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NEWS

173.6 • Thursday, FEBRUARY 13, 2014

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IDS lecture on the “industrial food diet” International Development Series talk given by Prof.

Anthony Winson Ian Gibson On Feb. 7, the Department of International Development Studies hosted a lecture on “Globalisation of the Industrial Diet,” presented

by University of Guelph Professor of Sociology and Anthropology Dr. Tony Winson. The lecture coincided with the release of Winson’s new book, “The Industrial Diet,” which he spoke about candidly.

Winson argued that the “degradation of food and the struggle for healthy eating has changed since the advent of food technology processes.” The definition of food has changed “because the change in technological innovation has enabled the transformation of our diets,” said Winson. Our eating habits have changed from “paleo diets” – which consist mainly of fish, vegetables, fruit, eggs and grass-fed pasture-raised meats – to

“industrial diets.”

Winson argued that the degradation of our modern diet has resulted in an industrial one that he referred to as a “suite of aggressively promoted, nutritionally compromised products that are the outcome of an ensemble of agricultural and food technology processes.”

Two factors that proved essential in precipitating this shift were increasing urbanization and liberalization of women in society.

“The combined socio-economic transformations of massive rural to urban migration and the liberalization of women working outside of the domestic unit have resulted in severe time constrictions which transform our diet,” said Winson.

It was these transformations that enabled the proliferation of the industrial diet and provided “a profitable opportunity for corporations.”

While the success of these corporations is based on their exploitation of time constraints, Winson adds that “with convenience, comes a price.” Powerful corporations are

“limiting our nutritional possibilities” and replacing traditional foods with “compromised edible products.”

Grocery stores encourage these limitations in immediate ways with their tremendous influence on the “spatial colonization of food environments.” With a combination of free parking, accommodating hours

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of operation and shopping carts, supermarkets entice buyers with convenience. Yet their “lucrative success” is really owed to “the hyperspatial colonization of pseudo-foods which are usually found at the displays on the ends of aisles.”

Winson goes so far as to estimate that “only ten per cent of food found in supermarkets has any nutritional value.” The rest, he said, “is pseudo (junk) food.” By manipulating food environments in this way, corporations are able to “wean people off of traditional snack foods and onto new ones they control,” fast food in particular.

This shift not only adversely affects the middle-class by exploiting their time constraints, but, in reality, has the biggest impact on vulnerable populations, children especially, who “are the key target for these pseudo-food products.”

“Corporations, in advertising, undermine the health of children,” said Winson. “[They] are aware of this.”

What is more, the foods that are aggressively marketed by American

transnational food corporations can be characterized by three traits: adulteration, simplification, and degradation.

In providing an example of adulteration, Winson highlighted the recent allegations brought forward by the website, Foodbabe.com.

Winson told the audience that the same ingredient “azodicarbonamide” used in yoga mats and shoe leather is also a chemical used to make Subway sandwich bread.

In concluding, Winson emphasized the global scope of this proliferating industrial diet.

“The control of food retail and the proliferation of supermarkets worldwide is part of the neoliberal agenda,” said Winson. The impact of this system, though, he says is worrying. With escalating obesity rates, developing countries otherwise known for shortages of food are showing the consequences of the industrial diet. Countries like Mexico, Brazil and India are now coming on par with developed countries in terms of high rates of obesity and diabetes.

Conversation on ‘opening up’ educational materials

Michael Long

On Feb. 11, the Institute for Community Engaged Scholarship (ICES), a group housed within the College of Social and Applied Human Sciences (CSAHS), held a small learning circle devoted to exploring the implications of “opening up” educational materials – course slides, syllabi, etc. – to the public, online and free of charge.

The philosophy behind sharing educational materials is broadly the same as the one that underpins the free sharing academic research with the public – a movement known as ‘open access.’ But there are compelling reasons why academics are wary of divulging their educational materials, according to

Gavan Watson, an Education Developer with the U of G’s OpenEd office and one of the learning circle’s co-facilitators.

Academic research is, by its very nature, “designed to be shared,” said Watson. Many academics like the idea of “removing barriers” to their published work even if the logistics of doing so can be a bit murky.

“But one of the assumptions I have, and one of the perspectives I think exists,” Watson said, “is that often teaching is seen as a private practice. And though it happens in front of 50, 60, 600 students, it’s really the instructor who makes the decision about what learning outcomes are going to be.”

The learning circle, which was

composed of staff and graduate students, noted that instructors can be very protective of their educational materials, and can be reluctant to share even a course syllabus among themselves for fear of compromising its worth, and even their own worth as an instructor.

“They’re concerned about how [an educational material] might be used if others got access to it, that somehow its value might be diminished,” said Watson.

The circle acknowledged, however, that the value of an educational material depends on the instructor’s ability to employ it effectively.

Indeed it is precisely for that reason that anxiety about releasing such materials is so strong.

The process of making

post-secondary educational materials available to people outside the university is a movement that is gaining traction. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are becoming increasingly popular, and top-tier schools like MIT have invested a lot of resources in making some of its course materials freely available online.

The learning circle’s other cofacilitator, Anne Bergen of the ICES, who is also a sessional instructor in the Department of Psychology, discussed her decision to make her lecture slides open to the public.

Like MIT’s Open Courseware service, Bergen decided to use a Creative Commons license to protect her work in at least some capacity.

Creative Commons is a copyright

system that allows creators to open up their work to whatever degree they feel comfortable.

In this way, Bergen’s lecture slides were made freely available but with certain restrictions: for example, users are forbidden from altering or copying the slides for commercial purposes, and, if a user chooses to alter or repurpose the slides, they must “share alike,” ensuring that the derivatives are also barrier-free.

For practical and philosophical purposes, many people (the ICES being just one example) are attracted to the equitability of open access. But just how similar open access research is to open access education is evidently a complicated matter.

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NEWS

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Guelph Pride celebrates Winter Pride Week

Suicide bomb instructor accidently blows up class At a terrorist training camp north of Baghdad, a militant commander made the mistake of using live explosives while giving a lesson to class of aspiring suicide bombers. He succeeded in killing himself and 21 other wannabe martyrs, army and police officials said.

The militant trainees were members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, a Sunni extremist group that was formerly the al Qaeda branch in Iraq. Iraq is currently experiencing its worst violence in more than five years, with almost 1,000 people killed last month. Many Iraqi citizens, unsurprisingly, were pleased to learn about the deaths of the terrorists.

“I heard this today when my friend rang me in the afternoon to tell me about it,” a local resident told The New York Times. “He was so happy as if he was getting married.” “[This] made me happy as well,” he added. “I was not happy with the number killed, though: I wanted more of them to die, as I remember my friend who was killed by a suicide bomber in 2007.”

Former US Navy tech sentenced 30 years for spying In 2012, undercover FBI agents posing as Russian operatives contacted Robert Hoffman, a retired U.S. Navy cryptologic technician, to see if he was wiling to divulge top-secret military files. After negotiating compensation and terms of “mutual trust,” Hoffman proceeded to drop thumb drives containing military secrets, specifically about tracking U.S. ships, into a hollowed out tree trunk on three separate occasions.

He was arrested on Dec. 6, 2012 and convicted last August of spying for Russia. He has now been sentenced to 30 years in prison. The Justice Department did not comment on why the FBI initially sought to approach Hoffman.

Hoffman served in the Navy for 20 years and spent much of his career operating systems designed to gather information for submarine commanders about potential threats.

In a public statement, acting U.S. Attorney Dana Boente said, “Today’s sentence should serve as a clear warning to others who would willingly compromise our nation’s most sensitive classified information.”

Compiled by Michael Long

Princess Pageant drag show one of week’s many community-building events Sameer Chhabra

Guelph Pride celebrated its annual Winter Pride Week from Feb. 3 to 9. The week’s events were organized by Guelph Pride in association with Out on the Shelf, The AIDS Committee of Guelph and Wellington County, and Guelph Spoken Word, in addition to community sponsors like the University of Guelph.

The week-long celebration is the winter equivalent of Guelph Pride Week (which takes place in July), and offers students who would normally be on summer break a chance to get involved with the LGBTQ community. Workshops designed to enhance the public’s knowledge and perception of LGBTQ issues and human sexuality were held alongside film screenings and art exhibitions dedicated to LGBTQ culture.

“Winter Pride is meant to engage those members of our community who aren’t available during Guelph Pride Week in May, such as University of Guelph students,” explained Dillon March, Chair of the Guelph Pride Committee. “Guelph Pride is fortunate to be supported by a number of University of Guelph LGBTQ and related student groups who help us promote and run our events.

[We offer] a variety of events to promote diversity, community, and acceptance within the community.”

In association with Cantina Music Productions, Winter Pride Week held “That’s My Drag: Winter Pride Princess Pageant” on Feb. 8 at the Red Papaya Thai and Grill. The first annual drag show featured performances by four talented Drag Queens and the King and Queen of last year’s Pride Festival. The performers competed for the title of Winter Pride Princess.

“Cantina Music Productions and Guelph Pride wanted to have an event that was fun, rather than having a week full of workshops and other more formal events,” explained March. “So Cantina Music came up with the idea of a Winter Pride Princess Pageant which will hopefully be an annual event. We hope this event allows various members of the Guelph community to have a good night and enjoy themselves within an accepting, open environment.”

The show featured contestants performing famous musical numbers. Performers were dressed in flashy outfits, and each performer underwent a minimum of three costume changes. Notable outfits were Sydney Savage’s leopard-print body suit and Athena McQueen’s interpretation of the dress worn by the Disney Princess Elsa.

PHOTO BY OLIVIA BROWN

Guelph Pride crowned Athena McQueen, seen above, this year’s Winter Pride Princess at last Saturday’s “That’s My Drag” pageant held at the Red Papaya Thai and Grill.

“It may surprise some of you tonight, but I’m really a man,” said Savage in a post-performance interview. “We’re all here because we’re proud of who we are and we’re proud of who we want to be. Whomever wins, my competitors and I are all so proud to be here and so happy to be able to spend the evening with you.”

In the end, Athena McQueen was crowned Winter Pride Princess.

Despite the best efforts of organizations like Guelph Pride, homophobia and prejudice toward members of the LGBTQ community are still prevalent issues. “Gay-bashing” is still a frequently referenced problem, especially among young males and male athletes.

“As a heterosexual 20-something man growing up in a religious household, I was raised around a great deal of homophobia,” explained University of Guelph student Stephen Lynch.

“Playing semi-professional sports only gave me more contact with homophobia, but from an early age I never understood the hatred that people around me felt toward homosexuals. I am personally very excited that Pride has come to Guelph, as it gives people who have not had the chance to attend one of the larger Pride events a chance to get involved in the gay community.”

Still, Guelph Pride hopes that its message about the importance of diversity and community will permeate through years of cultural programming.

“Everyone is unique and this uniqueness should be celebrated within an open, accepting environment,” said March.

“The University of Guelph is really fortunate to have a vast number of LGBTQ resources on campus and off,” said March.

“Guelph Queer Equality, The

Guelph Resource Centre for Gender Empowerment and Diversity (GRCGED), The Wellness Centre, and OUTline [are

all] student resources that offer a help-line for those who need someone to talk to about gender identity and sexual orientation.”

NEWS

173.6 • Thursday, FEBRUARY 13, 2014

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Unemployed professors will write for food

“So you can play while we make your papers go away” Alyssa Ottema

UnemployedProfessors.com, a web-based essay mill founded in Montreal, is currently climbing to infamy within the academic sphere. The site refers to itself as “a service [provided] to make your life easier.” Operating as a bidding process, students can purchase original academic work from “unemployed professors.” The site currently hosts 30 ghostwriter professors who bid on projects with an asking price and estimated completion date. The student then accepts whichever bid is most attractive.

“Let’s face it,” reads the “About Us” page, “academia is a machine that thrives only on what it incestuously produces.

The people writing for you here are those who’ve been sucked in and spit out by this machine… our job is to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen to you.”

The senior news editor of the Sheaf, the Univesrity of Saskatchewan student newspaper, recently interviewed the people behind UnemployedProfessors.com and discussed the media buzz they have experienced recently. Of course, the primary concern of this attention is the ethicality of it all.

“Isn’t it really unethical for you to be writing these essays for cash?” one of the site’s FAQs reads. “Incredibly so” is the answer. “Because the academic

system is already so corrupt, we’re totally cool with that.”

In the correspondence with the Sheaf, however, the site takes a slightly different stance. “We don’t see an ethical dilemma on our side,” they said. “The ethical burden really is on the students. We produce custom research; it’s up to the user to do with it as he or she sees fits.”

The concept of buying academic work is certainly not new. Essay mills existed before the Internet era, with a focus on selling previously submitted essays rather than creating “custom research” for individuals. Essay mills allowed students to purchase essays dependent on the grade they wished to receive. Students looking to boost their average could purchase an A paper, while those with poor academic records could purchase a paper in the C range to avoid being flagged for plagiarism.

However, sites like TurnItIn. com have ended the era of students buying recycled essays, and so UnemployedProfessors. com fills this void, targeting those with poor English, who are lazy, are busy, and those who simply resent being asked to write papers.

The Ontarion submitted a fake assignment to the site and within ten minutes had a response from an “unemployed professor” going by the pseudonym “Politically-Suspect,” who claims to have not one, but two PhDs. “I am a rare find,” claims Politically-Suspect. “I actively enjoy learning about new topics and I take pride in my work. As

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A website called UnemployedProfessors.com is attracting attention for, as its name suggests, giving students a chance to outsource their essay-writing assignments to PhD mercenaries looking to make a quick buck. a result, all the essays I write are not only learned, cogently argued, and sophisticated; they are also written with style and panache.”

Hilary Jarvis, the Governance and Judicial Officer for Student Judicial Services, noted that the U of G has an extensive policy on academic misconduct.

Though lacking a specific section for the fraud encouraged by UnemployedProfessors.com, a

section labelled “Unauthorized Aids and Assistance” states that “it is an offence to use or possess an unauthorized aid [or]… unauthorized assistance...in connection with any form of academic work. Such aids may include...commercial services (such as writing, editorial, software, or research survey services).” “[W]hile the University has attempted to present as

comprehensive a list as possible,” continued Jarvis, “the list of potential academic offences contained in the policy should not be considered exhaustive.”

At the time of publication, the Ontarion had 6 bids on the fake assignment, with ghostwriters asking between $150 and $300 to write a six-page philosophy paper. Clearly, academic misconduct is costly in more ways than one.

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ARTS & CULTURE

The Overview: The Walking Dead

Fight the dead, fear the living Stephen Banic

I found myself in a debate earlier this week with a friend concerning the plot of AMC’s The Walking Dead. My friend believes that the show is about killing zombies in every possible brutal way, and is slowly losing interest in the later seasons as the focus has shifted to drama between the living survivors. He is not wrong. For those of you looking for a mindless zombie killing frenzy, you probably will not be wholly satisfied with The Walking Dead, due to the fact that it focuses more on an allegorical story of morals

and what it means to retain one’s humanity when faced with death.

Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), the primary character of the series, is the Deputy-Sheriff of a small town outside of Atlanta, Georgia, and leads a pretty ordinary life with his wife, Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies), and son, Carl (Chandler Riggs). One day as he is chasing down a suspect, he is shot and falls into a coma, left on the brink of death.

A couple of weeks later, Rick awakens in what appears to be a war torn hospital. As he walks out he discovers he is still in his hometown, but everything has taken a turn for the worse. The town appears abandoned by humans and overrun by the living dead, who Rick begins to call “Walkers.” Rick must now search

for his family and friends while struggling to survive and accept this new post-apocalyptic world he has awoken to.

The show first started in Oct. 2010 and is still going strong.

Currently, it has three seasons completed, with the fourth ongoing, and a grand total of 44 episodes aired to date. It does not look like the zombiecraze is ending anytime soon.

The viewership is continually growing, as a reported 16.1 million viewers tuned into the season four premiere, shattering AMC show records. It has won numerous awards, and was nominated as Best New Series for the 2011 Writers Guild of America Awards, as well as Best Television Series-Drama at the

68th Golden Globe Awards.

As good as it is, this show is truly not for the faint of heart. Of course it contains the regular ‘viewer discretion is advised’ due to the mature themes, coarse language, sexual content, and violence.

However, the blood and gore in the show deserves some special attention. The truth is that killing zombies realistically produces a whole lot of blood spatter, and the show really is not shy at all in portraying many creative ways of killing off the walking dead. If you can stomach all the gore, you are in for one hell of a ride.

At the surface, The Walking Dead is a zombie-killing-humandrama hybrid, but the writing of the show is so brilliant that it manages to engage its audience on

a very personal level. A common question the show tends to ask the characters is if they are willing to do whatever it takes to survive in a world with no future at the cost of their own humanity and morality.

Although the characters are the ones answering, this also forces the audience to question their own morality and if they would be able to make the same decisions in order to survive. I know that I’ve stayed up multiple nights after watching an episode and wondered what I would do in those same situations. That is what makes this show so awesome.

Needless to say, The Walking Dead is Overview-approved, if not for the sole reason that it mentally prepares you for the inevitable zombie apocalypse.

The Weekly Review: American Hustle

3.5 horrifically-pacedcharacter-driven-instantclassics out of 4 Sameer Chhabra

Pacing is a cinematic term that can be summed up as knowing when to turn off the camera and stop shooting. It’s more than just the knowledge that some stories don’t need three hours of run-time to be told properly, because pacing isn’t just about run-time. Pacing is knowing how to sequence plot points, how to direct actors so they don’t drain the audience’s patience, and how to edit scenes so they maintain the audience’s attention without sacrificing either plot or characterization. Sadly, American Hustle is not a wellpaced movie. At least, not in the conventional sense of the term.

A fun and engaging two hour crime-comedy-drama romp that’s an intriguing character study on human survival, David O. Russell’s latest directorial effort suffers from pacing so audacious that I was more inclined to watch molasses trickle down a wall. It’s a fantastic movie by all accounts – great characters, interesting plot, strong writing, and some of the best acting to ever come out of these actors – but it is painfully, deliberately, ridiculously slow.

Luckily, the combined acting talents of Bradley Cooper, Amy Adams, Christian Bale, Jeremy Renner, and Jennifer Lawrence are enough to turn the would-be disaster into something spectacular.

The audience is constantly hustled this way throughout the entire film, and that is completely intentional on the part of the filmmakers.

Throughout much of its fairly standard run-time, American Hustle constantly shows far less interest in its plot than it does in

its characters. Make no mistake, however – there is a coherent story, and the intimate connection it forges with its characters is what makes the movie so compelling.

Taking the FBI ABSCAM operations of the 1970s and 1980s and putting them centre stage, the plot’s main conceit features conman Irving Rosenfield (Christian Bale), forced to work with ambitious FBI agent Richard DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) to expose corrupt politicians taking bribes from a fake Arab Sheik. The absurd premise warrants an opening title card explaining that “some of this actually happened.”

Caught between Rosenfield and DiMaso are Amy Adams’s Sydney Prosser and Jennifer Lawrence’s Rosalyn Rosenfield. Both characters are romantically tied to the charismatic Irving, with Sydney as his lover and Rosalyn as his deranged and incredibly unstable wife.

As Prosser, Adams channels her inner scavenger, playing a character whose sole purpose is to fight for the survival of herself and the man she loves. Prosser hustles foolish men by playing the role of an English lady, luring them into a feeling of safety before bringing them to

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Irving to be robbed. The connection between Irving and Sydney is the film’s driving relationship, and the audience feels the love the two share for each other. They want a good life together, away from the need to steal, but money is the only thing they lack.

Serving as the film’s secondary female character, Rosalyn traps Irving in her web of insanity.

He is powerless against her, and she is one of the few forces in his universe that he cannot control.

There’s a way that Lawrence plays Rosalyn that makes the audience shiver. She’s silly, childish, needy, and immature, but we can tell that Irving’s being hustled, just as we are. Rosalyn manipulates Irving like he manipulates the people who come to him with Sydney.

It’s how these people survive.

Irving’s weakness is that he believes in family. One wouldn’t expect a con man to want anything that ties him down, but Irving makes it clear that his relationship to his work only exists for the important people in his life. In this case, those people are Sydney and his step-son. The boy is Irving’s through his marriage to Rosalyn – one more way that the unstable wife seduces her husband.

Once Irving meets DiMaso, the con-man-with-a-heart-of-gold finds friendship in Jeremy Renners’ Carmine Polito, the mayor of New Jersey who only wishes to help the people of his city.

Praise must be given to Renner.

Polito isn’t sleazy, and the audience will wait the entire film to be hustled. Amazingly, we never are. To the last moment, Polito is every bit the man that the audience sees him to be. Ultimately, Polito is every bit the man that Irving wishes he could be himself.

There should be no mistake: these characters are more important than the story they find themselves in, and each cast member plays their part with a flourish.

As the audience, we fall for their slick charm, and whether they’re sleazy, slimeball, seductive, or sincere, we’re caught up in their acts.

Ultimately, the film is very

slow, but not at all boring. There is simply no universe where American Hustle is a bad movie, but in each of those universes, it is a slow movie.

ARTS & CULTURE

173.6 • Thursday, FEBRUARY 13, 2014

Artist’s Spotlight: Ron Shuebrook

Sameer Chhabra

The Macdonald Stewart Art Centre launched an exhibit featuring the charcoal-on-rag drawings of Ron Shuebrook on Jan. 23, 2014. Shuebrook was available on Thursday, Feb. 6, 2014 for a brief but candid one-on-one conversation about his career, his artwork, his exhibit, and his life.

Shuebrook is the kind of man few people ever meet. Eloquent, wise, knowledgeable, and worldly, his opinions are downto-earth and logical. His art speaks for itself, though it does take some occasional deciphering to understand his motivations. An artist trained in visual and studio arts, an academic, an administrator, the former president of the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD, now OCADU), and an occasional writer, Shuebrook is a man of many talents.

“My education is as a specialist [artist],” explained Shuebrook.

“Ironically, [my degree] was called a bachelor of science in art education.

It was science, mathematics, [and] economics, in addition to courses in art history and studio art.”

The irony extends to his belief in a unified school environment.

The idea that universities have begun to cut funding from arts programs is startling to him, and the idea that arts departments have succumbed to infighting to determine which courses get priority is reprehensible.

“When I became a chair or vice

president academic, I would look at programs, but I wouldn’t automatically think, ‘Oh, somebody who’s making ceramics is lesser than this or that field,’” explained Shuebrook. “I studied craft disciplines, but in China or Japan, [that art] wouldn’t be called a craft.

Whole villages are dedicated to preserving traditions.”

Speaking to Shuebrook is akin to speaking to an experienced historian. Within the University of Guelph alone, Shuebrook’s efforts lead to the creation of the School of Fine Arts and Music (SOFAM) and the withheld demolition of Zavitz Hall.

“If you look at [MacNaughton], there’s an element that juts out and looks like it’s going to hit Zavitz Hall,” said Shuebrook.

“The belief was ‘Oh, we’ll just level old buildings.’”

On the difference between Canadian and American educational standards, Shuebrook described his experience when he first moved to teach at the University of Saskatchewan in 1972.

According to Shuebrook, Canadian academics were more open to discussing Russian artwork than their American counterparts.

On the current state of academia, Shuebrook expressed disappointment at the absurd claim that any one particular field is more notable than any other.

“There are fields that are seen as worthy of study and fields that are not worthy of study in the university context,” began Shuebrook.

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PHOTO BY WENDY SHEPHERD

Above are three of the featured works on display at the Macdonald Stewart Arts Centre by artist Ron Shuebrook. His exhibition is available for viewing until April 27. “[If you look at] art history, [it’s] taught as paintings, sculpture, a little bit of print making, and reference to architecture. Where is textile? Where is design? Where is ceramics? Where are those other manifestations of culture in its broadest sense? They’re largely [ignored] and they don’t exist within the canon of university.”

Shuebrook began his studies at Kent State University in Ohio two years after the National Guard

was called in to handle a student protest against America’s involvement in Vietnam. His recollection of the school’s atmosphere and his reflection on how profoundly these events shaped his life are identifiable in his work.

Shuebrook’s work in the MSAC, however, is a collection of pieces gathered from different periods in his life. The unifying factor in each of his pieces is the abstract design of his work, his use of lines

to define space, and his emphasis on applying varying stroke intensities to characterize his art.

Utilizing charcoal pencils on rag paper, Shuebrook’s work requires time to analyze and understand the meaning behind each brushstroke. Of course, much like the man himself, Shuebrook’s art is worth experiencing.

The MSAC will be featuring Shuebrook’s work until April 27, 2014.

STYLE PICK OF THE WEEK: MORGAN LOCKHARD

ALBUM OF THE WEEK: CUTOFF AT 20000 HURTS

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The release of boyBITCH’s album, Cut Off at 20000 Hurts, features 10 sexually charged electronic tracks. This album was a result of Vanden Enden religious upbringing and a marriage that stifled his homosexuality and sense of self leaving music as the only place he felt he could be honest.

His bandcamp page states that he “is a slave to beats and ridiculous lyrics.” The truth is, boyBITCH doesn’t seem to take himself or his music too seriously, and the cheesy lyrics and electronic pop beats will make you want to laugh and dance at the same time.

PHOTO BY WENDY SHEPHERD

Morgan Lockhart was spotted in the UC. Lockhart’s look was a mixture of edgy and cool, mixing modern flare with a classic twist. Lockhart’s oversized red jacket, satchel purse, and skinny jeans worked well together – the classics frames and perfectly styled short hair topped off the look.

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SPORTS & HEALTH

Sports Roundup – Feb. 6-10

Andrew Donovan

Men’s hockey: Guelph 4-2 Laurier The Gryphons men’s hockey team hosted their annual “Do it for Daron” game to bring light to mental health awareness for children. Pregame ceremonies included TSN’s Michael Landsberg doing the puck drop and honouring the team’s departing seniors – James Merrett, Kenneth Peroff, Philip Teri, John Collins, and Cale Jefferies.

The Gryphons had an onslaught of shots in the first period, outshooting the Golden Hawks 16-6, but found it difficult to beat Laurier’s goaltender, Vinny Merante.

Teal Burns opened up the scoring on a shorthanded goal in a second period that saw Guelph get outshot 12-5. Leonard Fabbri was another Gryphon that took advantage of the little pressure Guelph had on net in the second, burying a goal to help the Gryphons go up two.

Guelph’s third goal came on the power play and was courtesy of Nicholas Trecapelli. This proved important, as Laurier strung together two quick goals to come within one of Guelph, but once the Golden Hawk’s goalie was pulled with a minute left of regulation, Guelph capitalized with their fourth and final goal of the game.

Women’s hockey: Finish tops in OUA, 3rd in Canada In what turned out to be a season for the record books, the Gryphons

women’s hockey team went 21-3 on the season as back-to-back wins, 3-0 versus York and 4-2 versus UOIT, leads the top-seeded Guelph side into the playoffs.

Guelph’s star-studded team features the likes of Christine Grant, second in the OUA in points with 34, Jessica Pinkerton, first in the OUA with 16 goals, and goalie Stephanie Nehring, first in wins (19) and goals against average (1.15) in the OUA. The playoffs begins at home versus the Waterloo Warriors today, Feb. 13, at 7:30 p.m., and if necessary, the Gryphons will return home for the deciding third game of the series on the 16 at 2 p.m.

Women’s volleyball: Tops in OUA West The streak of impressive feats for women’s athletics here at the U of G continued this weekend as the volleyball team solidified their first place spot in a win over Windsor in straight sets, 25-18, 25-24 and 25-18.

Guelph’s dominating performances continued as they played host to Western on Senior’s night, winning 3-1 over the lowly Mustangs, who finish 6-13 on the year.

The women will be hosting the Lakehead Thunderwolves in the quarter-finals of the OUA. In two previous meetings versus the Thunderwolves, Guelph won handily 3-1 and 3-1. Game one’s tip-off is set for Feb. 15 at 6 p.m. in the W.F. Mitchell Athletic Centre.

PHOTO BY WENDY SHEPHERD

TSN’s personality Michael Landsberg, was on hand for the puck drop at the “Do it for Daron” night at the Gryphon Centre. Guelph won 4-2 over rival Laurier.

Swimming: Golden Moments Both the men’s and women’s Gryphons athletes of the Week belonged to the swimmers this time around, as Guelph wrappedup an impressive showing at the OUA Championships this past weekend at Brock University.

Fourth-year Psychology student, Alisha Harricharan obtained gold in the 100m and 50m butterfly, setting OUA record times of 59.53 and 26.86. Harricharan also won gold in the 200m butterfly and participated in the 4 x 100m

The beat on the beet

Antioxidant, beneficial to cardiovascular system, and melts ice? The wonders of the beet Andrew Donovan

Every so often, products that claim to boost the performance or recovery of an athlete hit the shelves of grocery stores, bulk food retailers, and supplement shops, and become overnight necessities for your avid competitor.

Muscle Milk layers the clay ground of dugouts at baseball diamonds, while Gatorade coolers with their bright orange hue are spotted at every pitch, arena, and gridiron across North America.

Staples to their respective sports, liquid supplements are here to stay.

For better or for worse, any potential damage done by their high sugar contents is placed second to the benefits of electrolytes and protein.

Recently, however, beetroot juice has made a splash in the athletic market – so much so that it warrants a discussion on the merits of this burgundy liquid.

First of all, when free of added ingredients, dieticians and nutritionists have made the argument that beets deserve to be listed in

the ‘superfood’ category, with the likes of foods such as blueberries and salmon.

While beetroot juice can be appreciated for its accolades as an antioxidant, athletes are turning to beetroot juice for a beet’s ability to load a person up on nitrates. Nitrates, in laymen’s terms, help muscles use oxygen more efficiently.

In the past, nitrates in foods such as bacon have been under scrutiny from the wellness industry, but new research concludes that nitrates found organically in vegetables play an important role in cardiovascular health.

These claims prompted decorated U of G long-distance runner and master’s student, Kyle Boorsma, to study the health effects of beetroot juice on runners.

“There are quite a few athletes who are currently using beetroot juice…I’ve used it many times,” Boorsma explained to At Guelph.

“The main effect that athletes are most interested in is that, following nitrate supplementation with beetroot juice, you have a reduction in the amount of oxygen required to run or cycle at any given speed.”

Boorsma focused specifically on more experienced and high-level athletes and for that particular demographic, the results may

come with slight disappointment.

“On a group basis, there was no improvement in performance or a reduction in the oxygen consumption,” said Boorsma.

This would lead one to believe that the benefits of nitrates in beetroot juice are most beneficial to the lesser-trained athlete.

However, beetroot juice still has many properties that are beneficial to the everyday person, be it an elite athlete or an average Joe. Beets are loaded with a unique source of phytonutrients called betalains, which have been shown to provide antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and detoxification support.

If you are disinterested in the beet as a nutritional supplement or a means to upping your athleticism, praise the beet for its ability to melt ice. That’s right, the City of Toronto adds a beet concoction to the salt they spray on roads to melt ice when the temperatures drop below -20 C; the beet allows the salt to work until -32 C. “When it starts getting really cold, that’s where the sugar beet really shines,” said Tony Vaccari of Eco Solutions, which manufactures the organic product the city uses. “We don’t like saying it’s better for the environment than salt, but you can drink our product.”

freestyle relay, which earned a bronze medal for the Gryphons.

Guelph’s Evan Moerkerke, tasted all the colours of the podium’s rainbow, bringing home gold in the 100m freestyle, silver in the 50m freestyle, and

bronze in the 50m breaststroke.

Moerkerke, the defending OUA rookie of the year, has his next challenge at the CIS Championships starting on Feb. 22, and looking to earn a spot on the senior National Team in April.

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The Biggest Loser’s biggest flaw Andrew Donovan

The finale of NBC’s hit show, The Biggest Loser, generated a lot of controversy. Contestant and challenge winner, Rachel Frederickson, revealed that she’d lost an incredible 155 lbs. – including an astonishing 45 lbs lost in the final three months of the competition.

As Frederickson strutted her 5’4”, 105 pound frame in front of judges, their facial expressions said it all. “I was stunned. That would be the word. I mean, we’ve never had a contestant come in at 105 pounds,” exclaimed The Biggest Loser’s Bob Harper.

“What people don’t understand is, when the contestant leaves to go home…they’re in charge of themselves,” Harper said, “so I had not seen her until that night, and when she walked out, I was just kind of like, ‘Whoa.’ And I’ve been on the show since the beginning.”

Harper’s comments and longevity on the show (this was his fifteenth season) are a testament to how truly incredible Frederickson’s transformation was.

However, the word incredible isn’t necessarily a synonym for “good,” and the weight loss

doesn’t necessarily mean it was all praise and applause for Frederickson. In fact, the amount of weight she lost, in the time that she lost it, prompted many viewers and experts in health and fitness alike to weigh in on the transformation in a less than positive manner.

“I think the show gives [the obese] a false sense that they can lose that much weight that quickly, safely,” said celebrity trainer Harley Pasternak. “It gives them a false sense of what you need to do to lose weight. I don’t think you need to be flipping giant tractor tires and having obstacle courses…weight loss is not a competitive thing.”

Some critics have demanded the show be cancelled, but ratings and recent publicity will all but assure that a cancellation is the last thing that will happen to The Biggest Loser.

Other critics – take People Magazine for example – have provided the show with various recommendations such as: setting limits on how much weight contestants can lose, slowing down the weight loss, scaling down the intensity of workouts, and providing long-term support to former

contestants.

“It is impossible to lose more than 2 lbs. of fat per week, so then you’re losing muscle tissue,” said Laura Gideon, a L.A.-based exercise therapist and physiologist. “[Rapid weight loss] is very dangerous…she could really mess up her thyroid, her adrenals, her metabolism.”

The hashtag “#tellusatoday” asked viewers of USA Today to give their opinions of the transformation, and while most blasted Frederickson and the producers of the show for promoting body sizes that show extreme ends to the spectrum, others congratulated Frederickson on her hard work, achieving her goal, and being content with herself.

While the epidemic of obesity is highest in America, Canadian health experts warn that the rate of obesity among Canadians is continually rising, which is causing premature deaths and a strain on the public healthcare system.

The Toronto Star released a visual presentation earlier this month comparing obesity rates in 2000 to obesity rates as recent as 2011.

In 2000, British Columbia was the only province with an obesity rate between 15 to 19 per cent. Alberta,

COURTESY PHOTO

From one extreme to another. Rachel Frederickson’s almost unimaginable transformation has sparked a worthwhile debate on health and weight loss online.

Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec registered per cents ranging from 20 to 24; Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, P.E.I., Newfoundland, and the Yukon registered 25 to 29 per cent while Nunavut and the Northwest Territories ranged from 30 to 34 per cent As of 2011, no provinces register in the 15 to 19 per cent range any longer, and Quebec, Northwest Territories and Nunavut are the only provinces who have not registered significant changes in rates.

The Maritimes showed disproportionately high amounts of obesity,

as did aboriginal reserves.

Obesity is undoubtedly an issue in Canada, but shows such as The Biggest Loser, according to experts, do little to help solve the problems our societies face in weight-related illnesses.

Weight gain and loss comes down to education, and as one expert who spoke to Hollywood Gossip puts it, “90 per cent of losing weight is changing behaviour, getting to the root of the problem, and understanding why the pounds got put on.”

Opinion: The Olympic progressions of modern journalism Andrew Donovan I was a kid, no more than 10, when I started reading the newspaper from front to back. I never understood most of what I was reading, but I was obsessed with learning. The pictures captivated me, the headlines were clever (if not cheesy) enough that I laughed.

At 10, boys are at the monkey-see, money-do age, where anything dad is interested in, so are they.

I fell in love with newspapers, particularly the sports section, at the tail-end of a time where newspapers still gave relevant, up to date news. How unfortunate.

Fast-forward 14 years, and I am sitting behind the editor’s desk for the Sports and Health section of the Ontarion, streaming the Olympics for free online, and wondering what the future holds for my nostalgic affairs with black-inked fingertips and the smell of what can only be described as the “newspaper smell.”

In one word, the news on the future of newspapers is, well, bleak.

So much so that newspaperdeathwatch.com chronicles the closures of every relevant newspaper in Western society. Simply searching “death of journalism” in Google brings up a plethora of results ranging from opinion pieces, to anecdotes, to hard statistics that point to print media’s running out of ink.

The New York Times published a book, and followed with a documentary, titled Page One: The New York Times and the Future of Journalism, which examined the rapidly changing tide of news media.

Even though I relish the

opportunity to hold a paper in my hands, check MLB, NFL, NHL, and MLS standings side-by-side with the horse-betting odds at Woodbine Race Track, I cannot let cognitive dissonance jade the reality that as each year passes, less and less young people care about print media, and that Twitter personalities update me on sports quicker than websites dedicated to sports, such as ESPN and TSN. Yes, social media, or “new media,” as it’s called in the industry, is quickly replacing the archaic process of a printing press, and the industry of print media cannot sleep on their dire straits any longer. In 2011, 152 newspapers closed their doors or adopted strictly online publications, which was on par with 2010’s 151 closures.

It gets worse. BuzzFeed is expecting sales of up to $120 million in 2014, and with the likes of reddit, Politico, Bleacher Report, Drudge Report, and other web-based news publications that have up-to-thesecond news, the trend to web-only news continues at warp speed.

To prove my point, in the time I have written 420 words on this page, I have received two updates from the CBC’s Sochi 2014 app, alerting me of medals in the crosscountry skiing and women’s short-track speed skating events.

When I click on the app, I can watch the highlights for said events, or if I care to, I can watch the medal ceremonies live on the 4.7” display of my Nexus 4.

This is the future.

Granted, the U of G won’t be releasing real-time apps that stream all 23 of our varsity sports seven

days a week, but most schools are streaming live coverage of sporting events for free online, and at the very least, you can follow the Twitter accounts from athletic programs of all universities and get updates almost instantly.

“Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative,” commented the late H.G. Wells.

And it is with this primordial need to get with the times or be bastioned to the history books that print journalism will evolve.

Industry leaders are calling for papers to put all their in-depth stories into concentrated newspapers, as a means to remaining relevant. GQ has brilliantly set the bar in this approach with enthralling articles on accused murderer Aaron Hernandez, former tight end for the New England Patriots, and Phil Robertson’s candid comments on homosexuality and his Christian faith.

Look no further than the detailed reports Robyn Doolittle and Kevin Donovan put together on Rob Ford to prove that newspapers will sell… when they produce content people care about.

Heck, Sportsnet began publishing a bi-weekly magazine in late 2011, and it still continues to bring in a profit for Rogers Media, Inc. There is a market for detailed coverage on relevant news.

The future may be foggy for newspapers, print journalists, and print media as a whole, but the changing tides are undoubtedly ushering the industry into a new era of unknowns that will be saved when the formula for sustaining hard-copy circulation is cracked.

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www.theontarion.com

Two more ‘Neknominees’ dead

Viral craze continues to spread, people continue to die Eric Green

With the death of two young men in the United Kingdom being cited as the third and fourth fatality associated with the online drinking sensation, “Neknomination,” it seems that despite the media’s best efforts to scare people into stopping, no one is yet quite scared enough.

Twenty-year-old Isaac Richardson, who died in the early hours of Sunday, Feb. 9, is said to have collapsed and died after downing more than a pint of lager, white wine, whiskey, and vodka, all mixed together. Twenty-nine year old Stephen Brooks died in a similar fashion after trying to finish a whole pint of vodka while out with friends. These aren’t the first deaths to be linked to the new viral craze, with two young Irish men having died in the last week, following their own attempts at outdoing the competition.

What began as a simple ‘chug your beer and pass it on’ concept has

evolved drastically in a few short weeks, as the trend has spread like wildfire across the Internet. Now, in order to stay relevant, people are having to come up with new, improved, and often more disgusting ways in which to one up their friends. Some of the more horrible ingredients in the cocktails include raw eggs and human urine, while often times the drinking aspect is combined with some sort of stunt – the more dangerous or disgusting the stunt, the more impressive the video. Some notable stunts include a man skateboarding down the highway while funneling a beer, a woman stripping down to lingerie in a busy store, and a “man” biting the head off of a chicken.

The media’s sensationalizing aside, the idea of Neknomination is essentially that, upon nomination, one must ‘neck’ their drink (initially beer, but has progressed to more extreme cocktails as the chain continues) and then elect several friends to do the same within a 24-hour period. Essentially, all that has happened is that a time honoured tradition of challenging one’s friends to a ‘chugging’ competition has been taken and retooled for survival in the realm of social media.

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In what will undoubtedly prove to be another fad that leaves as quickly as it came, Neknominations have lit the Internet a fire in recent weeks.

This is not a new concept, just a new look for an old game that has been going on for generations.

However, the idea of committing something like this to social media, where absolutely anyone can access and watch it (and will be able to do so for the foreseeable future), is irresponsible. The main problem with the rise of social media in society is that there is virtually no privacy anymore. Every single person we engage with on

a day-to-day basis is essentially carrying a good camera with them at all times. Therefore, all our exploits, both altruistic and hedonistic, can be recorded and posted somewhere on the Internet.

Combine this with the dangerous exploits undertaken by those lucky “Neknominees,” and peer pressure, and this has developed a cocktail for disaster.

It is worth restating that this trend is far from new – people

have been challenging each other to drinking competitions for a long, long time. However, moving those competitions out of basements and backyards and into moving cars other unsafe places forfeits the small measure of security society might have had. Sure, passing out at a friends house and waking up with marker all over your face (and said face all over Facebook) is never much fun, but it beats not waking up at all.

Gryphons prepare to battle Thunderwolves in first round of OUA playoffs

PHOTO BY PABLO VADONE

The University of Guelph women’s volleyball team had their best season since 2010-2011 as they finished off their campaign with a 14-4 record that was good enough for first place in the OUA West. Guelph will open up the playoffs at home to Lakehead on Saturday, Feb. 15 at 2 p.m. The OUA Championship will prove to be a difficult one for the Gryphons. To win the tournament, they’ll have to get by CIS #7 rank Toronto, and #10 rank Ottawa, who finished 15-4 and 14-5 respectively in the OUA East.

Hillside Inside Friday, February 7th

A Tribe Called Red, featuring Lido Pimienta Caleb Dallman Guelph’s annual winter music festival, Hillside Inside, launched in a big way Friday, with Ottawa’s A Tribe Called Red. DJ NDN, DJ Shub, and Bear Witness’s mix of Aboriginal music and contemporary dance-beats turned a sold out St. George’s church into the party of the weekend.

Toronto’s Lido Pimienta started off the evening, moving from ambient soundscapes to up-beat dance. Mixing powerful vocals with haunting harmonies and woodwind instrumentation, Lido’s group set the tone for a night of dancing, at one point giving Hillside’s security a fit when she invited the crowd on stage to join her.

After Pimienta’s performance, A Tribe Called Red (ATCR) took the stage. Coming off recent Juno and back-to-back Polaris Music Prize nominations, ATCR wowed the audience with pulsing beats, looping visuals, and captivating sounds.

Although known for their political tone and support of Idle No More, the concert felt more like a party than a protest, with ATCR mixing club-bangers with songs off their two albums and some new, unreleased songs for their upcoming album. Their unique blend of music dubbed “powwow-step” blends the traditional sounds of Aboriginal singing and drums with modern reggae, dub step, and other electronic influences to create a unique and memorable sound. Their performance was well received, with attendees dancing in a frenzy, raising the temperature of the hall significantly in defiance to the bitter cold outside. It was impossible to not be captivated by their unique music and impressive DJing skills.

A large screen behind the DJs showed clips of movies, cartoons, and other film depicting stereotypes of First Nations and other aboriginal people throughout the world; ranging from old black and white film depicting natives as savages, to digitally manipulated clips of New Zealand All Blacks’ cultural appropriation of the Maori “Haka” war dance.

The show also included multiple appearances from a talented and compelling hoop dancer. Using one to ten small hula-hoop like props, the dancer wowed the crowd with impressive balance, strength, and dexterity, creating dynamic formations portraying various animals, symbols and shapes. The juxtaposition of the modern music, traditional dancing, and looping visuals created a one-of-a-kind evening - certainly something to remember.

A Tribe Called Red will be back in Toronto Mar. 7, as they travel through Canada on their four-month tour of North America.

River Run Centre hosts Fab Five Cabaret Anthony Campbell The Fab Five Cabaret was held at the River Run Centre on Friday, Feb. 7, and was the opening of this year’s Hillside Inside. The Cabaret consisted of five acts that have been showcased in five festivals here in Guelph.

The show opened with Tony Dekker from The Great Lake Swimmers. Dekker, a singer-songwriter, has been hailed a “national treasure” by the CBC. Dekker has opened for likes Robert Plant, Jeff Tweedy, and Feist. His songs have special geographical significance for listeners, with lyrics like “…everything frozen, slow, somewhere near Thunder Bay.” The evening continued with a showing of Georges Melies’ film from 1912, Conquest of the Pole, with the musical accompaniment of GUH, a group of talented musicians from Guelph and Toronto. GUH created an inventive musical score for the silent film, one that responded to the diverse screen images created by Melies. GUH have been making music together for over 20 years. They used a variety of instruments and moved briskly through their soundscape. Some of these scapes were dominated by bagpipes, drums, and horns; others scapes were softer and made up of string instruments. GUH has a unique repertoire of sound.

Melies was a French illusionist and filmmaker. He was also an innovator of special effects. He is hailed as the first “Cinemagician” because of his ability to manipulate and transform reality on the screen.

The performance continued with a ballet titled The Young Lions. This ballet was choreographed

by Kelly Steadman, and was performed by five young women of the Guelph You Dance Company and Apprentices Company. This company provides young dancers with an opportunity to work with professional choreographers. This work incorporated the music of Constantine, a rock-artist from Guelph. The lyrics, “Oh young lions, this is your kingdom” set the tone for a dance that exuded the energy of youth in a playful and aggressive way.

The Portal Dance Project performed excerpts from a dance choreographed by Janet Johnson, called This Side of Light. Johnson and Catrina von Radeki are the co-founders and co-artistic directors of the Guelph Contemporary Dance Festival, which was established in 1998. This Side of Light

PHOTO BY JESSICA AVOLIO

Pictured here from left; DJ Shub, DJ Bear Witness, and DJ NDN, a Native American DJ crew hailing from Ottawa, Ontario. Their electronic pow-wow beats had the audience dancing all night in Mitchell Hall at St. George’s Church.

was inspired by the role light plays in our lives. The dancers chase the light and retreat from the dark.

In pursuit of this force, this energy, they become physically buffeted and mentally confused. There was drama and terror present within this scene. The producers used fixed and moving lights of varying intensity and hue to create and manipulate their stage images.

Maestro Fresh Wes is the author of the critically acclaimed book, Stick to Your Vision. The subject matter of his book is crafted around how to define your talent or vision, how to achieve it, and what to do with your success. He has also hit the bright lights, so to speak, with his hip hop number “Let your Backbone Slide.” He’s no shrinking violet and he never apologized if he trampled on any of the audiences toes. At times he talked like a comedian, and when the audience laughed his responses were, “you’re beautiful,” or “reach for the sky, babe.” Sometimes he leaned in on the audience and brushed knuckles in an intimate way with a mutter, a god-bless, perhaps.

He told the audience that making records was not enough; we had to have a higher vision. His vision seemed to be caught up in the fame of such stars as Bob Dylan, Otis Redding, and Michael Jackson – saints of celebrity. Many of the audience members were likely fans of Bob Dylan, Michael Jackson, and Uncle Tom Cobley, but they remained quiet, stationary hands crossed in laps. No one stood, climbed out of their bucket seats, or shouted in agreement. They lacked the courage to stand up and declare their passion. Is this the attraction of entertainers like Wes, someone who projects a fearless and audacious attitude?

Eventually, Wes cooled down and began to rap a few of his tracks - a heavy, emotional poetry that seemed to embrace both mood and bodily action.

PHOTO BY WENDY SHEPHERD

Tony Dekker took the stage to perform as a part of the Fab Five Cabaret at the River Run Centre to kick off the Hillside Inside festivities.

7th Annual Hillsid SEE PHOTO REEL AT WWW.THEONTARION.COM

Emily Jones and Jessica Avolio The Hillside Festival has weaved its way into the cultural fabric of Guelph, and has marked its place in our heritage and community. Over the past 30 years, it has developed artistically to become an entity of its own, and has become an annual event to mark on calendars for Guelphites and out-of-towners alike.

This not-for-profit music festival boasts to offer “a broad vision that emphasizes diversity of culture, of musical heritage and style, of age, geography and influence,” as stated on their website. Though the Hillside Festival has been running for over 30 years, this year marks the 7th annual Hillside Inside festival, the muchloved winter version of these annual events.

From Feb. 7 to 9, multiple downtown venues showcased both on- and off-stage acts, with seven acts for ticketed concerts and 14 for free events. This is compared to the typical 70-orso acts booked during the summer Hillside festivities.

As a result of the small size of Hillside Inside, this festival had a more intimate feel. We spoke to Marie Zimmerman, Executive Director of the Hillside Festival (as well as Hillside’s Artistic Director), about this annual event.

Zimmerman noted that Hillside Inside is “urban and sometimes feels edgier,” since the acts chosen are better suited to a smaller program and have a place to stand out.

“We try to showcase a diverse selection of performers that reflect the same artistic sensibility as the programming at our summer festival,” added the festival’s Artistic Director.

The opening gathering began on Friday, Feb. 7 at 7:30 p.m., when the Fab 5 Cabaret met at the River Run Centre. Guelph is renowned for their Fab 5 Festivals - Hillside, Jazz Fest, Eden

Mills Writers’ Fest, Guelph Contemporary Dance Festival, and the Festival of Moving Media - and the cabaret was designed to represent each organization’s unique vision.

Later that evening, the rebellious Lido Pimienta opened with a performance at Mitchell Hall in St. George’s Church. The Colombian-born dance-pop performer made waves with her powerful vocals and brazen opinions. Afterwards, Polaris Music Prize nominated DJ crew, A Tribe Called Red, took the stage. Their music typically mends together Aboriginal pow-wow with electronic music, but their performance seemed more like a DJ set at a dance party, which resulted in the entire audience dancing for hours.

The morning of Saturday, Feb. 8 featured events such as Hillside Hockey, Girls & Guitars, and Youth Music.

The Girls & Guitars program, developed by those at Hillside, showcased women in an effort to assert the power of creativity in females and to encourage them to explore careers in music.

They was also a change made to this year’s Youth Music event, moving them out of the River Run Centre and into a café, which allowed these young musicians to perform in a venue that would be more reflective of where they would typically perform when launching their careers.

Saturday afternoon had Timber Timbre performing mysterious folk music with a haunting voice, followed by a performance by Tanya Tagaq, an Inuk throat singer from Nunavut.

At 6 p.m., a free event titled “Lit Music: The Broken Social Scene Story Project” highlighted three pieces of writing from the book of the same name, all while featuring live music from members of the Darcys. It was

Inuk throat singer, Tanya Tagaq Feb. 8 performance alongside T

PHOTO BY WENDY SHEPHERD

Tanya Tagaq performing at St. George’s Church Saturday afternoon.

PHOTO OF LIDO PIMIENTA BY JESSICA AVOLIO

de Inside festival an effort “to combine our passions for music and literature,” said Zimmerman. “We found the perfect vehicle this year with the Broken Social Scene Story Project. We were lucky enough to get the three top prize-winning writers of stories based on Broken Social Scene lyrics.” According to Zimmerman, the crowd loved the synergy.

Late on Saturday evening, art-rock band the Darcys joined July Talk for a performance in Mitchell Hall in St. George’s Church. July Talk combined their typical Americana and indierock sound, in addition to some outrageous acts performed on stage.

On Sunday, Feb. 9, the River Run Centre hosted a drumming workshop led by Tom Wolf, a dance workshop by Gadfly, and a singing workshop by the Guelph Community Singers. The Sunday events ended with a gospel session by Whitehorse and The Strumbellas at St. George’s Church.

In regards to all the off-stage events that were planned, “we [were] looking for something innovative and exciting and something with a local connection, if possible,” said Zimmerman.

“The festival is evolving each year,” added Hillside’s Artistic Director. “The creative vision for Hillside Inside is established almost a year in advance.” Hillside organizers start planning program ideas and performers in the summer, and go into more detail as they move into the fall.

As for future plans and goals for next year’s Hillside Inside, they aren’t yet sure.

“We’ve got a million ideas, as always,” said Zimmerman.

PHOTO BY WENDY SHEPHERD

Jason Couse of the Darcys also performed for Lit Music: The Broken Social Scene Story Project before heading to their show to later Saturday evening with July Talk.

PHOTO BY WENDY SHEPHERD

Michael le Riche of the Darcys performed for a small crowd at Planet Bean downtown, Saturday Feb. 8 to help showcase Lit Music: The Broken Social Scene Story Project.

Check out the flip side of this centre spread for additional Hillside Inside 2014 coverage.

PHOTO BY VANESSA TIGNANELLI PHOTOGRAPHY

Fay gazes lovingly into Dreimanis’s eyes, just one of the many moments these July Talk beloveds exhibit during a performance.

PHOTO BY WENDY SHEPHERD

PHOTO BY WENDY SHEPHERD

Simon Ward, vocalist and guitarist of The Strumbellas performed alongside his band-mates Sunday, Feb. 9 in the St. George Sanctuary.

q showcased her talents at the Timber Timbre.

PHOTO BY WENDY SHEPHERD

Izzy Ritchie doing what she does best during The Strumbellas performance Sunday afternoon at the St. George Sanctuary.

Hillside Inside Saturday, February 8th

Lit Music Show at Planet Bean Rachel Kopacki Downtown Guelph was bustling on Saturday, Feb. 8 with the many events occurring as part of the Hillside Inside Festival. Amongst all the action, many festival-goers sought out an intimate event: Lit Music: The Broken Social Scene Story Project at Planet Bean. The café was packed to the front door with literature and music lovers getting up close to the talented contributors of the evening. The whole event was an extension of the Broken Social Scene Story Contest which occurred earlier in 2013. This writing contest challenged Canadian writers to compose a piece inspired by songs of the definitive Canadian-indie band, Broken Social Scene. The top three writers – Jane Ozkowski, Shari Kasman and Jesse McLean – shared their stories at the Lit-Music event and were paired with the Darcys, who covered Broken Social Scene’s tracks.

The Darcys are a Toronto-based band signed by Broken Social Scene’s label, Arts & Crafts. Two of the bandmates offered this free cover show to the crowd, which acted as a prelude to their later show with July Talk. Accompanied by a synth-maker, the Darcys created a dreamy environment for the crowd, accentuating the imaginative stories of the writers. The band played the songs “Looks Just Like the Sun,” “Pacific Theme,” and “Cause=Time” to supplement the stories of each writer.

McLean was the first writer to read his work, inspired by “Looks Just Like the Sun.” His story described a man’s strange plan to dig a six-bytwenty foot hole in his backyard. This story was deemed “the best use of the song title in the contest” by the jury.

The next story was read by Kasman, who took the song “Pacific Theme” as inspiration for a stay-cation. Her humorous story depicted a dreamt-up road trip across the states with her pal Maury. The story stayed true to the kitschy beats of the song, with Hawaiian shirts and silly banter. As a midpoint, Shari’s piece was a great relief from the contrasting themes of the other stories.

Last but not least, Ozkowski read her tale, titled “Cause=Time.” The story followed the protagonist’s desperate wish for a new life in an apocalyptic world. In Ozkowski’s wacky world, people are turning

into fish at every moment and the sky rains spoons and light bulbs.

This imaginative story kept the whole crowd attentive with a sense of eerie anticipation. Her story eluded to the Broken Social Scene song with the cryptic line “Cause = Time, Time = God?” The night was a great opportunity to immerse oneself with the talent of local writers. If you want to check out some of the night’s literature, each of the story-tellers have their work featured in the collaborative book, Broken Social Scene Story Project.

PHOTO BY WENDY SHEPHERD

Jane Ozkowski was one of the talented writers who came to read at Music Lit: The Broken Social Scene Story Project at Planet Bean downtown.

July Talk, featuring The Darcys Vanessa Tignanelli It was a treat to watch two Juno-nominated bands share the stage on Saturday, Feb. 8 in Mitchell Hall, only days following the great news of their nominations. The reassured confidence in their music oozed out of the performers that night, albeit in a well-deserved manner for these Toronto natives.

The Darcys kicked off with a wave of energy. The group was messyhaired, in ties and tight jeans, as if they had just stepped out of the 1960s. An inventive and indistinguishable collision of sounds like The Constantines, Bon Iver, and Patrick Watson, created a luminous sound that was at the same time upbeat and authentic. The group begs to be undefinable, with a band name that derives from the name Mr. Darcy, Elizabeth Bennet’s romantic interest in Pride and Prejudice, and D’Arcy McGee, the first Canadian political figure to be assassinated.

It helps that each of them has the gratitude to match their talent,

PHOTO BY VANESSA TIGNANELLI PHOTOGRAPHY

The chemistry between July Talk’s front-couple Fay and Dreimanis is evident in every aspect of their performance, yet they make the audience feel part of their special bond.

humbled by the positive response they have received as of late. Between dancing wildly during July Talk’s performance to show their support and conversing with fans until they were the last ones in the venue, I instantly wanted to make these guys my best friends.

July Talk followed with quite the performance in the rawest sense of the word. The contrast between Leah Fay’s sweet vocals and feminine mystique, and Peter Dreimanis’ rough exterior and harsh Tom Waits-esque timbre, was like watching Beauty and the Beast drink whiskey and fall in love during a wild Spring Break vacation – you’re unsure if it will work in the real world, but your impression would be that it’s been the steamiest week of their lives.

Thejuxtapositionofthetwoonstagewaspuregenius. Theirplayfulflirtations with each other, though seeming a tad counterfeit, adds a sexy mysteriousness to their story. Upon returning to Toronto from a final European tour with his band, Dreimanis reportedly sat in a candlelit bar listening to a beautiful stranger perform, dumfounded, realizing he'd met his soul mate. The next day he started his search; when he found her, they founded July Talk.

Having seen the duo perform multiple times the past year has confirmed that the two are able to strike up a very unique relationship with their audience. The phrase “any publicity is good publicity” seems to work for July Talk, who have been known to do some pretty outrageous things on stage to make a show more interesting - even controversial. There are still speculations as to whether or not the blood that pooled on the back of Fay’s silky white dress was really a menstruation accident, or simply planned for the sake of shock value. One spectator went to the extent of licking the dried blood off of his hand to try and distinguish its authenticity.

Regardless, Fay had the entire audience encouraging her bravery, actually feeling honoured to have her blood smeared across their faces after the show like a rite of passage or a proof of your proximity to the stage.

It is my personal belief that the blood was a part of the act, yet it has been heard from a valuable source that the rest of the band was just as unaware of Fay’s plan as the rest of us. I echo the audience that night and commend it as an act of bravery. It is not every woman that would purposely impose such an image and own it the way she did. It shows confidence in her performance on an artistic level. Above all, my respect for the band is heightened after observing the way they handled many other things that went wrong over the span of the evening, including wardrobe malfunctions and technical difficulties. July Talk has been nominated for Breakthrough Group of the Year at this year’s Juno Awards, and The Darcys for Alternative Album of the Year for their 2013 record, Warring.

Tanya Tagaq and Timber Timbre Hillside Inside features two fantastic artists for the price of one Adrien Potvin The picturesque and cozy St. George’s Anglican Church hosted two illuminating performances for Hillside Inside on the gorgeous afternoon of Saturday, Feb. 8. An improvised soundscape featuring singer Tanya Tagaq and electronic musician Michael Red opened for the afternoon’s main attraction, art-folk group Timber Timbre.

Hailing from Nunavut, Tanya Tagaq makes improvised music utilizing the traditional method of Inuit throat singing. In a chilling, transcendent set of sounds and contortions (both bodily and vocal), Tagaq takes the traditions of Inuit throat singing and improvised electronic soundscapes and places them both in harmony and at odds with each other, often at the same time. The practice has been used for countless generations as a way to understand and manipulate the sounds of the land, and in this case, performing it becomes an example of improvisation as “necessity,” both in the context of the land and the manner of expressing ancient traditions. There is a particular sense of passion and urgency in it that is refreshing to see, and undeniably powerful to hear.

Timber Timbre followed after a short break. Featuring a new instrument configuration and new songs from their upcoming album, Hot Dreams, the material performed felt at once familiar and fresh. Their sound is characteristically dark - Gothic flourishes in the fashion of Nick Cave and Tom Waits set the tone for Taylor Kirk’s stark, sardonic vocals and storytelling, all arranged in a subtly complex fashion. Material off of Hot Dreams was mainly showcased throughout their set, aside from some older material in the three-song encore. It doesn’t seem to mark a big departure from their earlier work, but is nonetheless an engrossing listen.

With dynamics ranging from fragile and brooding to wild and abrasive, the afternoon’s music was complemented, if not highlighted, by the beautiful church venue.

Both performances were appropriate for the winter weather, evoking images of cold wilderness and the dread that follows it. It is unfair to consider Tagaq’s set as merely the opening act, as her aggressive and devastating improvisational style was much more immersive than Timber Timbre’s cold, nearly taciturn stage presence and musical approach. That being said, both acts offered a unique experience to a diverse and enthusiastic audience, as is characteristic of Hillside.

LIFE

Psychic Expo draws curious crowd

Exploring the appeal of psychic readings Stacey Aspinall

Would you trust a total stranger to predict your future?

Skeptics may scrutinize psychics and mediums, but the supernatural continues to captivate audiences who are drawn to the appeal of all things mystical. The Guelph Psychic Expo took place from Feb. 7 to 9 at the Best Western Hotel, and I decided to delve into the world of smoke and mirrors, tarot cards, and crystal balls.

As my friend and I came in from the bright snowy winter day outside, it took a couple of minutes for our eyes to adjust to the dim, mellow light in the conference room. “I feel like I’m in a dream,” she commented, as we looked at the psychic booths set up around the room, each offering a mystical service: tarot card reading, palmistry, clairvoyance, auras, past lives, numerology, astrology, crystal readings, mediumship,

or animal and spirit communication. The cost of these services ranged from $10 to $70 and upwards, depending on what kind of reading you chose.

Linda Fulcher, the “Electric Psychic” and organizer of the Psychic Expo (which has been held since 1988), explained that psychic practices are by definition mysterious, falling outside of the realm of science and logic.

Many psychics get their ability from a connection with a higher power, and being in tune with this force gives them guidance and insight, Fulcher explained.

Fulcher ensures the psychics at the expos are credible, so participants seeking guidance are not misled: “They come for answers, and there’s a certain vulnerability in that.”

Due to the mysterious nature of the readings, often some time must pass before determining how certain predictions may unfold. Predictions that seem vague or obscure at the time can play out in unexpected ways, according to Fulcher.

I continued on through the

173.6 • Thursday, FEBRUARY 13, 2014

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PHOTO BY WENDY SHEPHERD

The Guelph Psychic Expo drew crowds of people who were eager to explore the supernatural, and many participants chose one-on-one readings with psychic mediums. fair, slowly walking past all of the booths while psychics eye me intently. When they’re not busy connecting with potential customers at their booths, they quietly observe the room as participants wander.

At one booth, a psychic offers a mini-reading of my personality and has my “type” figured out in a matter of seconds. However, my friend proves more of a challenge the psychic is unable to categorize her, and (to my surprise) admits that in this case, he wouldn’t be able to offer her a reading.

After this brief encounter piqued my interest, I opted to sit down for a 20-minute reading with another psychic to see if my fate could be uncovered in a deck of cards.

For my first official psychic reading, Psychic Medium Jewelee draws on a deck of worn tarot cards and asks me questions about my life, focusing on work, friendships, and relationships. I get the impression that you get out of the experience what you

put into it. You have to be willing to share information about your own life, and the psychic will intuit what’s in store for you. It’s an exercise that requires cooperation and an open mind.

The intense gaze of the psychic is unwavering; you get the sense that when they look at you, they are really seeing you and picking up on your idiosyncrasies.

There is something unsettling about having a complete stranger observe you so closely, and some of the observations were uncanny.

“I have turned a few skeptics into believers,” said Jewelee. “One of the hardest things with skeptics is they try and put you on the spot, [saying] ‘Tell me something, anything.’ It doesn’t work like that.”

Jewelee explained, “With readings I have to tap into the person’s energy, and that is not easy if they have a wall or block up… Then I have to get past the wall… so that they can relax and then I can get a good reading for them.”

Though Jewelee is confident in

her abilities, and has memories of having premonitions since the age of five, she is hesitant to use the word “prediction.”

“I don’t think anyone can really predict anything, as we all have choices and free will. Nothing is set in stone. What I see is the path you are on and what will happen based on that path; however, you can always change it and I can also see what will happen if you do,” said Jewelee.

Whether psychic powers are derived from a higher power, contact with the spirit realm, or extrasensory perception is, of course, impossible to prove - and might actually be beside the point.

Events such as this expo offer a break from the mundane and an opportunity to experience alternative ways of viewing the world. You’ll walk away with much to reflect on.

What is known is that the future will remain uncertain, and people will always be fascinated with attempting to make sense of that inscrutable mystery.

You’ve probably seen this on Pinterest

Simple ways to express your love this Valentine’s Day Alyssa Ottema

Valentine’s Day: the most demanding of holidays. This is the one day, of all the days in a year, that demands extravagance in the form of grand gestures of love. This the day for you to stand atop a mountain, screaming your professions of deep, undying passion. This is the day for rose petals (because they’re cheaper than stemmed roses) and nine dollar champagne with a new label you made to make it look fancier. This is the day for mix tapes (or personalised Spotify playlists – I’m not really sure what’s cool these days) and baked goods (that, let’s face it, you called your mom and begged

her to make for you) and chocolate that costs more because it’s wrapped in red and pink foil.

This is the day of true love.

If you find yourself surrounded in presents and chocolate, but still struggling to find the words to let that special someone know just how much you care, look no further than the true romantic heroes of our time, like Leon Trotsky, Joseph Stalin, General Mao, Isaac Newton, and Karl Marx. If you’re unable to craft the perfect phrase to express your love, these men – known for their warm hearts, kind words, and gentle natures – are ready to help you express your true feelings. Sit back, relax, and let these beautiful words melt your partner’s tender heart.

Warm, endearing sentiments like “Leon Trotsky thinks you’re hotsky,” and “Live without you?

I Kant!” will show your partner that you are both filled with love and with wit. Other phrases, such as “You are most honourable Chairman of my heart,” add a touch of sensitivity, while “Quit Stalin! Be my valentine!” achieves that sense of assertive bossiness that is oh-so attractive in a significant other. If you’re truly looking to show your partner that your love is forever, a straightforward Newtonic theory, like “An object in love will stay in love forever,” should do the trick.

Really, it’s not about how much you love someone, but how you tell them that you love them on this very special day. This Valentine’s Day, let someone else do the talking for you while you frantically run around the dollar store, throwing anything red or pink into your cart.

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LIFE

www.theontarion.com

Perfecting being perpetually poor

Valentine’s Day done right Gabrielle Dickert

As a student, the chances that you’re able to take your partner to Paris, France for Valentine’s Day are very slim. I understand that, and so do most people. So here are some tips to help make your significant other happy while not taking a huge toll on your bank account.

Start thinking about it: You knew this day was coming, whether it be Valentine’s Day, or your upcoming anniversary.

You want it to be special, so think about it a few weeks in advance.

You don’t even need to start planning right away - just know that it’s coming up. That way, if your

Present U of G students respond with importance of great alumni Stephanie Coratti As the University of Guelph celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, one of the easiest things to do is jump on a virtual tour of the past. A lot can happen in 50 years, specifically on the grounds where thousands upon thousands have purposely stopped to make U of G a significant notch along their own personal life path. The humble attitude that naturally comes with the Gryphon status is largely at fault for hiding away the alumni who experience success after graduation.

Despite its claim to fame with deep, irremovable roots in the agriculture school, the University of Guelph has graduates in all walks of life representing the red and gold proudly, including: Olympic athletes, international hockey players, psychotherapists, CBC’s first female radio broadcaster, renowned journalists, writers, editors, and many more.

Current students like Kayla Besse have made note of the often-kept secret of diversity so evidently found within our alumni. “Once you become part of the Guelph community you realize that not everyone here is an Aggie or a Vet school hopeful,” Besse, an English major, explained. “This diversity should be celebrated and emphasized to prospective students, as it’s something to be proud of.”

When comparing three or four-year programs to 50 years, it’s fairly easy to recognize how quickly the time goes. With all the responsibility that comes with being a university student, constantly having an eye (and

partner starts dropping hints, you might be more likely to pick up on them, because you realize something is coming up. As you’re thinking about your evening, start jotting down ideas.

Plan ahead: Take your thoughts and come up with an outline of what you’d like to do for the day.

Dinner and a movie sounds good, so why not start looking at what movies are playing in the theatre?

See a coupon for a buy one, get one movie offer - keep it, and use it.

Solidify your plan: If you’re going out, check out deals in the area and make a reservation. The longer you wait, the more it’s probably going to cost you. Businesses know that a lot of people wait to the last minute to make their Valentine’s Day

plans, and they’re willing to take advantage of your laziness in the form of monetary gain.

Creativity is key: The less you are willing to pay, the more thought you should put into your plans.

If you really don’t have a lot of money to spend, be willing to put in a lot of time and effort to make up for that. Thinking of having dinner at home? Try looking up some exciting recipes online and making something new. If you’re not the best cook, why not make it a new opportunity for the two of you? Try making sushi for the first time together, or prepare everything for a romantic fondue night. Even if the food goes horribly wrong, you’ll have the memory of a nice experience you shared that Valentine’s Day when

you were broke students.

Think of a theme: To tie the night together, it’s great if you have a theme. Choose foods from one culture, and maybe find a movie that works with that. If you want to be extravagant, why not get simple decorations to match? There are a lot of different things you can do.

Have a special drink for the night: A nice bottle of wine or a new mixed drink is a great way to spice up your usual evening.

Mixed drinks or specialty drinks are a fun way to try something new and turn the night from something regular, to something extraordinary.

Find great deals: If you’re doing dinner at home, go to the dollar store to get some decorations;

Re: Alumni Spotlight

occasionally both) on the prize that lays ahead forces a lot of us to miss the time intended to allow us to just be students and to enjoy everything that comes with it.

Even with programmed minds set to watch the future, every so often the past catches up, pulling you right back to present day. In this case, that forceful yet humble past is the powerful University of Guelph alumni who have made current students take a second to consider what it means when past meets present.

“It never hit me that everyone has to start somewhere,” Solange Almeida, a third year Biomedical Science student said of the incredible success of Guelph alumni. “It was interesting to realize that so many really amazing people got that start here at U of G.” Students have even taken into account the success of those who still walk among them. “Just looking at our faculty, and some of the achievements that undergrad and graduate students have done, makes it totally plausible that there is so much talent here,” Ashley DeSouza, a Psychology major, explained.

Outside of graduated success, there is comfort to be found in the shared failure and struggle of those who, at one point or another, sat in the same classrooms, walked the same hallways, and fought the same frustrations. “[Alumni] obstacles make me think that I can get over my own,” Almeida explained. “Knowing that many successful people have gone through difficulties in their time as a student makes me believe that if you really want something, you can achieve it.”

There is no doubt that students often feel like their path is headed towards the deep end of a pool full of freezing water, but hearing about the paths of those before them has

helped many, including DeSouza, gain some perspective. “To know not all paths to success are easy, or necessarily straight and smooth… it proves that hard work, even in the face of obstacles, will almost always bring you somewhere positive,” DeSouza said.

This is a testament to the great people who have survived the task of being a student, and look back with nothing but appreciation. Current students have taken notice, and have taken the public struggles and genuine advice to heart. “The ‘Don’t be afraid to change your path’ sticks out to me,” Besse explained, adding that she is really working on letting go of other’s expectations. “It shows education is really a steppingstone, not a definitive end point.”

It is quite evident that even a seemingly never-ending amount of snow and an attitude full of modesty can’t cover up the large footprints left behind by past University of Guelph students.

This is, however, a good thing in every possible way, as current Gryphons look to fill their shoes.

“I hope my ‘Alumni Spotlight’ reflects someone who knows what they want and stands confidently behind it, whatever that may be,” Besse said of how she hopes future students see her, adding that a dream of photojournalism is something she wishes to bring to life.

“I would hope it would say that I achieved my goal of becoming a pediatrician,” Almeida explained of her future aspirations. “That I save lives, because it’s all I ever wanted.

I hope it says I ended up exactly where I always dreamed I would.”

As they so often say, history repeats itself. It is so important to know where an institution has been, how far it’s come, and those who have made it everything it is today. With the past of

the University of Guelph, there is every indication that current shoes will leave even bigger

small touches make a BIG difference. Grab some candles, or fancy placemats - something to take the night from every-other-day to something special. On Valentine’s Day, you can buy roses individually on campus. Consider purchasing one and getting a vase small enough for a single rose - it’s a gesture that’s both elegant and caring.

Remember, Valentine’s Day isn’t ultimately about how much you spend, but the fact that you spend it together. Even if you (or your partner) don’t create a super fancy date night, it can still be a memorable experience that you had together. Something can be said for date nights that go horribly wrong. Memories aren’t always made from perfect moments.

imprints on these grounds. Just be sure to pay attention to those leading the way.

LIFE Lauren Benoit, CanACT member

173.6 • Thursday, FEBRUARY 13, 2014

Inside Farming: Pass the pork

Everyone has had bad days, when you can’t seem to catch a break and things just aren’t going the way you need them too. The Ontario agriculture industry is no stranger to tough times, and the past weeks have pushed the swine industry to prove its resilience once again. In the past 21 days, there have been 11 reported cases of the Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea (PED) virus across Ontario. Professor Bob Friendship, a specialized pig veterinarian at the University of Guelph, pointed out that there are emotional challenges for farmers whose barns have contracted PED. “In the first two or three weeks of life, when they’re nursing their mothers, they dehydrate very quickly and it’s very hard to keep them alive. Seeing all your pigs sick and dying…it’s pretty hard to face on the farm and it will last for about a month,” said Friendship.

For farms that have tested positive for PED, the economic effects are devastating. Without piglets to restock, the herd farms lose months worth of hard work and profit. On a national level, the effects of the virus could be incredibly damaging for Canada’s $3.5 billion pork industry. Amy Cronin, chair of the Ontario Pork Board of Directors, was quoted saying, “We estimate

OPINION The new winner of The Biggest Loser is deemed “too thin” Diana Kurzeja If you’re familiar with the show The Biggest Loser, then you are also familiar with the goal of the game: the person who loses the largest percentage of body weight wins. Recently, an unlikely question has arisen from circumstances of the show’s results: what happens when the winner loses too much weight?

Rachel Frederickson, the newly crowned victor of Season 15 of The Biggest Loser, won the grand prize of $250,000 by losing 60 per cent of her body weight.

Rachel began the competition at 260 pounds and lost 155 pounds in total, shrinking down to 105 pounds. Controversy was immediately sparked as viewers and the media deemed Rachel “too thin,” stating that the show went too far by allowing Rachel, a former competitive swimmer, to lose 155 pounds.

It seems as though there is no winning with the media when it comes to a woman’s weight, as she is almost always either too fat

this, if it were to spread past Ontario throughout Canada, within one year, it would cost $45 million to the Canadian pork industry.” Both Cronin and Friendship confirm that the virus poses absolutely no risk to food safety or human health.

The PED virus causes vomiting and diarrhea in pigs and is transmitted through the oral consumption of infected feces. The PED virus thrives in cold weather and can survive for weeks or months in the snow. This means that even with added biosecurity measures, the spread of the virus is difficult to track. The virus can be spread via pigs, trucks, humans, and in some cases, the feet of birds.

The original strain of the virus was first found in Europe in the early 1970s and was not as deadly as the one Ontario farmers are battling currently. The virus then spread to China, and was first discovered in North America in May of 2013 on a swine operation in Iowa. It has since spread to twenty-three of the fifty-two states, and there are now thousands of reported cases across the United States.

PED virus is not transferable to humans, which means that it doesn’t affect human health and people are not able to contract the disease. The PED virus is classified as a coronavirus, and only affects the pig’s gastrointestinal tract.

Because the virus never enters the muscle tissue, pork is still safe for human consumption.

Suckling piglets are the most susceptible to PED virus, and there is 100 per cent mortality rate within five days due to severe dehydration.

Herd immunity will begin to mitigate the harms within three weeks of the first infection. While older pigs have a much lower mortality rate, the growth rate of the surviving pigs is seriously affected, and this leads to an additional loss for the farmer.

Farmers are doing everything within their power to terminate the virus before it continues to spread.

Danish entry systems are standard in all barns, and this ensures that boots and coveralls worn in the barn do not leave the premises, and that anybody entering must change their footwear and coveralls before entering the barn. Trucks and processing plants are also being thoroughly cleaned and disinfected between loads to further ensure that the spread of the virus is stopped.

Canadian agriculture has a reputation for having high-standards and a loyal, hardworking group of people dedicated to providing a safe product for consumption.

So tonight, when you sit down to dinner, think of the farmers who are providing your meal and put pork on your fork.

PHOTO BY DREW DEBRUYN

Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea (PED) virus has been reported in farms across Ontario, and though the disease is not a threat to humans, it has had a detrimental effect on the pork industry.

No winners here

or too thin, the line in between being almost impossible to reach.

The Biggest Loser is a show which does not promote losing weight in a healthy and reasonable manner. It is a show which instead shames those who are overweight, promotes diet products and damages the mental and physical health of the contestants. The Season 3 Biggest Loser finalist, Kai Hibbard, developed an eating disorder after being a contestant on the show, and told her story of what really happens behind the scenes of The Biggest Loser. “Unfortunately, what they’re telling you the contestants are doing and what they actually have the contestants doing are two different things, at least as far as my season goes.

We were working out anywhere between 2 and 5 hours a day, and we were working out severely injured. There’s absolutely no reason to work a 270 pound girl out so hard that she pukes the first time you bring [her into] a gym. That was entirely for good TV,” said Kai about her experience.

The Biggest Loser seeks to promote a fantasy in which their show changes people’s lives for the better; however, that is not

the case. This show encourages its audience to critique and judge the bodies of others, pointing out their flaws and then going as far as to criticize a contestant for being too thin.

Kai exposed the ulterior motives that the producers had: “There was a registered dietician that was supposed to be helping [the contestants at the ranch] as well... But every time she tried to give us advice . . . the crew or production would step in and tell us that we were not to listen to anybody except our trainers.

And my trainer’s a nice person, but I have no idea what she had for a nutritional background at all.” The producers and trainers overrode the advice of doctors in order to gain higher ratings and get the most shocking weight losses possible.

Now that such a shocking weight loss story has been achieved, the winning contestant is being criticized, rather than the producers and trainers who made this result a possibility.

In order to change this unhealthy promotion of extreme dieting and weight loss, it’s important for viewers to be aware that such quick dieting is not a solution to changing an

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unhealthy lifestyle. Praising contestants for losing weight and condemning them if they lose too much not only sends mixed signals to the public about body image, but also places intense pressure on people to make sure their bodies fit a specific,

unreachable mould. Instead, as viewers, we can encourage the acceptance of diverse body images by accepting them rather than demeaning them, and promoting healthy lifestyles rather than extreme dieting that produces such extreme results.

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OPINION

www.theontarion.com

Sorry, no GIFs in this list!

Ways that numbered lists demonstrate the downfall of society Mike Ott

The newest Internet trend is page-list “journalism;” websites that have numbered lists followed by pictures or GIFs, all following some arbitrary category of useless drivel. This is the devil in disguise, also known as BuzzFeed.com (or Upworthy, or EliteDaily, and so on). The pages on these websites attempt to pass off as journalism, or news, or important information - all framed in a way that makes you think you need to see it.

These pages will more often than not actually include the words “need” or “important” within their title. One of the best examples of this is “The 29 most important chicken fingers of all time” (yes, this is a real BuzzFeed article). This language somehow makes the reader feel as though they’ll be missing something if they don’t click the link and read it; it plays on the human desire to fit in (the same way you’re asked about a movie, and you lie and say you’ve seen it when you really haven’t).

Next, the article will feature content ripped from somewhere else on the Internet, whether it be reddit, Tumblr, or otherwise. It is never original, it is never new, and it is never funny. All of it is recycled, taken from somewhere where you have probably seen before if you ever go anywhere on the Internet other than Facebook.

However, the true problem that resides within our obsession to read about “The 37 Worst Translated Movie Titles Ever” or “The Story of Egypt’s Revolution in Jurassic Park Gifs” is not the attempt to pass these stories off as journalism, but rather the way that these websites are a direct commentary on our priorities as a society. We are more interested in looking at pictures of the “25 Hunkiest Egyptian Protestors” than we are in truly learning something worthwhile, or educating ourselves on what is going on in the world around us.

Given the fact that our world is pretty awful lately with places like Syria, Russia, Ukraine, and Central African Republic committing genocides and other horrible violence against their citizens, it would be nice to see articles that inform people and promote action. This is, ironically, the worst part of these websites: when they do take an activist stance. Most guilty of this is Upworthy, which frequently features articles on

current events. The problem lies in the fact that these websites are only attempting to rope you in and keep you, not to create change, and it’s painfully obvious. Every time a reader views an article on Upworthy about something that is happening in the world, a pop-up window asks you if you are against whatever atrocity the article is about, in a yes-or-no question, as if these problems have a simple yes-or-no answer.

This is the bane of our society.

We feel that if we agree with something and sign some imaginary online “petition” against it, we’ve done our part. But we haven’t. We give our email address to Upworthy to say that we’re against “insert cause here” and we carry on with our lives, feeling as though we’d done our good deed for the day – but that problem does not go away. The best example of this is the video of the woman who

undergoes extreme Photoshop modification to show how society has unrealistic expectations for women. This is a serious issue, but rather than doing something about it, we click the “yes” on that little pop-up window and feel like we’ve done our part. Then we share the video on Facebook and perpetuate this chain of non-action.

What we need to do is actually understand how to actively fix issues in the world.

Agreeing with Upworthy’s pop-up does not end homophobia, sexism, genocide, racism, ableism, or any other prejudice, violence, or negativity. What ends these things is action, mobilization, education, and informing others so that they can join in with the cause.

However, this type of informing needs to be done through a method that gets results, and that method is not a numbered BuzzFeed list.

OPINION

Stupid Cupid rears his head

Valentine’s Day brings the usual tidal waves of negativity Eric Green

Hold fast, everyone. February 14, the worst of all the ‘hallmark holidays,’ is fast approaching, and the closer this most controversial day comes, the more you’ll have to hear the myriad of reasons people have for despising it.

In the days of Chaucer and the Knights of the Round Table, Valentine’s Day was closely associated with the notions of chivalry that were so popular at the time. The lengths to which one would go for love are central to many of the Arthurian legends, and the relationship of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere is one of the most famous trysts of all time. However, in modern times, public sentiment has shifted away from Valentine’s Day, and a number of excuses are used to explain why some don’t buy into it.

Whether you discuss Valentine’s Day with a single friend or one in a serious relationship, the consensus seems to be that the day itself is nothing more than a marketing ploy, used to ensure that partners have heightened expectations of one another come the 14th. With the desire to meet these expectations comes boosted sales and increased revenues for card and chocolate companies, followed by the disdain of the public.

This has never made much sense to me, despite the cost of living at school. Tuition fees, rent, and groceries – these do put a strain on the bank account, and many of us have OSAP, bank loans, and parttime jobs in order to stay afloat during the school year. However, it is as simple as deciding to take your better half out on Valentine’s Day (and let’s face it, there really is rarely much of a choice) instead of going out downtown that week. In essence, they cost the same.

In recent years, embittered singles have created their own holiday, Singles Awareness Day (SAD). SAD

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173.6 • Thursday, FEBRUARY 13, 2014

PHOTO COURTESY OF SOMEECARDS

Valentine’s Day puts a great amount of pressure on both single people as well as those in relationships to acknowledge their relationship status, so it’s no surprise that the “Hallmark holiday” has left some feeling cynical. is just a means to celebrate single status by indulging in favourite activities and spending time with family and friends.

While I see no problem with the celebration of being unattached and enjoying it, I also hold that if the celebration of being single is only undertaken to spite those celebrating being in a relationship, then that is a fairly good indicator that the single person in question might harbour hard feelings towards their attached friends. Perhaps figuring out where this hostility originates might be a better use of time.

Another popular argument is that it degrades the value of one’s partner to suggest that they should be treated specially on only one day of the year. Many argue back that if you feel so strongly about your partner, you would be compelled to treat them the same way every day of the year.

While I do somewhat agree with

this response, I cannot use it to nullify the positive aspects of a day meant to celebrate the love that two people share. Valentine’s Day usually consists of flowers, some chocolate, a nice dinner, all followed by a romantic, personal evening together. Sounds nice, right? Why don’t we do that every single day?

Well that would get pretty damn expensive, would it not?

There are many ways to be romantic without spending a week’s pay.

As I get older, and continue to hear people complain about this problem, I’ve come to realize that the people who care more about money than the person they’re spending it on are the same ones who argue that reserving one day for love is demeaning. If that’s the case, there are plenty of free things to use to show you care the other 364 days of the year. If your partner usually cooks meals, take the reins every now and then. You might burn

everything, but at least you tried. If you have the courage to do it, write a damn love poem. Nobody expects you to be Robert Frost, but putting in the effort should be enough for someone who really cares about you.

In the end, while we have come up with many ways to argue that Valentine’s Day is hokey or backwards or corrupted by marketing and commercialization, it will be a sad day when we become so desensitized to love that we no longer feel the need to celebrate it. If you can’t tone down the cynicism and spend a little time and money for one day, maybe you’d be better off celebrating Singles Awareness Day.

The views represented in the opinion section do not necessarily reflect the views of the Ontarion nor its staff.

EDITORIAL

’Tis the season to make lemonade Does it not feel like, lately, there’s an inordinate amount of pressure to do things that you don’t want to do?

Take the infamous ‘Neknominations’ for example; an online drinking game where someone is filmed doing something daring while drinking at the same time, and then tags two friends to one-up them in the next 24 hours. People recognize the ridiculously juvenile and potentially dangerous nature of such a game, but there are still thousands of new YouTube and Facebook videos being posted daily as more and more people are caving to the social pressure of participating in this drinking game.

And as a quick aside, since when did binge drinking and doing ridiculous things whilst inebriated become a phenomenon? As if the photo evidence and embarrassingly candid drunk-texts that happened prior to Neknominations weren’t enough, now there’s online video evidence of your general haphazardness for all prospective employers to take note of.

Valentine’s Day is another prime example of people fearing the social stigmas they may face if they don’t participate in the Hallmark manufactured holiday. I’m sure many of us have scoffed at the absurdity of spending money on our significant other just because it’s Feb. 14. Despite this, the restaurants will be full, the prices of roses will climb, and people will struggle to find meaning on this day of forced lavish love.

Humanity enjoys being a participant in the lowest common denominators, as proven by binge drinking and needless spending on heart-shape chocolate and jewellery. Anybody anywhere can chug (neck) a beer whilst trudging through snowbanks.

Anybody can go to a jeweler and pick the first infinity necklace they see. It takes no thought, no ingenuity, and no creativity – just the pack-mentality of a zombie

The Ontarion Inc. University Centre Room 264 University of Guelph N1G 2W1 ontarion@uoguelph.ca Phone: 519-824-4120 General: x58265 Editorial: x58250 Advertising: x58267 Accounts: x53534 Editorial Staff: Editor-in-Chief Jessica Avolio News Editor Michael Long Arts & Culture Editor Emily Jones Sports & Health Editor Andrew Donovan Associate Editor Stacey Aspinall Copy Editor Alyssa Ottema

PHOTO BY NINA FRAZIER

Sure, lemons aren’t the first thing you think of when you hear neknominations and Valentine’s Day, but when social stigmas force you to do something you may not want to, make lemonade! horde and a will to get out of bed in the morning.

Yes, we all scoff, but we all participate in some manner.

There are the detractors though.

There are people out there who have made right of being Neknominated and saw it as an opportunity to help someone in need, donate to a charity, or put a smile on the face of someone who is down on their luck.

Likewise, there are the detractors that take the stigma Valentine’s Day forces upon us, and they do something unordinary and thoughtful: A hand-in-hand walk through the snowy woods, preparing their partner’s favourite meal, a handmade card expressing one’s endearment, the watching of someone’s favourite movie, perhaps – anything but the ordinary, expensive, and downright cheesy.

The lowest common denominators will always persist, and segments of society will

Corrections in issue 173.5

In “U of G interdisciplinary studies host conference,” the conference theme was Routes to Roots, not Roots to Routes. This theme focused on how our past experiences influence the paths that we take in the future, and not how the environment specifically impacts our everyday experiences.

The keynote speaker, Dr. Pat Barclay, is in the Psychology Department, not the department of Mathematics and Statistics.

One of the key points made in his address, about how hiring decisions tend to be more favourable when the

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173.6 • Thursday, FEBRUARY 13, 2014

employer is of the opposite sex, is false. Barclay had said that employers tend to hire candidates that are of the same sex.

The third speaker’s name was Paul Chartrand, not “Bartrand,” as stated in the article.

In “Alumni Spotlight: Colleen Tully,” Tully is the Senior Editor, and not the Editorin-Chief, of Fresh Juice. Tully also taught English in Korea, not Europe.

The Ontarion apologizes for any confusion this may have caused.

continually express their discontent with the fad’s fifteen minutes of fame. It’s futile, though. If you are bothered by the stigmas society provides, then make lemonade!

Does anybody remember the Harlem Shake phenomenon that happened in Guelph last year? I do, but no one is making those damn videos any longer – good riddance!

Does anyone care that you can’t Dougie?

Is anybody still looking for Kony?

Granted, there is a degree of righteousness, however mislead and ineffective, that makes political movements different than the aforementioned necking of beers – but they’re fads nevertheless.

Yes, popular society will continue to generate a lot of retweets, favourites, Thumbs up, and likes, and to the detractors, this can be frustrating. But rest assured that as quickly as a phenomenon blows up one day, it’ll be gone the

next.

As for holidays like Valentine’s Day (which will still be making young couples across the world cringe with disdain until the end of time), think of it as an opportunity to get creative and think outside the box. Use the opportunity to start something new, like a yearly tradition, so while the rest of the world panics to find a last minute trinket to express their boxed and bowtied love, you and your significant other can happily accompany one another in a yearly intimacy, unique to just yourselves, on Feb. 14.

And if this plea for ingenious lemonade making falls on deaf ears, at least ask for a sober second opinion on the merits of stomaching a 26 oz of vodka in one gulp like some hell-bent frat boy at an initiation ceremony.

Have a heartwarming Valentine’s Day, and if you receive one, try using your Neknomination to make the world a slightly better place this reading week.

Production Staff: Photo & Graphics Editor Wendy Shepherd Ad Designer Justin Thomson Layout Director Stephanie Lefebvre Office Staff: Business manager Lorrie Taylor Ad manager Al Ladha Office Coordinator Vanessa Tignanelli Circulation Director Sal Moran Web Editor Alexander Roibas Board of Directors President Heather Luz Treasurer Alex Lefebvre Chairperson Michael Bohdanowicz Directors Bronek Szulc Harrison Jordan Sohrab Rahmaty Anthony Jehn Melissa Yan Patrick Sutherland Contributors Stephen Banic Lauren Benoit Olivia Brown Anthony Campbell Sameer Chhabra Stephanie Coratti Drew Debruyn Ian Gibson Caleb Dallman

Gabrielle Dickert Eric Green Rachel Kopacki Diana Kurzeja Matt Lawson Michael Ott Adrien Potvin Pablo Vadone

The Ontarion is a non-profit organization governed by a Board of Directors.

Since the Ontarion undertakes the publishing of student work, the opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of the Ontarion Board of Directors. The Ontarion reserves the right to edit or refuse all material deemed sexist, racist, homophobic, or otherwise unfit for publication as determined by the Editor-in-Chief. Material of any form appearing in this newspaper is copyrighted 2011 and cannot be reprinted without the approval of the Editor-in-Chief. The Ontarion retains the right of first publication on all material. In the event that an advertiser is not satisfied with an advertisement in the newspaper, they must notify the Ontarion within four working days of publication. The Ontarion will not be held responsible for advertising mistakes beyond the cost of advertisement. The Ontarion is printed by the Guelph Mercury.

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FUN PAGE CLASSIFIEDS

Better Bagel Nutrition Study at the University of Guelph is looking for participants >40yrs old. Financial compensation. bagel@uoguelph.ca or 519-824-4120x58081

COMMUNITY LISTINGS

NATURE GUELPH Meeting Thursday, Feb 13th at 7:30pm, Arboretum Centre. All welcome. Andrew Peregrine of OVC speaking on “Lyme Disease and the raccoon roundworm: is the risk of human infection increasing in Ontario?”

Thursday At Noon Concert Series presents Adrian Raso and the Travelling Bohemians on Thursday, February 13, 2014 at 12 noon, Mackinnon 107. More info at uoguelph.ca/sofam/events February 24th – 2nd Annual National Cupcake Day in support of SPCAs and Humane Societies across Canada. Bake your best cupcakes, host a cupcake party, share cupcakes with family, friends and colleagues, and collect donations!

Applications for the Children’s Aid Foundation’s post-secondary scholarships for 2014-15. Online application forms due Monday, February 24. Visit www.cafdn.org/scholarship for eligibility criteria.

Sistas in Soccer outdoor recreational soccer league for women aged 18 and up. Games every Sunday afternoon, end of May until October. No previous soccer experience necessary. Register online at www.sistasinsoccer.com.

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SUBMIT your completed crossword by no later than Monday, February 24th at 4pm for a chance to win TWO FREE BOB’S DOGS! Last Week's Solution

Congratulations to this week's crossword winner: Brittany Burek. Stop by the Ontarion office to pick up your prize!