November 2013

2 November 2013

the newspaper Editor-in-Chief Yukon Damov Managing Editor Dylan Hornby Design Editor Odessa Kelebay News Editor Isaac Thornley Associate News Editor Marsha McLeod Arts Editor Carissa Ainslie Associate Arts Editor Jane Alice-Keachie Comment Editor Zach Morgenstern Features Editor David Stokes

call us maybe?

Do you long to express yourself to an uncaring robot and have a transcript of what you say printed in an independent campus newspaper?

Senior Copy Editor Sydney Gautreau

the newspaper is pleased to bring you the answer to your weirdly-specific prayers. Grab your phones, ladies and gents, and program the following number into your speed-dial:

Associate Copy Editor Samantha Preddie

647-931-7258

Photo Editor Grant Oyston Illustrations Editor Nick Ragetli Video Editor Ted Rawson Events Coordinator Chelsea Hirons

Cover Image & Centrefold: Grant Oyston

That’s right: for those of you with things to say and no fingers with which to type them, the newspaper has introduced its patented Low-Commitment Voicemail Line. Simply give us a tinkle, and speak after the beep. Drunk dialing encouraged.

We’ll pick our favourites to print in the next issue.

So call us maybe?

Thanks to the basketball, The Temptations, Isaac’s 4am ukulele lullabies, Paulina’s cookies, late-night doughnut runs, Tetley raspberry white tea, PBR, whisky, cigarettes, tomato sauce, shoe guy, Penn Jillette, DJ BG, campus police, Dylan Chauvin-Smith (for his honesty), Snoopzilla, and Julia.

No thanks to missed deadlines, InDesign lag, InDesign plugin issues, InDesign, campus police, essays, the Med Sci building, and Odessa’s phlegm.

the newspaper is published by Planet Publications Inc., a non-profit corporation.

256 McCaul St, Suite 106 Toronto, ON M5T1W5 thenewspaper@gmail.com All U of T community members, including students, staff and faculty, are encouraged to contribute to the newspaper.

Words Anna Afshar Anna Bianca Roach Erwin Bocianski Alex Correa Yukon Damov Clarrie Feinstein Dylan Hornby Jane Keachie Yasmine Laasraoui Camille Leon-Angelo Petr Liakhov Marsha McLeod Phil Metz Zach Morgenstern Grant Oyston Calan Panchoo Samantha Preddie Sigrid Roman Paulina Saliba Shaun Shepherd David Stokes Isaac Thornley Images Parker Bryant Daniel Glassman Julia Grieg A.I. Marin Grant Oyston Paulina Saliba Copy Editors Carla Bowman Sydney Gautreau Phil Metz Samantha Preddie Daniel Ross Poppy Sanders Alexander Saxton

thenewspaper.ca

3

Rob Ford: Janus-faced mayor for a Janus-faced city Not the obligatory Rob Ford piece

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ob Ford has got to go. His style of politics is divisive, obnoxious, and incapable of navigating complexity. But his scandals bring uncanny attention to hidden issues like poverty, drug use, and racial issues. While the people who vote for Ford are very often the suburban car-driving, socially regressive, anti-urban ‘Nation’ that they are made out to be, their attitudes are also the culmination of decades of flawed civic planning and a stupefying lack of government investment throughout our city-region. Strangely, these collective failures bring a culture of drugs, gangs, and poverty straight into the suburbs, ironically the places explicitly designed to be refuges away from trouble, but also the least prepared to deal with them. Rob Ford epitomizes this Janus-faced nature of the suburbs: for his day job he lobbies for the interests of old guard white suburban property owners, while at night he does crack cocaine with suburban Somali youthsturned-drug dealers. And it’s the success of the urban core that is fueling this vast cultural divide.

Shell shock and economic prosperity after WWII led young white Toronto couples to leave the old city and try a bold and newfangled experiment: the suburbs. Built-up quickly to account for the baby boom, the suburbs traded urban density, quality, and grandeur (epitomized by the status-conscious and tradition-soaked gingerbread architecture of the Victorian-era downtown) for space, privacy, and immediate (cheap) homeownership, with car travel making it all possible. It was a deliberate existence split that did not foresee the cultural divide it created.

Fast forward 60 years and increase gas prices 100 per cent and the old city of Toronto is now surrounded by neighbourhoods that were never designed to be urban areas. They have a different culture. Since you can’t walk to shopping or entertainment or work and there is less population density, people mingle less and are less exposed to the moderating influence of living beside diverse lifestyles. No surprise that the middle-aged and elderly white people who’ve been long-time residents of the suburbs still have a “property-traditioncar”’ cultural framework. These people like Ford’s calls to drop taxes, because ensconced in their homes they don’t use many city services. Why not vote for someone who will save you money?

On the other hand, Toronto now has many people who have no money to save. Toronto is now the 9th most expensive city in the world according to UBS AG, and it’s the urban core’s high rents, combined with decades of miniscule investment in urban public housing, that cause less affluent Torontonians, especially recent immigrants, to be pushed out of the downtown and

into the suburbs, ghettoized not in spacious suburban homes but in aging high rise tower in desolate locations. Decades of underinvestment in transit in the suburbs means that Toronto has more traffic than Los Angeles but also very limited transit service in the suburbs, which traps and isolate the working poor and visible minorities who are the suburbs __residents. This further increases the cultural disconnection from the prosperous downtown. As families struggle, youth becoming involved with drugs and gun violence. Enter the crack cocaine.

The total result is a negative feedback loop. Poor suburban areas get poorer as a largely white downtown gets more prosperous. The prosperity of the gleaming city centre leads to more immigration to the city, but these people end up living outside of it in high rise towers. But because there are still enough old guard white property owners in those suburban areas, a man who has said Toronto should become a “refugee free zone” ends up representing the very areas of the city where immigrants can afford to live. And he also does crack cocaine with their vulnerable youth.

We’re shocked, rightly (though who in this city isn’t buying drugs trafficked out from poorer neighborhoods?), but instead of solidarity and support for steps that would exorcise the demons from the suburbs and hence free Toronto from Rob Ford-like leaders, [the equation here is simple: make the suburbs more urban and integrate them into the city; and, why not liberalize our drug laws], Toronto’s newspapers are full of articles calling for the deamalgamation of Toronto. Sounds like a good enough solution if all you care about is the pride of the urban core.

But de-amalgamating means essentially abandons Toronto’s newest and most vulnerable citizens to life without necessary infrastructure that could help diminish their inequality. This is ironic since many urbanites say that the reason they hate Ford is because he has no social conscience. Though they are politically useful to him, he actually hangs out in the suburbs, and let that be a note to any TO politicians with mayoral ambitions. And de-amalgamation is also fiscally destructive for the urban core: the city needs political clout to get funding and harmonize growth for maximum prosperity, and the core has a deep economic co-dependence with the periphery regions as employment lands and industrial zones.

Ford’s dual worlds of megacity mayor and suburban crack user show that we need to unify the city. He’s doing it wrong. We can celebrate the downtown and the suburbs as they are and as they could be. We can find solutions that solve both their needs and benefit both

Image 1. Public domain via Wikipedia, image 2. J. David Hulchanski 3. Murdie

together. Each citizen can be involved in making connections, communities, and friendships across neighborhood barriers. This sounds like a lame civics lesson but it’s actually the essence of urbanity. Better transit makes it equally easier for an immigrant mother to get to work downtown while letting hipsters to get Sri Lankan dinner at Markham and Lawrence. Every neighbourhood in Toronto needs more bike lanes, every neighborhood needs more affordable rental housing, and every neighbourhood needs updated infrastructure and transit. If we’re going to live here let’s be

a part of all our neighbourhoods.

Interested in urban-suburb solidarity, how about start by attending the Police Services Meeting on Monday, November 18 at City Hall at 5:00 p.m., where the Board will hold a special meeting on police street checks. This is the systemwhere police can stop anyone and ask them questions for a database. Unfortunately it has been shown to have more stops of black males than there are black males in the city, localized in a few poor neighborhoods. • David Stokes

4 November 2013

Humanity 2.0 Transhumanism: preserving the human race Creating machine men at the expense of the experience of being

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randon Stanton, Humans of New York photographer, asked one of his subjects, “What is the most frustrating thing about the body?” The response: “There is so much we don’t know about [it]. Studying the human brain is like staring into outer space.” It’s impossible not to marvel at the human body. For some, however, this is not enough; called transhumanists, these people strive to look beyond natural evolution.

Transhumanism studies the body’s potential through technological advancement. It argues that the body is in the early stages of evolution and that, considering human intelligence, it’s possible to accelerate this development.

Transhumanist elements are already coming to light. Transhumanists consider any alteration that allows the body to perform beyond its natural function an improvement. Those who undergo these improvements are called cybernetic organisms, or more commonly, cyborgs.

Whether an implant to correct deafness, a prosthetic limb, or an artificial heart, these people have delved into the world of transhumanism using technology where their own bodies have failed them.

The possibilities are endless. Rob Spence, a documentary director, made his glass eye into a real-time video camera that not only observes the world, but records his environment.

The BrainGate 2 Clinical Trial involved a stroke patient who had 100 electrodes implanted in the motor cortex of her brain. This gave her the ability to maneuver a robot’s arm with the will used to move a natural one.

According to transhumanists, humans are at a comparatively early phase of development. Technological advancements have created a new horizon, encouraging the advanced nonhuman in favour of the technologically sound. Humans become an object one can construct, another expression of human innovation.

“Isn’t this tampering with nature?

Absolutely, and it is nothing to be ashamed of,” states the Humanityplus website, an organization “dedicated to elevating the human condition.”

Proponents of transhumanism see a future in which bodies are at the height of intelligence, physical capabilities, and psychological capacity. The goal is to overcome all human limitation until we reach the “post-human” state, that is, to continue biological changes despite the divergence from natural human form.

Looking for significance outside the body is an idea prevalent in religion and science. In either stance, there is a desire for a world “no longer constrained by the

natural imperatives of biological birth and biological death,” said Peter Lawler, a professor of government at Berry College.

In tampering with humanity and the relations between body and thought, the physical and the mental must be brought into consideration. “The transhumanists, of course, make the mistake of imagining that somehow personal consciousness can be detached from physical embodiment,” argued Lawler.

In The Abolition of Man, CS Lewis, an early 20th century Christian thinker, observed that society was stepping into the post-human era in which people, “lose all sense of value of human life that has always governed civilization,” to the extent in which “we have lost our spiritual quality.”

The unknown is expansive in the studies of transhumanism, but human hubris will push research to the limit.

“Precise technological manipulation of human nature to enhance desirable traits while avoiding undesirable side effects will be very difficult if not impossible,” warned Larry Arnhart, presidential research professor of political science at Northern Illinois University. “We might have to learn some tough lessons about “undesirable side effects.”

Hannah Arendt argued that the more distanced we are from our natural state and earth, the more willing people are to destroy and alter it. In accordance, Lawler stated, “We deny who we are when we innovate in such a way as to undermine who we are as generative animals.”

But transhumanists are looking far beyond the body into a realm of a completely organized and cohesive earth.

When explaining the ideas of Biophysicist Gregory Stock, Dr. Lawrence Terlizzese said, “through genetic engineering we will transform the human condition by merging humanity with the rest of nature, thereby creating a planetary superorganism.” This level of genetic engineering encompasses “joining of all biological creatures with machines, making one giant planetary life form.

This superorganism encompasses the entire globe.”

If the search to reach the height of our species continues, the fragility of our form will inevitably need advancement. Weakness, disease and even death will cease to pose a challenge if the transhumanist movement is successful. The effects this will have on human interaction, self-identity, and one’s experience of being will remain unknown until we roam deeper into the post-human world. • Samantha Preddie

Is being organic essential to being human? llustration by: Julia Greig

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The onion Layers of print-media history

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rom the hallways to the streets, bulletin boards provide a platform for print advertising of an old kind, and almost for free. Designed by a German printer in 1854, cylindrical columns were meant to tidy a city by organize graffiti and advertising, which had run rampant, around poles scattered around.

The content on these columns contend for the eyes of passersby in different ways, by using provocative questions, slick design, or sometimes just plain text. Some columns, like the one outside UofT Bookstore, are noticeably larger, and thus more popular with advertisers, than others.

The high levels of pedestrian traffic at that corner of St. George and College has captured the attention of advertising companies, individuals, and student groups. As more

Trashy art John Notten repurposes everyday materials to create an ulterior environment for the audience

5 people chose this location for their posters, the column has grown increasingly larger, as layers of posters built an advertising history that grew into an oblong onion. the newspaper decided to figure out just what kind of print history was tightly wrapped around this one pole.

With our knives and strong wills we attacked the beast outside of the UofT bookstore and uncovered over a year and a half of posters. The first layer contained the expected: Frosh posters, UofT writing centre ads, and another one of the bookstore’s “Secret Sales.”

As the layers unravelled, the posters became less university-oriented. Deeper into the onion were advertisements for job postings, night clubs, and bubble tea grand-openings. As we approached nearly two years deep, the posters be- Archaeological fieldwork in front of the UofT Bookstore. Photo credit to: Paulina Saliba came unpredictably dense.

Nevertheless, these onions Based on the sheer quan- within the week or within the chief executive at the Kaplan Thaler Group in New York, have been growing and gaintity of posters, it’s evident that day—who knows?

While hacking away with argues that advertisers work ing layers every year while advertisers believe students my serrated knife, I wondered, to overload consumers with history continues to be buried are looking at these boards. do they even work?

Research advertisement and “find a way within the time-machine of From the moment these posters are plastered on, they re- conducted by Yankelovich in to be everywhere.” An ad on advertising. They are a chaotic main untouched until the next 2006 estimates that a person the onion competes not only archival system that just wants set arrives, which is a basi- living in a city thirty years for space on the column, but to be pulled apart. • Paulina Saliba cally random occurrence. An ago saw up to 2,000 ads a day, also vies against more sophisad can vanish beneath another compared with up to 5,000 ticated forms of advertising today. Linda Kaplan Thaler, found in digital media.

T

he artwork of John Notten begins with the material; it utilizes pedestrian objects loaded with meaning for both himself and the audience. In doing so, Notten reconfigures and appropriates ordinary objects to convey a wholly different significance.

“In opposition to most contemporary artists that solely create conceptual art, I am more interested in the craft of art

making—the technique behind the work is very fascinating to me and vital to understand, especially sculptural technique,” said Notten in a recent interview with the newspaper.

This was Notten’s fourth year at Nuit Blanche, and his installation “Shrine” repurposed 45 garbage bins to create a Gothic Cathedral. “The design of a garbage bin is extraordinary and when you take it apart and transform it, it can become

A commentary on religion and the church, onlookers are mezmerized by this nuit blanche installment.

Photo credit to: cschelphoto.com

something beautiful and gothic,” said Notten. The effect was immediate and profound.

Notten’s intention was to juxtapose the sacred and profane, and allow the audience to form their own understanding of the piece.

While Notten stated that he does not have an agenda of societal issues he wishes to address, a number of people approached him with diverse personal interpretations. Opinions that he said were “valid and also correct.”

Opinions about how the church constantly recycles old ideas, and how they feel recycled when going to church; or how the church can take something deemed ugly and turn it into something beautiful.

Notten remarked that a major aspect of “Shrine” was the idea that excess consumerism and waste are now being worshipped in our society, and how these have become new societal beliefs.

Not only an artist, Notten is also a secondary school teacher and head of the art

department at Mary Ward Catholic School. His piece “The Next Desk” deals with the structure of the classroom, and considers the negative aspects of how classrooms are set up.

The classroom structure of rows of individual desks is “outdated,” said Notten, “and has nothing to do with good education.

It should be a collaborative experience with the students and the teacher.” So, Notten decided to take the desks and compose them into a 13-foot tall wheel. The desk, which is seen as a symbol for isolation and control, was reconfigured to create something innovative and exciting.

A system based on collaboration and active student participation, “This is what I have as a vision for education. This is my educational philosophy,” said Notten. He brings his artistic concepts into his teaching, and this year Notten encouraged his students to attend Nuit Blanche. Last year, his Grade 12 students made the installation “The Flexomobile,” which was showcased at the event.

Notten’s art catalyzes conversation and produces exactly what the artist desires—diverse meanings and interpretations that are relevant and significant to the viewer. • Clarrie Feinstein

6 November 2013

I

n 1995, Craig Kielburger began a journey that is now familiar to many Canadians. Upon learning the story of Iqbal Masih— an activist and former child labourer in a carpet mill—Kielburger began Free the Children (FTC) in his Thornhill classroom with 11 other students. Eighteen years on, Kielburger has a degree in peace and conflict studies and psychology from the University of Toronto and an MBA from York University. His name is on the Canadian Walk of Fame.

He remains, with his elder brother Marc, at the helm of Free the Children.

FTC is operational in 45 countries, has built schools in 16 nations, and has provided one million individuals improved access to healthcare, clean water, and sanitation facilities.

Craig and Marc act as codirectors of FTC. Although this takes up most of their carefully allotted time, it is still only the “volunteer commitment” portion of their lives. The pair also have a passion for business.

Several years into the expansion and development of FTC, the Kielburgers came to the conclusion that pure charity—giving without prospect of reciprocal reward—was, if unsupported, a fundamentally unsustainable model for their organization.

To ensure that FTC could continue to exist, and to help alleviate the tension created by the search for consistent funding, the Kielburgers cofounded Me to We, a “social enterprise” that donates half of its profits to the operational costs of FTC and uses the other half to keep itself sustainable. Social enterprise is a business model where, rather than the accumulation of profit, the goal is the sustainable advancement of local and global human well-being.

Although separated by a few provinces, the newspaper had a chance to speak with Craig over the telephone about the opportunities presented by an integrative model of charity and business. Namely, the ways in which social business can address new challenges, and also provide answers to persistent obstacles facing development.

Q:

A social business

The attack on Westgate Mall in Nairobi in September killed 260 people; tourism to Kenya has been decimated.

How does this affect Kenya and the region?

Craig Kielburger on Africa and profitable not-for-profits

A:

On one hand there is the immediate loss of life and the impact that would have on families and on the economy of the country. On the other hand, we’ll see a decline in foreign investments on a huge scale, as Kenya is seen as the gateway to investment into Africa.

Kenya is the only permanent house of the UN Environmental Program, home to the UN Mission to Somalia, as well as governments in exile, such as Somalia’s. It is such a cornerstone to the region.

And on a very practical level, if people lose their jobs in the cities, or at a tourism camp, then they are not sending money back to rural areas, and you see children dropping out [of school], you see hunger, you see very difficult choices as a result of this.

This is exactly when the world needs to rally around Kenya, as the world rallied around America. After 9/11 people talked of going to New York to show s o l i d a r i t y.

People are not doing that for Kenya: Kenya who was very much a victim.

A n d what is little understood is that while people are asking us if [Free the Children’s] programs are okay—and we appreciate the concern—they are hundreds of kilometres away from Nairobi. We work in the south of the country. In fact, I was reminded of when the riots took place in Vancouver [in 2010], and our friends in Kenya wrote to us in Toronto asking if we were okay.

While this may sound somewhat naive, this is the way many of us understand regions. It shows the process by which people in Canada and in the West can associate this attack with all of Kenya and in fact, much of East Africa.

“Good development is when you are able to exit in a sustainable way”

Q:

It seems as though there is a surplus of students studying international development

Craig Kielburger has long been a face of Canadian humanitarian innovation.

Photo credit to: Greater Tacoma Community Foundation

and disciplines like it for the number of choice positions in not-for-profit organizations.

A:

One of the challenges [of studying one of these fields] is that there are not enough jobs. Thus, there is a need to innovate the social sector, and bring some of these people into the for profit sector. We need a merging of the two fields.

I loved my time in peace and conflict studies [at the University of Toronto], but on the other hand I also loved my MBA [at the Schulich School of Business at York University], and I wish I could see a little bit of that in disciplines like peace and conflict studies.

The critical skills of an MBA are not taught to development students, they are only taught in an MBA: terms of trade, rate of investment; these things are not talked about. People are setting out to change the world for the better, but they need the practical tools, the knowledge of business, to achieve the scale and depth of their ideas.

as someone who has been massively successful at helping individuals, but also someone who is massively successful in your career. How do you define success?

A:

Success for us? The best development puts yourself at a distance and looks at about a five year model. Initially, everything in the [FTC aided] communities is free, and as they mature, the community is able to sustain itself. They begin to pay a cost, they pay for the schools’ upkeep. Good development is when you are able to exit in a sustainable way.

How can you look at the model in order to be financially viable when in fact, if you are successful, you will put yourself out of business?

The first thing though, is that there is not a lack of need: we will always be able to move our programs elsewhere when we no longer are necessary.

Q:

But what about success for you as an individual?

A: Q:

Students can look at your achievements and see you

The not-for-profit world loses really good, talented people who exit [the sector] because they need to start sustaining

families, paying a mortgage.

It’s ironic because a career in the not-for-profit sector isn’t sustainable—it is clear the arena is not built to sustain a career and that the arena in not sustainable in itself.

Therefore, my big interest is social enterprise, this is the easiest way to achieve career success. We work in a world where there is enterprise: some is for profit, some is for mission, and some is a hybrid.

Q:

What is the most precious resource that cannot be quantitatively measured?

A:

I once asked a very similar question to James Orbinski [a professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs], and he said resilience. I also like the answer that the most precious commodity is time.

But if I had to choose, I would say two: idealism mixed with innovation. • Marsha McLeod

This interview has been edited and condensed.

thenewspaper.ca

7

Show me yours and I’ll show you mine A notable dilemma

everystudentatuoft@mail.utoronto.ca

T

he environment was so cutthroat at my last school that students never bothered to ask other students for notes—unless they were desperate. They automatically knew the answer would be a sugarcoated “no.”

Hoping to start this year off differently, I gave my notes to each one of my unknown peers that asked. As the emails became more frequent, however, I increasingly became more and more aggravated.

To give notes or not give notes. It is the kind thing to do, but frankly it’s annoying to open an inbox full of poorly punctuated emails begging for notes.

It is obnoxious when fellow students try and mooch off their peers’ work because they are incapable of doing their own.

I do a substantial amount of work to

achieve academic success, and by giving someone my notes, am I not enabling a stranger to receive the same mark as me without supplying any effort? It is difficult to understand how someone can be irresponsible enough not to show up to the lecture, fail to complete the readings, and then feel entitled enough to ask for notes.

I can’t speak for other programs, but as an arts major I know good notes make the difference between a good grade and a great grade. From my experience, without notes it is nearly impossible for me to do well.

Still, I go through an internal dilemma before I click “delete” on one of those emails. Despite feeling annoyed I also feel profoundly guilty—by not giving this classmate my notes I am screwing over a fellow student.

So here is my advice to anyone, anywhere, who has or is planning to blast a peer’s inbox asking for notes. If you are truly suffering from “personal health problems” or were actually “bedridden,” then you should get registered with accessibility services. They provide students who actually have extenuating circumstances with an anonymous peer note-taking service.

Instead of sending a blast email to your whole 700-person class, at the beginning of your course make a friend, swap numbers with them, and be notepals. If one of you has to miss a class, or is swamped and can’t do the reading, you have a backup plan.

I am not saying that everyone can make it to every class or do all the assigned readings; instead of exploiting the weird kid who actually takes notes on

Thesis: Language is Matter outline Expo •Food metaphor — pleasure of writing // pleasure of eating (some eat for survival; some eat for sheer pleasure)

Body: language as sculpture •Words that sound like their meaning → “feel” the meaning (eg. grueling; fluttering; whisper; exotic)

— ambiance through choosy word selection

(Maupassant, Camus, Poe) •Finite matter (26 letters, a block of clay, six strings on a guitar) → infinite possibilities •Language as a social construct → residing in brain, in grey matter — fact-check neuroscience: brains with more languages organized differently

— language as inhabiting physical space •Language as symbols: symbols are physical, do they “contain” language?

•Language as identity → is identity physical? Are you a body who has a soul or a soul who has a body?

— Body language Closure •What makes language feel physical? What gives language an ambiance, what gives language such a strong presence that it can fill an empty room? If language is conceptual, how can it seem to contain any one thing, how can language encapsulate a feeling or a person so accurately that you would swear they were true? brainstorm Symbols actually physical •Language = symbols? • Anna Bianca Roach

Make a friend, even if it’s to use them for notes.

Illustration by: Caileigh Prince

the readings, however, take responsibility for your own education and attempt to do them yourself.

Regards, •

Camille Leon Angelo

8 November 2013

Bang!Bang! You're ok Why 3D printing is nothing to worry about

T

hree-D gun printing in Canada is nothing to worry about, despite widespread anxiety on the subject. The Criminal Code is strict about gun control, 3-D printers are super-expensive, and the ability to create weapons at home using legal materials is no new problem.

In May, the non-profit digital firearm publisher Defense Distributed, led by radical libertarian Cody Wilson, launched the Wiki-Weapons Project, releasing free digital blueprints for 3-D gun printing online. Met with both praise and outcry, the controversial project caused many to fear the inherent threat of 3-D printers and “homemade” guns.

Critical Making Lab, a shared space at U of T’s Faculty of Information that focuses on the social implications of new technologies, chose to engage with the project. After twelve hours with a $60,000 printer the lab created their own version of “The Liberator,” a single shot pistol posted online by Defense Distributed.

Using a softer resin and creating a builtin cap, the lab’s Liberator was made to prevent real bullets from being loaded and fired.

“We don’t believe that the device we printed this summer can accurately be called a firearm,” said the Critical Making Lab. “It is not capable of discharging ‘any shot, bullet or other projectile’ or of

You won't be able to print weapons from home anytime soon. Illustration by: Danny Braverman

‘causing serious bodily injury or death to a person,’” two crucial components in the Criminal Code.

“Something that looks like a gun but doesn’t have the muzzle velocity to be considered a firearm,” is federally controlled in Canada, explained Lorne Sabsay criminal defense and civil litigation lawyer. The attitudes of Canadians aside, the law defines a firearm by what it does, not by how it is created.

In light of recent shootings in the United States, such as the Washington DC Naval Yard and Newton, advocates of stricter gun control have brought 3-D gun printing to the forefront of a North American political debate. The lack of a constitutional right to bear arms, compounded with a much smaller progun culture in Canada renders such a debate, in the Canadian context, largely unnecessary.

“The bottom line is: unless someone is properly licensed to possess firearms, then the mere possession is illegal [in Canada],” said Sabsay.

From a cost-benefit standpoint, 3-D gun printing is not optimal. Purchasing guns on the black market is more cost efficient, according to Nelson Wiseman, a U of T professor of Canadian Politics.

Most 3-D printers cost tens of thousands of dollars; purchasing a firearm along the notorious “U.S.-Toronto gun pipeline” along Interstate 75 is much more costeffective.

The pipeline is a major gun trafficking root, the source of 70 per cent of all guns used in Toronto crime. If one is concerned about the proliferation of firearms in Canada, then the threat from 3-D printers pales in comparison to already existing threat of the gun trading black market. In March of 2010, over 250 charges were laid in a major police bust, seizing guns originally from Kentucky, as well as cocaine and marijuana.

Last month, 400 charges were laid in response to recent criminal activity in Scarborough’s east end, including guns, drugs, and homicide.

Driving down the I-75 to purchase inexpensive firearms at American gun

shows to smuggle back into Toronto has become a lucrative underground market.

I-75 Gun & Pawn in Byron, Georgia, a convenient gun dealer on the pipeline, is open six days a week, selling name brands like Remingtons, Colts, and Smith & Wessons.

The advent of 3D gun printing isn’t the first time North Americans have had the ability to produce dangerous weapons. Timothy McVeigh’s destructive homemade bomb used in the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995 killed 168 people, leaving several hundred more wounded.

“The precursors to make huge bombs from fertilizer and nitrogen…[are] tools that anyone can buy,” explained Sabsay.

The end products are illegal, but the ingredients in making it aren’t.

The downloadable instructions from Defense Distributed are the same in this respect.

“Because of our strong restrictions on the manufacture of firearms, laws specific to the use of 3-D printers for the manufacture of guns would be redundant,” notes Critical Making Lab. Just as restrictions on fertilizer, diesel fuel, and pseudoephedrine would interfere with the sale of common household items, the needless regulation of 3-D printing would be an impediment to technological development.

A federal initiative funded by the RCMP, Canada Border Services Agency, and Criminal Intelligence Service Canada is currently researching the potential threat of 3-D gun printing. The study aims to investigate software and Internet sharing controls, and their political and security related consequences. However, in a country where the possession of both firearms and imitation firearms is heavily regulated, 3-D gun printing will not require any large changes to be made to the Canadian legal landscape.

So unlike our southern neighbor, gun control policy adjustments and fear of the 3-D printer are unnecessary in Canada. • Yasmine Laasraoui

thenewspaper.ca

9

When I think about you I touch my...phone

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Assessing the physical impacts of our digital actions

efore modern, digital communication technology existed, social interactions were an intrinsically physical act. If you wanted to hang out with friends, you got off the couch, left your room, walked out the door, strolled over to the local pub, tried to spot your friends, mosied on over to them, shook hands, and sat down. There was an intimate and strong link between social interaction and physical touch.

Now there are multiple ways people can communicate that do not require any in-person contact. Has development of modern communication technology done away with the close tie between social and physical interaction? All one has to do is look at how much time people are spending on their mobile devices.

Canadians use their smartphones about 222 times per month, or approximately 3.3 hours per day, spending more time online than any other developed country—nearly 44 hours a month, which is about double the worldwide average.

Touch technology has been around in some form since the mid-60s, but was only really embraced in the past 20 years. The first touch-sensitive phones and PDAs weren’t released until 1993,

by IBM and Apple respectively, and only really boomed with Apple’s release of the iPhone in 2007.

Now touch technology is essential to communication for nearly all smartphones: you tap a screen to start texting, use a digital keyboard to tap out a message, swipe over a few other windows to snap a quick photo, imbed it in the message, and hit the send button.

Voila! You have just communicated with someone without having to leave your house, or even put on pants.

Clearly, Canadians are spending a huge amount of time communicating with one another digitally, but does this change mean that the link between physical and social interaction, in at least some forms of communication, is eroding?

This isn’t really the case. People’s technological habits does not reduce

their ability to reach out and touch others; the relationship between physical and social interaction still exists in a digital medium. Those who suggest the contrary define too narrowly what touch can be. To touch something is to come into contact with another body— to leave an impression on it. Touch and impression are inextricably linked because it’s impossible to come into contact with something without affecting it in at least a small way.

The ideas we communicate technologically have the potential to touch others, so long as they leave an impression of any kind. The content of your messages, texts, pokes, or videos influence—on some level—a person’s thought which, in turn, affects their actions.

Imagine you snap a photo of a park in Toronto that you’re particularly fond of. You take that picture, apply a couple choice filters, and post it on a friend’s page—someone potentially hundreds of kilometers away. When seen, your photo will necessarily inspire some degree of thought, and because thought dictates action, even a slight change to thought can lead to real-world changes. These are the physical impacts of your digital actions.

The ability to inspire physical change in the world is independent of the mode of communication you chose. Whether you are communicating face-to-face or on Facebook, the ability to touch others persists. The intimate link between touch and social interaction still exists in a digital format through the effects of digital actions on the minds of the people you are communicating with.

So next time you’re feeling lonely, log onto your tablet, reach out, and touch somebody.• Phil Metz

Smartphones are defining our social lives and this may not be a bad thing.

Illustration by: Parker Bryant

10 November 2013

In defense of white poppies An argument for understanding and compromise

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hile over 18 million Canadians will wear the red poppy this Remembrance Day, about 11 000 will wear a white poppy, which has been a pacifist symbol since 1926. They are worn to show support for a world without war and to establish peace as the goal society must aspire to.

Right-wing media outlets jumped on a recent story about the Rideau Institute’s white poppy campaign. “Ottawa students don’t care if ‘white poppy’ offends vets,” read the headline. Online commenters went berserk, claiming that the white poppy was a disgrace to Canadian veterans and that people who wear white poppies should be spat on, punched out, and ultimately condemned as unpatriotic, tree-hugging liberals.

Despite the supposedly insulting break from tradition, these two poppies have much more in common than the media response would suggest. Both white and red poppies draw their significance from John McCrae’s 1915 poem In Flanders Fields, and both are worn to remember victims of war.

“In Flanders Fields the poppies blow/Between the crosses, row on row/That mark our place: and in the sky/The larks still bravely singing fly/Scarce heard amid the guns below.”

People who condemn a poppy that calls for peace are mistakenly translating a hatred for war into disrespect for the veterans who fought in them. The white poppy only breaks with tradition by adding a moral imperative to end war, rather than merely remembering it.

White poppy campaigns also make an effort to acknowledge all

victims of war. Millions of soldiers’ sacrifices are remembered, and so are innocent civilian casualties. As civilian casualty rates have risen dramatically since WWII, this issue has become even more relevant in today’s wars.

To write off the white poppy campaign as insulting to veterans also assumes that all veterans share the same views about the purpose of Remembrance Day. Many veterans support anti-war movements and participate in campaigns that other veterans disagree with. Assuming that all veterans would be offended by the message of the white poppy is an unfair generalization.

While Canadians have bravely fought in the world’s deadliest conflicts, they have also developed an international identity as advocates for peacekeeping and taking humanitarian action to avoid violent conflict.

This characterization of Canada’s military past lends credibility to the arguments brought up by both poppy campaigns.

Remembrance Day should not be a debate about what colour poppy people should wear; rather, it should be about the personal feelings of Canadians who feel a deep association with our military past. Ultimately, some Canadians will always disagree about what remembrance means, but all parties should ultimately treat the day as one of respect.

The best way to resolve this symbolic situation is to appreciate the mutual values both poppies represent, and wear both if so inclined, as red and white are Canada’s colours. •

The Collapse of Communist China?

A closer look at the future of China’s political system

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n discussions about the future of China’s communist regime, there tend to be polarized views. Some strongly believe in the current system, and with good reason. China’s is the second largest economy after the United States, and the fastest growing.

This progress, however, has left

economists and politicians scratching their heads, especially now as it may be facing a downturn.

There has been a lot of talk over China’s recent economic slowdown.

While the country has experienced over 30 years of rapid growth, its growth rate in 2013 will be the country’s slowest in 23 years.

Global demand for Chinese goods is decreasing, which could be detrimental for the exportdependent country.

Supporters of the regime argue that manufacturing industries are continuing to grow at a rapid pace.

This may not be enough. China is able to manufacture goods very cheaply, which is why they hold the title of largest exporter in the world. So long as demand declines, however, this will amount to naught.

China’s communist party is facing a serious reality check.

Either they will redirect their efforts into industries that will entice future global demand, or they will continue to watch their economy’s growth decline.

Struggling and falling dictatorships around the world have shown us how economic failure can drive societal alienation.

In a globalizing world, information becomes increasingly accessible; this makes it difficult to hide government failures. In a case where the government is able to drive economic success, however, there is a deeper, more pressing issue. As the Chinese population steadily becomes more educated and gains access to information, it will develop values about the role of government, self-expression, and tolerance towards diversity. This shift in social values undermines the legitimacy of authoritarian rule.

After three decades of rapid economic growth, which pulled hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty, only an economy with modern ideologies can stay competitive. There seems to be a movement as the government begins to modernize authoritarian rule by tackling political corruption, allowing for more social expression online, and introducing environment protection. These may be the first signals of the democratization of China. For better or worse, there is growing sentiment that democracy is an inevitable part of the country’s future. • Anna Afshar

Dylan Hornby

China must strive to remain competitve in the international market.

Illustration by: Daniel Glassman

thenewspaper.ca

11

Dear Hart House Great Hall

COVER GAME Eye Spy with my little eye...

The forgotten histories of Hart House

Voices of history within the walls of Hart Hosuse. Photo credit to: David Stokes

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ur walls tell us so much if we only pay attention. For each nook and cranny in our castlesque buildings are a thousand memories, happy and sad, uplifting and cruel. To all of those longforgotten names scrawled upon our bricks; for each ghost of an etched penmanship; in honor of all who left at the University of Toronto a date, a sketch, a message; here is our small tribute to the many nowanonymous lives, minds, and spirits that have walked the halls that we today laugh in. Here’s to a handful of people who left graffiti behind in the turret of the Hart House Great Hall: She marched into the Hart House Great Hall, one last time. She snuck into the convention—something about sustainable energy—and walked around the room, slowly, deliberately taking in each detail, each portrait, each name, each word of the Latin scripture that he never understood.

Finally, she made her way to her favorite corner of the room. A small turret, a spiral staircase which once, long ago, had led to another hall but today leads only to a locked glass door. She walked the steps and paused at each window to look on to the room: laughter, the exchanging of business cards, and just a few social drinkers.

She reached her step; the step she had long sat on, the step she had come to in the moments of her strongest emotions.

The center column now bore a worn, shiny mark the shape of his back. Thinking back to the past month, to the heart-wrenching farewells and the sheer happiness and effervescent joy that accompany longcoveted and fervently fought-for success, she fumbled in his pocket and found her room key.

She inspected the grey stone and brought his new treasure—he’d make a new copy of it, use his dorm key as a keychain—to the wall. May 2011: It Was a Good Month.

And Boom Boom! Boom Boom indeed, boom boom like a racing heartbeat, boom boom like the cannons fired during frosh and boom boom like the doors rhythmically shutting on his last University classes.

Long, fast, aggressive, lost strides

meandered into the dining hall to find this tower, this closed space. Hatred—hatred in bold, black letters, at the top of the stairs.

Hatred in 68-point font; but it wasn’t font, it was penmanship, and it, too, was hated.

Loathing towards the man serving coffee on the other side of those glass panels—glass panels that could easily be broken, shattered if only a balled fist were brought to them.

A sharpie—thick and nearly out of ink—shook as it was dragged across the ledge by a quaking hand and the six letters were now forever destined to stay there condemned to the weight of loathing.

He sat and opened his sketchbook: Here’s the girl from the café; here’s the waitress; here’s a sketch of his coffee (black) and here’s his omelette. There was the charcoal he had used for the sketches, loose in the pocket of his jacket (two sizes too big). His fingers were darkened by the charcoal dust—as, certainly, were his phone and apartment key, but he’d deal with that later.

His mind drifted—to the girl in the café, to her soft curls, to the dimples when she smiled after a sip of her drink (dirty chai latte, two shots of espresso). His mind drifted to his violin, its smooth curves and the beauty of the notes it played. To Sonder, the realization that each person he had seen today while walking campus, each of them had a life, a home decorated with things that held meaning to them, maybe a pet and maybe a favorite freckle on a significant other’s shoulder.

He swayed backwards—nearly fell— and looked back up at the wall to find a sketch in his own hand, the study of a skull.

A slightly lopsided, goofy skull—teeth that are completely uneven and nasal cavities that were unaligned. Just like that, in the whirlwind of thoughts that had taken him over the past few minutes, the Hart House now bore an accidental mark of his existence, his life.

Our halls hold ghosts, etchings, doodles, names—as many reminders of lives, of the existence of the students who sat in our places before us. • Anna Bianca Roach

1. Bubble wand 10. Robot 2. Gyroscope 11. Spool of thread 3. Voodoo doll 12. Retainer 4. Gillette razor 13. Spider 6. Pocket watch 14. Headphones 7. Sneakers 15. Key 8. Silver elephant 16. Metropass 9. Floss 17. Sharpner

Fashion Flows feminism and vagina t-shirts

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ecently, Petra Collins released the Period Power T-shirt as part of a collaboration between American Apparel and The Ardorous, an allfemale art collective that Collins curates.

The T-shirt displays a line drawing of a female figure masturbating while on her period, and with visible pubic hair— an important detail because, apparently, female body hair is still taboo. Soon after it was available online, Collins and her T-shirt became a controversial news story.

While much of the media attention on these events has focused on backlash and uproar, the question of why these images are so shocking, and for whom, are worthy of further discussion.

What is it about the image that crosses the line? It seems like most people aren’t quite sure, or simply say “yuck” or “gross.”

Some argue the T-shirt is promoting shock value instead of representing periods as natural and normal, while others express concern over the validity of the drawing as a piece of feminist artwork or fashion statement.

VICE: What do you think of the media storm you’ve started?

Petra Collins: It’s really awesome. I’m not surprised. It’s exactly what I wanted because it totally proves my point…

And what is your point?

That we’re so shocked and appalled at something that’s such a natural state—and it’s funny that out of all the images everywhere, all of the sexually violent images, or disgustingly derogatory images, this is something that’s so, so shocking apparently.

Dialogue is a necessary part of fleshing out feminist issues, but can also be problematic in an age where the internet allows people to publish their opinions before the thought reaches their mouths. It allows knee-jerk disgust to overshadow reasoned discussion about depictions of the female body.

From a young age, girls are taught to hide their periods and shave their pubic hair, while masturbation is viewed as a dirty secret. Parts of the natural female body are labelled as taboo or shameful, and this shame persists

from girlhood into adulthood. Adult female bodies are meant to resemble those of pre-pubescent girls, and then are subject to hypersexualization.

We live in a society that uses blue liquid in tampon commercials, where regulated notions of female sexuality are so normalized that the natural aspects of the female body become targets of censorship. Blood is acceptable in horror movies, but not so cool when it’s coming out of a woman’s vagina.

Collins’ art explicitly explores ideas of girlhood, sexuality, and the female body.

The Period Power T-shirt shows an act of sexual pleasure; it’s a realistic, uncensored female body with grown-out hair and flowing blood, opposing everything females are conditioned to hide.

But the T-shirt’s shock value isn’t about the blood, the hair, or the sex act. It comes from the fact that this image is underrepresented to the point of nonexistence in commercial media.

People are shocked by images they rarely see. Imagine a society that celebrated female bodies in a variety of forms. Would this T-shirt still be making headlines?

Meanwhile, Collins’ Instagram account was deleted for violating the app’s terms and conditions. The violation stemmed from a reported photo of her from the waist down in bikini bottoms set against a sparkly backdrop. It appears that the visibility of pubic hair has created an uproar similar to that caused by her T-shirt.

In an editorial for Oyster Magazine, Collins addressed the censors, saying, “To those who reported me, to those who are disgusted by my body [...] I want you to thoughtfully dissect your own reaction to these things, please think about WHY you felt this way, WHY this image was so shocking, WHY you have no tolerance for it.”

As a piece of fashion, Collins’ line drawing hasn’t been relegated to a modern art gallery, but is a message to be worn on the streets of Toronto; it's a step towards beautiful and real representations of female bodies.

Collin’s advice for anyone still grossed out: “Honestly, if it’s stressing you out that much and you’re so uptight about it, you should probably masturbate and you’ll feel better—and then think about it again.” • Jane Alice Keachie

14 November 2013

Sugarnutz Confetti: A cultural study

O

nce upon a time, some old Italian shopkeeper sold confetti to families for weddings. He discovered that he could increase his profits by selling fake cardboard confetti instead of real candied almonds. He knew that the confetti wouldn’t be eaten and instead used a cheaper material. Thus, the shopkeeper effectively brought confetti as a purely decorative and celebratory substance, into its modern definition.

“Confetti” was an Italian word given to a sugar-coated almond treat; the word is a cognate to the English confection. Historically, these almonds—also known as dragée or Jordan almonds—were used as party favours: offered as gifts, thrown in celebration at weddings and carnivals, or casual snacking.

Most modern North American confetti has lost its traditional roots as a sweet treat and is more commonly made from cheap and easily produced materials, such as coloured paper, or plastic.

Curiously, the modern Italian equivalent to the modern English confetti—“coriandoli”—is also food-related: coriander seeds have also historically been used as material to throw into the air during special occasions.

Despite the English word’s

Photo credit to: Grant Oyston

specifically nutty origin, confetti in various forms has appeared in many times and places. In ancient agrarian societies during times of harvest, grain was thrown into the wind in celebration of earthly bounty.

It has been argued that due to pagan influences on early Christianity, the practice of throwing seeds, rice, and other grains at weddings came to symbolize fertility, growth, and reproduction, wishing the newlyweds both a healthy harvest and a large family. This is widely believed to have originated at least as early as the Romans.

Having largely abandoned actual seeds, grains, and bonbons in favour of mass-produced colourful paper shreds, modern confetti is used primarily as a generic sign of grandeur and importance rather than having event-specific meanings such as fertility or the harvest.

Now shredded paper blasts out of “confetti cannons” at the Superbowl, and at Times Square on New Year’s Eve. There has been a value shift in the past few centuries as “confetti the symbol” has been reduced to “confetti the prop.”

Some people choose to throw birdseed at weddings in favour of rice, which has gained the

reputation of harming birds— although this is in fact an urban myth.

Still, synthetic confetti made of plastic or processed plant material is less biodegradable than rice and other grain, thus more damaging to the environment and the wildlife in the long-run.

The widespread use of plastics and processed materials on a global scale has resulted in a floating island of garbage in the North Pacific Ocean. Made of pieces described as “colourful” and “confetti-like,” the garbage clump is the size of Texas.

Confetti is to special events what disposable plastic bags are to grocery shopping: archaic, unnecessary, and ultimately unsustainable.

To combat environmental concerns several confetti and party supply companies have turned to greenfriendly branding. The company Eco-fetti offers “water soluble, earth friendly… ECO-FETTI, the accepted, fun, safe, economical wedding send-off.”

Which is all well and good, but what of the floating garbage island?

These eco-friendly products might be progress, but as confetti, they sustain a wasteful, ecologically harmful, and extraneous party trick.

Isaac Thornley

thenewspaper.ca

15

Dawn of darkness The return of European neo-fascism

Photo credit to: Joanna Piazza del Popolo via Flickr

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ltra-nationalist political parties are slowly but surely reemerging in the European theatre, causing concern among the European Union’s political elites. Groups like Golden Dawn, in Greece, are flourishing as they spread hateful, violent, and xenophobic rhetoric to an increasingly attentive public.

The Great Recession has left a path of economic instability in its wake: increasing inequality (exemplified by a shrinking middle class), increasing unemployment—especially among youth—and seemingly unsuccessful economic austerity policies have fostered growing dissatisfaction with the continent’s political establishment.

European immigration policies have contributed to this mounting restlessness.

Associated with waves of unwanted cultural change and the criminal element afflicting certain states, influxes of non-European migrants are demonized by a disaffected public.

Anti-Islamic and

anti-immigrant polemics are becoming common in political discourse, as is the marginalization of minorities.

Worst of all, some white Europeans are listening; populist partisan movements are benefiting from the uproar.

Dutch Party of Freedom leader, Geert Wilders, has openly asserted his anti-Islamic stance, one that has propelled the party’s steady rise to the third largest in the state.

Hungary’s Jobik party is openly anti-Semitic and uses scapegoat tactics to assign blame to immigrants and minorities.

By playing on the misfortunes that plague a country and exploiting the feelings of the public, these extremist parties easily appeal to a wide-demographic, subsequently gaining power and prestige. Unlike the disjointed leftist movements that wreaked havoc in Western Europe in the 1970s, these parties loom menacingly in EU politics; they are organized and backed by an air of legitimacy. As economic and social tensions flourish,

Photo credit to: underclassrising.net

so too does Euroscepticism—a body of criticism of the EU and European political integration—which in turn translates into support for extremist solutions.

There are now plenty of parties on the far right making their presence known in European politics. Many remain on the fringe, but some are garnering support and representation.

In France, the Front National party, which emphasizes the need for stricter immigration policies and bemoans the threat of Islam to French identity, led a national poll in October—a clear sign that it has entered mainstream politics. After that poll, the party won a by-election in a riding in Bringoles, with 53.9 per cent of the vote. The town, with a large North African community, was severely impacted by high unemployment rates following the closure of the local aluminum plant in the 1990s.

Greece’s Golden Dawn party is similar in creed—although more notorious and less popular—to Front National.

Increasing immigration and illegal immigration, a destabilized economic system, steep unemployment (especially among youth), and a disgruntled middle class have created a volatile atmosphere— one that the party is keen on exploiting.

Golden Dawn embodies the elements of pre-WWII ultra-nationalist fascism more than any other European political party. Led by Nikola Michaloliakos, Golden Dawn’s political stance is explicit: the twisting meander party symbol resembles the Nazi swastika.

Like other far-right parties, the Golden Dawn fosters violent behaviour. In September, a man claiming allegiance to the party murdered anti-fascist rapper, Pavlos Fyssas, known as MC Killah P. Golden Dawn denied any connection to the murder.

The party slithered its way into the Greek parliament with just under seven per cent of the total vote in June, 2012.

It has 18 seats in parliament, but its popularity is declining.

Michaloliakos and two senior MPs are imprisoned pending a

trial, and the Greek government has cut funding to the party.

Until now, there has been limited reaction to this growing trend in far-right extremism, but some has begun to appear.

The Swedish Ministry of Justice and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue have partnered in a pan-European effort to better understand this issue and find solutions to curb the problem by studying the growth and tenacity of these movements in one of 10 states.

Additionally, mainstream parties have begun to incorporate policies that appeal to a larger audience, such as reforming certain economic policies. In Greece, nevertheless, the only tried and true method to curb ultranationalism is to educate the masses, stress accountability, and improve the transparency of government activities.

Otherwise, one thing is certain: if these extremist parties are left unchecked, the EU will face more than it’s current economic and diplomatic headaches. • Erwin Bocianski

16 November 2013 There is a secret country in Toronto—the ravines. From the street they are seen only as quiet, unassuming gates of green; but through them unfolds a wide polyrhythmic pulse, a descent into a quilt of gorges.

The extent of Toronto's ravine network is unusual and defines the city. In fact, it is the largest network of ravines of any city in the world.

So, while Montreal has a hill that

everyone can see, and NYC has a park in the centre, Toronto's greatest green-space, the ravine network, lies out of view. And yet it is larger by a significant degree -- 10 500 hectares of wild (the city’s parks are separate green space) -- and not centralized in expensive neighborhoods but equitably distributed amongst all corners. No matter where you are in Toronto, a foray into wilderness is only a short walk away.

The ravines are prehistoric scars on the chest of the city. If you had the geological time-lapse footage for Toronto and fast-for warded to the end of the last ice age, 12 000 years ago, you’d see a threekilometret h i c k c ont inentsized glacier above you right now.

You’d be beneath an ice sheet taller than five CN Towers stacked on top of each other. And that enormous ice sheet is moving, headed north, and as it moves it’s immense weight is carving out millions of long, deep gashes in the bedrock which meltwater flows through and further expands. Eventually the ice sheet retreated north, but it left behind a changed landscape, a Toronto scratched and stretched apart by deep ravines that bisect the city like the lines on your hand.

Today these ancient ravine are like passageways -“great

sunken gardens”, “rooms of green sunlight”, to Toronto poet Anne Michaels -- that reach through the city like fingers, weaving through virtually every neighbourhood. You can enter a ravine at Steeles and Leslie and emerge, hours later, in Cabbagetown. Toronto’s ravines are so distinct, their verdant tendrils forming the city’s unique green handprint from above, that it has been suggested that if the CN Tower is Toronto’s phallic symbol, then the ravines are the feminine corollary.

Suddenly, far from being a flat place, inclusion of the ravines reveals Toronto to be a landscape of inverted hills and unpredictable drops. Some of the ravines are 300400 feet below the surrounding land, many with a steepness only 20° away from vertical. Toronto is, in the phrase of architect Larry Richards, a “San Francisco in reverse.” Though to miss this alter-ego of our city is unsurprising, almost the work of a deliberate conspiracy: much of the city was purposely built around the ravines, the road network bypassing or crossing bridges above them, making it easy to travel through the city totally unaware of the sharp variations in topography. But Toronto is not as flat and straight as its planners have made it seem. We all drive through, past, or over the ravines.

And then there are those who choose to go into them. Novelist Hugh Hood describes Toronto as “a city where sooner or later you find yourself going down into a dark place in the ground.” The majority of the ravines have city-built and wheelchair accessible paved paths.

Other paths are desire lines and are quite rough, more like a dare: Is this a path or am I just hoping it is? Just a few feet into any path, the city drops away, its buildings disappeared behind, the city’s noise and traffic gone. Trees, nature, peace and solitude. You can walk paths without even knowing where you are going. It truly feels like the wild countryside.

The ravines were a favourite haunt of Ernest Hemingway when he lived in Toronto.

Despite the huge number of people who live around them, you can sometimes walk a ravine path and pass nobody for an hour or two.

When you do pass a person going for a walk with the dog, or squeezing a 15-minute hike into a busy day, there is the usual awkward glance and nod system of uncertain human contact. The loneliness here can be a joyous intoxication. On weekends, though, the paths are usually well used and are a good time to go if you don’t want to feel as alone. Many people walk, run, or bike. Some families picnic off the path; the city has even installed metal barbequelooking things in a few locations.

There are people who fish in the ravines. I once met a woman who was collecting wild mushrooms, and I’ve seen people forage for wild (and valuable: $500 to $600 per

pound) American Ginseng, neither ravines take our shit. When the city of which the Toronto Conservation was first built, residents just used the Agency wants you to do. They call it ravines as sewers themselves. poaching.

The ravines have long been the You don’t need to drive three home for what society didn’t want, hours to Algonquin Park to see a shelter for the suppressed and the wildlife. The ravines are like a repressed. There’s about 100 people national park that has been tucked living in the Don Valley ravine. The into a city. Our ravines are connected ravines are a popular destination to the the wilderness north of the for recreational drug users looking city, forming a nature corridor that for a safe and sedate place away animals and plants migrate and drift from people and laws. The smell of up and down through, like a feral weed, or a person hugging a tree highway. The ravines while on acid, is not No matter where uncommon. During are home to more than 762 plant species WWII, a prisoner of (89 are wild edibles), you are in Toronto, war camp was located thousands of mushroom in the ravines, the a foray into subspecies (including prisoners confined in seven hallucinogenic wilderness is only a tents and huts while species), 123 species of clay at the Don short walk away mining birds breed here, and Valley brick works and 19 species of reptiles. the Greenwood clay In the ravines you may come upon pits. The ravines have been a popular clouds of Red Admiral butterflies, spot for gay cruising throughout beavers, pheasants, deer, coyote, Toronto’s history, especially when southern flying squirrel, salmon, it was outlawed and stigmatized. dog-strangling vine, wild grape, During one attempted night time basswood, ironwood, eastern police crackdown in the ravine, a cottonwood, black cherry, balm of plain-clothes cop made contact with Gilead, red fox, red-tailed hawk, a guy who offered sex. When he whitewater, and white pine. But identified himself to make an arrest, inside them they are anything but a he got shoved and fell a considerable list. Life surrounds you and there is distance. The police backed off the no David Attenborough voice to tell entrapment tactics after that; the you what they are. landscape was simply not conducive The ravines are a being in whose to easily enforcing hierarchy. flesh you are entangled. The smell "Orgies easily start and continue of the woods is aromatherapy; you with changing personnel," one man are breathing in wood essential oils recalled, "It is really quite civilized." and the perfume of microorganisms Though it was repression that feasting (there’s a Japanese term led men into the ravines, once there for this: “forest bathing”). Around it provided a pastoral setting for you are trillions of spores, seeds, amour. City librarian Rick Bébout, a viruses and bacteria, many that have gay liberationist, AIDS activist, and never been classified and never will. with the ravines as backdrop, erotic Ravine life sees us and interacts with photographer: “There was the sweet us. In the summer I saw a crayfish, boy leaning on a tree just off the trail a small freshwater lobster, sitting in from the upper park, clearly very a few inches of water in a stream. young and very nervous. … There Trying to get it, it pinched me with was the dark haired boy in black its claws. The other night just after dress pants (a waiter, he said, here sunset, a saw-whet owl alighted on from Belgium) that he got muddy as a branch above me and watched me we slid together down a hill. … The as I wearied up a hill, almost as if it funny little man who wanted us to wanted to make sure I left. take off all our clothes and have sex In a city of 2.7 million, the ravines on a rock in the stream. We did, then are the Wild and Uncolonized. sat naked on a log -- and got our Margaret Atwood wrote that “to bottoms bit by ants. And there was go down into them is to go down Ken Hutchinson. He was there to into sleep, away from the conscious wander and sun, I to take pictures: electrified life of the houses. The of the stream, the viaduct, the piers, ravines are darker, even in the all wonderful. And of course I took day.” Rich people have their houses pictures of him. Ken leaning back built right up against the ravines naked on a fallen limb. And with that -- but not in them. The city spends -- I ran out of film. We didn't have millions encasing ravines’ edges in sex. But I did keep those pictures.” metal cages trying to contain their Perhaps the most under movement and stop erosion or appreciated aspect of the ravines is mudslides. The urban areas of the their great gift to the city’s sensuality. city depend on the ravines’ wild- People say that Toronto is not a nature to improve air quality and romantic city; but have they seen our control flood waters. It was the parkland? There is an intense and destruction wrought by Hurricane lurid plant life: spikes intermingle Hazel on the suburbs that led to with delicate flowers, shuddering the ravines being protected against beauty heighten by thorns. The more suburban development. The ravine shape itself, V, pushes matter ravines are used as a floodplain on top of each other, sliding life bulwark to protect Toronto during onto life. Walking down into the extreme weather events. Whenever ravines brings blood to the cheeks. it rains too much for the sewers, the An Atwood protagonist reflects: “It

thenewspaper.ca

A ravine. Photo credit to: David Stokes

seemed wrong to have this cavity in the city.” The ravines fill the city with poetry and stories, an awareness often beginning in childhood with the nourishment of contact and interchange it provides with other shapes of life, antlered and looptailed and amber-eyed beings whose resplendent weirdness loosens our imaginations. I grew up thinking that in every city children descended into ravines; I knew them as the only place away from parents, society. Toronto poet Elana Wolff alludes to the ravine’s protosexual significance in the lives of young girls: And in the soft mythology of memory, gully triumphant.

Intractably tied to the tail end of girlhood.

Damp gash where trilliums peeked like summer solstice fairies and were snatched.

Toronto resident Murray Seymour, author of a guidebook to the ravines, describes what he felt when discovering the ravines: “One day in desperation, tired beyond measure of walking the endless paved roads of suburbia, I cut across an overgrown field and almost fell into a green, riverine land. I remember even now how I felt I felt my chest expand, breathing in the oxygen from the trees. There was water down below, rushing over stones and darting through rapids. It sounded like water, looked like water, smelled like water. And though there was not a cloud in the sky, my cheek was wet.” Jason Ramsay-Brown, author of the blog Walking with Abbey, travels the ravines with his 6 year old daughter. On Flickr there are thousands of photographers for whom the ravines have been their muse. There is literal buried treasure in the ravines: there’s a story that as the Americans looted our city in April 1813, British soldiers buried their money in Gates Gully.

Many new immigrants, coming from climates where danger lurks proudly in the forest, are wary of the ravines. ‘There’s no poisonous snakes here, no poisonous spiders?’. While there are none of those here, it does require a certain unearned confidence to wander the ravines. There is danger in them — rare flash floods, unleashed dogs, strangers. Especially sobering: the sexual assaults. Anyone who extolls the virtues of the ravines must stress the importance of being careful; tell a friend, bring a phone. You could sprain an ankle or slip on winter

17 ice. Waterways are often deceptively fast moving and very cold, even in the height of summer, and can be deadly if you fall in.

Even light rains can transform trickling streams into raging rivers, death traps that sound and move like fast-moving freight trains and overflow their banks. “The floor of the ravine where light lies broken.”

The most unfortunate ravine community are the people whose bodies are found there. Less unfortunate but still shaken are the people who find them. Bricklayer Charles Edwards was working near Bathurst and Lawrence and decided to take a few minutes' break to walk down into a wooded ravine at the bottom of the street. He hadn't gone very far when he almost stumbled over what he first thought was a sleeping man. He said, "Pardon me." Then he saw the blood.

The man had been shot three times, somewhere else, and dragged there. "I can still see his wide, glassy eyes staring at me.” And the ravines each year give up their share of suicides and unexplained deaths. A woman walking her dog on a Sunday morning stumbled upon skeletal remains in the area just east of Royal York Rd. The remains were wearing only one running shoe and a pill bottle was found on the ground nearby. Nature is beautiful but it is also ceaseless fornication and asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and growing and just rotting away.

The ravines remind you that you’re an animal, a fellow creature of earth; here we tune our animal senses to the sensible terrain, blend our skin with the rain-rippled surface of a creek, mingle our ears with the thunder, our eyes with the molten sky through gold and red in the fall, lush and cool green in spring and summer, solemn cold in the winter. This beauty has an effect: many studies have found increased brain activity in people after a walk in the woods, reduced stress, better memory. The ravines change how you relate to your body. Sliding down a gully, hopping over fallen trees, stepping over a creek and catching yourself at the last moment; the ground is a dance partner. It is never flat. Immense puzzle: shoes avoiding puddles. Matter is soft here, such a contrast to the clean edges of the city and it’s canyons of straight lines and non-living non porous matter.

Some metal stakes abandoned here feel horribly cold, colder than anything in the whole woods. Even the rock here is soft. I’m elated to discover an exposed creekbed with layers of clay that peel off and mould in my hand. This stuff supports all our houses.

The ravines have never been more important to a good life. Dutch media scholar Christoph Lindner argued recently that in an age of population

density and near constant technological distraction where we’re becoming irradiated and sedentary beings, smart cities ought to create "slow-spots" -pockets of silence and attention that could house "creative sites of decelerated practice and experience." Well, Toronto already has these places. How lucky Toronto is. Here’s Toronto green entrepreneur Geoff Cape: "Every smart city in the world is trying to figure out how to develop a green strategy and a sustainability strategy. Ours is embedded in our landscape. It's here. We just need to pay attention to it."

Once there paying attention is easy. This is a landscape of continual interruptions of forms endless layered and shadowed against one another, terrifyingly rich, full of noticings and adventures. of the healthy kind. A painted place, fractal, as intense in each spot as all others. encourages a constant and promiscuous concentration. In the span of a few minutes: Two squirrels make impromptu shadow puppets.

A swarm of dragon flies. A tiny blue butterfly. A tree that drops a fragrant fruit. A chipmunk that sounds like a snake rattling. A strange strange orange fruit with a barb. A graffiti tagged ‘fuck’ on the opening tunnel of a buried creek.

The tunnel is big enough to enter and traverse underground in near total darkness for 50 meters, chanting to stave off fear. I follow the creek for the next 20 minutes until it entered a tunnel running beneath someones backyard. I find vines you can literally swing on, and do.

Natural ampitheatre and two chairs and someones script notes. A plum left in the middle of a stump like an offering to the woods. A fire pit with an abandoned paperback. I spend a few minutes staring into a clear pool watching the drops fractal. I feel high. I bend down and touch the closest piece of bark. Inside is a spider menacingly guarding her egg sac. I mouth an I’m sorry and return the bark.

A study finds that looking at nature photos or taking a walk in the woods "makes people care more for the future" and "entices people to prefer greater, delayed rewards over smaller, immediate rewards". The more we know about the ravines the better we can protect and respect them and use them, even if their main use is to put aside all cares. For to

Photo credit to: Ruffin_ready via Flickr

forest bath is actually to get dirty, you are truly being bathed, touched, immersed, nature gives the body a sort of reverse scrubbing, actually made dirtier but by things that are wild, and, hence, “cleansed” of civilization. The woods help keep the city sane. As one newspaper writer puts it, “After a long trip home on a crowded subway — where two jerks clogged the door, tripping everyone who came on and off — well, a trip to the woods is just the antidote to manslaughter.”

I come to a small clearing nestled near the riverbank. This used to be the home of Toronto’s Peace Lady, who appeared throughout the city in flowing white and waving peace signs on bridges. She lived in this spot for 25 years, her tarplin encampment covered with religious messages. No idea where she is now; it is strange to finally stand here. The ravines are full of other departed spirits. One time, bending a crooked trail just off this path, I stood less than 10 feet from a fully horned deer buck. 100 years ago, right here was a farming hamlet called Clark’s Settlement or Clarksville, one of the first communities in the area. The village had a smith, school and church.

I can’t find any sign of its foundations here. Nothing will bring back the thousands of huge pines that grew here and were felled to make masts for the British navy. The original name for the Don River was Nechengquakekonk.

I let that name possess my English tongue. In 2000, digging for a housing development beside an east-end ravine unearthed ceramic sherds. Eight months of archaeological excavation revealed a 600-year-old Huron village that supported a population of 800 to 1,000, with 16 or 17 longhouses plus sweat lodges and hearths. Over 19,000 artifacts, including stone tools and weapons, copper beads and pipes were found.

That’s the most extensive proof of human life in the ravines, but it’s not the oldest, not by a long shot. Relics unearthed in Gates Gully ravine have been dated from the early archaic period (circa 8000 BC).

That’s ten thousand years ago. At that time, the ravines were young. We are only just discovering the ravines. A partner to us for our lives while in this city. All its stories and beings. In the evening as transpiration exits the autumn leaves, the mist rises like a crowd of ghosts. • David Stokes

18 November 2013

The march against Monsanto

The boomers' gift to millenials

An introduction to the anti GMO movement

A

fter years of acceptance, Canada is now experiencing a growing movement against the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in agriculture. On October 12, 2013, the “March against Monsanto” move-

The GMO Debate

Unpaid internships

ment, also known as “Occupy Monsanto,” focused its efforts on Monsanto Co., an agricultural biotech leader in the use of genetically modified seeds.

Health Risks

The term "genetically modified" refers to Most processed food products in Canada the alteration of genetic material in plants contain at least some genetically modified or animals. More specifically, it involves the ingredients. Despite the fact that most combination of genes from different species European countries have significantly that would not come together naturally or in restricted or outright banned the use of GMOs traditional cross breeding. in agriculture, Canada and the US continue to Nearly all GMOs are theoretically designed approve the use of GMOs based on studies that to withstand diseases and contain pesticides, were created by the same corporations which thereby delivering higher food yields. stand to benefit from them most.

Monsanto Co. and proponents of GMO’s Initiative I-522, commonly known as the argue that agriculture needs to produce more genetically engineered labelling initiative[5], food to feed a growing population. The has not had any success so far in America company fails to mention, however, that and unfortunately Canada follows one-third of the food we produce for suit; Heath Canada does not require human consumption every year— companies to label GMO products. approximately 1.3 billion tonnes— Tami Monroe Canal, founder of gets lost or wasted, according to March Against Monsanto, and the United Nations Environment millions of other protesters Programme (UNEP). A logical hope to change this. They step, therefore, wouldn't be demand, and rightly so, that to make more food but governments investigate to figure out a better the potential health risks way to distribute associated with GMOs, what we're already and force companies such producing. as Monsanto Co. to label The Global their GMO products so Citizens' Report in that consumers might 2011 on the State of have a choice in the GMOs, coordinated by type of foods they Navdanya International buy[6]. of India, also explains that The GMO genetically engineered (GE) debate is definitely crops have failed to produce here to stay. With more food while creating companies around dangerous superweeds, which like Monsanto can be killed only by using Co., which more toxic substances such as manufactures 2,4-D (an ingredient found toxic substances in Agent Orange)[3]. such as Agent For those of us who do A bad seed. Whether it should work for Monsanto or Nick Orange and not know what Agent Cave is yet to be seen. g e n e t i c a lly Illustration by: A.I. Marin Orange is, the Monsanto modify their Co website admits it is products to one of the 15 herbicides the US government create superfluous "super foods,” it is no wonder used in the Vietnam War for aggressive that people have become sceptical about the purposes. Several other organizations, usage of GMOs in agriculture. Yet initiatives including the United States Department Affairs that have been aimed at informing the public of Veteran Affairs recognize that "concerns has been struck down. We do not know what about the health effects from these chemicals is in our food, Health Canada does not allow it. continue.”

We cannot know if we should expect any longAnother disturbing quality of genetically term health effects if companies are not held engineered organisms is that characteristics accountable. The March against Monsanto, such as higher nutrition and faster rate of one of the growing movements against GMOs, growth are singled out by the biotech industry is urging people to "take back" their food, and in the hopes of creating a sort of "super perhaps it’s time we did! • food.” The reason why humanity necessarily Sigrid Roman requires food that is enhanced nutritionally The preceding views are not necessarily shared by the is not exactly clear, and despite the industry's newspaper. promises, none of the GMO traits on the market actually offer such consumer benefits.

Meanwhile, the growing debate on the risks of GMOs continues.

W

e have been called the broke, immature, and entitled generation.

Time Magazine called us “lazyentitled narcissists.” Forbes claimed that we are destroying the housing market with our “Live-at-Home Lifestyle.”

Collectively, we are a generation of 20-somethings who have yet to reach the greatness of our parents—or their parents, for that matter.

We are the known as the Millennial Generation. And, frankly, being a Millennial is tough.

The continued analysis of the Millennial Generation has often been from the perspective of Baby Boomers who have been quick to blame Millennials for their failure to launch.

Even though it was the Baby Boomers who held the launch codes.

The perception of the Millennial Generation has been largely over-simplified. The reality is a much more complex and messy narrative. Trust me on this one. We learned that the world was complex from you, Boomers.

In fact, Millennials are the most educated generation in history. Spurred towards higher education on the praise and encouragement of Boomers, Millennials enrolled to postsecondary institutions in record numbers. According to Statistics Canada, full-time post-secondary enrollment increased by 39 per cent from 1997 to 2008.

The Boomers made it easier for us to finance our education with the expansion of national and private student loan services.

And for this we are forever indebted to you. According to the Canadian Federation of Students, the average university student will graduate with $37 000 in public and private debt.

The impact of an indebted

generation has lasting effects.

Student loan borrowers tend to be less likely to generate significant savings, make financial investments, and make large purchases.

The impact of which could weaken future economic growth.

To add insult to injury, Millennials are graduating into the troughs of a global recession.

Those eager to find work are faced with a labour market depleted of opportunity. In Toronto, youth unemployment has been as high as 18 per cent, as reported by the CBC. The difficulties for Millennials’ joining the labour force have been exacerbated by Boomers forced to return to the work force beyond the usual retirement age due to investments weakened by the recession.

The new economic reality has pushed Millennials to embrace any and all opportunity to gain work experience —without exception. It is under such conditions that our generation has reluctantly embraced the unpaid internship.

“Working for free, by the way, is supposed to be against the law,” decried Boomer and CBC host Rick Mercer, in an October rant.

Unpaid internships are an increasingly prevalent job opportunity that subvert the long-standing cultural practice of paying employees for work.

Boomers were notorious for championing socially subversive counter-cultures.

Perhaps the unpaid internship is the latest iteration of the Boomer consciousness.

Let’s hope so. We are tired of cleaning up after your catastrophes, Boomers. • Shaun Shepherd

The preceding views are not necessarily shared by the newspaper.

thenewspaper.ca

19

The revolutionary Brand

Rusty Toronto pipes

Celebrity’s discource may influence a generation

Citizens and industries alike could do more to preserve the health of our Great Lake

He may not be Marx, but Russell Brand has done his part for revolutionary disourse. Illustration by: A.I. Marin

W R.C. Harris Water Works in Toronto Ontario. Photo credit to: Jennyrotten via Flickr

I

n 2000, seven people died and 7 000 citizens fell ill in Walkerton, Ontario, after drinking tap water infected with e. coli. After inquiring into the issue, environmental activist Kristen Tully co-founded the Lake Ontario Waterkeepers, whose mandate is that “nobody in our watershed should ever get sick from water again. It should be swimmable, drinkable, and fishable. You should be able to touch the water, swim in it, find fish, and get food from the water without being sick.”

Thirteen years later, Tully is still fighting for clean water in Ontario. Over the final weekend of October, she joined four environmentalists on a panel at UofT to discuss the negative impacts Torontonians are having on the Great Lakes.

Panelists argued that the main causes of the Great Lakes’ degradation is that Canadians devalue the importance of water and lack knowledge of our water systems.

Water is the most valuable physical resource on the planet and Canada holds 20 per cent of global freshwater in the Great Lakes. Pollution in the Great Lakes jeopardizes water ecosystems, biodiversity, and human health. Water is an entity that humans need to survive—a fact many take for granted.

With mass engagement in the discourse of water protection,

however, positive change will be fluid.

Torontonians have an extremely significant impact on the health of the water system; Toronto acts as an enormous watershed, which means that topographically the city declines into Lake Ontario. Therefore, melted rain and snow are carried into the lake through runoff and street drains—carrying with it the pollution of the city, such as oil puddles from cars, cigarette butts, plastic bags, and the like.

Tully posited that there are two main indicators dictating the health of water resources: energy usage and wastewater treatment—otherwise known as sewage treatment.

In Toronto, the sewage system is over one hundred years old, which to replace would cost the city over $300-million.

The problem with these older systems is that stormwater and sewage is combined in the same pipe. Therefore, heavy rain or snowmelt can overload these pipes, sending sewage spilling into the lake untreated.

During the Toronto flood of July 2013, more sewage spilled into Lake Ontario in one day than would ordinarily occur in an entire year. Moreover, floods of this calibre are set happen more frequently due to effects of climate change.

Human society is built on the consumption of energy, which

will always be needed. Power plants, however—especially nuclear power generators—are incredibly harmful to water resources. In order to generate a power plant, excess amounts of water are needed, which affects fish and aquatic systems.

When energy waste is dumped into the lakes, it causes irreparable damage.

Power plants discharge a combination of heavy metals and salts which accumulate in the water, negatively affecting water quality and aquatic life.

Additionally, water ecosystems are harmed by the discharge of radioactive elements from nuclear power plants.

So what is the average Torontonian to do?

Panelist Lindsay Telfer stated: “We must make a connection with water; we need to know where our water is coming from and where it is going—we just aren’t educated on how polluted our waters are.”

The panelists stressed the idea that people must become aware of their environmental impact—and that making something personal is always a great motivator to enact change.

Once this is achieved, discussion with our peers, family, and colleagues spreads the concern.

Only when this discourse is initiated will meaningful action be produced.• Clarrie Feinstein

hat was supposed to be just another interview with Russell Brand now seems en route to becoming a defining cultural moment, the sign of a resurrection in revolutionary politics that many thought had been buried in the same grave as flower-power and Bob Dylan’s folk-rock sensibilities, rotting beneath a tombstone that says “the 1960s.”

Interviewer Jeremy Paxman acted as a stand-in for the traditional establishment: a staid and paternalistic figure whose understanding of the world does not extend beyond the realm of the status-quo.

Brand serves as his opposite: a personification of revolt, who in dress, behaviour, and language subverts traditional norms and seems to stretch the limits of possibilities.

The clash of these two intractable personalities reflects the economic contradictions that embroil the world in a competition between the haves and the have-nots. It is a material reality asserting itself through a public discourse that has, for far too long, been completely one-sided.

A single interview won’t upend shallow political punditry and pro-corporate news.

Nevertheless, the popularity of Brand’s interview signals that a new and critical discourse is mounting a successful challenge to the official version of events.

Antonio Gramsci, a founding member of the Italian Communist Party who was later imprisoned

by Benito Mussolini, wrote about the emergence of such a discourse, terming it “counterhegemonic.” For Gramsci, “hegemony” is the most

pernicious form of propaganda and control used by the ruling elites. Instead of securing control through the use of guns and batons, hegemony is a society-wide internalization of the views of the ruling class; the broad acceptance of their narrow interests and values as immutable and universal. Only once a counter-hegemonic discourse is widely accepted can revolutionary movements have any chance of success.

Occupy Wall Street was a flicker of today’s counterhegemony, introducing the concept of the mutually exclusive interests of the bottom 99 per cent and the top one1 per cent. It transformed the issue of poverty from one of individual failure to systemic failure, and made space for the sentiment that the game is rigged, that poverty does not always grow out of laziness and stupidity, but instead grows from the avarice and greed of those above one’s station.

The virality of the Brand interview is a sign that the flicker is growing into a flame and that it may just yet turn into an inferno, opening up further space at the material level for contestation in politics, economics, and the streets. It may even allow for a chance at a real revolution. It is a chance for all the unpaid interns, exploited workers, and debt burdened students to embrace the rage and optimism shown by that flamboyant long-haired trickster, and to take the reins away from the bankers and the billionaires; a chance to remake the world and themselves. • Peter Liakhov

The preceding views are not necessarily shared by the newspaper.

20 November 2013

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO STUDENTS’ UNION LOCAL 98, CANADIAN FEDERATION OF STUDENTS

THE ANNUAL

GENERAL MEETING WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2013 | OISE AUDITORIUM 6PM-9PM | REGISTRATION STARTS AT 4:30 PM 1. Call to Order

7. Consideration of Motions Duly Served

2. Welcoming Remarks & Guest Speaker 3. President's Address & Question Period 4. Approval of Minutes 5. Receipt of the 2012-2013 Audited Financial Statements

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6. Appointment of Auditors for 2013-2014

8. Adjournement

Every member at the University of Toronto Studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Union (full-time undergraduate students at the St.George and Mississauga campuses) can participate in this meeting.

Wheelchair accessible. If you have any accessibility requests, require ASL interpretation, childcare or any other inquiries, please contact: CAMERON WATHEY | VICE PRESIDENT INTERNAL & SERVICES | VPINTERNAL@UTSU.CA

By November 22, 2013

VISIT US AT WWW.UTSU.CA

FACEBOOK.COM/UTSU98

TWITTER @UTSU98

Proxy forms will be available at the UTSU office from November 11-18 for members who will be representing other members who cannot attend.

A pre-registration will be available for individual members between November 18-25 for those who wish to avoid a registration line up.

thenewspaper.ca

21

Life after death

Gilmour

New tricks in a dying industry

An old story

D

eath can be a real bummer. “Passing away” is a misleading phrase, implying as it does that when you pass, you’re gone for good.

If only it were so easy! No, while your eternal soul may pass freely into realms unknown, your earthly remains begin to let off a most unsavoury fragrance within a matter of days, if not hours—leaving your kith and kin to dispose of you before decomposition advances any further.

Tradition would have it that your body be cremated, buried, or left on a mountaintop for predatory birds to eat. But in this modern age of individuality, why limit your posthumous plans to such conformist arrangements? What other possibilities exist to celebrate your life and sustain your memory in perpetuity? After investigating potential options, the newspaper has compiled a novel list: Keep on spinnin’ Will your loved ones remember you for your stellar mixtapes, or your smooth radio voice? Why not send them one final mix from beyond the grave? UK-based And Vinyly will mix your ashes in with some vinyl, and press up to 30 records with music or vocal recordings of your choice for £3 000 ($5 000 Canadian). For a minimalist approach, you can also choose to leave the records blank, so playing them yields only the crackles and pops of your ashes.

Everything’s better under the sea If the idea of your remains sitting on someone’s mantelpiece doing nothing forever depresses you, consider Eternal Reefs. Based in Decatur, Georgia, this company will mix your ashes into a concrete “Pearl,” and place it into the centre of a reef ball, upon which various types of marine life soon flourish, including coral. You get a 6” bronze plaque, and can include small mementos embedded in the concrete. Service starts at only $2 000 US, cremation not included.

Baby, you’re a firework Plastic bag no more—you can literally become a firework. Many companies, including UK-based Heavens Above

Fireworks, will mix your ashes into fireworks, simultaneously scattering your ashes and dazzling the gathered crowd, starting from around £1 000 ($1 680 Canadian). Alternatively, try their more affordable takehome model—they make the fireworks, and you take care of the launch yourself.

Make your relatives starry-eyed If fireworks aren’t getting you high enough, why not fulfill your dreams of space posthumously? Celestis has been launching bits of dead people into the sky since 1997, including Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. Assuming you’re willing to wait until their next scheduled launch, one-to-seven grams of ash can be deposited into a specially designed spacecraft, and your loved ones can watch in awe as you’re fired off into space. Round trips start at $995, while Earth orbit is $4 995, and lunar orbit is $12 500.

Ashes are a girl’s best friend One of the best-known alternative options for memorialization is LifeGem—an artificial diamond created from human remains. Starting at $2 690 US for a 0.10-0.19 carat diamond, this option isn’t cheap, but if the idea of a loved one wearing you around on their finger all day pleases you, you may want to try a new life as an artificial diamond. A wide variety of colours and styles are available to capture your personality.

A

couple Friday nights back, I ran into Victoria College sessional lecturer David Gilmour at a bar, a man I had not met before, and whom I had never intended to write about. He is a great drinking companion.

It took me some time to recognize him, but then he introduced himself as an “award-winning author” and, later, “David.”

We spoke, of course, about the controversy that erupted around his literary, pedagogical, and social views. As has been previously reported, he again defended himself by saying that the journalist who interviewed him caused a fuss over very little, that he teaches what he knows, that he teaches what he knows very well, and that what he knows just happens to be, more or less, experiences he shares—the stories of middleaged white authors.

Virginia Woolf and Alice Munro were two female authors I thought he held in equal esteem to men. Woolf, yes.

Munro, he called “boring.”

He put September’s controversy about his comments and syllabus in the larger context of UofT’s history, arguing that UofT is fighting against criticism of it its own literary history, when

curricula were comprised of old white heterosexual men.

Now, Gilmour suggested, his own critics charge him to be deliberately undermining attempts to diversify and broaden those curricula.

He alleged that the interim head of the English Department, Paul Stevens, was trying to gather support to oust Gilmour from the university, even though Gilmour is not employed by the English Department. When his interview with Hazlitt magazine was published, Stevens posted on Facebook, saying, “[Gilmour’s remarks] constitute a travesty of all we stand for.” He added, “I will be pursuing the matter further today.”

Stevens replied to my inquiry about Gilmour’s claim by stating, “English and Vic are discrete operations. We have no say in their hiring policies or practices and we have not been in contact with them about Mr Gilmour.” A soft question on my part, given that Stevens had had a meeting with President David Naylor and Victoria College principal Angela Esterhammer on the subject.

No action was taken by Victoria or central administration, possibly because Gilmour is as strong a teacher as he says he is. I have not taken a class with him,

but after having spoken to a sampling of his few pupils, I assume that Esterhammer and Vic brass shares their complex views of him.

The young women I spoke to preferred not to go on record, because they couldn’t quite decide what to say about him. He offended them and sometimes disgusted them, but they also respected him as a teacher and a critic.

In one case, Gilmour offered to give serious criticism on the essays submitted to him. The young woman didn’t bother, but after reading her essay, he emailed her requesting to do so.

She told me he was delighted by her essay. “Any professor would be lying if they said this wasn’t a great essay,” he wrote to her, along with more effusive praise.

Her reaction was a mixture of flattery and revulsion.

In another case, a young woman keeps Gilmour’s writing advice at the top of each of her essay drafts: “Cut the fairies; kill your darlings.”

My experience with Gilmour was charming, intelligent, and warm that night, but he said some stupid shit I won’t put down here. I understand better now why he was a media sensation. • Yukon Damov

Get revenge from beyond the grave For the avid outdoorsy types, Alabama-based Holy Smoke will mix ash into ammunition, either for display or use—perhaps to kill the bear that killed you? A pound of ash produces 250 shotshells, although a range of ammunition choices is available to suit your preference.

Starting at $950 US, going out with a bang has never been so affordable. • Grant Oyston

Cheer up! New industries have found a way to make yours a death worth dying!

Illustration by: NICK RAGETLI

22 November 2013

On the spot

The end of physical media

A look at the rising popularity of improvisational comedy

R

ecent years have seen a meteoric rise in the popularity of comedy as a form of entertainment. Stand-up in particular has evolved, requiring that comedians be less celebrity funnymen and more household heroes. The leather suited ravings of Eddie Murphy have been replaced with the tuxedo trim effervescence of Aziz Ansari—audiences have seemingly abandoned the larger-than-life personas of the 80s in favour of the coolly relatable observations of modern comedians. It is in this shift that improvisational comedy has been quietly on the ascent.

People improvise all the time. This does not necessarily make us good comedians; however, it is here—in the ebb and flow of life—that comedy does finds its roots.

Improvisational comedy is about acting and reacting to those around you.

This is what makes improvisational comedy much more immersive than standup. It is a shared experience, and the heightened interaction between audience and comic allows for a greater connection. Trained improv comedians understand the nuances of the art form, and they will tell you it is not a solo dance, but a waltz.

“Improv comedy is meant to be seen in a comedy club where the audience is involved,” said Pavia. “A good improviser will create interesting characters and honest portrayals for people to draw inspiration from.”

“If I'm washing a glass in a scene and I set it on a counter, I have to make sure that I don't walk through that counter or any other objects in the kitchen later in the scene. That’s object work.”

One of the foremost examples of hilarious, engaging improv is the acclaimed TV show Whose Line Is It Anyway.

“What Whose Line has that makes it so good is its performers. Colin, Ryan, and

Wayne are at the top of their game. They have good focus and they are still able to maintain the feel of a comedy club by having scenes that involve audience members.”

Whose Line has recently been renewed for a ninth season after a six-year hiatus, and it is no surprise.

Audiences want to be more engaged in their forms of entertainment, and improv helps people relate, and not merely observe.

This trend has found its way into the work of popular stand-up comedians as well.

Acclaimed comic Bill Burr records a weekly podcast— along with handfuls of other comedians—where he, well, improvises. He talks colloquially about current events and his own experiences.

Nothing is planned, but any listener will tell you that his eccentric assessments of everyday life are not only amusing, but also alluring and rather fascinating.

Marc Maron used the popularity of his podcast as a staging point to launch his own TV show: Maron. His podcast sees him interviewing a variety of comedians and comedy writers in a compelling and deeply intimate way—so much so that guests have walked off set mid-interview because of the striking sincerity of his probing. In those times he has one option: adapt and improvise, and his skill in this regard has earned him an eponymous television series.

Improv is the core of what true comedy is. It is a mirror that reflects the life and times of us as people, and because of this it is quickly becoming a mainstay of the entertainment industry. Every show is different, evolving depending on the audience and the actors.

This makes it an experience which is not only unique, but a lot of fun as well. •' Calan Panchoo

How capitalist technological advancement is destroying simple pleasures

Internet killed the physical media stars. Photo credit to: Yukon Damov

A

ldous Huxley’s Brave New World is widely considered a dystopian novel, yet on a certain level this classification does not make sense. The inhabitants of that universe are almost entirely happy, and can easily maintain their happiness through taking well-designed pills. Even the foundations of his happiness are solid as children of the brave new world are designed and conditioned from birth to be happy with their lots in life. So why is that society considered dystopian? Perhaps its because it dis-includes certain individuals, labeling them as savages. But this does not make the universe dystopian- it simply makes it a science-fiction portrayal of the world’s inegalitarian reality. I would argue instead that this brave new world is seen as dystopian, not because of the daily realities faced by its citizens, but because of how these realities differ from our own. People who fear this world do not fear living in it, so much as they fear the process of getting to it.

In Brave New World, problems can be solved with simple medication. This is understandably disturbing to people used to living in a more intricate manner. Yet, perhaps it is worth asking, whether our replacement of many older technologies with e-versions, is equivalent to diluting life’s challenges with fix-all pills.

It is our generation that will perhaps experience the dystopian side of this shift.

Visits to the library and the

video store (and in later years CD stores) were events that gave my childhood meaningnot just because of the end products I got from these trips, but because these trips put a silver lining on the clouds of errands. These trips were a chance to enter little worlds with distinct atmospheres and filled with potentially exciting material. The convenience of the internet may have spelled an end to this era, however.

Blockbuster has gone extinct in Canada. HMV has failed in the America. Borders books has shut-down completely.

While it may be ironic for a socialist such as myself to bemoan the demise of these big corporate entities, I see my reaction as a response to a bigger picture issue. The fall of these giants illustrates one of capitalism’s internal contradictions-in its drive for efficiency it cannot even protect its own. Meanwhile, citizens are left to download “Big Yellow Taxi”, quoting it by singing “don’t it always seem to go/that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til its gone”. The decline of physical media shows how the free market is not the democratic entity its proponents make it out to be. Joseph Esposito of the Scholarly Kitchen argues that people prefer physical to e-books, but chose the latter when looking to save time and money. In a better world, people could reap the benefits of technology without having to worry about destroying physical stores and the art they contain.

The current system to a certain degree, however, operates as a

zero sum game Luckily, all hope is not lost. A reaction against the destruction of physical media has led to a recovery for vinyl records, with UK sales doubling in the past year. While things look bleaker for DVDs and video stores, some small stores have managed to stay open in the face of Blockbuster’s collapse by offering specialized libraries and more expert customer service. Still it’s a struggle, as expressed by filmmaker and ex-video store owner Jon Spira who said he felt tempted to spray paint “use it or lose it” across his Oxford store.

Physical media and its stores provide pleasant, low keys experiences that we can add to our daily routines. The existence of physical media is also artistically valuable. Take the Cat Stevens record Tea for the Tillerman, for instance. In the age of iTunes it’s the hit “Wild World” plus 10 other simple, pleasant songs you could choose to download. As a cohesive, physical entity, however, it’s an anthology of songs of journey, love, protest and existentialism.

Its a musical-storybook of a grown person’s nursery rhymes complete with whimsical cover art. This is not to say we should respect technological progress, but progress should not destroy the joys we have and confine us to the e-world. As Stevens sings in the opening track from the aforementioned album “I know we’ve /come along way/ we’re changing day to day/but tell me/ where do the children play?”• Zach Morgenstern

thenewspaper.ca

23

A Penn with different points

P

Magician preaches intolerance and understanding

enn Jillette, who forms the talking half of the worldfamous magic team Penn and Teller, has become a major figure in an expanding global community of atheists. He has frequently used his celebrity status to promote his personal atheistic and libertarian views through spectacular magical acts in his Vegas show and through eight seasons of the critically acclaimed TV show Penn and Teller: Bullshit!

The Centre for Inquiry Canada (CFI) invited Penn to the Medical Science building November 2, 2013. The CFI is an international educational charity that provides a community for atheists, agnostics, skeptics, and secular humanists—a demographic that now includes about 25 per cent of all Canadians During his talk, he dedicated plenty of time to bashing religious opinions, particularly when it came to the religious argument that it is impossible to be moral without religion. Jillette rejected the notion, saying, “They can’t say ‘god is good’ unless morality comes first.”

Jillette took up much of his time at UofT talking about his unexpected friendship with American conservative news icon Glenn Beck. Jillette said that Beck is often “completely hated and wrong about everything” he talks about, but praised him as a friend because “he will let you say anything to him.”

Prominent atheists, including Jillette’s personal idol, comedy icon Tommy Smothers, criticized him for appearing so often on Beck’s show, because it supposedly gave power to his right-wing religious agenda. “I was the first and only person to say on Glenn Beck that there is

no god”, Jillete told the crowd of at least 200. He voiced a viewpoint Beck’s conservative audience is seldom exposed to.

Throughout the evening Jillette referred back to the value of hearing the other side, taking the position that atheists shouldn’t discourage the religious right from proselytizing their views, even if they perceive them to be false. “If you fundamentally believe that life is eternal and you don’t say anything, it’s immoral. The best way to know if you’re wrong is to say it everywhere.”

He then heavily criticized the positions of skeptics such as astronomer Phil Plait, who have called on atheists to adopt a “don’t be a dick” mantra in order to convert religious people.

Jillette was “appalled” at the notion, saying that softening your own opinions in order to manipulate others shows a “lack of respect and love for humanity for ways to win friends and influence people. If you have a battle plan to turn this person around, the moment you have it, you’re a pig.”

Jillette concluded his talk by stressing the importance of maintaining a discourse between opposing ideas. “Tolerance to me is just condescending; I think we should be always arguing.” Jillette referred to his dispute with Beck as ultimately what inspired him to pen his new book. Rather than simply tolerating another person’s views, “We should be insulted and challenged—the answer to bad speech is more speech.”

CAPTION: Jillette stopped by the Medical Science Building November 2, 2013 to give a talk, take questions, and sign copies of his new book, Every Day Is An Atheist Holiday. • Dylan Hornby

On the Offbeat Arts A monthly catalog of the weird, the up-and-comers, the underground, and the offbeat artists that make the Canadian independent scene buzz.

by Lisa Monozlai Go to www.thenewspaper.ca for this month’s spotlight on illustrator Laura Gonsalves

Magician and militant atheist Penn Jillette likely would not have come across well in 17th century Salem. Photo credit to: GRANT OYSTON

Emma Gavey PhD candidate in Chemistry.

Goals: Develop new magnetic complexes for memory devices.

Improve our health care.

Apply for Graduate Studies at Brock.

There are 44 programs, an array of specializations, co-op opportunities and a world of possibilities. discover.brocku.ca

For both sides of the brain.

Brock University | Niagara | Canada

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2013-10-23 7:01 PM

24

THE COMIC

Toronto-native and comic creator Cameron Stewart was in town recently promoting his latest hardcover, Sin Titulo (see above), from Dark Horse Comics. Quite possibly his opus, Stewart crafted it over the span of six years which has won him several prestigious awards, solidified his status in the upper echelon of respectable creators in the medium and lead to more prosperous work on popular mainstream franchises. As impactful and engaging an experience that Sin Titulo holds for prospective buyers, the not-so-hidden truth is that it is a compilation of episodic webcomics, meaning that it is available in its entirety online for free. • by: Alex Correa

All are welcome!

COMMENT

CAMPUS

thenewspaper.ca

What's the most meaningful thing on your person?

Gian, second-year, International Relations. The broken cross that he carries in his wallet, given to him by an Aunt in Ireland. “It keeps good luck and is for good health.”

Klaudia, second-year, politics major with a double minor English and Cinema Studies. The rock in her wallet: “It is from the statue of St. Anthony in Albania. if you go, you’re supposed to bring a rock home, because it brings you good luck.”

Elena, second-year, International Relations. Her ring: "It is my boyfriend's, but it didn't fit him; we're doing long distance right now. I spin it when I'm bored or studying." ).

Photo credit to: GRANT OYSTON