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News

The McGill Daily, Thursday, November 20, 2008

3

The eating experiment: four students keep it local Greening McGill initiative supports Montreal and regional food producers Hayley Lapalme The McGill Daily

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our Greening McGill students are coming to the close of a two-week challenge to eat food produced within a 100-mile radius of Montreal, a project designed to demonstrate that it’s possible to eat locally.

Aynsley Merk, Ian Vogel, Tim Dowling, and Johanna Paquin have planned their diet exclusively around food coming from an area bounded

by Burlington, Vermont to the South, Jean Baptiste to the North, Ottawa to the West, and Sherbrooke to the East. An online blog tracks their experience.

“I don’t think about what we can’t have, but what we can have,” said Merk. “I look forward to what will come into season, and it changes every week.”

Eating locally both saves on fossil fuels burned to import food and supports fair payment for farmers.

Supporters of the movement swear that local food just simply tastes better; naturally-grown produce arrives fresh in comparison to fruits and vegetables cooped up during longdistance travel.

The Greening Mcgill group was inspired by Vancouver duo of Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon, who documented their year-long experiment with local food in the bestseller The 100 Mile Diet.

McGill’s experimenting locavores searched for local food by metro, foot, phone, and on the Internet.

Participants found it challenging to make time to buy produce directly from local farms and expanded their food diversity beyond an initial reliance on eggs and potatoes.

Vogel explained that misleading

Evan Newton / The McGill Daily

This little heffer was born and raised on Montreal soil, and it shows. food labels made it difficult to be sure that products were made locally.

“Foods are often labelled ‘Produit du Quebec,’ but it might just be the processing that is local and not the ingredients,” he said.

While all four admitted to spending far more time in the kitchen than normal, they maintain it’s possible to adapt to local eating.

“As long as you are willing to change your lifestyle and diet a bit, you could do this diet at any time if you wanted,” Dowling said.

The group avoided processed goods and mega stores like Provigo,

which tend to carry imported and long-distance products.

The students explained that local eating doesn’t break the bank. They could afford pricier goods like honey and local, organic Liberty dairy products with the money saved by cutting out caffeine and take-out. All participants saved money due to the nearimpossibility of eating at restaurants.

For good sources of local foods, the group suggested FrigoVert, McGill’s Organic Campus, Jardin de la Renaissance, community garden projects, networking and meal-sharing with other locavores, and dump-

ster diving.

Matthew Hawco, a volunteer at Organic Campus, suggested the group’s weekly food baskets as a convenient source of local produce. The baskets are stocked with fruits and vegetables from Farm True Food Ecostere, a family farm an hour outside of Montreal.

“Through the winter we have root vegetables and even apples, which can be stored in a cold room,” Hawco said, explaining that basket orders wane from almost 100 to about 30 through the cold months, when favourite produce items like leafy greens are no longer available.

While none of the students are planning to commit strictly to the diet once the experiment is up, there is a consensus that they are more willing and better equipped to seek out local foods in the future. Greening McGill will amass the tips and experiences of these students in a distributable form.

“I haven’t eaten this well since I got here in September. The meals have been wonderful and often the four of us will meet and make meals,” said Dowling. “Now it is sort of becoming routine, I don’t even feel like I am being challenged, because I have it figured out enough.”

Montreal shows solidarity with same-sex couples across the border Ambreen Walji The McGill Daily

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ith rain-drenched flags and soggy signs, roughly 35 activists marched through the rain Saturday to protest Proposition 8, California’s ban on same-sex marriage, and other heteronormative referenda passed in the November 4 U.S. elections.

Queer McGill organized the protest as a gesture of solidarity with activists demonstrating in the U.S. Individuals, groups, and organizations committed to promoting gender equality in Montreal joined with some people who fought to gain same-sex marriage in Canada united against what Rebecca Dooley, Political Action coordinator for

Queer McGill, called “institutional violence against gay marriage.”

“There are different positions in the queer community on whether or not marriage is the goal or whether or not we should be focusing on something else,” said Dooley. “[These bans are] an injustice, and so it’s something we can all be disappointed in, whether you’re Canadian or American.”

November 4 was a bittersweet day for the American queer community and its allies, with Barack Obama elected president as California banned gay marriage. Obama’s victory empowered one minority group black Americans but the bans disempowered the queer community.

The group marched from the Roddick Gates, along St. Catherine, to the American Consulate, where

they stayed for about 20 minutes.

“Because of the rain, it was a short protest,” Dooley said. “But it was organized and clear in its message.”

It is unlikely, though, claimed Harold Waller, professor of American politics at McGill, that out-of-state and out-of-country protests will significantly affect voter attitudes on state issues. Protests are more effective in relaying public dissatisfaction, he said.

Waller did not expect same-sex marriage will fare well in the States.

“Because California is the largest American state, and a liberal state, the ban slows down the trend toward acceptance of gay marriage,” said Waller.

According to Daniel Cere, a professor of Religious Studies who testified in June 2005 to a Parliamentary

committee studying the bill, the debate in the United States remains significantly more polarized than the debate in Canada ever was.

“In Canada, you could resolve the decision as one political decision at the federal level, but in the U.S. it’ll play out state by state in a series of polarized debates,” said Cere.

While courts struck down the Canadian opposite-sex-only marriage law province by province between 2003 and 2005 because the Supreme Court, which holds national jurisdiction, never issued a binding decision on the matter, the federal government got Parliament to change the definition in 2005 to include same-sex couples, which had an immediate effect across the country.

The change was much easier to achieve in Canada than it was in the U.S. said Robert Leckey, an assistant Law professor and chair of the McGill Equity Subcommittee on Queer People.

“Compared to the States, Canadian developments took place without significant backlash,” Leckey said, adding that unmarried couples have more rights in Canada and are more accepted in Canada, which has made same-sex marriage easier to accept.

“The U.S. constitutional doctrine does not recognize queer people in the same way,” Leckey said. “There are more legal entitlements attached to an unmarried couple in Canada than in the States, and unmarried cohabitation is more socially acceptable in Canada.”

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News

The McGill Daily, Thursday, November 20, 2008

5

Advance referendum polls invalidated Kartiga Thiyagarajah News Writer

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ast Friday, referendum votes cast during the advanced polls were invalidated because the First Year Council (FYC) candidates appeared on ballots for all voting students.

“Sometimes the online voting system does not upload the details of an election properly,” said Nicole Gileadi, the Chief Electoral Officer of Elections McGill. “The problem was that nonfirst year students were able to vote in the First Year Council elections.”

Only first year students can vote to elect FYC executives – a body of six students who represent the interests of first year students on SSMU Council and encourages first year involvement on campus life.

“Since the SSMU ballot consisted of both the First Year Council election and the referendum questions, voting in both areas had to stop,” Gileadi said.

Approximately 40 students voted during the advanced polls. An email was sent out to all students informing them that their votes were invalidated and encouraging them to re-vote online.

“We encouraged students to revote but at the end of the day, it is each student’s individual choice whether or not he or she takes the time to do so,” explained Gileadi.

SSMU President Kay Turner did not consider the invalidation of advanced votes a setback in the SSMU referendum.

“The percentage of students who voted during the advanced polls was not large enough to have a significant impact on the overall results of the

referendum,” said Turner. “However, I am confident that if these students were prompt enough to vote as soon as polls opened, they will surely be informed of the technical error via email and re-vote.”

According to Gileadi, Elections McGill has taken all the necessary precautions to prevent such a problem from occurring again, including uploading simple ballots to ensure against system overload.

“We have now separated the election and the referendum questions into two separate ballots, in case the problem arises again,” said Gileadi.

“We also immediately consulted with IT to prevent the reoccurrence of such a glitch.”

Turner remained confident that the referendum would reach quorum.

“We need 15 per cent of the student body to vote, in order to reach quorum. While it is generally more difficult to get students to vote in the Fall semester than in the Winter semester, we are confident that we will reach quorum.”

For the first time this year, students can vote on increases in ancillary fees – the University’s mandatory student fees separate from tuition – in the SSMU referendum. SSMU is also asking students to decide whether they want to renew the Undergraduate Student’s Fee – which funds bursaries, library improvements, and campus events. The Quebec Public Interest Research Group at McGill, which works on social and environmental issues, is asking students to support a 75-cent fee per semester and the Athletics Improvement Fund is proposing a $10 student contribution per semester. Online polls close today at 4 p.m.

Stephen Davis / The McGill Daily

Students decided to use a condom-covered elephant to kick-off their AIDS awareness campaign.

AIDS elephant in the room Global AIDS Week at McGill aims to clear up clichés

Shannon Kiely

You can vote for: 1) An increase in the McGill fee for online applications to undergraduate programs from $80 to $85 for applicants from out-of-province students and from $60 to $85 for those Quebec students.

2) A $10 increase per semester in the Students Services Fee, which will expand service in the Student Aid Office (SSAO), the Office for Students with Disabilities (OSD), and in Student Health on both the Downtown and MacDonald Campuses.

3) Renewing the $19 per semester SSMU fee for the Access Bursary Fund, the library improvement fund, and the Campus Life Fund, which funds clubs, productions.

4) A 75-cent increase in QPIRG’s per semester fee to cover the costs of inflation so the group can continue sponsoring on and off-campus student groups like the Barrière Lake Solidarity Collective and Greening McGill.

5) A $10 per semester for the next five years fee that would complete the Athletics Complex and create more student space in Athletics.

The McGill Daily

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chicken-wire elephant frame – standing a metre-and-ahalf tall – will be papiermâchéd, covered in 1,200 condoms, and moved across campus as part of a McGill’s Global AIDS Week campaign, running all next week.

“AIDS is the elephant in the room. No one wants to talk about it,” explained McGill Global AIDS Week coordinator Dasami Moodley, U3 Political Science. “It’s [a sexually transmitted infection (STI)], and you can get it from having sex. World AIDS Week at McGill is about starting conversation.”

Moodley hopes the events planned by the McGill AIDS Coalition (MCAC) will break down clichés and taboos attached to AIDS. She pointed to next Wednesday’s coffee house discussion with Philip Osano, a PhD candidate in geography, on HIV

among eastern Africa’s Lake Victoria fishing communities.

“We want to make the student population more aware of special issues they wouldn’t otherwise be able to know about. Something students would[n’t] see on the news,” Moodley said.

Other events include a workshop Tuesday on being an ally to HIVpositive people and a documentary screening Monday of A Closer Walk, which tells the story of the human side of AIDS from Cambodia to Switzerland to South Africa.

“We want to bring a face to HIV that isn’t black, necessarily,” Moodley said.

Dr. Kenneth Mayer will give a keynote address next Friday that looks back on 30 years of progress and challenges of the global AIDS epidemic.

Mayer is on the frontlines of research into microbicides, a gel applied to the vagina or rectum that doctors hope could protect against HIV. No effective microbicide has been developed as of yet.

Nikki Bozinoff, a former Daily editor who sat on the MCAC Global AIDS Week committee, explained that microbicides could empower women in the face of the AIDS epidemic.

“Women don’t have a choice whether their partners wear a condom. [If micobicides are developed],

women can make a choice without their partner’s knowledge or consent,” said Bozinoff.

The theme of the 20th annual Global AIDS week is Take the Lead, a message Moodley considers particularly relevant to the McGill student body.

“As students, it’s very important we step up as youth activists,” she said.

Students gathered in the Shatner Building’s fourth-floor club space yesterday to train tabling staff. At the tables, students can buy AIDS ribbons or sign a petition urging the Canadian government to increase national donations to the Global AIDS fund and basic foreign aid.

Bearing in mind local populations, MCAC will distribute business cards at tables that encourage students to get tested for HIV. MCAC collaborated with Head & Hands, a community health centre in Notre-Dame-deGrâce, to offer students two days of free, anonymous AIDS testing.

In the four years Moodley has worked with MCAC, she has noticed that students are reluctant to get tested for HIV. “You’ll get a Pap smear but people don’t get tested for HIV because they think it has nothing to do with them.

[But] we want to get it into people’s faces.”

Commentary

The McGill Daily, Thursday, November 20, 2008

9

Using Wente to advance progress Hayley Lapalme Ben Peck / The McGill Daily

Respect in translation Thoughts on the AUS listserv and universal bilingualism at McGill Amélie T. Gouin and Alana Boileau

HYDE PARK

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he problem of the lack of respect for francophone students at McGill and of the lack of accessibility to information in good French is not limited to the Arts Undegraduate Society listserv – as was one of the issues raised by Justin Margolis in his public letter to Adil Katrak (“AUS must respect its francophone students,” Nov. 10).

This problem is of a far more general nature and must be addressed as such. Faced with such an assertive letter, we were surprised – not by the problem itself, but by the fact that it was finally being brought to light by a member of McGill’s very own community of students.

As francophones, we want to underline what exactly provokes reactions such as Margolis’s. It’s not so much the lack of translation of committee or association documents – though this is indeed an important problem – that spikes disapproval. Rather, it is the utter lack of respect that a poor

quality translation represents.

One must understand that a simple translation from English to French, when done improperly, is not the sign of an attempted accommodation, it’s an insult which completely disfigures the most important element of francophone culture. When there are translations, it should go without saying that they must be completed well.

Another aspect that we wish to insist upon is that as SSMU Francophone Commissioners, we want to transcend the rivalry that has forever existed between francophone and anglophone populations in Quebec.

We believe that in order to progress, it is primordial and entirely possible for us to reconcile our differences and coexist in a peaceful way.

We must learn to know one another, to exchange with each other, and to appreciate our unique qualities in order to better unite and celebrate the bilingualism that is slowly but surely instilling itself within our institution.

In order to do this, there must

be equal access to all documents for anglophone and francophone students whether these are administrative documents, documents from a student association, or from an independent group working within our campus (like Elections McGill).

We are quite conscious of the restrictions in terms of available resources that would make this process of mass translation easier.

However, we remain positive that together, it is possible to cooperate in order to ensure that the rights of all students; anglophone, francophone, and others are fully respected. Please be aware that the Commission on Francophone Affairs is present and entirely willing to commit the efforts necessary toward the adoption of a universal bilingualism at McGill.

Amélie T. Gouin and Alana Boileau are both SSMU Francophone Commissioners and sit on the Commission on Francophone Affairs. Amélie is a Law I student, and Alana is a U2 Art History and Anthropology student. Both can be contacted at caf@ssmu.mcgill.ca.

Culture Shock should embrace both sides SSMU co-sponsored event little more than a propaganda session on Israeli apartheid Mookie Kideckel

HYDE PARK

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ast Monday, I attended a Culture Shock presentation called “Human Rights Law and Palestine/Israel: Exploring the Apartheid Paradigm.” I hoped, at Canada’s most prestigious university, to see an academic discourse with healthy exploration of the complex issue at hand.

I’m not sure at what point I was fooled into thinking a discussion with multiple viewpoints is legitimate, because the three eloquent speakers assured me that any dissenting opinion was either naïve or just racist babble. Call me cynical, but this was no informative presentation, nor an attempt to educate McGill students.

Instead it was a how-to session on divesting from Israel – amidst a backdrop of Palestinian flags, a giant banner reading “Solidarité Gaza,” and even Palestinian merchandise for sale. In short, this was propaganda.

I fully appreciate the right of political groups to hold rallies and host speakers in support of their political viewpoints. My problem is when a presentation with a narrow, divisive political agenda is included in a week sponsored by our student union.

The notion that Israel is an apartheid state is a serious allegation that attempts to fundamentally undermine the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state. Labelling Israel in such a manner also attempts to deny the Jewish people the right of self-determination granted nearly every other nation on Earth, or the existence of a safe haven from the anti-Semitism that has so tainted their past. While this could in itself be considered (unintentional) anti-Semitism, I will not attempt to play that card.

I don’t believe it is constructive to throw around buzzwords.

Unfortunately, the speakers projected words like oppression, racism, and now apartheid into foreign and

exaggerated contexts, driving people to conclusions without the formalities of evidence. In pretending to call a spade a spade, they called it a jackhammer.

What business does SSMU have putting its name on a week including an unapologetically slanted presentation? Have we, as a student population, mandated them to attack Israel’s existence as a Jewish state? Certainly not.

The most disturbing aspect of the event, however, was that no counter argument was presented. While this may have helped reinforce the beliefs of the attending choir, it robbed the whole exercise of any academic integrity. If an opposing voice had been invited and refused to attend, this was certainly not expressed to the audience. And if it wasn’t, why not? Perhaps the organizers were nervous that the fundamental argument of this presentation could have been rendered illegitimate by the rich body of evidence they simply neglected to acknowledge.

Mookie Kideckel is a U1 Political Science student. He can be reached at mookie.kideckel@mail.mcgill.ca.

HYDE PARK

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ationalizing the use of the word “savages” to describe indigenous peoples is a reckless exercise that gives legitimacy to racist arguments. I doubt this was Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente’s intention when she did just this on October 24, as a response to Dick Pound’s use of the term to describe Canada’s first peoples.

However, my defense is for neither the journalist nor the argument she made, but for the need to continue the debate that she sparked: how to broaden the boundaries of politically important discussion to challenge complacency and romantic ideals – without being racist or disrespectful.

Wente argues, “We have romanticized indigenous culture so much that it is often described (especially in native studies courses) as morally superior…. Anyone who questions the widespread belief that aboriginals originated in North America (rather than Africa, like the rest of us) is bound to be accused of disrespect and cultural insensitivity.”

Her piece was met with a kneejerk objection from a Facebook group “Fire Margaret Wente (and Dick Pound),” that describes the article as “racist screed” and swelled rapidly to include over 3,000 members. The group’s description reads, “Wente’s right-wing commentary has long been inflammatory and notable for its scant regard for serious research or facts, but this column has taken her over the edge.”

I am startled by this reaction to a controversial piece of journalism.

Why should Wente be the scapegoat for our own inability to discuss the circumstances of indigenous people today? Lambasting Wente’s piece and demanding that she be fired are red herrings; rather than prove the point that we shy from critical examination of ourselves, we should instead find a way to have a politically important debate in a respectful and constructive way.

Wente’s piece creates this opportunity and signals the urgency for us to take it. Wente called our ability to assess and respond to tough issues into question. And our natural reaction is to silence the woman because we disagree? This can’t be right.

While controversial, the piece dared to challenge the constitutionally embedded stance toward the First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities, that they are equal but different.

The only reason to silence Wente is if we want to remain recoiled behind our romantic claims of “equal but different,” a distinction not void of meaning but void of obligation.

“Equal but different” is intended to recognize the authority of aboriginal peoples’ claim to a separate political status, but it shouldn’t negate all Canadians from engaging in a discussion about a future that is nevertheless shared, no matter how different we may (not) be. If we treat this phrase as an escape clause, then our complacency with the status quo will be paralyzing.

Diversity and complacency are not ideal bedmates. To abstain from questioning whether our romanticism of aboriginal culture is damaging or to avoid a dialogue about the nature of aboriginal engagement in the “modern world” only pigeonholes indigenous communities to their historical expressions. Our first peoples are not an asterisk in history, once thriving communities we recall with nostalgia, they are alive and living – and Canadian history unfolding has fundamentally distorted their ability to thrive in the conditions of the globalized, modernized world.

I am worried that as Canadians we are developing some bizarre, neo-xenophobic fear of offending an “other” with whom we are not sure how to interact, but the best way to preserve our diversity is not to shield it from critical discussion. We need to find new ways to nurture aboriginal communities rather than to idealize their past and allow them to stagnate.

The same is true of Western culture; no belief system is excluded from the need for constant reevaluation if it wants to flourish.

We discount our intelligence if we perpetuate a habit of underutilizing our brainpower or if we click “Join Group” in a moment of superficial agreement with some of the key phrases (“racist screed”) that jumped out at us from the screen.

No debt will be serviced by firing a journalist. All this accomplishes is distance from two problems. First, we are afraid of what we might say because we don’t know how to say it in an informed and respectful way.

Second, Western values have chiseled away at aboriginal culture so persistently that it is becoming impossible to preserve a traditional way of life – and we are afraid of admitting this.

So, what comes next? And why do we let this question make us so squeamish?

It will be intelligence and sensitivity – not sensitivity and silence – that will allow Canadians to have a conversation that is 141 years overdue.

Hayley Lapalme is a U3 IDS and Political Science student currently enjoying the Barbados Field Study Semester. She can be reached at hayley.lapalme@gmail.com, and would like to thank those who provided feedback on the piece. She’s a real people-person.

10 Commentary

The McGill Daily, Thursday, November 20, 2008

mcgilldaily.com

Short critiques of Israel, AUS’s French quality, and fixies

Letters Classifieds

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Re: “Did you read my article, Ezra?”” | Commentary | Nov. 6 Dude, we did have a civil conversation about this a few weeks ago, remember? You were all “Oh shit I didn’t expect to meet you in person.”

You also wanted to continue correspondence through email and then, in a possible attempt to throw me off the debate, called me “gorgeous.”

Remember that? No? Email me if you really have beef – 300-word limits are so passé.

Sana Saeed U3 Honours Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies Daily columnist

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Clarification for Charles

ment), is responsible for the murder, the unlawful killing, of over 1,000 Lebanese men, women, and children during the Invasion of Lebanon in 2006. At the same time, the socalled “Moral West” green-lighted this attack against the whole of the Lebanese people (including the U.S. and Canadian governments) while at the same time condemning Hezbollah for its attacks on Israeli civilians. Anyone who reads, watches, or hears Western news services knows that this double-standard you refer to holds Israel to a far lower bar than any other political entity in the Middle East, to claim otherwise is fantasy.

Second, assuming you are portraying the Tadamon! event that you attended accurately, then I understand your issue with QPIRG funding them. What I don’t understand is why you would want to penalize the many, many other QPIRG-funded organizations: Greening McGill, Barrière Lake Solidarity Collective, and others? Wouldn’t it make better sense to voice your concerns to QPIRG as opposed to the knee-jerk response that you have broadcast to the world (or at least the McGill Community)?

themselves. The leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah are opportunists who are using the masses’ genuine aspiration for freedom to their own benefits.

The only true solution to the question of Israel-Palestine is the voluntary unity of the working class of Israel and Palestine.

Ted Sprague Master’s Chemistry II

Please stop laughing Re: “Please stop quoting vice” | Commentary | Nov. 6 Hi Marianna, I am glad you were amused.

However, it appears that the target of my derision was less than obvious.

Allow me to be more explicit: I have no problem with hipsters hyping my ‘hood so long as they’re not writing articles that read like obnoxious blog posts from Vice. That would entail doing slightly more research than cruising St. Henri for an hour on your fixie and then cobbling together 600 words of poorlyconcealed romanticism and things you sort of think Richard Florida said once.

Love,

Re: “Canada doesn’t care about native people” | Commentary | Nov. 13

Nasser Mohieddin Abukhdeir Chemical Engineering PhD IV

I’d like Charles Mostoller to clarify exactly which indigenous population India is “colonizing.”

Workers of Israel and Palestine, unite!

Sarah Allux U3 Geography (Urban Systems)

Re: “Why I’m voting against QPIRG’s fee increase” | Commentary | Nov. 17

Demanding better translations

Manosij Majumdar U2 Chemical Engineering

Knee-jerking isn’t the way to resolve your Tadamon! issues Re: “Why I’m voting against QPIRG’s fee increase” | Commentary | Nov. 17 Two brief points about Mr. Binkovitz’s “QPIRG is bad” letter in the previous issue: First, his belief that there somehow exists a double-standard between the moral bar that is imposed on Israel versus that on Hezbollah et al. (or non-Westerners as he puts it) is downright ironic.

There clearly is a double-standard, I will not argue with that, but to say that it is Israel who is held to the higher standard!? That’s more than absurd; it’s offensive. You are talking about a country that is, at this very moment, denying millions of innocent men, women, and children in Gaza the basic necessities of life. Israel is committing a war crime against the Gazan people by collectively punishing them for the acts of a few, with little tangible resistance from the so-called “moral West.”

This same political entity (I say this because I refuse to believe that the majority of Israelis support the brutal actions of their govern-

Dear Isaac, and all those who have similar concerns as Isaac, My knowledge about Tadamon! is that it is a very strictly solidarity group, and that as a group they don’t advocate solely a single solution to the problem of Israel-Palestine. They have invited many different speakers who advocate different solutions and politics. Thus, I would still appeal to Isaac and others to vote yes for the fee increase. Other than Tadamon!, QPIRG has been supporting other social causes worthy of support.

However, Isaac brought up a good point. The masses of Israel and the masses of Palestine have more in common than they have with their so-called leaders, who are using them as pawns for their own interests. Fundamentally, the workers of Israel have no interest in oppressing Palestinians. They are fundamentally allies, they just haven’t realized it because of the racist propaganda that the Israel ruling class is waging to pit them against each other. Thus, it is the task of the radicals to push for this unity and break the prejudice.

Israel’s working class has to overthrow their own imperialist government and confront their ruling class; and the masses of Palestine also have to overthrow their corrupt leaders who are using this conflict to benefit

Re: “En francais, s’il vous plait” | News | Nov. 17 Dear Adil Katrak, You say the current AUS translator is “very qualified” and that there are “no plans in place to have someone check her French” because it would be “hypocritical” when you do not check the English of your staff before publishing.

What an absurd defence of the abysmal quality of the so-called translator you use. Does it seem like the first language of the person writing the English-language listservs is anything other than English? Are the English-language listservs full of egregious and inexcusable errors that utterly change the intended meaning of the message?

Obviously not. Therefore, there is no need to double-check the work of the author of the English-language listservs. But let me tell you – coming even from someone whose first language is not French – the quality of your translation is inexcusable. If the English version were written as well as the French, it would be the stuff of jokes – I refer you to engrish.com to help you understand.

You were elected by Arts students to serve Arts students. Your organization is funded by us. Your choices

are therefore subject to our scrutiny; and I daresay that those of us who study the French language have better qualifications than you to judge the quality of a translation.

As one of your constituents, I demand that you disclose the qualifications of your hired translator. I demand that you tell us exactly what convinced you to hire her, and to give her $400 of our money.

Unlike the representative to the Francophone Commission, I have no threats to enforce my requests; but if you have even the slightest belief in the transparency of government, you will release this information.

William Burton U3 Lettres et traduction françaises

Nice try, Paterson, but I’m still not convinced Re: Basing the abortion debate on biology | Commentary | Nov. 13 It is quite true that I believe all human organisms to be “people.”

This means that, as Paterson points out, I consider the inherent human dignity enjoyed by a non-consious zygote to be equal to my own; my position is that qualities such as age, size, appearance, gender, health, ability, consiousness, etc. are all more or less accidental to the fact of personhood as such, and that all human persons are precious and have inviolable dignity and rights.

I realize that not everybody shares this opinion, but I would like to point out that nothing in this letter or in my original one was contrary to scientific data. Paterson’s description of the biological development of the neural system in unborn children was interesting but ultimately not convincing for me. My point was that to withhold the description of personhood from any particular group of human organisms strikes me as arbitrary.

Out of curiosity, I wonder whether Paterson considers children born with anencephalie to be human persons?

Amy Bergeron U2 Religious Studies

More letters were received for this issue than could be printed. They will appear in the next possible issue. Please send your letters to letters@mcgilldaily.com from your McGill email acount with your year and program.

The Daily edits for style and brevity, so keep your original letter to 300 words or less. Letters regarding Sana Saeed should be cc’d to aristotleslackey@mcgilldaily.com, especially if your last name is the opposite of white. The Daily does not print letters that are sexist, racist, homophobic, or otherwise hateful.

Commentary

The McGill Daily, Thursday, November 20, 2008

Consciousness is not the prerequisite to life

Robot wars are really scary Ben Peck

HYDE PARK Mostafa El-Diwany

HYDE PARK

I

t’s interesting to see history repeating itself, each time in a different context. Before women’s voices were recognized under the law, they were nothing more than the property of their husbands.

Prior to the war against slavery, darkskinned humans were not any more valuable than beasts. And before the formation of organizations defending animal rights, they were nothing more than creations at human disposal. However, humans have come to reverse these faulty conceptions, and now the debate turns around the question of whether a blastula is alive or not.

Like many other readers, I have been observing the debate concerning Choose Life with increasing confusion and bewilderment. In the last issue, David Sean Paterson attempted to base his argument on biology.

Certainly, Paterson is knowledgeable enough to talk about embryology in considering whether a baby in the second trimester is conscious or not – the answer is obvious.

But why does Paterson assume that consciousness defines valuable human life? Can we say that a newborn is conscious even though its nervous system is not yet fully developed? What about an individual in a deep coma, are they considered conscious? Maybe we’re all conscious when we sleep!

In all these cases, are we not talking about human beings? Perhaps Paterson can enlighten us where biology makes consciousness the prerequisite for life. Surely, the lowly yeast is considered living by biology, as it is the subject of intense studies that lead to the understanding of various diseases and allow their treatment.

If Paterson sees the blastula to be

Commentary enjoys a diversity of opinion (See page 8, “Addressing The Daily’s uniform content and uninviting nature”)

Commentary@ mcgilldaily.com

no more than a bunch of cells with potential, each of us is no better than “it.” Isn’t the nervous system, the basis of consciousness, itself a bunch of specialized cells? What makes it more special than the bunch of cells making a sponge in the floor of an ocean? Ah! It must be because the nervous system has the “potential” for receiving, processing, and sending information.

Surely biology has all of the answers that one needs, and it is not to be questioned – as the King’s decisions were once not to be discussed.

The blastula has not and will never have a tongue to speak for itself.

I don’t understand why the discussion regarding abortion should be stopped. Are people afraid of other opinions? I thought we lived in a free country! If my argument does not make sense to you, just shake your head. You may even laugh at me, but you cannot prevent my voice from being heard. Otherwise, we will go back in time to when women, people of colour, and non-human animals were nothing.

Finally, I think freedom of speech is an important part of human rights. It is contradictory to say that allowing one group to voice their opinions publicly would lead to the disrespect of human rights; duct taping that group’s mouth would supersede human rights. If others disagree, exposing them to an unpopular argument would not influence their position.

Also, according to Paterson, Choose Life has an “aggressive mandate.” I cannot understand what makes a pro-life group inherently violent.

Perhaps someone could explain it to me because clearly I am lost.

Mostafa El-Diwany is a U2 Physiology student. He can be reached at mostafa.el-diwany@mail. mcgill.ca.

11

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. – I, Robot

H

umans have been perfecting the art of killing each other for centuries. One can morbidly identify eras of our species based on the most popular chemical of death at the time: stone, bronze, iron, saltpeter, jellied gasoline, plutonium, uranium, nicotine. And now ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, I give you silicon.

Militaries around the world have deployed Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for quite some time now.

They are, what you might say, the new hotness. Everyone who is anyone, or anyone who wants to control everyone, is actively developing UAV technology. From the Austrians to the Thais, they all want a piece of the unmanned action.

Controlled remotely via joystick and a huge panel of sensor readouts, UAVs can fly up to 15 kilometres high with a flight range of up to 5,000 kilometres, and these numbers are always rising. At US$24- to 60-million, they’re also pretty cheap.

UAVs initially acted as highly effective reconnaissance and allpurpose sensing vehicles, providing both militaristic and civilian uses such as firefighting and geological research. But knowing a good opportunity had presented itself, military researchers quickly started adding

small payloads such as medical supplies and ammo to UAV designs, until finally, someone figured out how to strap a big fucking bomb to them.

These new and improved UAVs are referred to as unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs), because they have the added advantage of being able to kill things.

Starting in 2001, the U.S. military has been using UCAVs for “precision strikes,” missions of targeted assassination using guided missiles.

This loosely translates to a situation where the military really, really wants to kill someone but unfortunately the person’s location is too inconvenient to send a human being to personally do the killing.

This inconvenience can be seen as both the obvious danger of sending a human being to locations where other humans would want to kill them, but also the diplomatic embarrassment of having to retrieve a shot-down pilot from a country with whom we are supposedly at peace – the publicly admitted locations of the U.S.’s UCAV activity include Pakistan, Bosnia, Yemen, and Serbia.

A recent AFP headline reads, “Up to 14 dead in suspected U.S. missile strike in Pakistan: officials.” This is the sexiest part about UCAVs from the military’s perspective: suspected U.S. strike? Of course it was the U.S. military, but it’s extremely difficult to prove unless someone gets shot down. Deniability is king when waging a war without borders, and there is very low risk of being caught when the decision to click a button on a joystick is made from a few thousand kilometres away.

The U.S. Department of War Defense’s “Unmanned Aircraft Systems Roadmap: 2005-2030,” complete with a four-page list of acronyms – helping to mask the fact that the report discusses techniques for controlling and killing other humans beings – is a pretty good indication where the program is headed.

Terrifying, tinfoil-hat-inducing

nuggets include, “Distinguish facial features (identify individuals) from 4 nm [nautical miles],” by 2010, and, “Provide human-equivalent processor speed and memory in PC size for airborne use,” by 2030.

Current manned aircraft are to be replaced by unmanned counterparts within the next couple decades: stealth fighters such as the F-117 replaced by 2015, and traditional air fighters like the F-16 by 2025. There is no question of the military’s ultimate goal: autonomous machines capable of killing humans of their choosing, like a lightning bolt from the heavens.

We already have machines capable of navigating for themselves, why should we have to wait around and pull the trigger for them? I shit you not, the concept of killer robots is real, and depending on your definition robot, they’ve been killing for a long time.

On the surface, the argument for utilizing unmanned machines for combat is logical. Of course, it makes sense to use a machine instead of putting someone in harm’s way; no one wants to see another service member killed in action.

However, the complete elimination of human risk from combat presents many important questions.

What does it mean if no one has to risk their life in order to fight a war?

What does it mean if one side of the conflict must risk their lives in order to fight a war while the other side risks carpal tunnel? People make terrible decisions when they believe there will be no immediate consequences to their actions, and I hate it when people in charge of controlling other humans being make terrible decisions.

Ben Peck is a U2 Honours Computer Science student and The Daily’s graphic editor. He can be reached at bvpeck@gmail.com, or at 398-ROBOTS-R-HOTT. And they said 14-digit numbers couldn’t be done.

ERRATUM In “AUS must respect its francophone students” (Commentary, Nov. 10), The Daily incorrectly referred to Justin Margolis as the “AUS Francophone Commissioner” and the “Arts Representative to the SSMU Commission on Francophone Affairs (CAF).”

In “En français, s’il vous plait” (News, Nov. 17) The Daily stated that Margolis occupies the latter position. In fact, Margolis sits on CAF, and was interviewed for a position that is similar to that of francophone commissioner in AUS for SSMU that the Society is still unsure as to whether it will create.

The Daily regrets the error.

Death and destruction at the push of a button.

Nadja Popovich / The McGill Daily

12 Features

In

theoretical

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able

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Mark Kroeger, spokesman for the 2004 National Spelling Bee, met protesters’ assertions of illogicality with the alternative logic of history. “For these kids who understand the

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School xanthosis

root words, who understand the etymology, it’s totally logical,” he intoned. And truly, there is a rationale to tradition. Why should you start walking on your hands when your feet have served you well for so long?

Nevertheless, language changes all the time, whether we want it to or not. This is usually a good thing – imagine how impoverished party stories must have been before the word “crunk” was invented. In the case of spelling, though, language change is what created this conundrum to begin with. During the era of Middle English things were different. All those silent e’s on the end of words? They were pronounced, at least in the beginning. But as the language smoothly transitioned through Early Modern English (spoken by Shakespeare) to the Modern English of the present day, the printing press with its standardized typeface arrested many words in their Middle English spelling. We are condemned to travel through history each time we read or write.

Though this affords us the occasional satisfaction of pausing over, say, the word knight and making a Pythonesque remark such as “Huh! They used to say kuh-niggit!” it is hard to motivate impeded mass literacy on the grounds of historical appreciation.

But what if history were somehow more real than what we see in the present?

Enter Noam Chomsky. In 1968, he introduced the notion that for every word in an individual’s lexicon – the mental warehouse in which we store the thousands of words we learn over a lifetime – there is an associated Underlying Representation. The Underlying Representation is essentially a skeletal version of the sounds that make up a given word. For example, the Underlying Representation of quick would be /kwIk/, so every time you hear

alumni

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four

Underlying representation

NOW

gladiolus

“B

enjamin Franklin wants to be your frend.”

This was the amiable message of eight or so protesters, accompanied by world-class Franklin impersonator Ralph Archibald, as they rallied outside the 2008 Scripps National Spelling Bee last May. Their cardboard placards bore earnest pleas for civility: TAKE THE STING OUT OF SPELLING; LET’S END THE I IN FRIEND. Four years ago, the tone had been much more strident.

SPELLING SHUUD BE LOJICAL – ENUF IS ENUF, declared the picket signs of 2004. It appears that the protest’s organizers from the American Literacy Council have since found, in kind words and the avuncular character of Ben Franklin, a “friendlier” voice for their cherished cause.

The protesters sought to draw attention to the various harms – dyslexia, illiteracy, and even crime (“The prisons are full of people with literacy problems,” noted organizer Elizabeth Kuizenga) – that our schizophrenic writing system inflicts on the English-speaking population. They are carrying on an illustrious tradition. Intellectual heavyweights, from Charles Darwin to Mark Twain, including of course the good Mr. Franklin, have backed numerous proposals to overhaul English orthography. With the exception of Noah Webster (whose early 19th-century reforms brought us the labor/ labour alternations which today distinguish

British, American, and Canadian spellings), none have been successful; English spelling remains, as linguist Bill Poser puts it, a “baroque mess.”

Developmental psychologists draw a critical distinction between writing systems in terms of “depth.” Shallow orthographies exhibit consistent, predictable, and direct correspondences between sound and spelling, while deep orthographies reveal more abstruse aural-written relationships, necessitating the memorization of arbitrary or unusual pronunciations. Dutch, Spanish, and Czech fall in the former category, Hebrew and English in the latter. Consider the letters ou in the words cough, through, bough, dough, and four – these sorts of irregularities pose real burdens to language learners, be they native kindergartners or foreign PhDs. The dizzying complexity that makes the National Spelling Bee possible may have non-negligible impacts on literacy rates. Faced with these facts, what does one do?

Allow me to offer a defence of the indefensible: deep orthography. I do not wish to marginalize or diminish the harms brought to light by advocates of spelling reform, and in all seriousness, I am likely on their side – for the most part. Though simplified spelling may result in higher literacy and lower crime rates, there are at least three reasons – one theoretical, one empirical, and one anecdotal – for the preservation of our problematic system.

daily

Mark

Kate McCurdy argues against English language reforms that would force out spellings not logically linked to spoken sounds Orthography, n. 1.a. Correct or proper spelling; spelling according to accepted usage or convention.

Greek ortho- ‘straight, upright, perpendicular’; ‘correct, right’ –graph ‘that which writes, portrays, or records’ – Oxford English Dictionary

silent

kids

change

crime

bird

otherwise

TAKE

TAKE

Chomsky

knowledge BOMB addendum REFORM shallow myriad

pithy

asceticism

someone utter that particular combination of sounds, you are able to search through your mental lexicon and recognize it as matching the word quick.

Chomsky’s insight allowed him to see through the idiosyncrasy of English spelling and discern a deeper theoretical truth. It is exactly this sort of vision that has made him the founding father of contemporary generative linguistics. Left to our own devices, we modern folk would never have figured out that in our heads, we all speak Middle English: “[U]nderlying forms are systematically related to conventional orthography.... There has, in other words, been little change in lexical representation since Middle English,” he states in The Sound Pattern of English.

So actually, you’ve been thinking “kuh-niggit” all along. You devil.

While the idea sounds rather outlandish, there are in fact various reasons to take it seriously. One such reason involves the – ghost letters that run rampant in English – letters like the final b in bomb and the inaudible g’s in sign and gnostic. These letters, being silent, would seem to have no place in a speaker’s Underlying Representation of the words. However, in related and derived words, these letters show up in speech as well: bombard, bombastic; signature; agnostic. Chomsky uses examples like these to argue that the silent letters of spelling are really there in your Underlying Representation. That final b just hangs around the end of bomb, waiting for you to stick -astic on the end so it can surface.

The erratic spellings of English words, according to Chomsky’s theory, are not mere historical artifacts. On the contrary, they reflect the psychological reality of Underlying Representations, and are thus authentic at a

N

The McGill Daily, Thursday, November 20, 2008

13

Bee

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control

succedaneum mind AUGURY

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swivel

HAMMER

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NINE inches demarche lyceum blue red

green

Will Vanderbilt / The McGill Daily

deep NEAT

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deeper level than we speakers can consciously access. Take that, Noah Webster.

Word wars and the Czech Republic My second reason for upholding deep orthography stems from the practical difficulties spelling reform would likely entail. This is no light matter – such revisions have even caused political strife. Take Czech: the language has a shallow orthography that has been the subject of much controversy. Upon achieving statehood following World War I and the demise of the Habsburg Empire, Czechs immediately strove for linguistic purity and the eradication of foreign (read: German) terms. The influential Prague School of linguists championed structuralist and functionalist approaches to language, lending further support to a consistent spelling system.

According to the research of Marketa Caravelos while pursuing her Masters (and then PhD) in Psychology at McGill, Czech children benefit from all this attention to orthographic depth: Czech first-graders tend to have higher spelling and language abilities than their English counterparts. However, the inevitability of language change means that shallow orthographies require maintenance to continue to accurately reflect sound patterns, and this continual reform comes with a price – political instability, for instance.

Among the issues faced by the Czech Republic in 1993, including transition to a post-communist economy and dissolution of the joint state with Slovakia, spelling loomed large in the public eye. As chronicled by Neil Bermel in his 2007 book Linguistic Authority, Language Ideology, and Metaphor: The Czech Orthography Wars, in that year the Czech Language Institute

upended the traditional spelling system with a new edition of the Rules of Czech Orthography, setting off waves of rebellion in the media and negative popular opinion. There was heated debate over whether the English loanword president could be legitimately spelled prezident. Accusations of communist influence were levelled at the responsible committee; letters to the editor carried such titles as “The terrorism of directorial canons” and “A slap in the face of Czech culture and tradition;” and, in Bermel’s words, “strangled noises started to waft forth from the Ministry of Education.”

In March 1994, experts convened in an emergency seminar to address the crisis, and resolved to issue an Addendum to the Rules.

This Addendum would achieve the critical goal of invalidating many of the rules proposed in the 1993 Rules. Everyone calmed down, until a junior minister announced, while the Minister was on vacation, that the Rules had been abandoned, and the country would revert to the old spellings. Teachers who had been trained in the new system scrambled to find their old lesson plans, and newspapers gave daily updates on the national spelling calamity. A mere week before the school year was to begin, the Minister of Education frantically proclaimed the Rules, with revised Addendum, suitable for teaching.

Perhaps it is not so surprising that the Czech citizenry – a highly literate populace who elected the playwright Vaclav Havel as their first president – worked themselves up over orthography. Nonetheless, their example ought to serve as a cautionary tale to those who would rush to reform.

Spelling just as fast as I can My third motive for suggesting that we not

give up on deep orthography just yet is familiar to anyone who has ever felt a rush upon flipping through channels and discovering that the customary Sweating Muscular Men programming on ESPN had been replaced with distinctly uncomfortable-looking gawky preadolescents in starched shirts.

Spelling bees, a uniquely English language phenomenon, maintain a mysterious appeal to innumerable people who otherwise aren’t all that vocal about their interest in orthography; 14-million such individuals tuned-in to the final battle of the 2006 National Spelling Bee, as Katharine Close deftly fielded Ursprache (definition: proto-language) in round 20 for the win. Granted, in terms of everyday utility, being able to spell Ursprache falls somewhere between knowing how to make balloon animals and appreciating the subtler points of eight-track players.

Nonetheless we persist. Scores of children sullenly endure this type of competition in middle school English class, and those who perform unreasonably well are thrust into the national spotlight each spring to air-write, stutter, and occasionally faint before thousands. For the marginalized youth burdened with freakish orthographic abilities, the National Spelling Bee, despite all the trouble and anxiety, represents a rare moment in the sun.

At least it did for me. In 2001, at the tender age of 13, I won the regional bee and in doing so qualified to join the ranks of hushed, bespectacled contestants in D.C. Upon placing first regionally, I was handed a packet of 32,000 words and informed that any of them might be on round 1; immediately after that, I was handed a dictionary with 460,000 words and informed that any of them might be on rounds 2 and up. Then, inexplicably, I was handed a gigantic potted plant. I still look back on that

night in bewilderment.

The adrenaline rush that drove me through words like gobemouche and polydactyly abruptly abandoned me on the last day of competition. In round 4, mere moments before ESPN’s cameras started rolling, I was toppled by malachite – a mineral that will forever suffer my ill will. At the dance later that evening, after nursing my wounded pride, I joined forces with a similarly brash girl and we conspired to get the winner, wunderkind Sean Conley, to dance with us. It was the only competition I won that week. I still remember his panicked, roving eyes traversing the arms-length maximum possible space between us, as I swayed forcefully, consoling myself with the thought that his success was rubbing off on me through proximity and trembling fingertips.

Denouement: D-E-N-O-U . . .

My memory of the Spelling Bee, perhaps, is why, try as I might, I cannot lend my support to the reform efforts of ALC and the protesters outside the Bee. English orthography is an untenable potpourri (melange, gallimaufry, bricolage, olio) borne of historical happenstance, and it does indeed hinder aspects of literacy that would likely make us a happier and more learned populace. But what does deep orthography do for us?

It reminds us of the language of the past, a past that, by some theoretical accounts, we are still living in; it affords no opportunity for spellingrelated popular unrest, as befell the Czechs; and it allows nerdy kids, like I once was, an opportunity to celebrate that nerdiness in the public eye.

Maybe some day in the future we will become sufficiently enlightened to jettison our cumbersome orthography with its murky depths. I, for one, will enjoy it while it lasts.

FYCC and referendum questions!

Regular polls: November 18th to 20th Results will be announced at Gerts’ on November 20th at 5:00 pm Polling stations: McConnell — November 18 th Burnside — November 19 th Leacock — November 20 th

Vote! www.vote.electionsmcgill.ca

Mind&Body

The McGill Daily, Thursday, November 20, 2008

15

Student-parent like me

Shu Jiang / The McGill Daily

Kelly Symons plays with her daughter at Miss Kelly’s Daycare, which she opened in NDG.

Kelly Symons navigates the road from career woman, to single student mother

I

never thought I’d be opening my own daycare to solve the problem of what to do with my daughter while I went back to school. Never mind the fact I never thought I’d have a daughter in the first place, or even go back to school.

I guess I’m like a lot of women; I grew up believing I had to be practical, get a good job, have a career.

Other women struggled before me, right? So I earned a degree in engineering and went to work in the mining industry, moving to financial services after that.

I never questioned why I was doing it; I was fulfilling requirements, doing my duty. I paid rent, bought food, travelled. Yet, while I was enjoying some of it, there was something missing. I felt as if it wasn’t quite right, and I was waiting for something to happen.

So there I was, working in the

risk analysis department of a thirdparty payment processing company, when a friend asked what I really wanted to do with my life, and I got to thinking. I had talked about music over the years, and I even considered pursuing it, but it wasn’t practical. For some reason, this time I reevaluated the idea, and I decided to take it seriously – no more waiting.

Going back to school was a shock to say the least. But, I discovered that I really loved music theory and was able to play well enough to pass auditions; I even got a scholarship in my first year. Music was like second nature to me. I loved what I was doing. I felt ecstatic, exhilarated, fulfilled.

Then I got pregnant.

I had always said I would never have kids – it was a certainty. I had other plans with my life. No kids for me. I don’t know what changed, but suddenly I felt like maybe I could have a kid, and maybe I wanted one. So I started to think about it, to imagine and feel it, and that was that. The man I was seeing talked about it, and we gave it a try, and to our surprise, it worked – I got

pregnant. Things didn’t work out with the man, but we had a beautiful daughter together who is now the light of our lives.

Going to school with a newborn was a lot to deal with. My professors allowed me to bring her to class, which I did from the time she was two months until she was about five months. At that point I needed a daycare.

The problem is that the waiting lists for Montreal daycares are notorious. You actually have to go on these lists before you’re pregnant if you want a space. I put my name on a few, but it’s been nine months and they still haven’t called.

I’m on the McGill daycare waiting list too, but only since April 2008.

There’s been no response there either, but maybe that’s because they also don’t accept children less than 18 months old. So, again, I have to wait longer than I’d like, even if a space becomes available now.

Quitting school was not an option, although I did think about it. Then I realized that even if I went back to work I’d still need a daycare.

It quickly became obvious that daycare was indispensible regardless

of what I chose. It was then that I decided to open my own.

That was now my plan. I had gone from a steady job to going back to school, then having a baby, becoming a single mom, and opening a daycare. People questioned it; they thought I was getting in too deep, doing too many things at once. And I’ll admit, it does feel like it sometimes.

The hardest part was learning the business and figuring out how to present myself to people in an acceptable manner. I studied the Montessori method to get a more specified idea of what I wanted to do, and I received my certificate after three months.

This gave me a structure to stick to as much as it gave one to the kids.

Let’s face it, I never imagined I would be designing a Montessori curriculum based around music, for a roomful of hungry little minds and hearts in my own daycare.

But it works. I’m fortunate to have great staff, and they enjoy working with me in part because of the environment I’ve created. Caring for children has allowed me to dis-

cover many things about myself. For instance, I care deeply about the correctness of everything, but if I allow myself to relax a bit on that, I find that I enjoy children a lot more.

I also think that they find their true selves by engaging in the activities

“

I had always said I would never have kids.... I don’t know what changed

that I’ve set up for them.

Because of this I’m still in school.

There are still a few spaces to fill in my daycare, but it’s catching on. It’s all working out in ways I couldn’t have predicted. Montessori was the right choice. I’m seeing results in my daughter’s growth, as well as in the kids who come to me.

I took a chance and chose from the heart. It was a challenge, but it was worth it. Now all I want to know is what’s next?

Kelly is a U3 Music Theory student. She can be reached at misskellysdaycare@gmail.com.

16 Mind&Body

The McGill Daily, Thursday, November 20, 2008

In search of Montreal’s greener side “

It’s about encouraging people to walk, bike, and use public transit... focusing on [poorer] neighbourhoods – Owen Rose Urban Ecology Centre

Nicole Buchanan / The McGill Daily

Nadja Popovich The McGill Daily

I

t is generally accepted that higher incomes are associated with better health outcomes; as far as mortality goes, it isn’t hard to make the connection between being able to pay for better services and living longer. But a new study has found that discrepancies in health outcomes related to income inequality are substantially reduced with higher exposure to greenery.

While all of us are familiar with the preachings on sustainability and the greening of our urban environment for the earth’s sake, our future children’s sake, and quite possibly our own psychological sake, the study, published in The Lancet, has indicated that exposure to green spaces is also directly linked to our very imme-

diate bodily health.

Subjects in England, across income ranges displayed longer life spans on average; with increased exposure to greenery, they were also less likely to die of circulatory disease specifically, although the study found no correlation between cancer and proximity to green spaces.

The idea that “green is good” has been around for a while now, but according to Richard Mitchell, a co-author of the study, there is little research on the concrete impacts of greening.

“We lack a lot of evidence on exactly how green space is beneficial to health,” Mitchell said. “There have been studies about the relationships between green space and population health, but we think this is the first [study] to look at its impact on inequalities in health.”

A

cross the pond, Montreal has not yet shifted the focus of its greening approaches to concentrate more directly on health and income inequalities, but the city nonetheless has an extensive plan for urban green spaces, often collaborating with neighbourhood-based organizations in their greening initiatives. In turn, these non-governmental groups, such as La Société de Verdissement (Soverdi) and the Urban Ecology Centre, attempt to solve problems such as the urban heat island effect – where cities are warmer than their rural surroundings – and work with communities to build greener, healthier environments.

Among medium-sized cities, Montreal is faring well in green initiatives.

Owen Rose, president of the Urban Ecology Centre, noted that from an ecological perspective, Montreal benefits from its large, densely-populated urban core, which facilitates access to transit and services, and contributes to the city’s vibrant urban culture.

But, according to Rose, Montreal, like most North American cities, also has a tree deficit.

“In the long run this means that… we’ll see fewer trees than we have already,” he said.

Pierre Belec, special advisor to the General Manager for the city of Montreal and liaison for Soverdi, meanwhile, noted that the treeplanting project is only one aspect of the city’s complex sustainability and greening plan. However, he identified it as a keystone initiative.

“The tree planting projects in the boroughs are big projects because often old [trees] need to be cut down and new ones replanted en masse,” Belec said. “There is a renewal of the urban forest which is being planned right now.”

Yet Rose contends that even though the city plants new trees every year, there is still a net deforestation problem. This, in turn, is exacerbated in the more dense, urban, downtown neighbourhoods.

“There is limited per capita access to green space in the old pre-WorldWar-II neighbourhoods, for instance Rosemont, or the South centre, St. Henri, Point St. Charles, [and even] the Plateau,” Rose said. “All of these central neighbourhoods have a low level of park access per capita because they were densely populated and densely grown. The challenge is how to give them greater access to more green spaces.”

T

he city has no specific guidelines for selecting which neighbourhoods will undergo greening projects, and leaves such issues to the boroughs. Thus, economic considerations – such as a prioritiza-

tion of marginalized areas in greening projects, per The Lancet study’s findings, for example – are not accounted for.

According to Belec, the impetus for greening projects is instead left largely to individual communities themselves.

“We work mostly on a first-comfirst-serve basis because of the necessary involvement of people,” he said. “There is not such a planning process.”

Belec added that neighbourhood greening projects have been initiated through various routes – both topdown and bottom-up. He cited the examples of Verdun and Rosemeont, two areas in which the elected officials were involved in the process, often going door-to-door to mobilize people interested in pursuing a greening objective. On the other hand, districts like the Plateau have seen citizens take a much more hands-on approach. “[In the Plateau] people have been greening their back alleys for 20 years now, so you don’t need to go out and convince them, they’ll come to you; and this means that we don’t need to do a lot of planning on which neighbourhoods to target,” Belec said.

However, Rose explained that certain neighbourhoods are, by nature, able to support more greenery based on their relative location and wealth.

“Westmont and Outremont [for example] are old neighbourhoods, but they are very green,” he said.

“The problem with the old, downtown, pre-World-War-II neighbourhoods is that they can’t compare in greenery, [and] they also tend to be poorer neighbourhoods as well. The periphery, outside the central area, just by virtue of being much less dense, has more greenery.”

T

hough the Urban Ecology Centre itself does not have a policy to target less advantaged neighbourhoods, Rose noted that this is not a matter of ideology, but rather a matter of geography – the

Centre is located in the Milton-Parc neighbourhood. Still, the Urban Ecology Centre concerns itself with a range of urban environmental issues, which have impacts city-wide – from sustainable neighbourhood planning, to urban transport and water management. Rose reported that a large new project on green neighbourhoods, geared toward healthy active transport, is currently at the top of the Centre’s agenda.

“It’s about encouraging people to walk, bike, and use public transit, as well as focusing on neighbourhoods that are poorer, to improve healthy living conditions,” Rose said, adding that people need to be able to walk and exercise in safer environments in order to be healthier.

“We need safe sidewalks and bikepaths,” Rose said. “[The problem is that] in Montreal, our poorer central neighbourhoods have less per capita green space and higher traffic densities, so it’s not as encouraging for people to walk and exercise.”

This, he said, may be a factor contributing to the health discrepancies among income groups, adding that poorer areas tend to be deprived of the green spaces which are so integral to health – both physically and psychologically.

The city, meanwhile, has its own plans for boosting accessibility.

Noting the importance of bike paths in linking the city’s neighbourhoods, as well as facilitating access to green spaces and parks for many residents, Patricia Lowe, communications officer for the city of Montreal, has reported that plans to open a “beltway” or “green loop” around the mountain are in the works. The project is scheduled to be completed next year.

“That will [allow] access – [for both] biking and walking – to the mountain from different areas of the city that were previously cut off.

The Plateau and Côte-des-Neiges will have easier access, and downtown eastern Montreal too,” Lowe said, adding that this would greatly ameliorate issues of differential access to green spaces.

Culture

The McGill Daily, Thursday, November 20, 2008

18

Courtesy of Adam Symansky (NFB)

Roadsworth subverts the convention that important art must appear vertically.

Taking it to the streets Rogue Montreal street artist reimagines the urban landscape Montreal street artist Roadsworth, who was prosecuted four years ago for his self-described “attack on the streets,” is the subject of the new Montreal-made documentary Roadsworth: Crossing the Line. Earlier this month, The Daily’s Meghan Wray sat down with the man himself (real name: Peter Gibson) and the film’s director, Alan Kohl, to chat about art, individualism, and the politics of using public space as a canvas.

The McGill Daily: You cite Adbusters as one of your inspirations.

Peter Gibson (a.k.a.

Roadsworth): Oh yeah – that was a long time ago.

and signs that are already out there.

That’s one of the exciting things about a lot of street artists: using the space that is already there, using the elements that are already there, and incorporating their message or their imagery into that space. For me, that has a lot of implications. It really includes the environment – it enlarges the piece itself. It broadens the boundaries of the canvas.

But more overtly political? There are people like Banksy, for example, someone who does quite overtly political work. His messages often address specific issues.

I think that politics were informing images that I was creating – although they weren’t necessarily very specific.

MD: I know Adbusters really emphasizes direct activism. A lot of your work transforms the way people look at space. But what do you think of making more politically-loaded pieces? Like taking an ad and transforming something that’s already there? I know you work with blank canvases – well not blank canvases, but parts of the street. Have you ever thought about doing something like that?

PG: I’ve thought about it. The way I look at the city, in general, often is with that eye. What I was doing before was taking something that already exists and reading it and altering it....

I would argue that I wasn’t actually working with a blank canvas. I was actually working with a lot of symbols

MD: We’re bombarded with so many images that I feel like some people could walk past your pieces [without noticing them] quite easily.

It’s something we’re so used to. Are you happy that not everyone who walks by notices them?

PG: I feel like a lot of people do notice them…. A lot of imagery becomes subliminal and we become oblivious to it. That was one of the reasons I found working on the ground interesting. It’s not a plane that people are used to – looking on the horizontal plane, or looking down. There’s a convention that says that anything that’s important will appear vertically; anything from the art gallery to the billboard is present-

ed to us on the vertical plane. And the street I find is a very subliminal zone in and of itself.

MD: I was really interested in the idea of hyper-individualist culture, which you saw as coming a lot from car culture. Do you equate individual artistic expression with ownership of your pieces? How would you feel about a collaborative piece, or even if somebody took one of your street art pieces and “added” their own little addition?

PG: In the early stages, I almost fantasized about people interacting with what I was doing. And you do see it from time to time in street art or graffiti. I don’t see it often, but I do see artists interacting with another. You’ll see someone scribble a sentence, and someone will come and answer it with a “Fuck you,” or [something] more sophisticated than that…. That’s part of what public expression is about. It’s about responding to what’s out there.

I think that’s what most street artists are inspired by in the first place.

There is individualism in the artistic process. So when I say something like “car culture represents hyperindividualism” it’s not like I’m against the individual per se. I think, unfortunately, politics are so polarized – we associate individualism with free markets, and community with control of markets.

But I don’t look at it that way; I think there’s a hybrid of solutions, some of which are individualistic and some of

which are communal. And I think that when it comes to driving, and in particular public space, there needs to be a more communal mentality. Because the fact is, we all share this space. If I’m painting a canvas, I can afford to be individualistic, but being on the street, I don’t think individuals should have all the rights…driving in a car by yourself, being in a machine that exerts a certain amount of influence on so many levels of the environment is disproportionate to the individual’s [rights].

MD: You started off in the Plateau.

Would you ever work on something like a freeway, or somewhere where space is the more congested? I feel like malls, subways, and freeways are a lot more claustrophobic than the streets of the Plateau.

PG: It’s funny you say that. You notice that when you travel to different cities. I’ve noticed that there seems to be a higher concentration of street art (a lot of people don’t like that term – but to distinguish it from graffiti and tagging which is a more established phenomenon) in the hip and artistic parts of town. It often has this subversive underground message, [but it’s] almost like preaching to the converted. I guess I did the same thing by concentrating a lot of what I was doing in the Plateau and Mile End. But it was the area that I lived in, and those are the areas that I went most of the time, and for me it was a direct relationship to my environment. So when I was

riding my bike or whatever, I would look at an intersection and say “Oh I gotta do something with this.” That was the environment that was inspiring, so it was the environment that I was responding to. But I do think it would be interesting.

MD: To subvert suburbia?

PG: Yeah definitely. I think there would be a lot of opportunity to do such interventions in places where you really wouldn’t expect it.

MD: Could you possibly point out where some of your still-existing pieces are, for someone who wants to hunt them down?

PG: Well they’re mostly commissions. There’s nothing illegal left except for faint traces, except here and there. Now, along Ste. Catherine if you walk between Jeanne-Mance and Paramount you’ll notice some little cartoons and various things on the street. [And] there’s Berri square, the chessboard that I did.

Alan Kohl (Director): You might have had bigger fines if it had been in Westmount.

PG: Yeah, I might not have had the sympathy of the community.

– Compiled by Meghan Wray Roadsworth opens at Cinema du Parc on November 22.

20 Culture

The McGill Daily, Thursday, November 20, 2008

Sixteen years and still no rain More than a decade after the overdose of their first singer, Blind Melon returns with a new vocalist – then fires him MAX HALPARIN The McGill Daily

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’ve probably listened to Blind Melon’s 1992 hit “No Rain” more times than any other song, and that’s including “Semi-Charmed Life” and “Stairway to Heaven.” My fondness for the tune – perhaps equally well-known for its melody as it is for the video, which follows a girl dancing around town in a bumblebee outfit while the band plays in a field – started in middle school, culminating with a performance at my grade eight talent show. I fucked up the end of the solo, but nobody noticed.

Even by then, I’d discovered Blind Melon a few years too late – in 1995, singer Shannon Hoon passed away after snorting one too many

eight balls. In hindsight, “No Rain” might have foreshadowed his fate.

Throughout the video, his jittery mannerisms suggest a dabbling in the drugs that eventually took him, not to mention the not-so-hopeful opening verse, “All I can say, is that my life is pretty plain/ and I like watchin’ the puddles gather rain.” The band never found a replacement, and broke up in 1999, never to be heard from again (except in the form of less successful side projects).

Well, maybe not. In 2002, they released a Classic Masters collection, followed by a Best Of CD/DVD three years later. This is especially impressive considering they only put out two proper studio albums, plus a compilation of covers and B-sides.

And then, in some kind of weird sci-fi scenario where you’re suddenly

a university student at the same time that your favourite band is still playing live, Blind Melon regrouped with an otherwise unknown dude named Travis Warren. Guitarist Chris Torn and bassist Brad Smith were producing some songs for Warren, who evidently was also a big fan of Blind Melon and the Mark Wahlberg epic Rock Star. Oh, and Warren happened to sing just like Hoon, with the same soulfully pained ability to reach notes most men would only attempt with falsetto.

After gaining momentum with a few small tours, in the spring Blind Melon excitedly released For My Friends, their first album in 12 years.

It’s actually pretty good – though, to be honest, had the band played their cancelled show tonight in Montreal, I only would’ve gone to hear the old

stuff. So what happened to the show?

Well, two weeks ago, Warren – who turns out to be a bit of an asshole – got fired.

In all their liner notes, the band includes the line, “Written and performed by Blind Melon as one” – but as they explain in a heated blog post from November 6, Warren never quite understood the whole “as one” idea. The band goes on to say that over the past two years, Warren complained of being overworked and underpaid, threatened to quit several times, and, most recently, flaked out on a doctor’s appointment the band had set up to help him with his recurring throat problems. The last straw came after he went completely AWOL for two weeks.

Fortunately, they’re not taking this latest vocal upset as badly as they did

in 1995, and they’ve already begun searching for a new singer. They’ve also made it clear that they’re not interested in “clones, drones, jokers, clowns, or drama queens.”

I definitely won’t envy whoever gets the job, as they’ll always be under Hoon’s shadow. The late singer continues to have a huge presence in the Blind Melon world, with fans continually posting eulogies on their message board, always calling Shannon by his first name.

And don’t forget about that bumblebee. She’s back, but instead of being a young girl finding solace in the music of some talented hippies, she’s a sultry cartoon vixen smoking a cigarette at the top of the band’s MySpace page. I really hope somebody changes that; it’s just not tasteful.

An intimate distance Aleesa Cohene’s multi-screen video installation pieces together the pitfalls of family life VERONICA FRENCH Culture Writer

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o family situation is ever peachy perfect. Each has its own drama to sort out, whether it be living in a home that is always empty, caring for an ill-loved one, or having a brother who hogs the TV all day. We’ve all figured out that Leave it to Beaver was full of shit. But it still makes great material for an artist to work with.

Last Thursday evening, Vancouverborn and Toronto-based artist Aleesa Cohene opened up her seventh video art installation, “Something Better,” at Articule gallery. Her work has been screened at over a dozen film festivals around the world, including the Toronto International Film Festival in 2006.

Much of Cohene’s art stems from social and political critique. She explains that the whole family dilemma reveals a larger issue we are all faced with. It all boils down to a universal activity that we just can’t seem to get right: communication.

How she manages to get her message across is anything but a simple process. There are three screens – Mom on the right screen, Dad on the left, and kid in the middle. We see eight minutes of the characters interacting through the television screens. There’s a lot of action, a bit of dialogue, and music that Cohene pieced together herself to fit the melancholic mood perfectly.

Most impressive is that she did

everything with found footage, taking clips from unknown eighties films and rearranging them. Removing the clips from their usual context, Cohene places them into new situations to manifest the story she wants to tell.

Within these eight minutes, the videos tell a story of Dad who is bored of playing house. So Mom kicks him out of their home. The situation leaves her utterly broken-hearted – blank stares, tears, worried facial expressions. Mom doesn’t understand what is wrong with Dad since the entire meaning of her existence revolves around her family. She wants to raise a family with Dad, provide her child with the skills to go out into the world and make his own family some day.

Stuck in the middle of all this is the child. Cohene says that the “child is paralyzed because he is a product of these two extremes,” being stretched out like a Stretch Armstrong toy. The child suffers what we have all experienced at one point or another in our lives: questions like “Are you really my parents?” “What’s up with my body?”

“And why is mom so sad?”

According to Cohene, it’s impossible to ever fully understand someone else. There are always communication barriers. The screens are so close together; the characters are spatially close, but remain emotionally distant. With all the high-tech gadgets we’ve developed, we have the means to communicate better, but we still manage to be stuck in the same rut.

The exhibition doesn’t overtly attempt to find a way out of the situ-

ation. “There is no desire for resolution,” explains Cohene. “The desire is just to feel.”

But “there is hope sprinkled throughout,” she adds, and this hope

is symbolized by the piano, the only focal point of daily life where we see these characters understand each other, and even love one another.

Humans have developed alternative

ways of communicating – dancing, bongo playing, different sex positions, painting. Each medium of communication can make up for what the others lack.

Courtesy of Veronica French

Aleesa Cohene rearranges found footage from the 1980s in her latest installation on family relationships.

Culture

The McGill Daily, Thursday, November 20, 2008

21

Out of the closet and onto the screen Image+nation festival brings queer film to the fore MAI A NH TRAN-HO The McGill Daily

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n November 4, Arizona, California, and Florida surprised the world by banning same-sex marriage. Since then, Grey’s Anatomy has made the choice to eliminate two of its non-heterosexual characters for their upcoming season. Fortunately, this kind of visual censorship isn’t as present in Canada, where marriage between same-sex partners has been legal since July 2005. In the same spirit, the image+nation is an important player in promoting respect for human rights.

Image+nation, now in its twenty-first year, seeks to broaden the false, narrow understanding many have of the homosexual

Documentaries Be Like Others (Canada, USA, and Iran) Totally disturbing , and genuinely touching.

Director Tanaz Eshaghian’s film deals not only with the little-known realities of transsexual life, but also with Iran’s culture, which often seems intangible to North American audiences.

Some aspects of the film are as unbelievable as they are unsettling: in the Islamic Republic of Iran, having a sex change is legal – but homosexuality is punishable by death.

In Tehran, two men deeply uncomfortable in their male bodies aspire to become women and, ultimately, gain more respect. But after traumatic surgery, nothing is resolved. The square camera lens acts as a metaphor for the government’s inflexible reasoning: everything needs its approval; homosexuality is a sin and transsexuality a mental disorder. Identity is only a piece of paper, and the soul wanders like an orphan. Be Like Others is a beautiful documentary with remarkable conviction, where sometimes silence is more profound than spoken words. A must-see.

Gay… so what? (France) Jean-Baptiste Erreca travels the world to provide a picture of what he calls the “postgay generation.” From Beijing and Paris, to the streets of Madrid, Havana, New York, and Berlin, we discover the identity and demands of this new generation. Full acceptance and communication are praised, while mere tolerance of homosexuality seems hypocritical.

Bit by bit, we are immersed in this contemporary counter-culture. We are brought to Madrid with transvestites during EuroPride 2007; to Beijing, where freedom of speech is subjected to the Communist Party’s control; to New York’s Greenwich Village and its new gay hip-hop generation; to Cuba, where lesbians have to hide; to Berlin, where the city’s most iconic gay man fights against drug abuse and unprotected sex; and finally to Paris, with the organization GaiLib and the controversy during Sarkozy’s election. Gay…so what? is a broad and well-constructed portrait of sexual diversity, offering unique arguments and beautiful cinematography.

Sex Positive (USA) In this documentary, director Daryl Wein explores Richard Berkowitz and Michael Callen’s efforts to encourage safe sex for homo-

community. The festival has garnered international recognition in recent years, and strives to offer films with a wide variety of perspectives on contemporary sexuality, explains Charlie Boudreau, executive director of the festival for the past ten years.

The queer cinema, as it’s called, doesn’t just focus on coming out anymore. “There are 5,000 ways to be gay,” she says. New visions are emerging, and young talents are being developed.

Image+nation is not a barometer for society’s perception of different sexualities; it doesn’t exactly reflect highs or lows – but it does give us the opportunity to see some excellent movies on the big screen. Boudreau acknowledges that they’ve scored a point against the small American gay film industry, in which hopelessness has resulted in reductive movies. As Boudreau emphasizes, this festival – which once presented

sexuals during the 1980s. At first, Berkowitz comes off as a total jerk. In the beginning of the documentary, he blurts out: “I’m 51 years old. I can’t think of anything less sexual than listening to an old fart talking about how he got his dick sucked in 1979.” Still, we get to see pretty quickly that Berkowitz’s frustrated, arrogant personality is what helped him to raise his voice, and champion the use of condoms in the homosexual community.

The film evokes an era where AIDS had just been discovered, and crazy speculations on the epidemic abounded. With a handheld camera, Wein achieves a wonderful sense of immediacy.

Sex Positive is a touching documentary, essential for understanding the emergence of a crisis that increasingly affects us today.

Newcastle (Australia) This Dan Castle film focuses on a group of gorgeous young surfers, and might well become a cult movie to young audiences. Jesse lives in the shadow of his brother Victor, a one-time surfing star. His other brother, Fergus, is gay and attracted to his friend, Andy.

Although the film insists on numerous fullfrontal shots of bare-chested or nude guys, Newcastle is really a story about Fergus’s integration into his brother’s very heterosexual world. As entertaining as 2005 skateboard flick Lords of Dogtown, Dan Castle’s movie has some breathtaking scenes. It’s a captivating teen movie, well-adapted to the tone of the festival.

Otto; or, Up with Dead People (Canada and Germany)

the first works of famous director Gus Van Sant – distinguishes itself with its edgy range of films, and by prominently showcasing new talent.

After a movie-watching marathon, I’ve prepared an overview of the festival, as well as previews of some of the movies worth checking out.

The festival image+nation presents a generation fighting not only for the acceptance of its diverse sexualities, but also for the respect of all human rights. In an age of crossing boundaries and pushing limits, the image of society offered by image+nation is not restricted to homosexuality, but embraces the young, contemporary generation filled with contradictions, questions, doubts, expectations, and desires – it is a truly multifaceted festival.

events lead him to stay with Fritz Fritze, the star of a political-porno-epic-zombie movie Up with Dead People. Otto comes to remember his living days, and the circumstances of his death with his lover, Rudolf.

If you’re not already familiar with the work of director Bruce LaBruce, Otto; or, Up with Dead People can seem too multi-faceted to possibly work – but don’t be fooled. The experimental combination of aesthetics is what gives this director his own style. Melding the dark mood of German expressionism with satirical student films, this movie will win over even the most cynical viewer.

The New Twenty (USA) This first feature-length film by director Chris Mason Johnson raises numerous questions without really answering any of them – such is the beauty of the film. The New Twenty exposes the downside of a long-standing friendship between five friends. Stepping into their world through an old picture filled with beaming smiles, we discover how very different they are from one another. Andrew is handsome, Julie is beautiful, they’ve been going out for some time, and they just moved into a new apartment together. Everything seems to be going well, but the fantasy does not last long.

As the characters verge on their thirties, expectations shift. Felix, obsessed by Julie, loses himself in drugs. Ben tries to establish a cyberidentity instead of getting out into the world.

Tony is forced to think over his future when he falls in love with an older man living with AIDS. Moments of humour offer this drama a bit of optimism. Life is a new beginning.

Short films Une robe blanche (Canada) A young man living in Berlin pays a woman to pretend to be his girlfriend when he visits his mother in Montreal. Maintaining a suffocating decorum keeps him from revealing himself, and his love for his mother prevents him from expressing himself honestly, as though he’s constantly under the scrutiny of a security camera. How can he bring himself to be open with his mom, when she keeps calling him “Kitty”?

Though this movie may seem hard to classify, it could simply be called a porn-horrorcomedy. Otto, a zombie that suffers from amnesia, is hitchhiking his way to Berlin. Surprising

Spotlight: Dolls

Other shorts suggestions 1977, For the Love of God, Les Lapines, The Lonely Lights, Sleep Lines, The Window.

All images courtesy of Image+Nation

JACQUELINE BIRD The McGill Daily

Dolls is an interesting title for Karin Babinska’s latest film, as I wasn’t inclined to think back to my playing-with-dolls days even once during the 99-minute running time.

The film is described as the Czech version of Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and being a fan of the original I pounced at the chance to review it. Let’s just say this Euro-version should be introduced as The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pant-less – if you’re watching a scene where they’re fully clothed, give them a few minutes. Dolls is a coming-of-age theatrical, wherein three best friends and a 14-yearold brother depart on a post-high school summer adventure to Holland. Karolina is a slim, pretty girl who flirts with anything made up of XY chromosomes, unavoidably taking sexual experimentation to the big leagues.

Vendula is slightly overweight and struggles with jealousy of Karolina and has self-esteem issues around men. Iska is a contemplative, suicidal girl who discovers that the source of her unhappiness has been the closeting of her true sexual orientation. The trip is expected to be a celebration of freedom, but suddenly evolves into a frenzy of hormones, all-hours intoxication, and poorly thought-out choices. The girls find that the road they’ve been walking together has branched into a fork with three tines, one for each of them to walk separately. Dolls is an openly daring and provocative film, a brute force in the promotion of homosexual filmmaking worldwide. It will make you want to laugh, cry, and take off your pants.

22 Culture

The McGill Daily, Thursday, November 20, 2008

Young and restless

BAND PROFILE

LA weirdos No Age bang out songs and tour the continent with equal fervour

Hey Predator!

Rock / Post punk

LIAM O’KEEFE The McGill Daily

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ttempting to describe the sound of Los Angeles-based band No Age is like navigating a minefield of pretentiousness, repetitiveness, and assorted other –nesses. To classify a band’s catalogue as “pulsating lo-fi art rock with pop sensibilities” is admittedly not as descriptive as it once was. No Age’s layered, distortion-heavy melodies – not to mention the critical goodwill they have enjoyed from influential music blogs – invite comparisons with bands like Deerhunter and A Place to Bury Strangers.

Trying to assign a specific genre to a band with influences as diverse as No Age’s is pointless. With inspirations ranging from the loud, unaffected punk sounds of their Los Angeles predecessors the Germs and X to the raw, abrasive sound

of Sonic Youth, No Age has assembled a more-than-modest arsenal of labels and genres. Their debut album, 2007’s Weirdo Rippers, was at once ambient and cacophonous, prompting reviewers to label the group as noise rock. Pitchfork claimed that the album achieved a “low-tech immensity...much bigger than its constituent parts.” However, the following album, this year’s Nouns, yielded more straightforward, melodic material, while not losing the band’s familiar relentless blasts of distortion.

Throughout the group’s shifts in direction, No Age’s music has remained refreshingly earnest in both lyrics and production. No Age’s two components, drummer/vocalist Dean Spunt and guitarist Randy Randall (yes, that is his real name), demonstrate this humility through their prolific and varied volume of projects. Together, they have played shows in venues as diverse as a vegan

grocery store and The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, all the while maintaining a consistent DIY and allages ethos. In a nod to their humble origins in the Los Angeles art scene, the group has recently expanded into traditional mediums beyond music. Their recent album Nouns included a 68-page full-color booklet with art and images by, among others, the album cover’s designer Brian Rottinger.

Randall, the band’s guitarist, has even ventured into film; he is set to direct The Foreigners, a film documenting the Altamont Apparel skate team’s 2008 tour of Paris. The film will be scored exclusively by No Age. Despite these varied projects, No Age continues to tour tirelessly and promote their sophomore album Nouns, put out by Sub Pop Records.

No Age plays at Club Lambi (4465 St. Laurent) on November 22 at 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $15.

Sally Lin / The McGill Daily

www.myspace.com/heypredator Band Members

Avrum Hollinger, Taylor Fredricks, Luke Fowlie, Zakir Jafry, Tristan Matthews, Vincent Richard

Sounds Like

A pack of feral dogs eating Blood Brothers, Ultra Dolphins, North of America, and Weights and Measures.

Record Label

Aribin Sillah

Upcoming shows

November 22 with Parts and Labor, Special Noise at Zoobizarre (6388 St. Hubert).

Doors are at 8 p.m. and tickets are $8.

McGill Daily: What’s the story behind your name?

Zakir Jafry: There were gazillions of band names…

Tristan Matthews: We’d keep one as a joke, for two weeks, and then

CULTURE BRIEFS Cats and dogs Pop quiz: if an alley cat and a street dog met at midday in Park La Fontaine, who would win in a fight?

Answer: the dog would win every time.

Whereas alleycats are oft-vicious bicycle deathraces organized by the bike courier community, Montreal’s first ever Street Dog – taking place this Saturday at Park La Fontaine – is a non-intimidating scavenger hunt for cyclists of all stripes.

“The Street Dog race is about celebrating biking by exploring the city,” the organizers explain. “We believe enthusiasm for biking is infectious and we want to share the love.”

The Street Dog’s kindred spirit is Critical Mass, Montreal cyclists’ monthly effort to reclaim the streets.

Both aim to bring together the bike community and display strength in numbers against our four-wheeled, engined counterparts. “We believe we can have fun and be political at the same time,” the organizers say, emphasizing the accessibility and

ease of cycling.

Street Dog hopefuls can roll on over to the corner of Brébeuf and Rachel on Saturday afternoon to take part in the festivities. Registration and pre-race activities start at noon and the Dog itself takes off at 2 p.m..

Entry donations of $2-5 are appreciated, but no one will be turned away.

Bring your bike and helmet, a map, and your street dog face – but leave your spoke cards and alleycat sass at home!

An afterparty at Révolution Montreal bike shop (1757 Amherst) will feature the bike film 2 Secondes, free food, and prizes for the wiliest Dogs. See you on the streets!

– Leah Pires

The Jurassic period In 1990, I was born. But more importantly, literary genius Michael Crichton wrote the Lazarus-cumBarney thriller Jurassic Park. In 1993, this work of art was translated to film form, and more recently Crichton’s brilliance has inspired a gang of Montreal rock ‘n’ rollers. This weekend there are two occasions to catch Jurassic Park’s carnivorous seventies AM gold melodies.

Friday, kill two birds with one

change it for another. It’s really hard to come up with a band name that six people can agree on! [...] The Blood Brothers were a band we all liked, and they broke up, so Taylor said, “It’s totally fair to take one of their lyrics or song titles as a band name.” So he compiled this giant list of eighty Blood Brothers-related names, and we all had different choices. And he kind of just threw Hey Predator! in without telling us. I didn’t recognize it, but I just assumed it was a Blood Brothers reference.

It was something we agreed on, and it was the only one that wasn’t a reference. [...] Because there’s an exclamation mark, it’s sort of goofy and cutesy, but then really creepy. The term “predator” especially has this underlying creepiness. It’s a cool conflict.

stone (did you know: dinosaurs are the ancestors of birds) and get your music fix while supporting McGill’s funny paper The Red Herring. Their fundraising event taking place at Barfly will showcase an array of McGill student talent. Jurassic’s dino-beats will feature James Bondsteeped stylings of The Herring’s (and The Daily’s) Rupert Common, rapper extraordinaire. Andy White will be performing new-age-murderative-guitar-and-voice-dystopocalypse-mixed ass-shakin’ jams. And rounding out the set list is rockabilly acoustic heartthrob Rex Daren (not to be confused with a Tyrannosorous Rex).

If you can’t get enough of Jurassic Park’s tunes Friday night, head on down to Theatre Ste. Catherine for a night of madness and mad beats.

With the Apocalypse Brothers’ DJ set and Doctor Buttfuck on the bill, a double dose of homoeroticism is guaranteed. Reversing Falls and 15 Minutes of Power will be playing, and the night is sure to climax with Michael Farsky’s Black Family Orchestra.

Jurassic Park plays at Barfly tonight at 9 p.m., $6, and Friday, November 21 at Theatre Ste. Catherine at 9 p.m..

Admission is pay-what-you-can.

MD: Four of you live together. Has that affected your music?

TM: Usually when you play in a band you see them whenever you’re rehearsing, but then you kind of go a while without seeing each other.

But if you hang out anyway, it makes a huge difference.

ZJ: It’s a lot easier to make songs when you like everybody!

TM: There’s also this tension, like “Listen, you didn’t do your dishes, and you also didn’t finish the part for that song!” sort of wrapped into one. (Laughter) I think it’s been productive.

– Whitney Mallett

– compiled by Joshua Frank

MD: Is there a certain sound you want to create?

TM: It’s usually on a song-by-song basis. Someone will come in with a part or an idea, and have to sell it. It never sounds good right off the bat because there are so many of us. I’d say the best description we’ve heard so far was from [Toronto band] Whiskey Priest, who said, “Your songwriting is so eccentric!” and I thought, “Yeah, I think that’s what we’re going for.” Eccentric is great.

MD: Would you describe your sound as eccentric, then?

TM: I think it just comes out like that because there are so many of us.

ZJ: I wouldn’t say we necessarily try for a specific sound. Our influences show in our music, but I like to think we don’t sound like any one of our given influences.

Compendium!

The McGill Daily, Thursday, November 20, 2008

Lies, Half-truths, & Hot TAs

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Calling on McGill to chill out on that whole ranking thing Katie Burrell The McGill Daily

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here is a lot of talk bippitybopping around this joint regarding the worldwide rankings of our fine institution being somewhere in the twenties, and I’ve heard just about enough.

I’m double-fist pumped that we got ranked lower than last year, when my conversations were dominated by three major themes: dude, so, and fucked. I was always terrified that I would get the academic boot and have to go live with the parents, who would not be impressed and probably make me take up something weird like gardening.

My mom loves a nice garden but has bad knees, so I would be heir to her garden duties. I don’t like bending, kneeling, squatting, or getting dirty. So fuck that, I had to stay in school. But last year, we were getting drilled because we were number one! I woke up every morning with sweaty hands and a stomachache, and couldn’t remember the last time I had sat down to a proper meal or gotten in the shower because I was so dang busy trying to get down with syllabus deadlines.

This year, I propose that we give up any hopes of making the top ten, and as a student body, just put it into cruise control and chill the eff out. No more of this “Can’t talk, need to get note to withdraw from everything,” or, “My advisor told me to transfer to Concordia to take Leisure Studies”

business. For the next year, let’s just hang out and learn – together.

So far I’ve discovered things about McGill that I never thought I would.

For example, between the thirty-fifth and fortieth minute of every hour when everybody has head-downed-it to class, I have campus all to myself.

Nobody’s around. They’re all settling into their seats, un-doing their toggle coats, crossing their legs, re-swooping their swoopy bangs and firing up their Macbooks. This is all occurring while Nicole from the Debating Union announces the regional championships being held this weekend and Dave from the Science Undergraduate Society makes an announcement about a biophysicist guest lecturer he wheeled to give a talk so that he can later put it on his med school resume. For the record, I really respect Nicole and Dave, since Nicole definitely knows what she is talking about and Dave looks like a pretty fit guy.

On the other hand, I struggle getting to my classes and handing in my work on time, let alone having the mental capacity or physical stamina to join a club. So instead of listening to these two tell us about how they are better, more efficient people than I can even aspire to be, I swing by the chocolate almond dispensers in the basement of the Arts building. Then I go up the stairs to the marble floor level. It’s kind of like being in the stomach of a whale: checking out the insides of our ocean dwelling friends would be very cool, but at the same time, you would be being eaten alive,

Musical Misdemeanors Regina Phelangi 1

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which is kind of what McGill is doing to me. (Side note: I have decided to be a fancy lady, and the very mature noises that my expensive boots make on the expensive floor make me feel successful – even though I am really late, have not done a reading in some time, and actively participate only

because I think the TA is hot.)

Sometimes, when Nicole and Dave finish up, I have this urge to stand up and say, “Hey guys, I just want to say, when it hurts, close the book. Eat something. Go to bed. Stay strong, little guys, we’re all in this together,” because I just know that everyone

would clap, one kid would cry, and my TA would ask me out.

But instead, I’m quiet, listen to the girls with Macbooks transcribe the entire lecture with a clickity-clack, and go to the library afterward to do my homework so that I can ride the bell curve to freedom.

Dan Kaell / The McGill Daily

Overheard in The Daily Your ignorance made me vomit my Vitamin Water.

Bro 1: If you just eat a whole chicken for breakfast, is that enough protein for the day?

Bro 2: No man, you don’t get protein from chicken, you get it from protein shakes...dumbass.

– New Rez You can find this brand new Overheard at McGill gem – as well as plenty of other stupid things that arguably smart students have said – at overheardatmcgill.com.

Across 1. Flightless birds 5. Spinach-like plant 10. Move quickly 14. Hottie 15. 6th largest Hawaiian island 16. Milk or sapien beginning 17. Band convicted for arson?

19. German river 20. Lecturer 21. Mumbles 22. Tarnish 25. Island between Great Britain and Ireland 29. Sole 30. Loss of coordination 31. 1995 Sandra Bullock movie, “The ___” 32. Internet discussion system 34. Nucleotide chain 35.Band convicted for indecent exposure?

42. Over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder?

43. Random facts 44. Girly getaway location?

47. Scale 49. Russian rulers 50. Equitably, in Latin 52. Churches or temples 53. Scent 54. Essence 56. ___ d’état

57. Band convicted for homocide?

63. “Or !”

64. ___ one’s ways 65. Milk-dipping cookie 66. Part of a fishing rod 67. Practical joke 68. Weaving term Down 1. Life after Bronfman?

2. Paddle 3. TV station 4. Amphibious aircraft 5. Margarine 6. Type of palm 7. Cuckoo relative 8. “Dude, where’s my ___?”

9. Hasten 10. Ledge 11. Doric or ionic 12. Dark areas 13. Not does 18. Goalie turned politician, Ken ___ 21. Tofu basis 22. Part of a ticket 23. Major or Minor 24. Ogle 26. Small rivers 27. Acreage 28. Worship 33. Indian drum

36. ___ Kringle 37. Crafty 38. Forbid 39. 2004 Atlantic hurricane 40. Ireland 41. Attitude 44. Orthodontic tool 45. Type of officer 46. Excite 47. Psych majors may join this one day?

48. Greek boot 51. Set in motion 55. Pig phrase 57. Amt. in baking 58. Not him 59. Pilot’s prediction 60. Before, in poetry 61. Striped-one, in sports 62. Drunkard

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