thenewspaper U of T’s Independednt Newspaper Since 1978
vol 37 - issue iii
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thenewspaper.ca Editor-In-Chief............................David Stokes Design Editor......................Daniel Glassman Arts & Culture Editor.............Clarrie Feinstein Music Editor...........................Melissa Vincent Comment Editor..............Zach Morgenstern Photo Editor...................................Josh Silver Illustration Editor..............Daniel Braverman Marketing Director..................Paulina Saliba Senior Copy Editor .............Anna Bianca Roach Copy Editors Rebecca M. Williams (Associate), Alina Butt, Jordan Donovan, Alexandra McKinnon. Contributors Emily Posteraro, Alina Butt, Cassandra Mazza, Kristina Knox, Nina De Taeye, Seema Shafei, Clarotte Smith, Elysse Cloma, Samantha Preddie, Karilyn Xu
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An adult Turkey vulture, trapped by volunteers at Toronto’s Tommy Thompson Park Bird Research Station. They described it as “a very heavy, stinky bird.”
A redtail hawk perched on the outside of Robarts
Olivia Chow loses a race that was hers to win
A radicalized Chow could have united the city against conservatives Ford and Tory
When Olivia Chow declared her candidacy to be Mayor of Toronto in March, she was the clear favorite. She was seen as a candidate that could excite the left much as the Fords excited the right. Meanwhile, Rob Ford was mired in scandal, and looked like he would split the right vote with John Tory, and perhaps Karen Stintz and David Socknacki. So what happened? Why did Chow only get 23 per cent of the vote, finishing behind Ford and Tory? Emil Cohen, a volunteer with U of T Students for Chow, noted several possible factors. He suggested Chow’s “platform wasn’t as progressive as it could have been” and that early in the campaign “[Chow] was gunning for Rob Ford instead of John Tory who should have been her real target.” Others, however, have suggested that Chow may have come off as too progressive. Peter Kuitenbrouwer of the National Post argues that “Chow originally sounded centrist, be she later veered left…and the tactic flopped.” Yahoo Canada News’ Matthew Coutts speculated that “some voters found Chow’s promise of a far-left alternative to Ford a little too shocking.” While there is no doubt that some Torontonians, including the Toronto Taxpayers coalition, hold this view of Chow, it’s worth pausing to ask what merits the “far-left” label has, if any. Chow promised to extend small business tax cuts, and ensure that Toronto businesses do not pay disproportionately higher taxes than those in the 905 area. While, to her credit, she proudly touted herself as a supporter of progressive taxation, her proposed 1 per cent increase on the land transfer tax for houses valued over $2 million hardly makes her worthy of the title “tax and spend” socialist. While Chow no doubt represents a challenge to Doug Ford’s view that
denouncing racists can make you a racist, and John Tory’s professed disbelief in white privilege, her refusal to defend Warren Kinsella’s anti-racist critique of John Tory’s transit plan, also exposes the hollowness of attempts to paint her as a radical. Chow’s moderation was no accident. Rather, she, and arguably the NDP as a whole, have seemingly bought into the right-wing narrative that taking a pro-business, spending-cautious approach is fiscally responsible. Chow spokesman Jamey Heath even said: “it’s not good enough for a progressive candidate…to want to work with business. [They must] actively prove the point.” If Toronto’s left is ever to take power again, it cannot afford to take its mantras from the right, but rather, must define concepts like fiscal responsibility on its own terms. In 2013, Kshama Sawant was elected to Seattle’s city-council, running on an unabashedly socialist platform. Sawant called for a $15/hour minimum wage (which has since been introduced), a millionaire’s tax, the unionization of low-paid service workers, the creation of a civilian review board to combat police brutality and more. Had she run against Tory and Ford, they could have tried to call her fiscally irresponsible, but that would be a hard charge to prove seeing as Sawant is also an economics professor. Of course, not every good leftist needs an economics degree to legitimize their campaign, but there are some clear lessons the left should take from Chow’s defeat. Firstly, Rob and Doug Ford should be recognized populists who won votes in some of the poorest areas of Toronto. This suggests that the Fords’ popularity was not due to their fiscal responsibility, but due to their willingness to push for popular investments that other politicians dismissed as unfeasible (i.e. subways, subways!). Secondly, the Fords were also right-wingers, and thus needed to get some support from elite voters. Elite institutions, including the Globe, Post, Sun and Star, are not always comfortable with populists and can thus make it possible for the non-populist right (i.e. Tory) to win pluralities. Therefore in order to win, a leftist candidate should not mimic the right and fight for elite endorsements, but rather should develop policies that can unite working and progressive-middle class voters throughout the city. According to Cohen, “Rob Ford’s biggest achievement was making John Tory … look like a borderline attractive vote for progressive people.” Had Chow actually done what her right-wing critics said and firmly articulated an overwhelming gap between her worldview and Tory’s, Rob Ford would not have succeeded. n
Respect Your Leafy Elders Looking for the oldest tree at U of T by David Stokes Velut arbor aevo. This Latin phrase is U of T’s motto. It means “as a tree through the ages,” and expresses the hope that U of T will grow big and pretty like a nice tree. It’s a charming pastoral image; who doesn’t like trees? And in the spirit of the motto, I went to find the oldest tree at U of T. This initially seemed quite easy: both Terry Carleton, a professor at the faculty of forestry, and Stan Szwagiel, head of grounds at U of T St. George, independently told me that they thought that the elm tree behind the UTSU office was the oldest tree on campus. A visit to the elm in question–a Scotch Elm, Ulmus Glabra–revealed an appropriately large and beautiful tree, which I was surprised I hadn’t noticed before. Mr. Szwagiel thought that size of the tree indicated that it could even be as old as 165 years, which would make it one year older than U of T (which came into existence in 1850). But is this elm really the oldest tree? Through Paul Aird, an emeritus professor of forestry who has written a book about ecological fables and nature tales, I learned that the U of T archives has a 1910 map of all the trees that were then on campus. I consulted the map, which is over six feet tall and made of linen, but the elm is not on the map. The map does have some irregularities; could they have missed the elm? The elm is visible in a photograph of the site taken in 1933, and partially visible in a 1924 image. So it is at least 90 years old, and the size
Salvation Army Hope Shelter Closing By David Stokes
The Salvation Army Hope Shelter at 167 College is closing at the end of March 2015. The men’s shelter currently serves over a hundred clients a night and provides meals and counselling in addition to sleeping quarters. The building, which is adjacent to the U of T Exam Centre, is one of two shelters, along with the Scott Mission, that border U of T’s St. George campus. A Krcmar Surveyors sign went up on the building before the sign was defaced and disappeared from view. The Krcmar client list confirms that the property has been surveyed by Krcmar. Krcmar Surveyors is a company that does site reconnaissance prior to extensive redevelopment. Reached for comment, Carson Durdle, director of the Hope Shelter, stated: “the only thing I can share at this time is that our lease is up in April 2015 and we are looking at our options for
relocating.” Documents obtained from the Ontario Land Registry Office state that the owner of the building is Memara Investments Incorporated. The 167 College Street site is the only property owned by Memara according to the land title registry. Memara is a low-profile group headquartered in Toronto and associated with a company that produces small statuettes and replicas of buildings, animals and vehicles made out of resin-molded sand. They are also the owner of the “Mr. Sandman” trademark. Memara acquired the building in 1996. The Salvation Army has been leasing the site since 1987. Before that, the building was leased to U of T. There has been a spate of redevelopment in the area around campus. The owners of the Hotel Waverly at College and Spadina are appealing to
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Image: Daniel Braverman
By Zach Morgenstern
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the Ontario Municipal Board for permission to demolish the building—which currently offers long-term low-income rentals—and replace it with private residences. At 247 College Street, Knightstone Capital Management has an agreement with U of T to replace the existing building with student residences. Clients of the Hope Shelter stated that they knew the shelter was closing. Rather than closing, they felt that “they should be opening more shelters.” Asked where they will go when it closes, one man stated that he “will figure that out when it closes.” n
of the tree in those photographs makes it seem like it must have been more than a teenager even then. Mr. Szwagiel told me about another elm tree on campus that recently had to be cut down due to its death through disease. That tree was smaller than the UTSU elm and when it was cut an arborist counted its rings and it was over 150 years old. An elm tree was probably the most significant tree in U of T’s history. Before UC College was built, and the governor general and the architect
“Without this treatment... this tree could die within a year.” were surveying the grounds, the governor general wanted the building to face west, though the architect–and to us today–it seemed obvious that it should face south. The decision was made by the fact of a tall elm tree which the governor general, calling it, “the handsomest tree about Toronto,” did not want cut. He is reported to have told the architect: “I am sure that you can never put anything up half so pretty." So to save that tree, the building faced south. The tree was toppled in a storm the following year. The UTSU elm has so far survived storms but it is diseased with the scourge of elm trees, Dutch Elm disease. Mr. Szwagiel met me at the tree, and pointed out the tell-tale holes at the base of the tree where it is has been injected with fungicide to stop the Dutch Elm. Without this treatment, which is expensive, this tree could die within a year. Mr. Szwagiel also pointed out the extensive series of steel wires that add strength to upper branches. Without question this tree would be dead by now, if it weren’t for the yearly labour of forestry professors, grounds crew, and the arborists who tend to it. So, perhaps trees should take as their motto “as a university through the ages.” U of T has currently over 3,000 trees, and, though the UTSU elm is a strong suspect, the jury is out on which one of them is definitively the oldest. Tony Ung, a member of the forest faculty, says that the only way to know for sure is to take a core sample of the tree. Until then the age of this tree will remain a mystery. Thanks to the care it receives, this elm could live another 300 years. n
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Prof.’s Office
If Joe hadn’t become a professor, he probably would have joined the WWE as a professional wrestler.
Professor Repka By Emily Posteraro
Professor Repka shows off his favourite toy, the icosahedron.
Talking icosahedrons, slippers, and life itself with Professor Repka
When I walk into Professor Joe Repka’s office, it looks exactly the way I remember it (having been in his class last year). There are papers, papers everywhere, stacks of them. Bookshelves crowded with books, greeting cards and decorative mugs. On his desk is a kettle atop a pile of books, and over the desks hangs a clock. The clock is slightly crooked. There is also a single woman’s slipper on the floor, but I will get back to that. Before Prof. Repka can offer me a seat he has to remove a laptop from his pale blue IKEA couch. I sink into the couch, which is adorned with embroidered pillows and miscellaneous items, and begin my interview. the newspaper: What is your teaching specialty at UofT? Prof. Repka: The simple answer to that question is “math.” I’ve taught the JMB170 [Biology, Models and Math] course for many years now. It’s meant to give biology students the tools they’ll need to solve biological problems. JMB170 is a great course that teaches you math strategies that are relevant and applicable to biology. Some of the topics covered include allometry, probability, calculus, statistics, and dynamic programming.
tn: On average, how much time do you spend in your
Image: Emily Posteraro
office each day? Prof. Repka: Oh, probably around 5 or 6 hours a day. There’s always lots to do.
tn: Do you think this office reflects your personality? Prof. Repka: If it does, it says something odd.
Professor Repka expresses his joy for not wearing shoes in the office.
tn: Any interesting photographs, mementos, or other items that you keep here? Prof. Repka: All sorts of stuff, but much of it would only mean anything to me. He pauses and looks around. There is one thing I’m proud of... He removes a 3-D structure made entirely of straws from a shelf. This is an icosahedron. It has 20 faces, each of them is a triangle. It has various mathematical significances, and there are even crystals that will grow in this shape.
tn: How long did it take you to make that?
Prof. Repka: Oh, about the duration of an afternoon. Kids like to wear it as a hat when they come to visit.
tn: What is the best thing that has happened in this room? Prof. Repka: Well I know that math can be tricky and sometimes intimidating. It’s gratifying to help students understand something that they didn’t before coming in to my office. It makes me proud of them. tn: What do you love about this space?
Prof. Repka: I’m surrounded by things I find extremely interesting and exciting.
tn: Could you explain why that woman’s slipper is on the floor under that table? Prof. Repka: [laughs] My wife decided that students shouldn’t be allowed to wear their shoes in here during the winter time. But then she felt bad not following that rule herself, so now she keeps a pair of slippers here.
tn: Is there anything else you’d like to say about your
office? Prof. Repka: Visitors sometimes think it’s chaotic, but I like to think I know where pretty much most things are... Once in a while I really lose something, and once in a while I find something unexpected.
tn: Sounds like your office is a microcosm for life itself. n
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Image: Paulina Saliba
The Money House
Professor discovers why we see Jesus in toast
By Cassandra Mazza
Confused by OSAP? Confounded by financial planning? We heard you. Here are some of your most pressing money-matter dilemmas, and what Donna Wall, Director of Financial Aid and Awards at Enrolment Services, had to say about them.
And wins a quirky science prize for it, too By Alina Butt
rhe newspaper: Should a student take out OSAP loans even if their tuition and/or rent is already financially covered? Donna Wall: OSAP considers a student’s education costs (e.g., tuition and books, living costs, transportation) and a student’s resources (e.g., income from summer and study period earnings, parental income, assets) to determine financial need. The OSAP application process is very thorough, so it’s unlikely that a student will receive funding they don’t need. It’s important to keep in mind that a portion of OSAP funding is loan and that loan must be repaid. Students who take out a student loan when it’s not really needed are incurring debt unnecessarily.
tn: How should you spend/ where should you put your
OSAP money if you have any left over after paying tuition and rent? DW: Students with unused OSAP would be wise to put it in the bank. Students can run out of money, especially toward the end of the year, if they have budgeted incorrectly. Having a little OSAP to rely on when things get unexpectedly tight would be help reduce financial stress.
Image: Cortex
If you’ve ever seen the silhouette of Bloody Mary in a broken mirror or come across a garbage bag and mistaken it for a black cat, don’t sweat it. You may be unlucky (or dead) for a really long time, but at least you’re not crazy! Kang Lee, a professor of psychology and a researcher at U of T, has published some research in the unusual field of face pareidolia, which helps to prove that such perceptions are, thankfully, normal. Lee was recently awarded an Ig Nobel Prize for Neuroscience for this research. The Ig Nobel Prizes are a punny parody of the prestigious Nobel Prizes, and are awarded by the science humor magazine, Annals of Improbable Research. According to the magazine, they are given out “for achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think” in the arts and sciences. Now in their 24th year, the prizes were handed out at a Nobel and Ig Nobel laureate-filled ceremony on Sept. 18th at Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Lee accepted the award alone on behalf of the full research team. The paper “Jesus in toast: Neural and behavioural correlates of face pareidolia,” picked up a large amount of media and Internet buzz for its unconventional title and subject matter before its win, as well as after. Pareidolia is a perceptional phenomenon when a person sees something where it doesn’t actually exist, like when you can pick out images in clouds. Face pareidolia is therefore a phenomenon where faces are seen where they don’t actually exist. The study refers to a popular image that circulated on the Internet a few years prior, where the face of Jesus was discernable in the burnt parts on a piece of toast. Lee has been involved in face processing research for many years prior to this study, but wanted more specific information about the connection between top-down and bottom-up neural processes. Bottom-up face processing, or the un-stimulated visual processing of faces by the visual cortex, is well researched. Lee’s research inquiries began with the less-researched top-down processes involving the frontal cortex in illusory and non-illusory face perception, which occurs through a stimulus, or in this case, the suggestion of the presence of faces in images. All the participants were shown carefully generated white-noise images and told that there would be faces in them half of the time, with varying degrees of clarity. When reading the research, one experimentation specification stuck out in a strange way. All the participants are right-handed, so you might wonder, is this some form of discrimination? Is this meant to ward off the evils that come with being left-handed?
Alas, there is actually real science behind this decision. Lee said that right-handed people’s right visual cortexes more strongly correlate with face processing than the left side of the brain. This is important because the part of the brain being studied to find the link between bottom-up and top-down neural processes is the right fusiform face area (rFFA). This specification means right-handed subjects also exhibit greater rFFA activity, so it is easier to study the activity levels in the brains of these subjects. The researchers were able to conclude that the rFFA becomes active in any case where both the white noise image and the suggestion of faces resulted in a case of face pareidolia, thus proving all of our sanity. Yeah, we’re still imagining things, but at least we now know we’re hardwired to.
’’
Pareidolia is a perceptional phenomenon when a person sees something where it doesn’t actually exist
“
The research recognizes that the complexity exhibited by the brain in face processing is something integral to human survival, since we rely so much on it for social interaction. Lee also acknowledges the usefulness of the research’s methodology in other neuroscientific experiments, saying, “it turns out our method can be used for creating new image manipulations for people with phobias. For example, some people may have a snake phobia, or a spider phobia. Our method can be used to see whether or not these individuals actually have … hyper-activated frontal cortexes or visual cortexes.” Basically, now that the mysteries of face pareidolia have been conquered, science can move on to creepier, crawlier things and help us understand and find ways of vanquishing them from our minds and the world. Lee never thought his research would gain so much traction with the greater public, since it “was just kind of his pet project,” and that he was “doing it to really answer his own questions” about face pareidolia. Getting awarded for being curious certainly didn’t hurt either. n
tn: How does a student budget, and what does it mean to do so?
DW: Budgeting can be as simple as writing down all the things you expect you’ll have to spend money on (e.g., your costs), assigning an amount you can afford to cover your costs, and then keeping track of where you spend your money. Staff at Enrolment Services, at the Financial Aid offices at UTM and UTSC, as well as staff in the registrarial offices at the colleges and faculties can provide students with budget advice or can direct students to other sources of information. Information on budgeting, including access to budget templates and planning tools also can be found by searching “Financial Consumer Agency of Canada” online.
tn: There is a rumour going around that thousands of
dollars of scholarship money goes unclaimed every year, yet most students don't directly qualify for many of the scholarships available. Is it true that students should apply to these scholarships regardless, even if they don't fulfill all the requirements? DW: Students should apply for all the scholarships for which they may be eligible. There are many scholarships available, so students need to be proactive and do their homework. Information on scholarships is available through the Enrolment Services website (www.adm.utoronto.ca) and through each college or faculty website. In addition, students should check out scholarships that may be available through external sources such as AUCC (Association of Universities and Colleges Canada) and the Grants Register (for graduate study) which is available at most libraries in the periodical section.
tn: How much money are you permitted to earn during the
school year and summer while taking OSAP? DW: During the summer, there is a minimum amount a student is expected to contribute from their summer earnings toward their education costs. For example, single students are expected to contribute the greater of: about $3,115 (assuming there is 16 weeks in the summer) or 80% of their discretionary income from the summer. For OSAP purposes, discretionary income is gross income less standard tax deductions (e.g., CPP, EI) less a standard living allowance. During studies, students can earn up to $113/week before it affects their OSAP funding. For all other financial inquiries, Donna suggests contacting Enrolment Services or booking a personal appointment with a financial advisor where you bank. n
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thenewspaper.ca Image: David Stokes
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STUDY TIPS THAT WILL BLOW YOUR TINY MIND By Kristina Knox
Inside glass blower’s studio
The Man Who Blows Glass by David Stokes
Jack O’Donnell...MASTER OF FLAMES!
Jack O’Donnell is U of T’s in-house scientific glassblower. I met up with him at his office in the basement of the Lash Miller building. Jack is the only glassblower on campus; in fact, there’s only one other in Toronto. “It’s definitely a dying art,” says Jack. It’s an art but in no way a hobby. Jack’s creations are pivotal in chemistry experiments that each require specific chambers with different shapes, valves, and condensing properties. It’s his job to put many of those together. He shows me an example of his work. It’s a long glass tube with a detachable inner glass tube wrapped with a continuous glass coil. The base of the inner tube has three separate glass valves. The object emanates complexity and fragility. He gets specifications from labs and makes the pieces by hand after strategically planning ahead how he will make the pieces and attach them. Each piece is unique. Why use glass instead of metal? “Glass is highly unreactive. And, more importantly, you can see through glass and know what is happening inside. It is also much cheaper than metal and parts can be made faster.” Though most people don’t even know the job exists, in Jack’s family being a glassblower is something of a tradition. The glassblower at the University of Windsor is Jack’s uncle, who’s almost 80 and still doing it. His uncle got started basically by accident: going for an interview for a carpenter job, another person also showed up, so we went upstairs and apprenticed to a glassblower. The glassblower at UBC is Jack’s cousin. Jack, who grew up in Scotland and still speaks with a Scottish accent (he has a copy of “How the Scots Invented the Modern World” in his office), came to Canada and took over this position at U of T. The glassblowing room is full of tools and unfamiliar-looking machines. The most most noticeable thing in his office is a continually burning flame that flickers like a giant lighter. These flames are essential to Jack’s work. To melt and shape glass, the heat has to be intense: between 1212 Celsius and 1650 Celsius. Jack hands me a pair of special glasses whose lenses contain a mineral called didymium. With these you can see through the glare of the flame and see what you are doing. Jack turns the flame up and puts a glass tube into the heat. Without the glasses, the flame is a blinding ball of orange fire, and the glass tube is impossible to see within the billows of fire. But with the glasses on, the flame becomes blue and compact, and I can see the glass meet the flame in detail. Jack holds the glass tube with bare hands only a few inches from the flame, turning the tube with his hands. The glass in the middle of the flame begins to take on a pink glow. I ask Jack if he can feel the glass becoming hot. “No, it feels warm but not hot. Glass is not a good conductor of heat.” Jack starts pulling the glass apart. It stretches like cheese on a pizza. He pulls it until it has created a narrow tube of glass, which he blows into, and the other end becomes a ball of glass. After showing it to me, he decides to surprise me: he drops the glass ball. Waiting for it to shatter, the glass ball actually bounces.
“It’s due to it’s shape,” says Jack, picking up the ball and bringing it to another tool in his office called a polariscope. To the naked eye, the glass ball looks clear and uniform. But looked at through the polariscope it is a field of coloured waves. These are the lines of strain and stress that the glass has developed through being deformed in the flame. To make the objects strong enough for laboratory use, the glass is put into an industrial oven in his office, which takes the stress out. Jack also lets me melt some glass and my hands could feel the heat of the flame and were struggling to spin the glass; I couldn’t adjust to the continually changing properties of the material. My result is a twisted and useless piece of glass. It’s clear that effectively shaping something as it is deforming takes years of skill.
“Without the glasses,
the flame is a blinding ball of orange fire, and the glass tube is impossible to see
within the billows of fire.” Someone comes to Jack’s door to drop off a laboratory piece that has broken. Most of his work is repairing things that people have accidentally broken, and the thing that Jack would like most is getting to make the complex pieces more often. Jack, who has only a high-school level degree in chemistry, helps make possible some of the most intensive chemistry experiments in Canada, a practice that will continue even though chemistry experiments are increasingly being done at the nanoscale and are too small to require glassblowing. But Jack O’Donnell has one of the best jobs at U of T, a perfect combination of practical skill and intellectual labour. n
As the midterm season comes to an end, you may realize that you need to improve your study habits. Here are six scientifically proven tips to help you study more effectively. > Take Lecture Notes by Hand A Princeton study found that students who took lecture notes by hand were able to retain information from lectures better than those who took notes on their laptops. Since most students are able to type faster than they can write, notes taken on computers tend to be word-for-word documents of the lecture. In contrast, students who choose to take notes by hand take more time to process the lecture’s content by selecting the significant points. > Get a Good Night’s Rest Researchers at Ghent University reported that students who increase the amount of hours they sleep from six to seven score an average of 1.7 points higher on exams. Getting seven hours of sleep is essential to the REM phase, in which the memory consolidation process occurs. Consolidation is one of the three functions of the brain—acquisition, consolidation, and recall— that refer to the introduction of new information, stabilization, and recalling the information. The memory consolidation process is the only function that occurs during sleep, so seven hours of sleep will not only keep you awake in class, but also enable you to retain the material you learn! > Remove Distractions According to the Michigan State University, students using the Internet for non-academic purposes during lectures are more likely to score lower on exams no matter their intellectual abilities. In relation, Dr. Gloria Mark and assoicates of the University of California observed the work habits of high-tech office employees and found that switching between tasks may decrease brain efficiency by 50%. Mark and associated observed that there was a extended break between the moment an empolyee was distracted and the time it took him or her to restart the project. Although you may not be working in high-tech environments, the time it takes you switch your attention from your Facebook feed to your lecture slides is one too many! > Record & Replay Lectures According to study by psychologist Dani Mckinney, students who can play, pause and repeat podcasts of their lectures achieve significantly higher grades than those who simply attend the lectures. The study compared a group of sixty-four students who viewed the same lecture—half attended a single lecture in person, while the other half downloaded the podcast version—and were tested a week later. Students who had access to the podcast of the lectures and took notes, performed better on the test. If you have access to lecture recordings—or you can record lectures yourself—take advantage of it! Being able to pause, take detailed notes and repeat sections you don’t fully understand is proven to enhance your academic performance. > Quizzes In a psychology experiment on 901 students, the University of Texas found that quizzing the students at the beginning of each lecture—rather than giving them a final exam—increased both their attendance and performance. The study concluded that small quizzes based on previous lectures forced students to study the material in smaller chunks and pay attention in class. You may already experience this type of testing in your courses—so keep up with your readings—however, if you do not, you can always create your own quizzes based on your notes! > Petting Puppies An important part of effective studying and performing well on exams is managing stress levels. Researchers at the University of Minnesota’s Boynton Health Service found that students who reported little to no stress were able to maintain a higher GPA than students who felt that stress was hurting their academic performance. Dr. Leslie Stewart, as a Ph.D. student, led a study to determine whether animal-assisted therapy can reduce symptoms. In the experiment, fifty-five students were provided group sessions of animal assisted therapy, bi-weekly during a semester, where they were able to interact with a therapy dog. The study reported a 60 per cent experienced decreases in self-evaluated stress levels. n
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AGO curator David Wistow shares his opinions on the exhibit and student involvement in visual art viewership.
Michelangelo: The Quest for Genius
By Nina de Taeye On Saturday, October 18th the AGO premiered drawings by monumental artist Michelangelo in the exhibit, Michelangelo: Quest for Genius exhibit. The exhibit contains 30 drawings and sketches over 500 years old, allowing the viewers glimpses of an artist’s world and mind. The exhibit is like going backstage to some of the greatest monuments and treasures of art history-observing the early stages, mistakes and sometimes, failed attempts of Michelangelo’s work. Throughout his career, Michelangelo endured conflict, rejection in his efforts and dealt with difficult defeats. This show is not of his immaculate frescos and iconographies--rather precious drawings done mostly in chalk, ink or brown wash on paper. From well-known pieces such as ‘Madonna and Child’ to works of great architecture that were never created such as the ‘Plan for the Small Library of the Laurentian Library,’ the exhibit has a broad range of figural and architectural drawings and sketches. In addition to Michelangelo, the exhibit offers several pieces by Auguste Rodin, who was a great admirer of Michelangelo and even traveled to Rome to study his works. In an interview with the newspaper, curator of the Michelangelo: Quest for Genius, David Wistow, was able to answer some questions about the exhibit and students’ involvement with the arts.
Image courtesy of Art Gallery of Ontario
Michaelangelo enjoys pizza immensley.
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the newspaper: This is the first time these drawings are coming to Toronto, is there anything that may surprise the audience? David Wistow: The drawings show a huge range of approach. As paper was suddenly affordable for Michelangelo’s generation, he used it extensively. It was how he thought. Visitors will see how this master created, as if they were watching over his shoulder in the privacy of his studio.
tn: Is there one particular piece that stands out to you or that you think is the most significant? DW: The Madonna and Child is a work of virtuosity. Michelangelo uses different coloured chalks and a host of different marks or strokes to recreate the Christ Child’s anatomy. Also, Michelangelo had a very distant relationship with his mother. Here the Madonna seems to echo that relationship. She looks away.
tn: How is 'Michelangelo: Quest for Genius' different than
any other exhibition the AGO has held before, or that you have curated? DW: We have used more technology in this exhibition than in most. It’s a way of helping visitors connect with a man who lived five hundred years ago. We have videos that show how the drawings relate to real places in Rome and Florence today. Other videos are elaborate computer graphics that reveal what Michelangelo’s incomplete projects would have looked like. And four 4K screens give visitors the opportunity to see the drawings enlarged to eight feet tall.
tn: Do you believe there is a barrier or divide between
students and their involvement or interest in the art community? If so, what could the AGO or any other gallery do to eliminate the barrier? DW: The AGO is free every Wednesday night so I certainly hope students from many different fields see us as a rewarding place to visit. ‘First Thursdays’ too is a program that is geared to student-age visitors, and a wonderful evening by all accounts. Visitors can draw with pencil in the Michelangelo exhibition.
tn: How can students relate to this exhibition?
DW: This exhibition is about being creative and learning how to live with disappointment and sometimes even defeat when working on projects. Even geniuses like Michelangelo had to struggle every day in their search for new ideas and new ways of doing things.
tn: If there is one thing that you could say to get someone to come see this exhibit, what would it be? DW: Michelangelo is an inspiration. He suffered constant criticism and competition and even defeat and yet over a career lasting a remarkable 77 years, he continued to strive, to invent, to experiment, to create new ways of thinking. He never gave up. n
Michaelangelo: Quest for Genius runs October 18, 2014 to January 11, 2015 at the Art Gallery of Ontario
Wu-Tang is for the children
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A
V-Tape Founder Shares All
Decade of Crap The Newspaper’s PR mogul rounds up the shittiest films of the 2000s By Paulina Saliba
The Newspaper sits down with Lisa Steele, video artist and founder of art gallery Vtape
Glitter Dir. Vondie Curtis-Hall (2001)
Whoever thought it was a good idea to make this sparkly shitshow into a major motion picture was wrong, so very very wrong. The next time you are at a slumber party and someone recommends this pile of shiny crap send them home.
By Clarrie Feinstein
Year One Dir. Harold Ramis (2009)
Did you remember this one? Yeah, neither did we. Starring Jack Black, Michael Cera and produced by Judd Apatow this movie should not have been the flop that it was.
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Life is too short for fake orgasms and bad movies. – Me
Image: Lisa Steele
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I Know Who Killed Me Dir. Chris Siverston (2007)
Lisa Birke walks towards the future in red carpet.
If I wanted to see Lindsay Lohan naked I would just google, “Lindsay Lohan naked.” I really don’t need a whole movie about this. Horrible plot, convoluted story line. In this case it’s okay to cry over spilt milk... this movie is a mess. Note: I know you googled “Lindsay Lohan naked,” you pervs. Freddy Got Fingered Dir. Tom Green (2001)
be naked in Nature.” And painful it is. Birke filmed red carpet over a duration of nine-months in various locations around the Waterloo area, learning in the process how to protect her hands from frostbite, dress and undress quickly in a freezing snowstorm, and duck tape high heels to her feet to prevent losing them in harsh conditions.
Throughout history, humans have categorized life and society in order to understand its mystery. The exciting work that Birke has created begs the questions—is she one of many video art artists in an expanding field? Or is Birke one of few grasping onto an art form that isn’t taking flight? Professor Steele, who teaches time-based and performance arts at U of T views students as being a vital role in this art field for it’s continued survival. According to Birke, video art is a thriving discipline, with the number of video art programs at universities rapidly expanding. As video technology becomes increasingly inexpensive and portable, it appears that video/media art is the medium to pursue, “More and more people have access to cameras and affordable home editing software and thus the interest in the medium continues to boom,” says Birke. Some credit for the successful (and sustainable) foundation of video art in Toronto must be awarded to artists like Professor Steele, who pioneered the foundations for experimental work and worked hard to found Vtape, an organization “on the edge of the technological avant-garde.” With this kind of work, artists are taking risks that impact everyday society by bringing social awareness of multiple issues through the powerful medium of video art. n
Oh boy Tom, this one sure was bad... But at least you gave us Robot Chicken, so thank you for that... What? That wasn’t Tom Green? That was Seth Green?! Oh fuck you, Tom Green! What fucking good are you anyways?! Gigli Dir. Martin Brest (2003)
Ben Affleck, Al Pacino, Christopher Walken... These were the ingredients selected to produce an excellent film, but Director Brest accidentally added an extra ingredient to the concoction... Jennifer Lopes. Dark Shadows Dir. Tim Burton (2012)
Never did I think that a film directed by Tim Burton, starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, and composed by Danny Elfman would make it to this type of list... Truly, I am sorry. Please forgive me Creepy Movie Gods, and I will forgive you for this film. Zack and Miri Make a Porno Dir. Kevin Smith (2008)
Just kidding, this movie was fucking amazing and didn’t receive nearly as much recognition as it should have. Watch it, DO IT NOW.
I’m just not in comedy mode
Image: Karilyn Xu
On Saturday, October 18, Vtape, a video art gallery and artist distribution centre, premiered red carpet, a 15-minute performance-for-camera work by Lisa Birke. In red carpet, a woman walks on a red carpet away from the camera wearing a sparkling gala dress with high heels—all through various wild environments, a swamp, a snowy forest forest, and a field of wildflowers, to name a few. Among other conceptual factors, it was the powerful imagery of this work that attracted Lisa Steele— U of T professor, renowned artist, and co-founder of Vtape— to select red carpet for exhibition at Vtape Video Gallery. In an interview with The Newspaper, Steele shared her reasoning for starting Vtape, which she co-founded in 1980, “Originally, we wanted to be able to assemble a selection of works for curators, programmers, and educators to see that was not pre-selected which was how the distributors of video art worked when we started over 30 years ago. We wanted to create a space that was a bit more democratic and allowed for connections to be drawn between artists and artworks that were out of the ordinary—not usual.” Vtape is an organization that promotes and fosters independent artists working within performance-for-camera, video art, and new media, with a special emphasis on human-rights-oriented, LGBTQ, and feminist video works. Vtape also focuses on the promotion of local and international Aboriginal media artists and their work. “I select work that often, but not always, has something to say, a story about the times we live in that trouble us—what I would call the ‘status quo,’” says Steele. Regarding Lisa Birke’s work, it has staying-power, states Steele. “It’s a performance for the camera, but one that never faces the camera, one that denies the camera’s gaze resolutely and completely, receding into the horizon in each beautifully framed shot. It strikes me now that perhaps she is actually playing with the porosity of time.” As a 2013 MFA graduate from Waterloo University, Birke has already received acclaim for her multidisciplinary work in the field of painting, digital, and performance art. “My work examines how ancient philosophical ways of structuring the world still influence contemporary behaviours and the status quo. Throughout history, humans have categorized life and society in order to understand its mystery. In this way, mythologizing can be seen as a freeze-framing of identity resulting in a form of societal status.” In red carpet, Birke confronts the tropes of the red carpet, ranging from its incarnation the Greek myth Agamemnon, to its present day form as a celebrity platform. “[Societal status] is particularly apparent in how we set gender expectations. Women are associated, amongst other things, with the reactive rather than the active, with nature rather than culture, beauty rather than brawn, and water rather than fire. My work reveals and challenges these levels of signification at work in the mythologizing of gender roles,” says Birke. The juxtaposition of the female societal ideal versus the female reality is deeply explored in her piece red carpet, “Throughout art history women have been placed within the picturesque scene—she is a part of this scene—and meant to be admired for her physical beauty. We often expect the female to be “at home” (and graceful) in nature and so I am interested in revealing the fallacy of this idea. I try to confront Nature head-on—the reality is that it is cold, awkward, and painful to
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The Social Territory of Tanya Tagaq
are four times more likely to experience violence than non-aboriginal women. According to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, roughly half of of the murdered women in Canada from 1980-2012 were identified as aboriginal. The female victims were more likely to be unemployed than their non-native counterparts, and more likely to support themselves through illegal means such as involvement with the sex trade.
“The missing women speak to an eerie absence that is there at the core of Tagaq’s art.”
Image: Daniel Glassman
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Polaris winner set mainstream ablaze by Seema Shafei When Tanya Tagaq was awarded the 2014 Polaris Prize, it felt like a historic feat. During her performance at the Polaris gala, a mounted screen behind her featured a rolling list of twelve hundred missing or murdered Indigenous women in Canada. It was aptly unnerving. Rather than resorting to simply stating the volume of absent Indigenous women, she took a much more personal approach by listing every single name as she forced the audience to physically face the facts. But the connection between Tagaq’s music and these missing women is not merely one of timely, topical awareness. These missing women speak to an eerie absence that is there at the core of Tagaq’s art. Throat singing is traditionally practiced by two women taking turns bouncing sounds off of each other in sonic improvisation.
That Tagaq does it alone is a statement: where has the responding voice gone? Some of the reasons for her solos are practical: when she left her home in Nunavut for Halifax, she taught herself throat singing to battle her homesickness. But there is a real woman absent behind the music. Her album, Animism, was dedicated to Loretta Saunders, an Inuit woman who went missing from Halifax in early 2014. Saunders’ body was found within weeks. The parallel of Saunders’ life with her own struck a particular chord with Tagaq. As Tagaq stated in an interview with the CBC, Loretta Saunders was “an Inuit girl going to university in Halifax. That was me.” In interviews, she often reminds her audience of the scary reality that First Nation, Métis, and Inuit women face as a demographic: they
This is the social territory that stands behind what Tagaq expresses in her album, in her public statements, and in her approach to her culture’s traditional music. Her expression, like all great art, is complex and full of paradox. As art, her songs and style are entirely her own, a fusion of Inuit throat singing combined with intense electronica, post-rock, and black metal influences that simply didn’t exist until she put them together. And despite her music’s inherently personal composition, it’s clear that her music gives voice to something not particular to her, and sadly not at all new. A Tanya Tagaq song is made up of harsh breaths, bellowing screams, and abrasive background instrumentals. It’s as if the burden of having to take on alone something usually done by two people has overloaded something, turned a practice that is about harmony into something angry and unafraid of being disruptive, searching, and discordant. It is the song of the survivors of violence and racism, it is their sorrow and anger for their loved ones. And it is also the song of the dead itself. Her voice hits the screechiest highs and the most demonic lows, transporting listeners from the pits of Hell to the graces of paradise and back again, all within a single four minute song. This is Tagaq’s interpretation of the rich world of feelings that lived in the women whose lives are discussed all too often as just names and victims. This is why mainstream recognition of her talent feels like something is changing. It is impossible to listen to her without wanting to express oneself as vividly as she does, gaining an understanding of what she knows, and a hope for a society as just as her music is brilliant. n
NAOMI KLEIN DEMANDS CLIMATE ACTION No Logo author takes on climate change and capitalism in new book released in wake of people’s climate march
by Charlotte Smith This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate is the powerful new book from Naomi Klein. It follows 2001’s No Logo, which examined the anti-worker practices of big multinational corporations like Nike and 2007’s Shock Doctrine, which detailed how corporations profit from disasters. Both books made a huge impact on their subject matter, and it looks like this new one is set to follow in their footsteps. Klein divides the book into three sections. The first focuses on how, after the economic crisis of 2007, governments and industry were successfully able to legitimate their anaemic climate policies through austerity. She details how large right wing organizations such as the Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation and the Heartland Institute have successfully led the charge in convincing many Americans—and to a lesser extent other Western countries—of the uncertainty of the science behind climate change. She gives one striking statistic that in 2007, 71 percent of Americans believed that burning fossil fuels damaged the environment. In 2011, that statistic was just 44 percent. In the second section Klein moves on to de-
bunking the “Magical Thinking” of the technical fixes for climate change. She explains how the merger of Big Business and “Big Green” only serves to greenwash the destructive actions of businesses. The interests of capitalist industry, she claims, are necessarily anathema to those of the environment, and the systematic overhaul that we need cannot come from within. In the last section, “Starting Anyways,” Klein advances certain strategies that can work for battling climate change and its deniers. On an international scale, she advocates for countries paying their “Climate Debt.” This means that developed nations, who have been polluting longer, take more responsibility. She is also a big proponent of divestment, in which large organizations—universities, faith groups, municipal governments—sell the financial holdings they have in fossil fuel companies. Klein argues that it is divestment that has resonated as the most powerful strategy yet. To date, over 40 faith groups and 25 universities in the United States are in the process of divesting their fossil fuel interests. One of the largest victories came when Stanford University announced it was selling its coal stocks. The University of Toronto currently has around 20 million dollars invested in fossil fuel industries.
U of T is currently a petition submitted by 350. org for U of T to divest. Futher information on this campaign can be found at toronto350.org/ divest. Throughout the book, Klein argues the need for collective sacrifice—that either way we can’t expect our current lifestyles to last. While this is usually the part that scares people off, we really shouldn’t see it as being that difficult. We sacrifice all the time for what we are told is the public good. We are told over and over again that our countries can’t survive if we don’t tighten our belts and do our bit. We sacrifice our pensions and our healthcare. We accept that public education means ludicrously large class sizes and not enough textbooks. We accept that public universities leave students in debt for years. We accept the rising costs of public transit at the same time as service cuts. The language of austerity and collective sacrifice is exactly what we’re doing. We ask the 99% to sacrifice so the 1% can make exorbitant profits, and that’s exactly what happens. If we can sacrifice so much for the sake of so few people, it really shouldn’t be that hard to come together and sacrifice for the sake of everyone’s well being. n
Campus Comment
the newspaper asks students: What’s the wierdest thing you’ve seen on campus? Images: Elysse Cloma
“I saw a guy walking into St. George station completely backwards.”
“Trinity College.”
“I’ve seen people bringing sleeping bags into Robarts, but that’s pretty standard...”
“A guy dressed in a sumo suit doing sumo dead lifts at the SMC (St.Mike’s) gym.”
“A man preaching on the corner condemning everyone to hell.”
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Aga Khan Finds Home
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The Court of Keyomars
Image courtesy of Aga Khan Museum
by Samantha Preddie The Aga Khan Museum offers a multicultural tapestry ornate with history, a history not often shared with the Western world. Now Islamic culture has its own museum in the city of Toronto, just off of Don Mills and Eglinton. Artists spanning thousands of years within the Islamic empire valued detail in a way not found in the usual art gallery. The Court of Keyomars (ca.1522), the “Mona Lisa” of the Aga Khan’s exhibit, is inundated with details so precise, paint brushes composed of a single squirrel’s hair were used. Three years of labour and numerous painters later, it is considered one of the most important Iranian paintings. The multiplicity of talent that made up one work encapsulates the culmination of talents brought together to make the Aga Khan Museum. As the Globe and Mail shares, the museum was “designed by architects of global stature: Japanese Pritzker Prize-winner Fumihiko Maki and Indian modernist Charles Correa, together with Toronto’s Moriyama & Teshima Architects. […] The surrounding 10 acres of public gardens were created by Lebanese landscape architect Vladimir Djurovic.” The museum’s architectural highlights are
found in how it uses outdoor space. The entrance is accented by dark, shallow pools of water and gravel walkways. Inside, there is an enclosed courtyard with an entrancing simplicity. The courtyard is nothing but a outdoor box within the museum, but the simplicity of the enclosed space is entrancing. The walls and flooring is ornate, and the enclosed space creates is welcoming. Taking up two floors, the exhibits display beautifully framed painted manuscripts, some smaller than a sheet of paper, some on more sprawling canvas. “The Manuscripts of Mathnaiv of Rumi” are notable for their attention to detail and their focus on storytelling. Much of the art within the museum contain a larger narrative such as “the story of Haftvad and the worm, folio from Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp,” which within the busy painting contains a buzz of activity. Each piece, from the near-microscopic calligraphy to the large strokes of blue on a ceramic bowl is breathtaking in their own right. Admirably, the museum also includes a contemporary exhibit in which modern and current middle eastern artists are displayed. Value is found twofold in the Aga Khan
Museum: The centre provides a community space for the Ismaili community. There are merely six such locations globally, scant considering the Ismaili Islamic sect makes up 15 million people, approximately 100,000 of which are in Canada. Further, the museum represents an oft unacknowledged or, frankly, negatively stereotyped people in a light of appreciation and admiration.
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the museum represents an unacknowledged people in a light of appreciation and admiration
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The question, however, lies in whether the museum is an effective way of educating a population on a misunderstood culture, or whether it only contributes to an “othering” of another race or religion. Should the goal of the Aga Khan be to make visitors appreciate a different culture, or to make visitors familiar with that
culture? Walking into the museum certainly creates a new environment. Surrounded by unknown artifacts, a myriad of ceramics, and colourful tapestries, the designers and architects have succeeded in creating an “other-worldly” experience. Hopefully this experience, though different, sheds a positive light and inspires an open mind. It would be naïve to believe “Islamaphobia” can be combatted by creating an ethnic experience in Middle Eastern art, but perhaps the museum can act as a positive first step. Countries of the Middle East seem to be the setting for media-focused conflict. Groups such as the Islamic State or Boko Haram are dominating the news and conflicts seemed to be concentrated in countries such as Syria or Israel. These events have created a perception of an entire culture, a perception that ignores history, customs, and beauty – everything the Aga Kahn works to bring forth. The Aga Khan Museum is an outing I would wholly recommend. Viewing countries of Muslim faith through an artistic lens was quite the privilege, and I was humbled by how much I have yet to learn about Islam. n
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Allan Turton’s THIS LITTLE LIGHT
Emma Gavey PhD candidate, Chemistry. Goal: Improve health care.
Discover your options. Apply for Graduate Studies. brocku.ca/nextstep For both sides of the brain. Brock Universit y | Niagara | Canada