser 30 PHOTOGRAPHY THE LINE” Jeremy Allen Henderson 31 “CROSSING

TEAM EXECUTIVE EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Jeremy Allen Henderson Kate Sinclair MANAGING EDITORS Mark Belan (Graphics) Irena Papst (Layout) Ianitza Vassileva (Graphics) ASSISTANT EDITOR Avery Lam (Layout) CONTENT EDITORS Steve Clare, Sam Godfrey, Matthew Ing, Sarah Kanko, Kacper Niburski Incite Magazine

CONTRIBUTORS WRITERS Maryann Ashley, Matthew Bassett, Devra Charney, Sydney Dusselier, Peter Gardhouse, Brooke Hamilton, Jeremy Allen Henderson, Julie-Anne Mendoza, Nima Nahiddi, Udoka Gabriella Okafor, Meg Peters, Nigel PynnCoates, Kaila Radan, Julia Redmond, Jae Eun Ryu, Kate Sinclair, Brianna Smrke, Safiya Wazir, Lucas Wilson, Yardena Winegust

GRAPHICS Mark Belan, Teal Booth, Zainab Furqan, Whyishnave Suthagar, Livia Tsang, Ianitza Vassileva COVERS Mark Belan CORRECTION

The graphic on page 14 of the Summer 2012 Issue was mistakenly credited to Nicki Varkevisser, and is actually by Ianitza Vassileva. The production team sincerely appologizes for this error.

@incitemagazine PHOTOGRAPHY BY LIVIA TSANG VOLUME 15, ISSUE 2 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ 3

HAPPENINGS

“

“ Toadally

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALEX POPOVKIN (FLICKR)

Toad-ing the Line Northeast Australia has experienced an alien invasion, and these visitors do not come in peace. In 1935, 102 cane toads were imported to control insect populations; their population has since grown to 1.5 billion, and cane toads have overrun several indigenous species. Local residents have come up with creative solutions to deal with the pests. Some have taken to using the creatures to play cricket or golf. Others sell toad carcasses that have been fashioned into coin purses, visors, key chains, or even bow ties. Animal rights activists advocate that cane toads be frozen instead of used for sport, but do recognize the need to decrease their numbers. Orders over $100.00 from ToadShop.com ship free to Canada; tell your friends.

Talk it Out A formerly vibrant language that survived the conquistadors, revolution, and war, Ayapaneco has been reduced to just two fluent speakers. And they aren’t talking to each other. It’s not clear how the mutual animosity started, but Manuel Segovia, 75, and Isidro Velazquez, 69, refuse to speak, even in a recorded conversation for research and educational purposes. Ayapaneco’s fate was sealed in the mid-20th century, when the Mexican government introduced compulsory Spanish language education. Urbanization and migration disbanded the lin4 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ OCTOBER 2012

gering core of speakers. There are currently 6000 languages spoken in the world, and half are forecast to go extinct within the next century. It’s a shame that no one is talking about it.

A Layered Issue Last month the Iranian news agency Fars reported on a recent Gallup poll that indicated most rural, white Americans would rather vote for Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than President Barack Obama. Apparently the state-run Fars took these results as a splendid insult to American government and rushed the story into publication on its website. There’s just one problem: such a poll was never conducted. In a stunning display of Poe’s Law, which argues that it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism without someone mistaking it for the real thing, Fars’s source was the satirical news site The Onion. The editor who let this story slip through is not alone, though: check out literallyunbelievable.com for hundreds of posts by oblivious Facebook users expressing their outrage towards shocking Onion headlines.

Maybe She Should Sleep On It How far would you go to help those in need? I wager you didn’t answer “all the way.” Christina Migliorini, though, is doing more than her part to help the poor in her community: auctioning off her virginity for

charity. The 20-year-old Brazillian is blowing off conventional methods of philanthropy, creating an Internet auction offering a onetime encounter, to take place during a flight.

The opportunity to join her in the Mile-High Club is currently going for $160 000. Covering, once again, all her bases, Migliorini states “For me, it’s not prostitution.” But for the law, it is.

Girls Gone Wilde A long-overdue amnesty program was conducted in September by the Chicago Public Library. The library gave delinquent bookborrowers a three-week chance to return any overdue books without penalty. Librarians went wilde over one particular return; a woman brought back a rare limited edition of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” she found in her late mother’s attic. Checked out in 1934, the total fine would have been about $6000. She earnestly insisted that she hadn’t returned the book because she was afraid of being arrested but the library said they were just happy to have it back. And after 78 years, the return of the book was a picture-perfect ending.

Compiled by Steve Clare, Sam Godfrey, Jeremy Allen Henderson, Matthew Ing, Sarah Kanko.

FROM DIVISION TO UNITY Meg Peters

W

hen it comes to exercise, I have a habit of comparing myself to more experienced work-out buffs. This often makes me feel insecure about my abilities and leads me to spend months without exercising. In the past, my mantra has been: “I can’t therefore, I shouldn’t.” This used to work for me. I kept myself busy with academics, clubs, and a part-time job, while ignoring the need to actually work out my body. I used “I’m busy” as yet another excuse, pretending that eating well could make up for my lack of exercise; it didn’t matter to me that running to catch a bus left me out of breath; I felt I ate a balanced diet.

The truth is, I have never been an athletic person. You’re more likely to find me at a coffee shop sipping espresso and reading some pretentious better-than-you novel than sweating it out at the gym. My one exception is yoga. I bought my first yoga mat from Chapters on my way to meet someone in the attached Starbucks. I first saw yoga

as a cool trend that bookworms like me could indulge in without seeming too jocklike. I dabbled in the twists and turns of solitary exercises, but until recently, I never committed to yoga in the long term.

A few months ago, I dusted off my old yoga mat and started using it three or four times a week. It started as a way of filling time, but it has become a life-changing routine that I hope to maintain in the long term.

What makes yoga different from other forms of exercise is its aim to go beyond the physical. Yoga trains the mind along with the body. The word “yoga” itself means union and this is what yoga teaches – the unity of body, mind, and spirit.

Yoga aims to redefine your control over yourself, giving you the freedom and the ability to develop a healthy, open mind. For me, it meant the end of my frustration over my limitations, and the end of comparing myself to others. In my yoga classes, I am reminded that there are no failures, just pos-

sibilities for improvement. Competition with others is meaningless. As I calm my overactive mind, I tone my body.

Yoga is not all about the stereotypical stretching exercises we’ve seen on chick flicks since the 1980s. Yoga can be divided into many different forms: meditation, breathing, chanting, and Hatha yoga. I practice exclusively Hatha yoga in the form of Bikram, which involves heating the yoga room to 42 degrees Celsius. The heat is meant to be an extra challenge to control the mind.

The heat also lubricates your muscles and helps you to stretch further. Bikram consists of 26 poses done in the same order, with the same time intervals, and the same dialogue each time. This procedure is repeated in the same way in every Bikram yoga class on the planet.

I like to call yoga my pause button for life. Truthfully, it is more like my entire life on fast forward. Everything comes out in that 42 degree Celsius room, every thought piling on top of others, like a stack of thought pancakes destined PHOTOGRAPHY BY GADGETGIRL (FLICKR) to fall over. A good class allows me to remove each thought, acknowledge its existence, accept it, and release it. A bad class, which is unfortunately more common, is when that pot of thoughts boils over, and I find myself unable to stand the heat. It becomes a challenge, not only to twist my body into uncomfortable positions, but also to twist my mind and eliminate negative thoughts.

Over the past three months, I have lost around ten pounds and shed multiple dress sizes. For the first time since seventh grade, I fit into an extra small. More importantly, I no longer lose my breath on the way upstairs, and have more energy at the end of each day. While I never intended to lose weight, I am proud of my body’s newfound endurance and strength. It was my mind, not my body that allowed this transformation to occur. Without a positive attitude, I would never have made it through each yoga class. Yoga was the most important intersection of my life. It has allowed me to achieve a union of body, mind, and spirit.

VOLUME 15, ISSUE 2 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ 5

KNOWN TO ANONYMITY Matthew Bassett

was lifted off my shoulders.

Fast forward to first year, when I was the only one from my county at McMaster.

Suddenly, I was alone, one within a sea of faces. One might suspect that this would be an unsettling feeling, but for someone who had been looking forward to this day for so long it was a relief, a reason to finally exhale. I began to breathe a new air filled with spirit, diversity, and knowledge.

It was a very different kind of community.

A blank canvas was mine and I could not wait to begin painting.

Within weeks, I was referring to McMaster and Hamilton as home. Adjusting was not nearly as difficult as I had anticipated. I was experiencing the kind of freedom I had before only dreamed of.

However, before I could fully immerse ARTWORK BY IANITZA VASSILEVA

6 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ OCTOBER 2012

myself in that atmosphere, I had one last obstacle. Travelling home for Thanksgiving graduation was bittersweet at best.

It seemed that I had made more genuine friendships in the past month of school

to breathe “aI began new air filled with

“

M

y teachers always said, “Just wait until you leave this place,” the small town in the Ottawa Valley where I grew up. The entirety of my youth was lived within an array of small villages, and the occasional trip to the city. I’m a valley kid, born and raised. I had the same friends from the first day of kindergarten to grade twelve graduation. I know it is a typical story, but only one who has lived it knows the true confines of such a life.

The valley mouth will swallow you whole and, before you realize it, you’re seventy years old, chewing tobacco on the same porch where your mother rocked you as a little boy. Although many find that life fulfilling, I aspired to be something different, something more. When I accepted my offer to McMaster University, a weight

spirit, diversity, and knowledge.

than I had in the previous eighteen years.

On the surface, that seems great, right?

I found my new beginning. Nevertheless, I still remembered the people from my past, and it stung to know they did not return the favour. It seemed that the intersection of happiness and home was drastically changing in its scenery.

Walking through the arch back to my room in McKay after classes, the anonymity began to hit me. But it was not fear of being alone or isolated, it was fear of becoming lost within the crowds, losing sight of who I am, and forgetting why I had begun to call McMaster my home in the first place. Could it be that, once the initial excitement subsided, there was nothing left but dusty hallways and tired souls?

In my pursuit to study the mind, I myself had forgotten that perception and hope are the most powerful tools at human disposal. The most amazing thing about McMaster is that regardless of how you find peace, you can find it here.

For me, peace is in seclusion and nature, which I’ve found within Cootes’ Paradise.

Something about the tree-covered paths, waterside boardwalk, and occasional curious fawn interrupting your wandering brings a wholly satisfying peace of mind.

By the end of the year, I had found my place within the mosaic of McMaster.

It was comfortable, exciting, and unpredictable. It was exactly where I needed to be. The university atmosphere had consumed me: the students of all colours and cultures, the professors with pea coats and briefcases, and the overarching communal pride in bleeding maroon.

My journey to anonymity was complete, and I was happy.

ARTWORK BY IANITZA VASSILEVA

COMBINING TWO CULTURES Safiya Wazir & Yardena Winegust

L

ove is the way you feel towards your mom and dad, beta. This is my Indian mother’s talk on love, verbatim – right down to the Hindi word for “child”. Islamic Indian culture and Western culture have disparate approaches to the concept of love.

In my family, it’s taboo to speak of the romantic relationships that are common currency in Western culture.

Growing up, tradition was ingrained in my mind, so having my parents find a Muslim husband with a high paying job seemed the right choice for me. After all, “family first.” Since then, I met Devesh (a pseudonym) in grade 11, we fell for each other, and we are now in a strong, loving relationship. Where it gets complicated is that he’s not Muslim, I’m not Hindu, and we want to be together in the face of two cultures that don’t believe in love over family. In fact, we’re just one of the many couples facing this problem.

It’s frustrating to have to choose between cultures that have equally flawed approaches to love; one fails to value romantic love and the other belittles parental consent in the face of selfish desires. Despite the downsides, being a second generation immigrant exposes me to valuable traditions and culture – it’s both enriching and suffocating to be caught between two cultures.

- SW

T

he pocket Jewish calendar has become my best friend, reminding me of Sabbath times and the Jewish Holidays: my sources of happiness and stress. Having attended a Jewish school from grades K through 12, it was a nobrainer that we received time off for the High Holidays. Now that I’m in a secular university world, I don’t have it so easy.

In addition to arranging my schedule to fulfill academic requirements, I also have to minimize the amount of class missed. Inevitably, this means emailing all my professors every year, listing the days of my absence, explaining the holiday behind it all, the holiday’s duration, and then begging for lecture notes.

The first few weeks of school are the hardest, within which most of the holidays are concentrated. I find myself travelling constantly to and from Toronto, where I celebrate with my family. Although missing class and catching up is stressful, I find the balance between my religious life and secular life rewarding. I savour every minute.

- YW PHOTOGRAPHY BY ZAINAB FURQAN VOLUME 15, ISSUE 2 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ 7

Zainab Furqan

8 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ OCTOBER 2012

VOLUME 15, ISSUE 2 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ 9

THE LEFTOVERS OF TIFF Jeremy Allen Henderson & Kate Sinclair

ARTWORK BY MARK BELAN

BYZANTIUM

I

t was the last day of the Toronto International Film Festival and I just happened to be in town for the evening. Some friends had reserved tickets for a British fantasy thriller, Byzantium, and invited me to come along. Growing up away from the city, I had always imagined TIFF as a star-studded event that one could not just decide to go to at the last minute. I went online and, surely enough, there were a few tickets left. We rushed to the theatre, getting there with negative two minutes to spare.

We ended up sitting in the furthest-back row of the highest balcony of the enormous Bloor Hot Docs Cinema (the one advantage of sitting here: we could stand up whenever we needed to stretch without blocking anyone’s view). A TIFF volunteer appeared on screen and gave us some background information on the film. It was, apparently, director Neil Jordan’s return to the fantasy thriller genre. This meant essentially nothing to us. However, it did seem to spark conversation amongst the less-accidental attendees seated in the front half of the theatre (another reason to sit in the back: you don’t have to pretend to know anything about the film).

Byzantium is the story of a mother-daughter duo of vampires struggling with their pasts and their immortality in, well, different ways. Sixteen-year-old Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan) wants to tell the world her story; she narrates the film as if it were written in her personal diary. For a vampire, she is rather squeamish, and will only drink the blood of the sick and the elderly. Her mother, Clara (Gemma Arterson), has been providing for her daughter for two hundred years by working as a prostitute, viciously murdering any clients or especially seedy pimps she encounters along the way. Clara’s antics force the pair to relocate constantly despite the fact that the authori10 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ OCTOBER 2012

ties never seem to be far behind. At the beginning of the film, Clara and Eleanor establish themselves in a rundown town on the English coast, but Eleanor suspects they had been there before.

The film alternates between scenes set in the early 1800s, when Clara and Eleanor were mere mortals, and those depicting the modern day. In the former, we learn the story of their estranged relationship, Clara’s troubled history, and how they eventually came to be fanged partners in crime. In the latter, these stories just seem to repeat themselves. The moral of the story, that you can’t run away from your past, is belabored to the point of meaninglessness, often explicitly so. At times it felt like I was simultaneously watching two period pieces with the same characters and plot points rather than one cohesive film, which was disorienting to say the least.

To be honest, I expected more from my first TIFF film than Byzantium was able to give me. The script was mediocre at best, and the ending was unrealistic, even for a vampire movie. The trajectories set for each of the characters in the concluding scene were inconsistent with their actions throughout the movie and left me unsatisfied (yet not yearning for more). That being said, the film did have a few redeeming features. Eleanor’s quirkier moments were endearing in a Zooey-Deschanel-esque way, and I did walk away hoping that things would turn out well for her. The quality of the cinematography surpassed that of the script by an order of magnitude (or two), and parts of the film were visually stunning. Overall, while I wouldn’t say I regret losing my TIFF virginity to Byzantium (at the tender age of 20, it was time), let’s just say I’m not eager for a second date anytime soon.

- JAH

THE DEFLOWERING OF EVA VAN END

F

ollowing the TIFF premier of Dutch filmmaker Michiel Ten Horn’s The Deflowering of Eva van End, one reviewer described it as a “toned-down drama with the quirkier ambitions of indie-flavoured malaise porn.” That’s pretty much what it was. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, but I think I was laughing for all the wrong reasons.

The plot was hilariously two-dimensional. Ten Horn self-describes the film as a “caustic, absurdist satire of petit-bourgeois family life.” This is a bit of an overstatement. The plot follows the van End family through the sordid details of their middle class lives.

The already-dysfunctional family is destabilized by the arrival of a dashing German exchange student. Eva is totally smitten. Her eldest brother, a soon-to-be-married bird-lover and eccentric, finds himself equally love-struck. Sexual frustration permeates the film and adds to a general feeling of empty detachment. In a flurry of strange camera angles, ‘poignant’ silences, and indie music, Eva’s elder brother discovers his latent homosexuality, her mother discovers the magic of marijuana, and her father falls prey to a series of internet scams. During the film’s climax, Eva walks unseen into the exchange student’s bedroom and copulates with him while

he sleeps. Post-coitus, Eva is surprisingly un-phased to find that her house is on fire. The van End family emerges from the flames unscathed. More indie music plays. The scene cuts to a hospital where all the members of the van End family lie variously undone.

The film ends bizarrely with someone asking: “What happened to the Duitse?” End scene.

Like I said, I found this movie immensely entertaining, but that doesn’t mean I thought it was a quality feature film. While the movie had its charming moments, the overall effect was rather unfortunate. The various vignettes, while hysterical on their own, were disconnected and inconsistent as a whole. The film’s lack of a single, unifying purpose left me unsatisfied. This was probably what Ten Horn meant when he described his film as an “absurdist satire”, but altogether, I think the execution was clumsy. I also found the plot a bit unsettling. You can imagine how uncomfortable it is to watch two fifteen-year-olds have intercourse on-screen - let alone the fact that one of them is apparently asleep the whole time. Maybe Canadian audiences just aren’t ready yet.

- KS

ARTWORK BY MARK BELAN

VOLUME 15, ISSUE 2 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ 11

ARTWORK BY MARK BELAN

BUILDING BLOCKS OF LIFE Brianna Smrke

S

tructural biologists, sculptors, and designers extract meaning from form, using the visible to probe the intangible. An especially fun class of structural biologists, protein crystallographers, fire X-rays at regular lattices of millions of protein molecules. The data they obtain does the unthinkable: map the cloud of electrons that define the surface of the molecule. Sculptors bend, merge and cut physical materials – scrap metal from shipwrecks, forks, clay – to convey information about concepts, emotions and questions.

Designers take a purpose, something immaterial – and manifest it physically. All are chasing the essential question of how information, function and meaning shape reality. In our increasingly digitized world, there might be less emphasis on place, structure and form, but they are no less important. That’s why these three fields need to be brought together, forcefully and fast.

A few years ago, as an inexperienced student, I stumbled into a protein crystal12 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ OCTOBER 2012

lography lab and was, surprisingly, hired.

In the two summers I worked there, I saw crystals and three-dimensional images that were strange enough and beautiful enough for modern art museums. But they were confined to microscope lenses and computer screens. That wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to touch the molecular models we were studying because I think it would have helped me understand why our research was so important. Holding the model helices might help me grasp the fact that we are made of them. It can be easy to forget, as more and more of our life moves online, that we are made of physical building blocks and we live in physical spaces. Digital technology should be a way to connect us to this reality, not buffer us from it. Form – the shape of ourselves and our world – defines function. If we understand form, we can influence function.

The digital models and pictures, though wonderful, are not enough. A better connection to the physicality of our lives might give us more incentive to

be engaged rather than disconnected. It might fill us with wonder, provoking questions that we can use digital technologies to answer. Being rooted to the real world doesn’t mean we would have to shun technology. Instead, it gives us a better reason to use technology, not as an end in itself, not to get lost in pixels, but to better understand who we are and where we live.

That’s why we need more structural biologists, sculptors and designers going out for drinks and starting up collaborations. We need museum exhibits where children can roll molecules around in their hands see what they look like from different perspectives. We need scientists to be able to produce models quickly and cheaply so they can understand better how and why certain things fit together.

Advances in 3D-printing technology suggest we’re almost there.

Sculptors and biologists and designers and 3D printing impresarios can’t afford to stay in their little niches. They can improve their skills—skills we are in dire

derful applications for things like 3D-printing I’m sure the original developers hadn’t envisioned.”

— the shape “ Form of ourselves and our world — defines functions. If we understand form, we can influence function.

“

need of—much more efficiently together than apart. “The magic – the huge leaps in understanding – happen at the very edges of a field,” said Dr. Murray Junop, a professor in structural biology at McMaster, when asked about the benefits of interdisciplinary collaboration. “If you can bring in people who can understand one aspect of what you’re doing really well, you have the potential for completely new ideas. You need to push the barriers of your field out as far as you can. It just makes sense.”

Paige Woodhouse, an artist studying at McMaster, has a slightly different perspective. “People don’t always see the connections, but the fields of art and science are not separate. They are constantly intertwining. And it’s not just about exchanging ideas. Technologies and processes should be exchanged - there are so many won-

Structural biologists can inspire new techniques in sculpture. Sculptors can

bring to life static images. We need motifs from protein structure – helices, zig-zagging sheets, and coils – inspiring sculptors to change the way they model life and growth. Designers can learn from the iterative process of determining a molecule’s probable shape. And the general public can benefit from watching as three titans of representation collide.

The images accompanying this article are some of the most beautiful structures from the international, open-access Protein Data Bank (http://www.rcsb.org/pdb).

These images may be worth many words, but actual sculptures are worth more than any number of these pictures. Here’s to liberating these models from the computer and putting them into our hands - adding to the dialogue between the disciplines that help us keep hold of our world.

VOLUME 15, ISSUE 2 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ 13

ARTWORK BY MARK BELAN

TECHNOLOGY’S MARCH Maryann Ashley

W

e’ve all been there. Trapped in one of the most remote, obscure, classrooms on campus, attempting to listen to your professor while your eyes constantly stray to check the clock, waiting for it to reach that coveted twentyminute-after mark. You get more and more agitated as you sit there because you know that you have less then ten minutes to sprint the distance to your next class on the opposite side of campus. Surprisingly, you’re making pretty good progress being herded with the rest of the students through busy, narrow hallways. It seems like you might actually make it to class on time when BAM! You get stuck behind three people, all in a row, walking as slowly as humanly possible.

But they don’t even notice you, because they are oblivious to the world and the traffic around them. They have their heads down, singularly focused on the next slightly suggestive text or hilarious YOLO tweet they’re about to send. So much for making it to class on time.

It happens all the time: people text or pay attention to their iPods, their cell phones, even their Gameboys, and they don’t pay attention to where they’re going or what’s around them. Walking down the hallway proves to be a dangerous task when every other person has their head focused on a miniature screen. Countless times I’ve been witness to people bumping 14 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ OCTOBER 2012

into each other, or the hastened apologizes when someone looks up at the last moment before a collision and veers back onto their side of the sidewalk.

People might laugh when they hear that a woman fell into Lake Michigan because she walked off the pier while texting, but the truth is that a lot of students are just as bad.

We’re lucky that McMaster is a pedestrianfriendly campus. We only have to avoid the odd maintenance truck and security vehicle.

It’s impressive that bus drivers don’t go into blinding road rage when students just walk right in front of their large moving vehicle like they own the road. And that’s just on campus.

Once you move to the edge of campus all hell breaks loose. Students jaywalk, run across lanes at the last moment, hang out on the medians camouflaged by trees, biding their time to pop out into traffic. Just last week I was walking to campus and noticed that all the cars had pulled over. A fire truck was coming down the road, lights flashing, sirens sounding, and the cars were patiently waiting for it to pass. All of a sudden a couple of students just sauntered out in front of the fire truck and took their time crossing the street. One of them was even texting.

So much for the fire, I guess.

In the past seven years, traffic accidents with a connection to cellphones and MP3 players has tripled. Too often, students

are tuned in to their music and tuned out to traffic. Seventy percent of accidents where people have been hit by cars while wearing headphones are fatal. Technologicallydistracted pedestrians are becoming such a common problem that people have come up with the term “inattentional blindness” to describe someone whose attention has been divided by multiple stimuli. There are also clever terms floating around like “podestrians” and “traffic zombies”. In some parts of the United States people can get fined for texting while walking. Although careless walking isn’t illegal in Canada, Toronto police have been giving lectures and handing out pamphlets to people found texting or not paying attention while walking among busy traffic.

The march of technology seems to be unstoppable, but it’s also marching people out into busy traffic and slowing people down in jam-packed hallways. Students should be more aware and considerate while walking both on and off campus. Maybe next time you should leave your cellphone in your pocket, or step out of the main flow of traffic if it’s really a text that can’t wait thirty seconds for a response. At the very least, look up from time to time while attempting to walk at a normal speed. If none of these options sound reasonable, then don’t be surprised if one day you get pushed by one of those people just trying to get to class.

THE FUN THEORY Julie-Anne Mendoza

P

ositive reinforcement is not a new concept. Psychologist and social philosopher B. F. Skinner formalized it in his famous “Skinner Boxes,” which neatly summarize the idea of positive reinforcement. Put an animal in a box with some kind of mechanism – usually a lever or a pressure pad – and reward it with a treat every time they use it. Eventually, the animal will continuously activate the mechanism to keep getting the reward.

Under the right circumstances, this kind of conditioning is just as effective on humans, and can be used to encourage good behavior. As part of a safety campaign, Volkswagen recently exploited this technique. Using the intersection of work and fun to incite people to practice better safety methods, they modified their in-car entertainment systems so that every passenger has to buckle their seat belt before the entertainment system will come online.

This inspired a larger publicity campaign, aptly named The Fun Theory. Its intent is obvious: modify product design and encourage people to use new safety features using positive reinforcement.

The Piano Stairs are by far the most well-known of Volkswagen’s projects.

Volkswagen engineers installed pressure plates, a sound system, and custom tiling to turn a staircase into an oversized piano that plays the chromatic scale as people climb it. By modifying the staircase next to an escalator in a Stockholm subway station, Volkswagen increased the number of people who took the stairs by 66%.

Their other projects, while not as famous, are just as clever and successful.

The World’s Deepest Bin, for example, was introduced to encourage proper waste disposal. This project involved a motion sensor, a speaker, and a sound effect reminiscent of Wile E. Coyote plummeting off a cliff. The day after it was installed, Volkswagen’s modified bin had 41 kilograms more garbage in it than its closest neighbor.

The Bottle Bank Arcade – one of Volkswagen’s more elaborate projects – was created to increase glass bottle recycling. The recycling bin looks like an arcade game complete with flashing lights, a score board, motion sensors, and oldtimey sound effects. Putting glass bottles into the hole when the light flashes above it scores the player points, while putting one

into an unlit hole triggers a point penalty and a cheesy honking sound. In a single evening, Volkswagen’s bank saw nearly 100 users while the average bottle depot saw only two visitors.

The results are all in favor of Volkswagen’s hypothesis. By making things fun to use, we can effectively encourage people to behave in a more socially conscious way. Watching the YouTube videos is proof enough, in the comments box, viewers gushed about how much they wished their local staircases had this technology. As a publicity stunt, The Fun Theory is impres-

sive, and an interesting display of human behavior. The downside is that these modifications are costly, and probably unnecessary: people shouldn’t need to be entertained to recycle or exercise. What exactly should we think of a population that won’t take simple steps to improve their lifestyle without an ulterior incentive? Volkswagen’s projects are clever, and the results are interesting, but personally, I find it disheartening that such over-the-top measures are required to make people do things they probably should have been doing in the first place.

ARTWORK BY IANITZA VASSILEVA VOLUME 15, ISSUE 2 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ 15

Ianitza Vassileva

16 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ OCTOBER 2012

Livia Tsang

VOLUME 15, ISSUE 2 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ 17

Know What I Mean Peter Gardhouse Do you understand me?

Do I understand myself?

Or do our Words speak for themselves?

Ugly utterances may abound, but maybe we need them; do they help one to understand another – to stand under and support the syntactic frameworks, the verbal architecture and flying buttresses, to build connections with family, friends, enemies... contemplation kills action, Hamlet knows too well...

Maybe we don’t need idiot idioms, maybe we could be more creative, more empathetic with our choice of words, perhaps we could scan the ether more Thoreau-ly, with serenity and grace we could find those terms, unique and rarely spoken, pregnant with emotion which birth new life in language.

Intersections Sydney Dusselier Intersect, dissect, bisect and around.

These pieces all falling, into one.

Infinite parts that stand, Alone.

That join together, cohesive and adhesive, as one.

Units of, sections, of subsections, of grids, of pieces, of parts, of wholes, Intersect.

This void of divisions, collisions, submissions, lacks space apart.

These intersections which we face, are pieces of ourselves, myself, yourself.

A whole of a half, of a third.

Intersect, dissect, bisect and around.

These pieces all falling, into one.

18 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ OCTOBER 2012

A listener has to listen as much as a speaker has to speak, to meet each other half way, to think what was thought, and what was not.

Meaning can be teased, turned over and tampered with, prepositions can be postpositions, to grammarians’ dismay, thoughtfully, we might learn to speak one day.

Morality hides in every word, in every tone of voice, every syllable glossed over or enunciated by choice.

Do you know what I mean?

You Ever Notice How Cold It Gets in the Fall?

Lucas Wilson You ever notice how cold it gets in the fall?

No, I know it may sound inane, but when the weather is so bitter, as pain is imparted and your lips begin to quiver, you know it’s fall.

When we walk down the red hall and step out the door, I realize it’s not so warm outside anymore.

You ever notice how cold it gets in the fall?

So I turn around only to be found by myself.

They stayed in on the other side of the door, they hide, not behind solid wood, but instead where I stood: inside.

They lied, they weren’t comin’ for a walk, they are stayin’ where it’s not freezin’.

But outside its the season to be wearing a coat— but I didn’t get in that boat, that ship has sailed, I failed to hear they weren’t comin’ out and I highly doubt they ever said a word.

I heard nothing.

And I ask you, you ever notice how cold it gets in the fall?

And now I feel it: the sting of the wind and I’m pressed pinned up against this pane of glass and the fast breeze hasn’t passed.

And they sit in that lazyboy.

I’m a crazy boy to think I’ll overcome this door, find a way around this, mount this.

I’ll count this a loss, I’ll never be gifted, lifted, with it enough to get through this maple block and we can’t talk and that’s the way they like it.

So they sit, inside, and confide within their self, as they put me on the shelf and let me wear nothing in the cold and chill.

They watch me pay the bill, for our mistake and they mouth to me: “You can have your cake and eat it too...”

Who? I turn around and found they were talking to me but only to say: “Stay.

Don’t try to come in because it’s locked.”

It’s locked.

So I stand here and I ask you: You ever notice how cold it gets in the fall?

ARTWORK BY IANITZA VASSILEVA

ARTWORK BY MARK BELAN

THE INTERSECTING PARALLEL Nigel Pynn-Coates

A

round 300 BCE, Euclid wrote Elements, a hugely influential mathematical treatise that was used in classrooms for nearly 2000 years. Indeed, it is second only to the Bible in the number of editions published! Lewis Carroll, of Alice in Wonderland fame, even wrote Euclid and his Modern Rivals in the late 19th century to argue for the supremacy of Euclid’s Elements as a geometry textbook for schools Helping to establish the axiomatic and deductive approach to mathematics, Euclid’s Elements describes the basic number theory as well as the field that would become known as Euclidean geometry.

Euclid begins by defining his terms, then asserting five simple axioms and five more postulates for geometric construction.

The axioms codify basic ideas about equality, but the postulates contain more interesting ideas about geometric constructions.

For example, Euclid postulates that we can draw a straight line between any two points or draw a circle with any centre or radius. Euclid’s fifth and most famous postulate, also known as the parallel postulate, is equivalent to the statement that “given a line and a point not on the line, there is exactly one line through the point that does not intersect the first line”. (That is not how he originally stated it, but for our purposes it is easier to use.)

Since it is not nearly as intuitive as Euclid’s other postulates, many mathematicians believed it should not be an assumption of geometry and for many centuries they have tried to prove it. Their efforts were in vain, as it was discovered that the parallel postulate does not follow from Euclid’s other axioms of geometry.

In fact, the parallel postulate is a key assumption of Euclidean geometry. One of the beautiful techniques of mathematics is to generalise the abstract and see what happens, so mathematicians naturally asked what geometry would look like when

we forget the parallel postulate. The field of non-Euclidean geometry was born of this question.

The parallel postulate is integral to other truths of Euclidean geometry and throwing it away gives us interesting and different spaces. One example is elliptic geometry, usually visualised as geometry on a sphere.

In this geometry, there are no parallel lines.

Even if two lines have the property that we can draw a third line connecting the first two which is perpendicular to each of them, they will intersect. If we visualise this on a sphere (think of latitude and longitude lines on the Earth), these two lines will meet at a pole. This also means that the three lines make a triangle with angles that add up to more than 180 degrees, violating a traditional truth of geometry.

As with many ideas in mathematics that seem irrelevant to reality at first, the discovery of non-Euclidean geometry led to significant advances in the scientific understanding of the universe. One of the most notable advances is Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which posits that space and time are intimately connected. Geometrically, space-time is curved and nonEuclidean, so gravity is a property of this curved space-time. Suddenly, mathematical fantasies had become the reality of the universe.

Mathematicians like to think about abstract objects with nice properties, so another reason geometers discard Euclid’s fifth postulate is because Euclidean space is not well-behaved from the perspective of projective geometry. In particular, not all lines intersect. Why should we allow parallel lines to be an exception?

If we want two parallel lines to intersect, they’re going to have to intersect at infinity. Think of standing on railroad tracks: as you look into the distance, it appears that the tracks intersect on the horizon although they’re really the same distance apart all

along. So what we do mathematically to make this true is add a “point at infinity” where these two parallel lines eventually meet. If we do this for every pair of parallel lines, we are basically drawing a circle around the plane that is infinitely far away.

This is the idea behind what mathematicians call the projective plane, where any two lines intersect even if they’re parallel.

A more precise geometric construction of the projective plane involves the Möbius strip, everyone’s favourite one-sided surface. It is formed by twisting a strip of paper and gluing the ends together, so if you have some paper handy, make one and convince yourself it has only one side and one boundary! (Trace your finger along the face of the paper and the edge of the paper to see this.) Starting with a Möbius strip, if you were to glue its boundary to itself, you would get the projective plane. Unfortunately, it is impossible to visualise in three dimensions, but four will do the trick!

Both the projective plane and the Möbius strip have only one side and are nonorientable, meaning we cannot consistently define left and right in the space. Unlike the Möbius strip though, the projective plane has no boundary, so we cannot picture it in three dimensions without it intersecting itself. Because of these weird properties, the Möbius strip has been adopted in industry, but we haven’t thought of a way to apply the projective plane yet.

Although we assumed Euclid’s fifth postulate to be true for centuries, it turns out that life is more interesting without it.

Euclidean geometry is a good model for three-dimensional space with no time component, but general relativity couldn’t have been developed without non-Euclidean geometry. Mathematicians challenged our assumptions and in pioneering non-Euclidean geometry, developed interesting abstract ideas that would later describe the very fabric of the universe.

VOLUME 15, ISSUE 2 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ 19

ARTWORK BY TEAL BOOTH

AWAKE AND DREAMING Nima Nahiddi

I

’ve always thought of dreams as a nice chat with your own subconscious. Like any conversation, the content of dreams can vary greatly and can evoke an endless possibility of emotions – from fear to anticipation, from joy to depression. One never really knows how the scene is going to end, and whether or not the conversation has any meaning is completely dependent on your thoughts and interpretations.

Perhaps it is because of this wiggleroom that there are countless scientific and pseudo-scientific fields dedicated to dream interpretation. Skimming through online dream guides reveals that dreaming about teacups means one wants to lead a more spiritual life, while dreaming about teeth means one is feeling insecure. Personally, it’s not these predictive explanations that fascinate me, but rather the reasons why one can feel so much emotion about what one has dreamt. Waking up afraid and damp with sweat in the middle of the night is a clear indication that your mind, or at least some part of your consciousness, believes you were in danger while you slept.

Does that imply that when we rest, our minds think that our dreams are the reality in which we live?

This way of thinking evokes an Incep20 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ OCTOBER 2012

tion-style anxiety that one would never be able to tell if one is asleep or awake. I do not doubt the reality of our conscious world, but what if it were possible to distinguish between dreams and reality in one’s sleep? The answer to this question is a phenomenon known as lucid dreaming: a dream where one acknowledges that one is in the dream state.

If you’ve never had a lucid dream before the idea sounds incredible. When I tell people that I’ve had dozens of lucid dreams, they think it means that I can dream about anything, that I can do the impossible in my dreams. Unfortunately, that’s not exactly how it works. Acknowledging that you’re in a dream state simply means that you’re aware of the lack of reality. This acknowledgment may come from doing something completely out of character, like skipping a very well-established morning routine. Often you come into this realization mid-way into your dream and so cannot control your initial environment. A dream in which you’re riding the HSR bus to school is not very exciting, lucid or not.

Lucid dreams only become fascinating once you develop conscious control over your dream actions. In those cases, your imagination really is the limit. Even if

you start off on the HSR in Westdale, you can skip class and go on a flying adventure through Hamilton’s waterfalls. Since you know it’s all just a dream, your actions have no consequences. This freedom allows you to transform all your dreams into marvellous adventures. A friend of mine has ridden dragons through a fantastical landscape, controlling the beast only with her thoughts. Another time, someone told me of how they flew from Hamilton to their hometown and then proceeded to touch the stars with their enormous, supernatural hands.

After hearing these wonderful stories, the most common question people ask me when I talk about my lucid dreams is not about their content, but why I don’t try to perfect some technique so that I could lucid dream every night. On the surface, that idea sounds wonderful. To have absolutely no physical limits or responsibility, even if only in our dreams, sounds glorious. But if you could perfect a lucid dreaming technique, would you choose to constantly use it? My answer would be a definite ‘no’. I think Professor Dumbledore phrased it nicely when he warned the reader and wisely said, “It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”

THE CAMPUS KEYSTONE Julia Redmond

I

f you’ve ever seen a McMaster brochure, you have inevitably encountered photos of the famous McMaster archway. Located at the heart of campus, the neo-Gothic structure, part of University Hall, was built when the university moved from its original location in Toronto to its new home in Hamilton.

Back then the campus had a classically collegiate vibe; there’s something about old-looking stone and vines that inspires learning. But now, 82 years later, that atmosphere is limited to one small corner of the campus, the rest of which is overrun by awkward-looking modern architecture.

Before coming to McMaster, it would be easy to think that it’s a cross between Hogwarts and Oxford. Somehow, the photos only capture the most flattering angles of campus, avoiding the eyesore that is the Arts Quad, or the industrial look of ABB. It probably isn’t anything like what you expected. But just as the campus isn’t necessarily what you thought it would be, the whole university experience can be surprising too.

University is supposed to be a place where you come to figure out what you will do with your life. In high school, you may have had no sense of what you should do. University is assumed to be the cure for that. We assume that a university takes in fresh-faced teens and churns out mature adults. But what no one tells us freshfaced teens that there’s no set recipe for success—at the end of an undergrad degree, people are really just as clueless as they were to begin with. The difference is that they pretend to handle it a bit better.

Spending four years immersed in academia certainly fills our heads with lots of information, although it seems to leak out over the summer months. Countless hours in the library, reams of paper used up, and newfound caffeine addictions are what we have to show for our time in school. How does this really prepare us for the so-called real world? Perhaps the caffeine addiction makes us part of the majority of workingage North Americans, but it isn’t the kind of transition phase we expected.

A noticeable characteristic of the arch that’s evident when passing through is that it’s dark inside. No matter the weather, the position and structure of the arch create a sort of movie-theatre effect, making people mildly disoriented as they leave the arch

and reemerge into the sunlight. The same can be said of the university experience.

It’s a bit disorienting at times. You might find yourself confused, or unable to see clearly ahead. Barring any major disasters, though, you make it out the other side in one piece.

That’s not to say no one encounters disaster between the two sides of the archway. As a major traffic crossroads on campus, it sees a flood of students every hour, at twenty minutes past, when classes let out. The sheer number of students and faculty that go through means that there inevitably will be some accidents. Plus, there are students who opt to roll rather than walk, be it on a bike, on a longboard, or on rollerblades. These speedier travelers choose to ignore the signs that recommend riders dismount, preferring instead to push through the masses. Crashes do happen. The important thing is that if we crash, whether physically in the archway or metaphorically when our motivation fails,

we try to get back up again.

The McMaster campus probably isn’t what Thomas McQuesten had envisioned when he encouraged the school to move from its original home in downtown Toronto to its “new” location in Hamilton. Though the campus would be look different to him, the man who is credited with bringing McMaster to the city would probably recognize and appreciate many of the same problems university students face today.

Each one of us will encounter setbacks during the transition period of undergrad.

We’ll be confused, sometimes discouraged, and once in a while we’ll feel like we’re trapped in the dark. Occasionally, major crashes will happen, but we’re capable of surviving them. Even if nothing goes as planned, we can only hope to emerge on the other side, into the real world, with some sense of accomplishment for having completed the journey.

And who knows, we might even have an arch to look back on when we do it.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY DANIELLELORENZ (FLICKR)

VOLUME 15, ISSUE 2 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ 21

LOOK BOTH WAYS Devra Charney & Kaila Radan

N

ot only are intersections points of convergence for foot and vehicle traffic, they can also be central hubs of activity. In the following piece, we walk you through a guided tour of the intersections closest to Mac. Based on a ranking system that takes into consideration such criteria as safety, atmosphere, and general points of interest, we grade them from red to green for your convenience.

Main and Emerson The first intersection we visit is Main and Emerson, the busiest around campus.

The constant flow of traffic coupled with a two-stage pedestrian crossing makes for a dangerous and chaotic junction. In an attempt to speed up our journey, we push the crosswalk button, but, like countless others before us, our actions seem futile. When the walk signal finally appears, we follow the herd of students to the gated median where we must repeat the tedious wait. When we finally reach Starbucks, we get our drinks and occupy an outside table, only to find ourselves shouting over the honking of horns and inhaling exhaust fumes. This is not the place to relax and chat. Instead, we sip our drinks PHOTOGRAPHY BY WHYISHNAVE SUTHAGAR

22 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ OCTOBER 2012

in silence and see a young girl clutching her mother’s hand nearly get hit by a car. We also take in the architectural beauty of McMaster, from the eye-catching cement of the hospital to the innovative rectangular design of the Engineering Technology Building.

Due to this intersection’s lack of safety and uninspiring atmosphere, we are inclined to give it a low rating. Its two redeeming factors, however – the newly-built Starbucks and Shoppers Drug Mart – cause us to generously award it a yellow light for “proceed with caution.”

Sterling and Forsyth Next we make our way back to campus to observe the intersection at Sterling and Forsyth. We sit down on a stone bench near the student parking lot, under the shade of a large tree. Nature thrives here – even the cement median dividing Sterling is decorated with shrubbery. We watch students commuting to and from campus, jaywalking as if they own the place. Frustrated drivers are forced to pause halfway through their turns as oblivious pedestrians and cyclists cross at their leisure. It doesn’t help that there are no traffic lights to regulate the flow of traffic, though

stop signs prevent total chaos. Bored by our mundane surroundings, we start to think we could have much more fun at the playground across the road. Owing to a lack of excitement and safety, we rate this intersection a harsh red for “STOP.” King and Sterling Our final intersection is located in the heart of Westdale, at the corner of King and Sterling. Sitting down on the bench in front of Pita Pit, we have a first-rate view of HSR buses, local eateries, and casual cyclists. We appreciate the ample greenery: flower baskets hang from lampposts and trees line the sidewalk. While this is one of the busier intersections near McMaster, it is comparatively safe. For the most part drivers follow the signals and are considerate toward the constant stream of students and families frequenting the surrounding stores.

Popular shops include TCBY (best yogurt in the country), Westdale Cupcake on “Toonie Tuesdays”, and Pita Pit or Basilique for 3 a.m. snacks. Not only is this intersection high functioning, but it’s also a pleasant spot to take a well-deserved break from university life. We give it a green light for “GO.”

Whyishnave Suthagar

VOLUME 15, ISSUE 2 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ 23

LOST IN THE CROSSROADS Udoka Gabriella Okafor

L

ost. Confused. Tired. I have been en route for hours. The refrain, “left or right, forward or backward?”, has become all too frequent and, honestly, the monotony is becoming unbearable.

Everywhere I look I see intersections.

I look at the map for clarification but the intersections just become more conspicuous. Mother’s admonition reverberates continually in my head, drowning out all other thoughts: “The road to the convention park is really complicated, Desmond.”

But obviously, stubbornness prevented me from listening to a word she said…until now, of course.

I decide to act on pure gut. I decide to go right. Then for a moment, the roads seem clearer, the intersections disappear, and the complexity recedes into the background. “Go on Desmond,” I said, enthusiastically, “You are now on the right track.”

I walked confidently across the street.

Pretending to recall the mental snapshot

of a map that I’d never taken. Pretending that my feet are not slowly failing. Pretending not to notice the flying nylon that I have passed by twice. All the while lying to myself: everything will be all right. After several hours of restless wandering, I decide to give in to my fear that I am indeed lost.

The panic so expressly printed on my face.

In a moment of sudden vulnerability I kneel down and begin to cry. But I catch myself and shake off the tears: now is not the time to give in to worry.

I decided to bring out the map and actually try to read it. Maybe the intersections and crossroads are just superficial hurdles.

Perhaps, if I look closely, I just might find the route. I tried to deduce my bearing, but the map is nothing more than the lingo of gibberish.

I am frustrated, alone, tired, hungry, and anxious. I look at my watch – the convention is going to be over in a couple hours. The enthusiasm I felt when I left the

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ZAINAB FURQAN 24 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ OCTOBER 2012

house this morning has all but slid away.

Maybe it’s time to make that call. The call I have been avoiding all day. The one where I pick up the phone and tell Mother she was right. An obligatory apology in which I swallow my immense pride, and ending in a possible ride home.

As I sat by the curb waiting apathetically for Mother, I decided to stand up to take a peek beyond where I sat. I gazed intensely at the road crossings. I could not help but feel defeated as the nylon passed by one last time.

When mother arrived, I got into the car. The mutual but unacknowledged silence said all that needed to be said. As the car drove off, giving off that disturbing yet familiar honk sound, I gazed at the road immediately behind us. The crossroads.

Intersections. Junctures. And even though I finally found my way, and all the intersections receded into the golden sunset, the sight of it all still made me feel lost.

NETWORKING

ARTWORK BY IANITZA VASSILEVA

Jae Eun Ryu

W

hat do Barack Obama, Shiloh Jolie-Pitt, and O. J. Simpson have in common? What about Anne Frank, Steve Nash, and Henry Kissinger?

If you haven’t figured it out, these people have the same Bacon number; Obama, Shiloh and O. J. all have Bacon numbers of 2, while Anne Frank, Nash and Kissinger share a Bacon number of 3.

Now, it doesn’t mean that they all have two or three pieces of bacon for breakfast, as awesome as that would be. Bacon numbers actually describe the degree of separation between an individual and Kevin Bacon, an actor who starred in various movies including Footloose and X-Men: First Class.

It is a variation of the game “six degrees of separation” that suggests all Hollywood actors can be connected to Bacon in six steps or less. The higher your Bacon number, the more distant the connection. Kevin Bacon has a Bacon number of 0. Anyone who has starred in a film with Bacon has a Bacon number of 1. Steve Carell, for example, has a Bacon number of 1 because they both appeared in Crazy, Stupid, Love.

Obama, who was in The Official Inaugural Celebration with Carell, has a Bacon number of 2.

The particular focus on Kevin Bacon began with a couple of college students who, while watching Footloose, thought that it would be a funny party trick. The trick caught on and spread on the Internet, even sparking Google to add it as a function on their search engine (just search “Bacon

Number [Name of Actor]”). Although Bacon initially had reservations about this newfound status, he eventually came to embrace it and even founded a charity called sixdegrees.org.

While Bacon numbers are a relatively modern trend, “six degrees of separation” has been around for much longer and is not just restricted to actors. Chess players have an equivalent scale called Morphy numbers, which maps out a lineage of people who have played against Paul Morphy, the American commonly hailed as the greatest chess player of his era. Mathematicians have Erdõs numbers connecting them to the brilliant and prolific Hungarian scholar Paul Erdõs, who has co-authored more papers than any mathematician in history.

You can even have an Erdõs -Bacon number, which is the sum of your Bacon and Erdõs numbers. This is the real challenge, the real indication of your godliness as you straddle Hollywood and academia.

Having a Bacon number or an Erdõs number might show that you are proficient in your craft, but having both? Herein lies the path to eternal glory.

What is it about Bacon numbers or Erdõs-Bacon numbers that fascinates us?

At some level, this question is related to a common phenomenon we experience at parties or while lurking a friend’s Facebook page; I’m sure everyone has at some point met a new person only to unexpectedly discover that you share a mutual acquaintance. The more random and improbable

this connection, the greater the exclamations of delight: “Get out of here, I can’t believe you know Cathy! She was my reading buddy in grade 1, back when I lived on that hunter-gatherer island off the coast of New Zealand.” There are many instances in our lives where our paths intersect with others in wonderful coincidences, and we tend to be pleasantly surprised or overjoyed when we stumble across such connections. But is a magical serendipitous connection with a famous stranger that the only reason why we find these degrees of separation so fascinating?

The Bacon-Erdõs scale is a discrete point of intersection of the arts and the sciences, a way of identifying polymaths hidden in our world of specialists and specializations. These people have not only excelled in their initial field, but have ventured into and excelled in something completely different. You could chalk it up to dumb luck (maybe the mathematician was an extra on film sets around his university campus for an extra buck and managed to put himself on the Bacon-Erdõs scale).

But I think that there is something freeing in the fact that there are so many different people with Bacon-Erdõs numbers (including Natalie Portman and Carl Sagan), who have not allowed themselves to be penned into a set role. Maybe I should stop telling myself that it is too late to branch out into new and exciting fields. Right now, the only bacon number I have is the number of bacon strips I cooked for breakfast.

VOLUME 15, ISSUE 2 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ 25

ARTWORK BY IANITZA VASSILEVA

DEVILS AT A CROSSWALK Brooke Hamilton

26 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ OCTOBER 2012

They were both so forceful, so compelling. I knew I should be focused on trying to regain my bearings, but I was drawn in by the ferocity of their debate. I sided with the suave one, then I with the man on the right. Then I switched, and switched back, and back again.

It all came to halt at a crosswalk. The client was clearly waiting for the first opportunity to split, escape his dues. The

party should “I Which trail behind? Which

“

I

t was on a bitter autumn night that I found myself lost, walking down the shady streets of what some referred to as “the real world”.

In my eagerness to find a recognized street, I quickened my pace. This caused me to come across an obstacle: a slowmoving pair of men taking up the entire sidewalk. I was forced to slow down and walk behind them as they argued over a matter I knew did not concern me, but yet seemed so enticing all the same. I fell prey to the allure of eavesdropping.

“You’re not getting any money,” proclaimed the crude-looking fellow on the right. “You’re full of shit!”

His colleague, or perhaps more specifically his supplier, defended himself with suave charisma. “I gave you what you paid for. It’s not my fault that you had unreasonable expectations.”

Their argument bounced back and forth, intensity rising with every word.

Both were determined to place blame on the other, but both seemed suspiciously over-defensive. With more eavesdropping, I filled in the gaps of their story. According to the client, the supplier had wrongly suggested that his product was softer, gentler, than that of his competition.

party is saner, more trustworthy?

light couldn’t change soon enough.

What should have only been ten or twenty seconds, seemed to be more like a year and a half. For all this time I stood behind them, feeling at odds: “Which party should I trail behind?” I wondered to myself. “Which party is saner, more trustworthy? Where will I be safe?

Which direction will take me to where I

want to be?”

Like the “two twins at a crossroads” riddle, one lying and the other telling the truth, the real-life version was mind-boggling. They were two persuasive men, yes. Two greedy men, yes. Two twins at a crossroads? No, two devils at a crosswalk.

While I was contemplating my descision, the pair clued in that they had company. Their argument trailed off, and their attention shifted to me. Neither appeared thrilled to discover their conversation about an illegal trade had been overheard.

I stared back at them, like a deer in the headlights.

Genius struck me, and I deliberately and pointedly looked past them to the traffic lights. My distraction was lost on them both, as they took what seemed like a very large step toward me. With that, my indecisiveness was magically cured: I ran.

I had learned my lesson. What path should I take? The path that took me to where I wanted to go, regardless of who I’d be travelling with, the path that contained what I wanted, be it a scenic route or a quick one, the path that I knew to be the right path, no matter how persuasive my peers, the path onward. And onwards I went, breathless.

NOAH’S ARK ▪ A FICTION Kate Sinclair

O

n an ark, floating down the Euphrates. A figure lies prostrate on a bed in one of the captain’s chambers. Miscellaneous papers cover the walls and desk of the room. The air is rank with mold and mildew. The atmosphere is oppressive.

Wilbur awoke in an unfamiliar room feeling decidedly rumpled.

Piles of sheets were heaped tent-like over his belly. Mired in cushions and blankets of every sort, he felt queasy. Out of the corner of his eye he could see a single down feather poke sickeningly out the corner of his pillow. Whimsically, he thought of his friends Mother Goose and Jemima Puddle Duck, who used to share the keep next to his small pen.

Limbs cramped, Wilbur bucked his sheets off and tried awkwardly to hurtle himself out of bed. Only after several violent attempts did he manage to vault himself off the mattress and onto the floor. He took a few ungainly steps forward. Across the room he noticed that his reflection was doing the same. Or was that really him?

Slowly, deliberately, Wilbur approached the looking glass. He watched as the reflection followed suit. Something was definitely off. Feeling nauseated, he stopped, took a deep breath, and just looked.

It couldn’t be.

Leaning closer, he peered at the creature in the glass.

The creature peered hideously back.

Noah Noyes and his family were sitting down to a Sunday morning breakfast of bacon, eggs, and pancakes. Mrs. Noyes stepped wearily back and forth from the stove, depositing platefuls of food in front of her husband to be blessed. The smell of roasting flesh wafted through the cabin.

Fern sniffed the air appreciatively as she sat down. It had been quite an agreeable morning. Having woken up earlier than her brother, she had gotten the recreation room all to herself. Now, still absorbed in the fantasies of her game, she sat absently humming, swinging her feet back and forth. She did not even notice that her brother was missing from the table.

“Shall we?” Mrs. Noyes asked, taking her seat shakily. Mr. Noyes nodded quietly as he linked hands with his wife and daughter. He began: “Bless us O Lord, for these thy gifts, which we are about to receive, from thy bounty, Amen.” “Amen” they all three repeated.

With that, Noah picked up his fork, plunged it into a slice of bacon, and shovelled it into his mouth. Between gulps, he managed to ask: “Fern, have you any idea where your brother is?”

In the ship’s hold, chaos was breaking loose. Animals were going missing again. Jemima Puddle Duck was beside herself. Anxiety permeated every coop as insects and rats, the only creatures not confined in cages, spread outrageous rumours and mongered fear from keep to keep.

Templeton was in his element. Pacing back and forth, he regarded Jemima curiously.

“The kids are missing again, eh Jemima?”

No response.

Templeton circled the grieving bird tauntingly.

“Is it Wilbur?”

Jemima glowered at Templeton and, with a self-righteous sniff, turned to face the opposite direction.

“He’s really gone you know”, Templeton continued, “You smelled it too, don’t deny it – there’s nothing like fried bacon on a Sunday morning.”

At that, Jemima took a few deliberate steps toward the rat, raised a trembling wing, and struck him ferociously across the chest, sending him catapulting into a pile of manure. Taking a deep breath, she returned to her mourning, gazing sightlessly at her now empty nest. Unperturbed, Templeton licked himself clean and continued on to the lion cage.

Aslan shifted gloomily in his cell.

“Well, well, well.” Templeton sneered at him. “We’re looking in fine form this morning. How’s life behind bars? Are we domesticated yet?”

Aslan gritted his teeth. “Good morning Templeton. What news do you have for me?”

“What is it that you want to know?”

“Well, to start with, how many animals exactly are we missing?”

“You aren’t going to like this…”

“How many?”

“Well…all of the newborn geese, ten chickens, six cattle, two goats, four pigs…and Wilbur.”

“Good Lord, what are they using them all for?”

“Well, they eat some of them course.”

“And the rest?”

“The rest are killed and then cast into the sea or burned. The father does it. He mumbles things at the same time…poetry…magic. I can’t make head or tail of it. ” Aslan mulled over this last bit of information. After some moments, he continued his interrogation.

VOLUME 15, ISSUE 2 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ 27

“And what about the keys?”

“Oh yes…It’s the son that has them, what’s his name…”

“Christopher?”

“Right, Christopher, Christopher Robin has them.”

“Where?”

“He keeps them on a chain around his neck.”

“At all times?”

“Yes.” “I need you to go get them for me.”

After breakfast, Fern galloped back to the recreation room, eager to resume play. She hadn’t been there very long when she heard a terrific crash from her brother’s room.

“Chris?” She called.

No answer.

Feeling uneasy, Fern got to her feet and tiptoed to her brother’s door. Holding her breath, she knocked.

Wilbur was within, gaping at his unsightly reflection. He had been quite transfigured. His pig-features seemed to have mixed with human ones. Not just any human, he realized with alarm. Looking down at his body, there was no mistaking it. Although the face was Wilbur-like, the body was decidedly not. The result was almost comical. A massive pig’s head perched on the body of a small human boy. Incomprehensibly, he seemed to have been transported into the body of Noah Noyes’ own son.

“Chris?”

Fern? He thought hopefully. Opening his mouth, he tried to call out to her, but the only sound he managed to produce was a weak squeal.

The door clicked open.

Hearing her walk in, Wilbur froze.

“Chris?” Fern whispered unsteadily.

It took a moment for her to come to terms with what she saw.

The head…

28 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ OCTOBER 2012

ARTWORK BY MARK BELAN

With a faint squeal, she crumpled to the floor.

In the bowels of the ship, Templeton was creeping through all kinds of knots and crevices, making his way to the Captain’s quarters. Shimmying up a wooden rampart, he found himself in the open air of the deck. He breathed deeply, relieved, as always, to be free of the oppressive stench from down below. In the distance he could see a small congregation assembling. Noyes is up to his old tricks. Humph. What a lot of nonsense. Templeton thought irreverently. He stopped only to see who the unlucky sacrifice was. Sylvia. He realized. That’s too bad. I always thought Noyes was fond of her. Unabashed, he continued on his way. Up several flights of stairs, past the kitchens and across countless corridors he ran. At last, he arrived at the family bedrooms, all in a row. He surveyed the length of the hallway. Aha! Against all odds, the door to the boy’s room was open.

Relieved, he charged headlong into the room, nearly falling over the girl lying prostrate just inside the door. Confused, Templeton looked around. Where’s the boy? He wondered.

Just then, a monstrous figure loomed into his field of vision. Was that - ?

“WILBUR?” “Shh! Yes! I mean – No – I don’t know…”

“Oh this is juicy. Just look at you!”

“It isn’t funny, it’s perfectly awful. Now that you’re here you might at least help me”.

“I don’t think there’s much I can do.”

“Didn’t you come here looking for me?”

“No, I came for the keys. We’re plotting a revolution downstairs.”

“What about me?”

“What about you?”

“Well…I’m changed.”

Templeton surveyed his friend critically.

“Yes I see that.” He replied unhelpfully. “It’s most unfortunate. But what do you want me to do about it? As far as I’m concerned you’re stuck like this indefinitely. All we can do is make sure that Noyes doesn’t come back and find you like this. Let’s get the keys.”

Wilbur hesitated a moment before nodding in agreement. There was, after all, nothing else for him to do.

Wilbur fished clumsily in his shirt and pulled out the glistening set of keys hidden thereunder. Templeton watched gleefully. What a stroke of luck. Accepting the keys in his mouth, he nodded his thanks and trotted off.

“Wait - you’ll be back right!?’ Wilbur called.

No answer.

To Be Continued VOLUME 15, ISSUE 2 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ 29

Nicki Varkevisser

30 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ OCTOBER 2012

“

“ CROSSING THE LINE Jeremy Allen Henderson

ACROSS 1.

____ Armstrong 3.

To contend 8.

Greek conjunction 9.

Dutch tripoint 11.

Happy 12.

Dr. Scholl’s material 13.

Swamps 17.

Garden ______ 20.

Two of the “Four Corners” states

(3 words, including “and”) 23.

Kasey Kasem, or Pauly D, for example 25.

Playground structure 27.

1, en español 28.

Miniscule matter 31.

Toronto square (2 words)

34.

35.

36.

Tic-tac-toe win USA (or China, arguably) Disney __ ___ (2 words)

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

10.

14.

15.

DOWN Auld ____ Syne “Four Corners” Nation ___ and Peace ___ cage Wayward canine Second-largest bird (by weight) Six ____ Hull part SuperPAC product Jason’s ship Savchuk, of tennis

16.

Tasty, or Incite editors Godfrey

and Lam (Amer. spelling) 17.

_____ and thighs 18.

Fe 19.

American ____ 21.

Wile E.’s supplier 22.

Opera feature 23.

Football plays 24.

Extreme water vehicle 26.

Mile, corner, or birth ____ 27.

Take back 28.

Support group for spirits 29.

Of ___ and Men 30.

Expression of indifference 32.

Sonic Youth album 33.

Homeric lifespan VOLUME 15, ISSUE 2 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ 31

WRITE ▪ DRAW ▪ PHOTOGRAPH ▪ EDIT ▪ DESIGN CONTACT INCITE@MCMASTER.CA Incite Magazine 32 ▪ INCITE MAGAZINE ▪ OCTOBER 2012

@incitemagazine