Brewing Beer

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FIRST PEEK

October 15, 2013 · Volume 145, Issue 7

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FIRST PEEK

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October 15, 2013

Forgive me in advance, ‘cause for this column I’m taking you guys to UBC (kind of ). Wreck Beach isn’t technically a part of UBC’s campus, but you do have to go through it to get there.

Once you’ve found the sign demarcating the beach, you have to descend a fair number of steps through some really beautiful rainforest-y surroundings to get to the actual waterfront. Once you hit sand, the view is pretty damn breathtaking: you can turn in a complete circle and you’ll see nothing but ocean, mountains and forest. Well . . . you may see some other stuff as well, as this beach is clothing-optional.

In May, after being in Vancouver just over a month, a friend suggested a day at Wreck.

I love the beach (duh) and was totally enthused until she casually said, “Oh, it’s a nude beach, by the way.”

I’m from a pretty conservative household and even if I wasn’t, public nudity isn’t really a thing in suburban Michigan.

But, never one to shy away from an adventure, I played it cool and said I was up for anything.

And, I’ll admit, I was curious.

It’s funny, the way that nakedness makes us panic. In theory, we’re all mature and confident enough to be unphased by the human body in all its exposed glory; in reality, that kind of vulnerability is scary as shit. It’s not so bad in a sexual context: you’re in the moment, you’re caught up in the sensations, you’re seeing without really seeing, responding to an animal-like urge. But, nakedness outside of sex, existing unabashedly in a social context?

That’s a different story.

That messes with our sense of civilization, of normalcy.

It’s the animal edging into the societal, and it makes us uncomfortable. But Wreck Beach celebrates naturism or nudism — a political and/or social movement defending social nudity.

Nudism is tough for a lot of us to take seriously. There are plenty of stories, movies, etc. where nudism is the punch line of a joke, which might explain my childish reaction upon arrival at Wreck: an outburst of giggling.

But after about an hour, I couldn’t help but notice how comfortable people were. I

know that’s not a groundbreaking statement — “nudists are comfortable in their own skin” — but I’d never seen that kind of self-confidence in real life.

I’m not about to advocate naturism in everyday life, but in a safe, isolated spot like Wreck, it was kind of awesome.

Sagging breasts, flat butts, thighs marked with cellulite, the human body and all of its flaws on display without shame . . . there’s some kind of magic associated with that kind of liberated space.

The first time I went to a life drawing class, I sketched a naked woman in her 40s. I remember being struck by her grace and beauty. It was an imperfect beauty to be sure, but, looking at my friends’ drawings, it was clear to me that the flaws held the most interest, the most mystery, the most beauty.

It sounds cliché: beauty is in the eye of the beholder and whatnot; but in the midst of all the perfect images we’re bombarded by daily, I was completely dumbfounded to realize that I, myself, saw her blemishes as beautiful.

Wreck is an isolated space, tucked in the folds of nature, offering a momentary respite from society’s judgmental eye.

I guarantee people beachcomb there for varied reasons but, for my part, it was a relief to see people strutting instead of hiding. An eye-opener and no mistake.

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Hardwiring Happiness: Growing Inner Strengths in Children, Parents, and Teachers

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NEWS

Professors at SFU Surrey are taking their students’ thirst for knowledge literally, offering a new course this Spring semester called “The Science of Brewing.”

Co-developed and taught by Chemistry Professor Uwe Kreis and Biology Professor Zamir Punja, the course (BISC 372) will provide the opportunity for students to explore the scientific, research and business aspects of the beer-making industry.

“It’s not about drinking beer,” laughed Kreis in an interview with The Peak. “It’s really about understanding the process and

October 15, 2013

what actually goes into making a good beer.”

The Science of Brewing is a product of the $2 million INSPIRE initiative that Dean of Science, Claire Cupples, launched last year to stimulate change in the way science is taught at SFU. The initiative brought professors from various disciplines together to brainstorm innovative courses that would provide students with applicable skills for the industry as “a lot of them won’t end up in a traditional science job,” according to Kreis.

Additional course proposals included the science of skin

news editor email / phone

and the study of fuel cells (which would involve a partnership with Ballard Power Systems) but the team settled on the brewing course because of its mass appeal and the access to a corporate partner. Central City Brewing Co., which brews Red Racer beer and is looking to distill gin and whisky in the future, is SFU Surrey’s neighbour and an eager partner for the program.

“Central City Brewing will actually play a somewhat active role in the process,” explained Kreis.

“They’re sharing resources with us. We will be running some of the analytics and some of the things they actually do when they check on how well they’re doing for the batch of beers going and so on.”

“They’re actually going to have some of their lead researchers come and talk to the students in terms of lectures,” added Punja. “You don’t really see that happening a lot with other industries except perhaps in business. It’s hard to get a company to really devote their space, their time, their facility

Alison Roach associate news editor news@the-peak.ca / 778.782.4560

and their people to actually get involved in a course.”

BISC 372 will be open to all students who have over 60 credits, as it involves not just the science behind brewing beer, but the marketing and business aspects as well.

“We’re making a lot of effort to keep the science at a level that students from different backgrounds can really enjoy the process,” said Kreis. “We’d like to see a variety of different students from different faculties.”

In addition to Punja’s and Kreis’ expertise, students in the course will receive guest lectures from experts in the industry and participate in panels, such as an

Leah Bjornson

introduction to tasting. During the lab segments, students will be able to visit the microbrewery and collect samples for scientific analysis of components such as flavour, colour, texture, and alcohol content.

“There will be some other hands-on things that they can do with the ingredients — with the barley, the hops, and all the various things that go into it, so they will be setting up mini experiments in the labs in Surrey,” said Punja.

Punja also feels that for some students the applicable science learned in the course may come in handy sooner rather than later.

“The industry hopes at least that some students will get so jazzed or turned on by it that they might actually want to work there over the summer, like as an internship,” Punja said. “They do have four of those, probably for their students that really show the most motivation, so there could be spin-off opportunities for students who take the course.”

NEWS

corporations. “Harper elevated the economy above the very atmosphere that sustains us,” Suzuki said. “Let’s put the ‘eco’ back into ‘economics’ where it belongs.”

Sustainable SFU, an environmental and social advocacy society based on campus, was at the heart of the event as an organizing partner, hoping to take away ideas that might help them create a more sustainable environment on campus. Sustainable SFU also provided travel grants and financial support to students who wanted to attend the conference.

“Sustainable SFU gained some insight into the spectrum of issues resulting from an imbalance in power, and some tools to use in further mobilizing to combat the issues of climate change and the lack of recognition of Aboriginal rights and titles,” said James Hoffele, Sustainable SFU’s climate director. “I gained a sense that young people do care about the earth we are inheriting and want to have their democratic voices heard.”

Other highlights from the conference included the small yet powerful voice of 12-year-old Ta’Kaiya Blaney, a singer, actor, and environmental activist who is a member of Sliammon First Nation from BC. “I can’t wait until I’m 20 for politicians to act,” said Blaney.

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ADMISSION INCLUDES UNLIMITED ACCESS TO The conference ended with students participating in a march as they teamed up with Idle No More to protest against the building of resource draining projects such as pipelines and tankers. The march was organized by PowerShift BC as a stage for mass civil disobedience training.

The crowd chanted, “We are unstoppable! Another world is possible!” as they marched through the streets of downtown Victoria.

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The weekend of Oct 4 to 7 marked a pivotal moment for Canadians fighting for environmental and social change. Over a thousand youth gathered in Victoria to participate in the largest climate change conference in BC’s history: PowerShift BC. Over the course of three action packed days, students took part in a series of interactive discussions, workshops, and panel events. The premise of the conference was to work towards creating a sustainable planet so that a fair economy and job market might also become a reality.

As part of the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition, PowerShift BC was organized in partnership with a variety of other groups including: the Wilderness Committee, Forest Ethics Advocacy, University of Victoria Student Society, Council of Canadians, and Sustainable SFU. The event kicked off with a workshop titled “PowerShift 101,” which brought attendees together in the name of international solidarity for climate justice. Workshop topics ranged from exploring the instances of oppression in society to field experts discussing the implications of pipelines and tankers.

The delicate balance between economic growth and environmental sustainability was a focal point of discussion during the conference. Specific concerns were highlighted and discussed, such as the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline to be built as a new outlet for accessing crude oil, and Premier Christy Clark’s recent announcement about increasing fossil fuel exports.

Keynote speakers included Maude Barlow, David Suzuki, and Neelam Khare, who spoke about rising up against the energy economy of governments and

October 15, 2013

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Angela Kaida, an SFU professor of health sciences, is leading SFU in Canada’s cutting-edge research on the prevalence of HIV in women.

Without a doubt, the biological differences among men and women are vast, and include an increased susceptibility of women to HIV. This vulnerability is amplified by social and cultural factors such as poverty, marginalization, violence and gender inequalities.

Kaida is the BC lead of the Canadian HIV Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health Cohort Study (CHIWOS), a research project with three other principal investigators around the country that focuses on women-centered health care to address these issues. SFU is one of three Canadian universities associated with the project, along with a team of investigators from across the country who are collaborating on the study.

Robert Hogg, a fellow SFU health sciences professor and director of the Epidemiology and Population Health program at the

October 15, 2013

BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/ AIDS, leads the connection of CHIWOS to the Canadian Observational Cohort (CANOC) study.

“The etymology of HIV in women has been changing over the last few years,” explained Kaida. “The aim of the study is to

see how women-centered health care may a make a difference in the lives of women living with HIV. We’re really trying to meet women where they’re at.”

CHIWOS’ methodology focuses on community-based research in Ontario, Québec and British

Columbia. The study is partnering with policy makers and HIV positive women from all social gradients across the country. The individuals who will profit from the study provides are part of the collection process, and that’s where the emphasis on community lies.

Already, interesting findings have come out of the BC portion of the study regarding the province’s Aboriginal population. In BC, one third of HIV-positive women are Aboriginal, a finding that is not reflected in Ontario or Québec.

“We’re taking a different approach to how we’re implementing the study. It’s from a community perspective from the beginning,” said Kaida. “We’re excited to see what kind of impact this has.”

She continued, “We’re very interested in how access to good quality health care can differ by social axis: are we seeing, what we would call, ‘more vulnerable’ women with lower income and lower literacy compared to higher income, higher literacy?”

The study requires participants to complete a questionnaire with a trained peer interviewer and to take part in a follow-up interview 18 months later. Study results are planned to be release in early 2015.

Making waves on Canadian coastlines, doctoral graduand Brett Favaro has received a Liber Ero doctoral fellowship at the University of Victoria for his research on reducing bycatch in commercial fishing traps.

According to Favaro, a course on the biology of marine fish at at the Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre sensitized him to issues such as the damage that unrestricted commercial fishing activity can have on marine ecosystems.

After the University of Victoria was contacted by the BC prawn fishery, who hoped to investigate the issue of conservation, Favaro was presented with the opportunity to apply his knowledge to a real industry problem.

In his doctoral thesis, “Can fishing gear protect non-target fish?”, Brett examined the impacts of commercial fishing and evaluated how fisheries might reduce non-target catch, or bycatch. Building upon this, Brett designed and created a device that would keep threatened rockfish species out of the prawn fisheries’ traps.

“I didn’t appreciate how hard it would be,” laughed Favaro in an interview with The Peak. “Marine biology is really hard because to do the simplest thing you have to rely on a lot of technology.”

“The problem is these traps go down 100m, so that’s pretty deep. That’s too deep to scuba dive down, and it’s too expensive to send ROVs [Remotely Operated Vehicles] down to study them for any sort of extended period of time. So the first thing we had to come up with some way to look at what was going on in the traps.”

Favaro’s research culminated in the creation of a device that was designed to keep rockfish out while keeping the prawns in.

However, scientific innovation for Favaro isn’t enough; it has to be a useable tool for the industry.

“You can’t just look at what it does to your bycatch rate . . . you have to introduce a technique that is also viable for catching fish. But you also have to look at what it does to other species. So it’s very, very complicated, but you have to look at whether its practical for use in the fishery.”

Favaro’s involvement with the industry has not stopped at technological innovation. Since writing his thesis, Favaro has written a letter to the editor of Science, challenging the federal government’s rationale for reducing fish habitat protection, and helped draw attention to the need for a made-in-BC Species at Risk Act in a provincial letter-writing campaign.

Yet, Favaro refuses to call himself a politically motivated scientist. “All that we were doing was doing science on essentially statements,” explained Favaro.

“So instead of just accepting that the fisheries act was getting in the way of everyday activities, we treated that as a hypothesis and tried to find data or evidence [to support that].”

“I just felt it was a natural extension of science to take that and find data and test it, just like you would test any hypothesis.”

Away from BC’s coast, Favaro’s future research will take him to the Arctic, where he will conduct his post-doc on how to solve bycatch problems in uncharted waters.

NEWS

October 15, 2013

SFU’S VANCITY OFFICE OF COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

A FREE SCREENING OF

ZIPPER a film about the gentrification of Coney Island OCTOBER 23, 2013 | 7:00 PM Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema, Free admission. No RSVP required.

Details at sfuwoodwards.ca This screening of Zipper is co-presented

by SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement, Pivot Legal Society, and the Projecting Change FIlm Festival.

GOLDCORP CENTRE FOR THE ARTS, 149 W. HASTINGS STREET, VANCOUVER Twitter: @SFU_Arts | Facebook: SFUWoodward’s

www.sfuwoodwards.ca

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After almost two years of negotiation, Starbucks finally opened at SFU, offering students an opportunity to order their grandeextra-hot-soy-latte-with-extrafoam while on the mountain.

The new coffee shop has opened its doors in MBC, replacing the old SFU Security and Parking Services offices.

The Starbucks at SFU is also one of the largest in the country covering over 1900 square feet of space and able to seat 80 customers indoors and 25 on the patio.

“This is meant to be a social space,” said Mark McLaughlin, executive director of SFU Ancillary Services. Designed with students in mind, Starbucks will remain open after Bennett library closes on weekend nights to give them another place to study.

There are abundant power and USB charging outlets, as well as a wall that has been reserved for contemporary arts students, where they will be able to create a mural, to go up in November. McLaughlin said that it would likely be temporary, chalk-based art that can be rotated every few months.

The initial setback for the SFU location concerned Starbucks’ reluctance to include fair trade coffee and espresso on the menu — though they introduced it across Europe in 2010 — it took two years of negotiations for the chain to accept SFU’s terms.

McLaughlin knew student concerns, in general, transcended those of price or brand; he tried to focus on options like fair trade — a preference that is taking off at campuses across Canada. An SFU survey by the Dining Services Committee indicated that 77 per cent of respondents felt that fair trade coffee was at least somewhat important to them.

“In two or three years, most campuses are going to switch to fair trade too,” said McLaughlin.

“So we basically told Starbucks that

October 15, 2013

SFSS Treasurer Emad Shahid brought a drafted statement of expenditures and revenues for the Kickoff Concert, held on Sept. 23.

The statement outlined the budgeted expenses in comparison to the actual final costs, as well as the revenue brought in through tickets and sponsorships.

The final deficit, including all costs and revenues, was $12,607.69. The deficit is based on a “conservative budget,” according to Shahid, of $56,000, while the actual approved funding for the concert was $63,000.

Total expenses for the event were $56,732.21, over the conservative budget by $732.21. The total revenue of the event was $44,124.52, largely comprised of over $36,000 in ticket sales and $7,300 in sponsorships.

Overall, Shahid described the event as “very well managed, financially.”

they weren’t going to reach these audiences if they didn’t step up.”

While there are no plans to offer fair trade coffee at any upcoming or existing branches, Girotto said that Starbucks will be paying close attention to the pilot project at SFU. McLaughlin added that the SFU location was offering fair trade options on a conditional basis: it will only continue to be offered as long as it sells well.

Starbucks will offer two fair trade options, one of their espressos and the dark roast coffee, both certified by the company’s own C.A.F.E. Practices as well as Fair Trade Canada.

Fair Trade Canada’s communications director, Michael Zelmer, explained that fair trade certification is a thirdparty system that focuses specifically on improving the terms of trade and price for disadvantaged farmers and workers, while including strong labour and sustainable agriculture standards and processes.

“C.A.F.E. Practices is a scoring system Starbucks developed to measure coffee producers on social responsibility and environmental indicators. It then takes that score and somehow combines it with its purchasing decisions, with a higher score presumably increasing the likelihood they’d buy from a particular source and possibly price, we don’t know,” explained Zelmer.

He continued, “The focus of the standards is exclusively on the performance of the farmers themselves, not the interaction between Starbucks and the farmers.”

McLaughlin said that the lowest price that can be paid under Fair Trade Canada’s certification no matter how low the

market price goes is US$1.40/lb.

This is compared with a current industry average of US$1.15/ lb. However, even when prices are high internationally, farmers can still get very low prices when they have limited options in terms of market access.

SFU was designated a fair trade campus in 2012, meaning that all on-campus coffee shops must offer a fair trade option; which is why requiring Starbucks to offer such choices was so important.

Franchises, like Tim Hortons, are exempt, but that doesn’t mean they’re off the hook.

McLaughlin said that the Dining Services Committee has been pressuring them to offer fair trade coffee, but have not received a favourable response.

In the meantime, SFU is not allowing Tim Hortons to open another store on campus until they acquiesce. According to Girotto, there were no plans on the table to offer fair trade coffee at their other Canadian locations.

NEWS

The Teaching Support Staff Union, which represents all SFU teaching assistants, tutor markers, sessional instructors, and language instructors, has filed a policy grievance with SFU Human Resources over the failure to pay wages, claiming that some members still have not been paid for any work done this semester.

The grievance asserts that SFU has violated the right to timely payment of wages, and seeks immediate remedy, as well as future compliance with those rights and redress for damages.

The TSSU’s issue lies with one clerical process of SFU Finance’s Payroll department.

The first payday of the semester was Sept. 6, the second was Sept. 20, and the third Oct. 4.

After three paydays, several TSSU members remained unpaid for the semester, having not received a paycheque for their work for over a month.

According to TSSU spokesperson Derek Sahota, who personally didn’t receive a paycheque for the semester until after the second payday had come and gone, approximately 18 per cent of TSSU members were not paid on the first payday. Six per cent of members remained unpaid on the second payday and, based on the members who have contacted the union since the third payday, approximately three per cent of members have still yet to see a paycheque.

The problem, according to Sahota, starts with SFU departments delaying making hiring decisions until right before the start of semester, which delays the process of setting up TSSU employees with Payroll. “[The departments are] supposed to make those [decisions] three weeks before semester starts,” said Sahota. “In a lot of cases, they don’t do that until the day the semester starts.” The largest concentrations of TSSU

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October 15, 2013

members who were not paid on the first pay day work within Computing Science, Beedie School of Business, and Mathematics.

The BC Employment Standards Act requires employers to pay employees at least twice a month, and within eight days of a pay period. A pay period cannot exceed more than 16 days.

Sahota stated that the issue of members not receiving payment has been ongoing for years, but that this year the problem is more widespread among the membership. Another problem he pointed out is an extra step that has been added by SFU Payroll to resolve the issue of non-payment.

“In the past, what was done is you would go to Payroll, say ‘I didn’t get paid,’ and they would cut you a manual check and it would be ready within 24 hours,” said Sahota. “They’ve added in an extra layer: there’s a deadline now to get the manual check, and they get run once per week.

So if you don’t get in by that deadline, then you’re waiting another week, which puts you to the next pay period anyways.

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The extra layer is a form that unpaid members are required to have signed by their department, and then return to Payroll. “It seems like there are just a bunch of somewhat arbitrary rules they’ve put in, that make it hard for people to get paid,” Sahota observed.

He continued, “From the whole Employment Standards Act perspective, if you’re not paid, the employer has to sort it out. It’s not your responsibility,” Sahota said that the TSSU will be looking into possible damages incurred by members due to the lapse in pay, including interest earned on bills or lapsed payments for living expenses.

SFU, in accordance with their media policy towards ongoing union issues, declined to comment on the filed grievance.

Tuesday, October 15 | 7 pm

Morris J Wosk Centre for Dialogue 580 West Hastings Street, Vancouver (enter from Seymour Street courtyard)

This event is free, but seating is limited. Please reserve online at www.sfu.ca/reserve.

Reception follows.

SPONSORED BY THE VICE-PRESIDENT, ACADEMIC

ANKE KESSLER joined SFU’s Department of Economics in 2003 and holds a PhD from the University of Bonn, Germany, specializing in organizational design. Combining elements of public economics and political economics with contract theory, her current research focuses on the design of public institutions.

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OPINIONS

October 15, 2013

email / phone

opinions@the-peak.ca / 778.782.4560

Dear Joseph, Re: “Letter to the editor Sept. 30, 2013”

FREDRICTON (CUP) — There has been a great deal of concern in the news about whether or not Iran is a threat. The nuclear program in Iran is close to levels that would allow it to create nuclear weapons. I am here to dispel myth and give you reasons why you should not be afraid of Iran.

Iran is an Islamic republic in the Middle East with a moderately modernized military, a space program, and surplus in its budget from oil exports. Iran is dominated by the Shi’a rather than most of the Middle East that is Sunni, which means that Iran’s neighbours are not very accommodating.

The United States and many western nations see Iran as a threat due to the success of their nuclear program. Iran claims that this nuclear program is for medical and energy purposes, but the West is frightened by the increased efficiency of their program.

Iran has never invaded another country.

It has supported armed factions in other countries, and sent some of its special forces into the Syrian civil war, but so have the US and countless other western countries. If there should be no reason for anyone to be afraid of Iran, why does the media and the U.S. continue to bring up the subject?

The explanation is quite simple; the US dislikes the tone Iran has taken since the 70s. In 1979 the Shah of Iran, a dictator put in power by the US and the United Kingdom decades before, was overthrown. In an instant the US lost another ally in the Middle East and a source of cheap oil. The US then covertly supported Iraq with weapons and funds to combat Iran in a terrible war that saw wide-scale use of chemical weapons.

After this, the Americans, with their partner Israel, have continually used whatever means necessary to harm Iran. When Iran was furthering its development of uranium enrichment in the beginning of 2012, their lead scientists were killed by car bombs. According to Al Jazeera, Iran claimed Israel was behind the attacks.

Recently, the European Union and the US have placed embargoes and sanctions on Iran, tightening the pockets of ordinary Iranians. It seems that the US and their allies are bullying a country simply because it wants to sustain its country with nuclear power.

The time has come once again for the United Nations General Assembly meeting. The new president of Iran is asking for talks with the US about Iran’s nuclear program. This does not seem like the violent, evil, hatemongering autocrat that America claims he is.

Hopefully the dialogue will come with an agreement that allows both sides to calm down, respect one another and become allies against instability in the region. Or, they can go back to what they do best: hating each other.

In your letter to the editor published two weeks ago, you discussed the unfairness of the inclusion of a site link in the article “Bright ideas for shifting your body clock,” claiming that by providing direction to a service The Peak was not upholding its policy of being impartial. Although your point is an important one, we, the news team, would like to take this opportunity to outline our policies and explain our actions.

You claimed that “it makes no sense” that the paper would refuse to advertise a political cause, while still publishing the website of a service, as well as actual advertisements. To us, it makes all the sense in the world.

We do not advertise political causes because, as independent and unbiased news reporters, we cannot reasonably align ourselves with anything political. Not only would this inhibit our news reporting, but could bite us in the future if we have to objectively report on a related event.

Providing web addresses of activist groups is different from giving students a link to a website which is the exclusive focus of a nonsolicitous article, such as “Bright ideas.” The article links students to a research initiative by an SFU professor, not a cause, which happens to provide a free service.

While we won’t cover the existence of activist clubs, we can cover their effects or events, provided they are noteworthy and relevant. Your club is combating racist immigration policies? That’s not news. Your club held a rally of hundreds of people on campus for your cause? That’s news.

This week we’re running a story about a huge event that was organized in part by Sustainable SFU. While we don’t follow their activism with continuous stories, covering the event was right up our alley.

You also critique the idea of objectivity in news, stating that “there is a point . . . when one must stop being ‘objective,’ and start being fair.” In news, there is never a point to stop being objective. Objectivity is fairness. If we started aligning

ourselves with causes that we personally agree with, we would be accused of not being fair to others. Once we stop being objective, our credibility is lost.

This is the very reason why The Peak wasn’t able to support the movement to close down SFU campuses for the Truth and Reconciliation Committee when we were approached to do so. However, we did cover the TRC’s closing event, the Walk for Reconciliation, which saw tens of thousands of people walking together through downtown Vancouver.

Our responsibility to the SFU public isn’t to educate them about your cause, at least not in the news section.

It’s to provide unbiased, fair coverage of happenings on campus. We cannot champion causes, however obvious they may seem, because that would mean giving up that mantle.

Finally, you suggested that our editorial board take “necessary steps to evaluate its political responsibility, and to put into place explicit, accessible guidelines as to what our responsibility is or is not.” We’ve actually already done that. In our Submissions Policy, it’s stated that “The Peak will not publish content that is sexist, racist, or otherwise hateful or prejudiced.” This statement is published on the second page of every paper we print.

The news section does not have a political responsibility, beyond adhering to those guidelines, and doing our utmost to cover the political events on campus that affect students’ lives. It’s why we run coverage of SFSS and GSS elections, and it’s why we printed a guide to the most recent provincial election.

Our paper does make political statements — lots of them — but you won’t find them in the news section. For that, you’ll have to look in opinions, features, and humour.

Here’s a recommendation for you: please don’t equate us not heralding the causes you champion with The Peak not publishing political content, or not being fair.

Sincerely, Alison Roach & Leah Bjornson News Editor and Associate News Editor

OPINIONS

October 15, 2013

On Sunday, Oct. 6, Neil Degrasse Tyson was fresh off of seeing Gravity and, bent on fulfilling his role as Premiere Pop Scientist, he slathered Twitter with scientific correctives. He later clarified that he viewed the right to scientific criticism as a big compliment to any science-fiction movie, but the damage had been done, and criticisms of scientific accuracy now plague discourse surrounding a humanist sci-fi spectacle movie.

One can only endure the needling of philistines so long and, as a lover of Gravity, I’m not ashamed

to admit that tears of outrage filled my eyes. I blinked them dry and focused on the troglodytes’ misinterpretations of the factual duties of “hard” sci-fi. “Do you enjoy poetry?” someone said, and when I looked up I saw a stranger speaking to me. “Yes,” I lied, though I had never enjoyed it; it seems to me that without the law of grammar there’s no real point to language.

She kept on, asking, “Do you speak French?” “No,” I said. Then, with ill-informed politesse, “But please go ahead anyway.” She started reading, and her pronunciations drifted over me without meaning. I was halfway through having her translate and explain each line when the bus stopped. As I got off, I weighed the experience’s value, and concluded that it was a wash. Then I remembered that time is fleeting and realized that the whole affair was probably a net loss.

Soon, I was in the office and online again, scouring comments on Gravity and its orbital

inconsistencies. Where they seemed especially misguided, I posted replies that concisely detailed my view on the limits of suspension of disbelief. This got tedious, and I was relieved when my pocket buzzed with a message asking when I was free. It’s hard to know how to turn down someone you have only dated once (sort-of-twice), but I decided that a text was too impersonal and meeting in person too grandiose. I opted to do nothing; anyway, gradually trimming off their expectations seemed better than sudden disappointment.

It was a good time-kill; in the meantime, someone had responded to one of my comments on Gravity. As the argument blossomed and branched, more and more inconsistencies in logic and tone went up for grabs. I dove into my role with pride: too many people lean on intellectually dishonest hairsplitting to fill their wasted lives. Someone has to show them the light, and if not me, who?

studies.” [Sic] to all this crap, p.s.

Was the course material (which, for the record, was all written in English) not worthy of study because it wasn’t about a

It’s a liberal cop-out to say that professors can teach solely to their “preferences” if they want to, as Gloria Mellesmoen does in the Oct. 7 article, “Professors are entitled to teach their preferences.”

Professors should and do teach to their specializations, but unless that specialization is white male writers, a “preference” for white male writers in an academic sense is just veiled bigotry.

Being an academic is a privileged position. When a prof designs a reading list for a course on a specific genre or period, they aren’t just picking neato reads, they’re dictating what is worth studying in their field. When I took Early Canadian Literature (ENG 354) at SFU, Susanna Moodie and Pauline Johnson were included on the reading list because of their undeniably important contributions to Canadian

literature. These early Canadian female writers would’ve been lost to history if it was taught by David Gilmour, the U of T professor who admitted to consciously omitting female authors from his lectures.

When female authors — and in the case of Gilmour, queer authors and authors of colour — go unrepresented on reading lists, it marks their contributions as irrelevant, or at least unworthy. If a department holds enough members of similar tastes, their “preferences” could remove authors from a literary canon for a generation of undergraduates.

Looking up the reviews for Dr. Deanna Reder on ratemyprof, you can see the effects of this ol’ white boys club approach to literature.

Her English 101 Fall 2011 (Introduction to Fiction) course outline explicitly states, “the focus of this section . . . will be Aboriginal Fiction.” Three separate reviewers on ratemyprof had this to say: “We looked at a native comic book done in a japanese style this semester. not exactly english literature. talked too much about her race, nobody really cares.”; “I didnt know shed make all the books native books.

That wasn’t really fair.”; “Eng 101 isn’t even english, its aboriginal

WASP protagonist? That’s highly problematic, given that there are literally millions of people writing texts in English who aren’t WASPy assholes writing WASP-y narratives about their white people problems. If the general public, who, in part, pays these professors’ salaries continues to placate their dismissal of non-white heterosexual male voices, future generations’ understanding of literature will be incredibly limited.

Think of it this way: if a physics professor decided he wasn’t going to lecture on advancements in his field made by female, queer, and/ or non-white researchers because their work just didn’t appeal to his

11

Nothing feels better than asserting your will based only on your own immediate gain, and if you don’t think so then fuck off, killjoy. No matter how you slice it, it’s great to be a young, privileged hedonist: my vocal chords are ripe for shouting opinions, my unwrinkled face is an ironclad defense against threats to my

ego, and my faucets turn off when I say they turn off. Sure, I play hard, but my liver’s gonna be fine; I do, like, 15 pushups every morning.

Okay, so I have some obligations to mankind and stuff, but I’ll work on those later — I’m only young once, and I have a lot of yelling “Fuck” in public to do!

Every time I see my grandpa at reunions, he calls me to whatever corner he’s slouched into and talks to me, and it really freaks me out. Every friend he talks about — every one — gets the “past-tense” treatment, if you know what I mean. The worst part is that he keeps saying shit like “One day you’ll understand,” or “Soon you’ll be

like me, decrepit and sterile.”

Not that I believe him; I’ll be tearing it up ‘till the end. Anyway, I bet he didn’t do pushups.

Still, it makes me a little nervous. Hopefully science bails us out with some fountain of youth shit in the next few years. Come on, chemistry students! I’m counting on you guys!

“preferences,” he’d be a laughing stock. Empirical evidence is empirical evidence. You don’t get to pretend things didn’t happen or don’t exist because they don’t fit into your narrow world view when you are supposed to be one of the forefront thinkers in your field. The study of literature should be held to the same standards.

Professors should, obviously, teach to their areas of expertise, but as far as preference goes, like an English undergrad who doesn’t want to fulfill their medieval

component, they can suck it up.

When preferences deny the existence of works by differing voices in specific periods or genres, universities offer students a limited education and become complicit in this bigotry-by-omission.

Just because a professor doesn’t preach intolerance doesn’t mean they don’t passively promote it.

When a student signs up for an English class, unless it’s specifically designated as a history of mansplaining, they should be able to expect a varied reading list.

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11:30am — 2:30pm Tuesday, Wednesday, & Thursday @ Forum Chambers Maggie Benston Building, SFU Hare Krishna Food For Life is serving hundreds of meals every week to homeless people in downtown Vancouver, funding an orphanage and school in India as well as many other uplifting programs for the body and soul. For more info go to hkffl.org.

Please friend “New Veggie Lunch” on Facebook!

12

FEATURES

or many, it’s ironic to think of the Downtown Eastside — Vancouver’s poorest neighbourhood — as the city’s last hope. Just the thought of East Hastings conjures images of addiction, AIDS, prostitution and death. On top of this, recent gentrification attempts have been met with violent protests that have generally been more destructive than productive.

Since most attempts to improve the neighbourhood have been met with criticism, it is hard to see how the black hole of the DTES can provide the thriving metropolis of Vancouver with any benefits.

In the recent decade, Vancouver has seen rapid population growth.

In 2012 Statistics Canada reported Vancouver as the fastest-growing Canadian city, with growth rates well above the national average. Not only is Vancouver growing faster than a weed, it is also reported as Canada’s

October 15, 2013

features editor email / phone

densest city, with 5249.1 people per square kilometer.

Herein lies the source of Vancouver’s exorbitant living costs. With an increasing number of people in the city and limited space to accommo-

individuals seeking homes, however, this is bad news. Many are forced to move outside of the city — and away from their jobs — as rent becomes too expensive. This also makes life hard for individuals seeking jobs

date them, housing prices rise. In the last two decades, housing prices and rents have soared. Landowners have made millions, resulting in another claim to fame: Vancouver, Canada’s most expensive place to live.

For middle and low-income

upon graduation. Many opportunities are found in the city, but for most, living downtown is out of the question. By default, business and housing development has expanded to some of the only affordable land in the city, the downtown Eastside.

Max Hill features@the-peak.ca / 778.782.4560

However, as the region averaging the lowest income in Vancouver, the services that are moving in do not cater to the community. With gentrification efforts increasing, the area is becoming less and less welcoming to its lower-income population. What Vancouver has effectively become is an inequitable city colonized by the rich. Only the lucky few who can afford it have the privilege of living downtown.

Mark Townsend is the executive director of the Portland Hotel Society, a non-profit working on affordable social housing projects. He ultimately believes that Vancouver is in this state because the city has no development plan. The city has alluded that they have a plan for more equitable development, but, as Mark puts it, “it’s kind of like a wild, wild west thing.” We have let the city grow in whatever direction it chooses with no plan on how we are going to make Vancouver an affordable city.

FEATURES Townsend compares the development of Vancouver to that of early London or New York City, both of which have imposed rent controls and designated spaces for subsidized housing, two things Vancouver has failed to implement.

However, there is still hope for Vancouver to repave its path down a more equitable road to development. Mark Townsend offers solutions: “How are we going to make our city more affordable? Some of those things people won’t like — rent controls, zoning things that are going to remain for low-income, and catering to who’s already here. So, to me, there needs to be a moratorium or a sober second thought to how we are going to move forward.”

Ultimately, these solutions that Mark is referring to are subsidized housing, zoning and rent controls.

This is where the Downtown Eastside comes in. Amid its dirty, druggy stigma, it is the only Vancouver region that has encouraged inclusive, equitable metropolis development.

Subsidized housing and zoning have been observed in the Downtown Eastside for the last decade.

Non-profit organizations such as the Portland Hotel Society have purchased hotels in the Downtown Eastside and turned them into single room occupancies for lower-income individuals. The rate is set at $375 a month — the welfare allowance for housing. Housing priority is given to low-income individuals working in the city who have no home.

The provincial government has also hopped on this project, purchasing more hotels, and renovating them to accommodate as many people as possible. Not only does this project allow individuals to live in the city who could otherwise not afford it, but it also helps people get off the street.

The Downtown Eastside makes a remarkable effort to cater to the individuals living there. A prime example of this is InSite, the only legal drug injection site in North America. Just last week, InSite celebrated its 10year anniversary.

The advent of a legal injection site has produced much federal and provincial controversy; however, in just the decade that InSite has existed, the life expectancy in the Downtown Eastside has risen. Between 2006 and 2011, the disparity between life expectancy in the DTES and the rest of British Columbia fell from 5.2 years to 2.3 years.

Working with the Portland Hotel Society on East Hastings for 22 years, Mark Townsend states: “When I first started, 20 years ago, people were dying of AIDS, dying of overdoses; that’s why we came to be involved with an injection site, because so many people were dying. Healthcare has become more relevant and more attuned to the population that it is dealing with. In the old days you had to go to them, now they come to you, and they try and come to you in an appropriate, cultural way.”

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However, health care opportunities in the Downtown Eastside haven’t always been so accessible. “In the old days, it was hard to get services,” Mark says. “We’d send people to services and they’d tell a woman with buzz cut hair that she needed to grow her hair long and wear lipstick. She would be ‘better’ if she did things a lady should. But that wasn’t

lower-income individuals to utilize its services.

The Radio Station Café is a nonprofit operation that provides a cheap place to enjoy a coffee and a safe place to lounge for the afternoon.

With its affordable prices and warm atmosphere, the Radio Station Café attempts to support all members of the Downtown Eastside community.

other regions in Vancouver have, it has seen a different, more equitable development. The Downtown Eastside creates an affordable, inclusive community integrating various social classes. It is the only area in Vancouver that has promoted affordable living, making space for lower-income individuals to remain in the city. So maybe there is more to learn from the

the issue at all. Now people are being met much more where they are.”

Beyond the stigmatized, overtly negative portrayal of the Downtown Eastside, there exists a population of artists, teachers, entrepreneurs and more, living a middle-class lifestyle.

Generally speaking, facilities such as InSite do not cater to their needs; however, local businesses and organizations have made a valiant effort to cater to everyone.

Take, for example, the Radio Station Café, the perfect place to enjoy a latte and catch up on some reading.

From the vintage woodwork that lines the floor, to the vibrant fresh flowers that line the windowsills and entryway, to the friendly baristas and vast panini selection, the café wouldn’t be out of place in the Granville or Main Street area.

What distinguishes the Radio Station Café from other gentrification attempts in the East Side community is its inclusivity. While the café is attractive to middle-class residents in the community, it also encourages

Save On Meats, another Downtown Eastside staple, began a meal token program in order to help the community’s less fortunate population. Customers are able to purchase $2.25 tokens that can be redeemed for breakfast sandwiches. Many have taken to handing out these tokens in lieu of cash to the area’s homeless population, in order to ensure that their money is spent on a nutritious hot meal.

On the other hand, young entrepreneurs are, by and large, opening businesses in the Downtown Eastside which only cater to the middle- and upper-class members of the neighbourhood, ostracizing the lower-income percentile. This type of gentrification encourages development by pushing out one class of people, not building an inclusive sense of community. Hence why recent gentrification attempts have been met with ardent protests.

Although the Downtown Eastside has not seen the same industrial, metropolitan expansion as

Downtown Eastside than we think.

On top of this, the development of Gastown, Yaletown, and other such ventures have left Vancouver with very little unindustrialized space. At this point in time, the only affordable living space is in the Downtown Eastside.

The municipality or provincial government must take control of this land and distinguish it as an area that welcomes individuals of all incomes.

The Downtown Eastside stands alone as Vancouver’s last hope at becoming an inclusive, metropolitan hub, rather than an inequitable city for the rich and fortunate. With alreadyimposed subsidies on housing, zoning controls, and the inherent effort to integrate various groups of Vancouver residents, we have a lot to learn from the community.

So the next time you drive along East Hastings, don’t turn your nose up at the drug use and homelessness — consider the inspiring things that the community has achieved, and consider the role the Downtown Eastside will play in the future of Vancouver.

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nough and more hands had been wrung over the question of marijuana legalization and its place in our society before Justin Trudeau waded into the fray, cribbing a phrase from Barack Obama claiming that his views on the legality of pot have “evolved” over time.

Trudeau based this evolution in part on the fact that nicotine and alcohol have equivalent if not more significantly detrimental health effects to teens and adults as cannabis, an argument that has solid scientific backing.

However, as one (and Trudeau, indubitably) would expect, planting one’s flag in the pro- camp on this topic is publicly declaring yourself in political morass; in the wake of his comments, both Tories and New Democrats gleefully sharpened their knives and took pot shots at Trudeau’s presumed youthful narcissism and naiveté.

It’s easy to bury your head in the sand on either side of this argument, which is precisely why it has and continues to be so polarizing. Cannabis advocates are caricatured as anarchist hippies; opponents to legalization likewise sketched in crayon as stiff and inflexible moral zealots. It is a fine line to walk and one that is difficult to loan moral high ground to, but the argument over legalization is about so much more than just about pot; it betrays a deep-rooted crisis of our societal identity.

Perhaps the most telling moment in the condemnation of Trudeau’s new political direction occured during a brief interview Justice Minister Peter MacKay gave to the CBC in Halifax: “I find it quite strange frankly that Mr. Trudeau would be talking about legalization as a priority at this time” he clucked disapprovingly. MacKay then continued on, urging the young Liberal prince to “look at other areas in which we can end violence and drug use and end this societal ill.”

Most drug advocates, such as those in Sensible BC who published an article in The Peak a few weeks ago, argue for drug legalization on the basis of exceedingly harsh punitive measures for a comparably minor offense (regarding possession without intent to distribute). There is a logical fondness for equating marijuana and alcohol, the latter of which acts as a significant burden on the health care system and a strain on society at present. Alcohol is no angel, and may exacerbate a number of society’s lingering issues, however benign or malignant.

So it seems logical that if one evil is gleefully accepted, why not marijuana? Surely it couldn’t be worse? Advocates further hammer on numerous arguments encouraging pot production and distribution in a controlled manner as a governmental revenue stream, as though marijuana is in itself some sort of magic bullet to fix all that ails society and the economy. While many of their arguments are simply blowing smoke, it is without question that a number of their points are quite sound.

MacKay’s quote, however, is instructive in the way it illustrates the

opposition camp’s fundamental stance towards marijuana. In that same interview, MacKay also fretted that pot acted as a gateway drug to far harder substances, and would encourage an escalating cycle of drug abuse that people would become indoctrinated into at a young age and become dependent on throughout their lifetimes. This, in turn, would exaggerate violence in society and act as a financial and social burden on law-abiding tax payers.

It’s a compelling argument. Once again, the parallels between pot and alcohol abuse and dependency are overt and impossible to dismiss as wholly different, but let’s put on MacKay’s glasses and ignore these similarities for the sake of this argument — attempting to catalog the mountains of criticisms against either stance would have us here all day. Ultimately, MacKay, the Tory party and the entire opposition camp circles back to the same idea that drug use and abuse is a ‘societal ill’ that needs to be stamped out like so many un-extinguished cigarettes. This is where we enter morally fuzzy territory, which is nigh impossible to reasonably debate over one way or another.

I don’t personally smoke pot, nor have I ever; if that colours your perception of my argument, have at it. Coming to, and growing up, in Canada, I found the rampant use and abuse of pot as abhorrent. The entire lifestyle and culture that has sprouted around marijuana and its advocacy has been a general turn-off, and honestly, I don’t see a need or place for pot in our society, or any functional society.

But does a single individual’s perspective on a drug matter that much when set against the desires of a large group? Does it matter what my religious, cultural or socioeconomic background is? Not a jot. And this is the issue that marijuana advocates and antagonists miss entirely.

Indeed, it’s a prevailing question in our society that draws far too inadequate attention — how much freedom is too much freedom, and where do we draw lines? More importantly, can we draw lines based on so-called ‘moral’ logic and reasoning that dictates suppression of diverse sets and groups?

There is no argument against pot that can be based on anything more than a presumptive outrage of our society’s presumed moral decay and decadence. Try it — it’s impossible. I’ve always considered myself relatively liberal from the aspect of social freedoms and have generally sought out similar company.

However, in my own conversations with friends who are casual users or supporters of marijuana legalization,

the crux of my arguments hinged on the classic conservative scare-mongering gambit — hysterical terror that young children would indulge in pot as the all-terrible gateway drug, abrogating all future life choices and dimming their potential going forward.

My reasoning hinged on a hazy assumption of individual decisions that I had no basis for predicting and postiioned me on a higher moral ground, one that I didn’t deserve.

The predilection towards ‘judgmentalism’ is extremely troublesome; it enables dominating social perceptions of what is ‘moral’ and ‘just’ to inform debates and prevailing public policy. This is a slippery slope — most of these attitudes tend to be influenced or rooted in religious or established cultural attitudes, which may not lend to growth, modification, or evolution, entrenching inequalities that may suppress sects of the population. How can

arbitrarily designate what is ‘good’ and ‘fair’ and, conversely, what isn’t.

This is a thread of the argument that is repetitively and exhaustively fought in the US every time an individual on society’s fringe picks up a gun and heads out the door with malignant intentions.

How do they, in a truly secular state, aim to limit actual social and individual freedoms? The fight isn’t over whether we restrict access to weapons with a higherthan-prescribed cartridge count, or firing rate, or range of accuracy; it’s that we restrict access at all. The idea has been held untenable by gun owners, with the vague and obviously outdated protections afforded them in the Constitution.

Ignoring America’s decade-long slide into totalitarianism and elevation of individuals above the law, the idea of restricting public goods in the name of the public interest violates the desires of a significant subset of the population and

we identify what values form the cornerstone of a state, especially when the state is divorced of religious influence?

It may shock you but Canada is not, in absolute terms, a secular state. While accepting that Canada is founded upon “principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of Law” as stated in The Charter of Rights and Freedoms, this state is one of the more accommodating and accepting nations on the planet when it comes to protections on multiethnicism and guaranteeing religious and social expression. In everything but actual designation, Canada is a secular nation.

To be truly secular, however, is to divorce the social sphere from the religious. To prevent religious codes of conduct from dictating law, or lassitude and concessions made socially from coercing religious principles. To truly turn the State over to the people demands the elimination of so-called ‘morals’ and ‘values’ when dictating public policy, and by extension, establishing guidelines for public behaviour. This does not happen in Canada or, truly, anywhere else in the world.

The process of recognizing the rule of law is simple and can be compartmentalized. The State exists to provide service to and protect its citizens. We can all agree very quickly that rape is a moral affront. So is armed robbery and murder. These are obvious limitations we enforce on individuals for the protection of the overwhelming public interest.

However, attempting to arbitrarily legislate behaviour by restricting access to a substance is not in the overwhelming public interest, at least not when an alternative substance that is equally if not more harmful is freely available for access and consumption. Instead, this breeds an environment where the government is given the freedom to

therefore, runs in countenance to the founding principles of secular democracy. So we are left with a conundrum — do we enforce unpopular legislation against public will that limits freedoms and dash to pieces the concepts that define secularism, or do we open up the doors and restrict only the most heinous expressions that directly impact public safety and functionality?

After all, homosexuality was once deemed by the overwhelmingly (vocal) section of the populace to be a potent moral and societal ill, and was banned with the full force of the law — despite this being an absolute violation of basic individual freedoms afforded by constitutional protection. This is the same puzzle being combated on the streets of Québec as xenophobic-tinted government policies attempt to enforce standards of behaviour that do not march in lockstep with the totality of its (already isolated) society, but simply the collective will of a small, yet exceedingly empowered, demographic.

Simply put, we cannot have it both ways or in parts, not if we are to be a truly fair and secular nation based on democratic participation. There is no grey line; we cannot elect to validate certain freedoms while disregarding others flippantly. To label pot legalization under the opaque banner of it being a ‘social ill’ is not a constructive argument — it’s a stance that demeans and undercuts the functional definition of an argument.

If we are to ban such ills in the name of the public good, then free access to alcohol should be eliminated as well, and promptly. This is the choice we make, to either live in a country that values competing interests individually and on their own merits, or one that functions (as we do now) on hazily religious moralizing and idealistic totalitarianism.

I choose freedom.

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ARTS

You can’t blame Miley for trying. In the midst of weekly PR disasters — the latest being the ongoing feud between the singer and Sinéad O’Connor, formerly an influence — Bangerz would have sold millions of copies, regardless of the amount of effort put into it.

It’s worth noting, to the duogenarian diva’s credit, that her newest LP is far from acquiescent.

In fact, it’s one of the most ambitious records so far this year: Cyrus tries her hand at hip-hop, electro pop, funk and salsa, all within 13 lean, Ziplock-sealed tracks.

Of course, almost none of this works. Album opener “Adore You”, which is Bangerz’ best track by a country mile, is weighed down by clunky, been-there-done-that lyrics. “SMS (Bangerz),” featuring Britney Spears,

Björk is on the outside looking in. She interprets electronic music in the same

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showcases the best of Cyrus’ countless attempts at rapping throughout the album, but is a convoluted, overproduced mess. “FU” might be the LP’s most egregious misstep: through a half-hearted and woefully adolescent Lady Gaga impression, Cyrus uses the term “LOL” as a verb without her everpresent tongue in her cheek.

Cyrus’ more sensual lyrics walk the tightrope between laughably adolescent and cringe-inducing, and she’s unable to tame the country twang that escapes through attempted dance anthems like “We Can’t Stop” and “Drive.” The uncomfortable sexual energy — if you can even call it that — from Cyrus’ notorious VMA performance is in full force throughout the record. Cue a collective sigh.

But the unsung hero of Bangerz is, without question, its producer Mike Will Made It. The album’s syncopated hiphop beats, aluminium vocals and subtle string arrangements are the paint by numbers norm of contemporary pop music, but Mike rises to the occasion with enough enthusiasm to make it sound just like the first time. Unfortunately, it’s not enough to make Bangerz any less of a disjointed mess than Miley’s tumultuous personal life.

way that she interprets the English language — from a 90-degree angle, sewing together disparate threads like an impressionistic seamstress.

In the aftermath of her sophomore album Post, which won her unprecedented acclaim and celebrity status, Björk did what any introvert would: she fled. In the furthest recesses of her extraterrestrial mind, she plotted her retaliation, note by note.

Homogenic is the result of Björk’s self-imposed exile, an album full of contradictions: nature versus technology, fiction versus reality, optimism versus melancholy. Each song seems to shed light on some universal aspect of human nature, while simultaneously focusing on the minute details of the singer’s own personal life.

Gone are the inviting string arrangements of Post and the almost-pop of Debut. From the galloping drum machine opening of “Hunter,” Homogenic immediately announces itself as a work

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It’s early. I’m sitting at my desk listening to R Plus Seven, drinking notquite-coffee from The Peak’s brand new percolator. I’m alone and overtired. This office, so often filled with the frantic din of student journalists, has a silent, almost churchlike quality when it’s empty.

Jotting down the occasional note to myself, I’m enraptured by the album’s peculiar brilliance. It’s a singularly strange soundtrack to my lonely Thursday morning.

Daniel Lopatin, the man behind Oneohtrix Point Never, has always been willing to play with ideas of what music can be — his previous record, 2011’s wonderful Replica, was pieced together entirely from 80s commercial jingles. R Plus Seven is harder to describe: each of the album’s 10 tracks

of art, difficult and tempestuous even

by Björk’s standards.

But there’s also beauty to be found in the album’s industrial tundra atmosphere. “Unravel,” a love song repurposed as a warped fairytale, features some of Björk’s most beautifully organic vocals, while “All Is Full of Love” serves as a hopeful epilogue to the LP’s emotive parallelograms. The seamless marriage of subtle strings and abstract electronic beats throughout Homogenic punctuate the singer’s expressive intonation, in flux between the natural world and the one inside Björk’s Casio keyboard.

Björk’s vertical career trajectory ended with Homogenic as precipitously as it began. Each of her subsequent efforts have felt like admirable footnotes, intent on recapturing the glacial perfection of her third and best LP. It’s hard to blame her — every self-respecting singer-songwriter in the twenty-first century has, in their own way, been trying to do the same.

Daryn Wright arts@the-peak.ca / 778.782.4560

eschew format and structure, exploring a sound or vocal sample to its apex and then veering towards another.

There are occasional bursts of eclectic brilliance and long ambient passages connecting them, like an unfinished symphony written on a thrift store synthesizer.

Considering how often Lopatin is accused of over-intellectualizing music, R Plus Seven is remarkable in its spontaneity. The freeform jazz influences and music concrète sound collages of the LP’s more experimental passages are a change of pace from Replica’s restless circumlocution.

Lopatin’s fascination with primordial synthesizers is still in full form on tracks like “Problem Areas” and opener “Boring Angels,” which play like a post-modern interpolation of a John Hughes soundtrack. For an album so unconcerned with any overarching theme or sentiment, R Plus Seven is surprisingly cinematic in tone.

It’s later, now: coworkers and hangers-on have begun to trickle into their office chairs to prepare for the day, and the album’s tonal ingenuity has been confined to my headphones. But if anything, this only serves to exaggerate its appeal; R Plus Seven is a world all on its own, and one that I have had the immense pleasure of visiting.

ARTS

With two world premieres by Jorma Elo and Emily Molnar and a remount of Johan Inger’s Walking Mad, Tilt is an evening of three distinct contemporary ballets.

Walking Mad had its Canadian premiere with Ballet BC in March 2012, and they decided to remount it based on the audience’s response: “It’s a very successful work that has won awards,” explained artistic director Emily Molnar. “It received such a good response and this is a good opportunity to revisit the work and go that much deeper.”

When the audience watches the piece this time around, they’ll have the chance to see many other layers and experience something new. “There’s always a fine line with how many times you can do it again,” says Molnar. Not every work can be remounted, but some deserve to be.

Walking Mad deals with humanity; Inger began with the Socratic idea that “our greatest blessings come to us by way of madness.” The piece transitions through the three points of a relationship: from first love, to uncertainty, to knowing someone so well and nothing ever changing.

Set to Ravel’s “Boléro”, Molnar said the work is “full of deep emotion.”

“The artists have grown and matured [since the first staging],” said Molnar. This time around, they have a chance to delve even deeper into the subtleties and idiosyncrasies of the choreography.

Molnar’s new work, as yet untitled, is a full company piece set to the music of German composer Dirk Halbrich.

Molnar met Halbrich when she was dancing at Frankfurt Ballet, and she describes his work as interesting, experimental

17

October 15, 2013

electronic soundscapes: “His music has created an environment for the work.”

During the creative process, a few pieces of literature were brought into the studio for inspiration, including some Emily Dickinson poetry and Art Objects by Jeanette Winterson. “This piece is also about relationships . .. it’s about our relationship to space and ourselves,” Molnar explained. She turned 40 this year, so the work is about aging, as well as liberation. It is also simultaneously about collapse and growth, and she tried to approach this in a philosophical way.

date

OCT. 15 TO 18

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place

NORTH CONCOURSE WILDLIFE

As a collaborative effort with the dancers, the final piece retains elements of their own improvisation encouraging deeper engagement — they have a personal stake in it. Molnar said that she is proud her company has matured enough to be able to pull something like that off.

All three works in Tilt deal with relationships in some way, but each from a very different starting point and in a unique way. All the choreographers have similarities and overlap in their histories (for example Molnar and Inger were at the National Ballet of Canada together), but they have all moved from their classical lineage to contemporary ballet, and they have their own ways of expressing ideas.

When the audience walks out of Tilt, Molnar said she wants them to feel like they experienced something meaningful, whatever that may be.

“I want them to find meaning and feel welcomed to feel whatever they’re feeling. The only thing they need to bring is themselves and an openness to the work.”

GIANT-SIZED POSTERS hours

9 -­ 8

MUSIC

last day

FRAMES & HANGERS

9-5 FILM PHOTOGRAPHY 1000S OF POSTERS

THE

POSTER SALE

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October 15, 2013

marketing team which was in charge of the launch. Realizing their budgetary constraints, the team organized a fundraiser in September, which was “above and beyond the call of duty,” says student Deborah Patton, who was part of the copy editing team.

After a one-year crash course in the craft and business of writing, The Writers’ Studio graduates are presenting their work in the 13th annual emerge anthology. However, after 13 years, this is the first time emerge has been produced as part of a for-credit course.

“Previously, the students worked on it with not much more than the instruction from the previous years,” explains Andrew Chesham, the program assistant for The Writers’ Studio (TWS). So Chesham took his experience from the Masters in Publishing program, Catchfire Press, and his co-op term with The Peak to develop the Book Production course for TWS. “The course was intended to help the students better understand how books are made through coursework and handson, to have them understand the steps in small press publishing for when they are published in the future or if they decide to self publish,” says Chesham.

The course began in May and lasted throughout the summer, covering different stages of production as they related to the existing cycle for emerge: production, design, writing, editing, formatting, marketing, and sales.

Kait Fowlie, a student in the course, says that they had visits from printers when they were studying print production, and spoke to designers when they were contracting a layout designer. “We learned production, obscure parts of books, ebook publishing,” says Fowlie.

“Andrew [Chesham]’s excitement was infectious and you ended up thinking ‘This is the coolest thing ever — how did I not know about this?’”

Sixteen of the 36 TWS students enrolled in the course and were divided into different departments, focusing on editorial, production, and sales/ marketing. Fowlie was on the

Also helping out was JJ Lee, fashion columnist and author of The Measure of a Man: The Story of a Father, a Son, and a Suit as guest editor; TWS alumni Leanne Dunic as managing editor; and Chesham as publisher. Fowlie, who has been published before, says JJ Lee was “so wonderful and encouraging,” adding that he was also “smart and quirky.”

Chesham explained that Lee’s experience was beneficial to demonstrate variety among editors — especially those who don’t already know you and your style. “Many students are nervous about being published for the first time, and we try to subdue some of those fears,” said Chesham.

The emerge anthology includes one piece from each of the 36 students in The Writers’ Studio. There is no annual theme, no set genre, and a self-selection process by the students, although some of the pieces are excerpts of larger works.

The emerge 2013 launch takes place Thursday, Oct. 17, at SFU Harbour Centre. Beginning at 6:00 p.m. there will be short readings by each of the students published in the anthology. “We will be giving thanks and love, being creative, and showing off,” says Fowlie.

Chesham calls it a sort of “graduation for TWS students . . . to show what they’ve been doing for the past six to eight months and share it with their family and friends.”

During the evening of Oct. 3, I visited Hot Art Wet City on Main Street to peruse the gallery’s’ most recent exhibit: Boobies & Weiners: An Immature Look at the Nude, which is on until Oct. 26.

From the get go, it was obvious that the presentation space would include more than just still images, photographs, drawings, paintings and sculptures of naked body parts. Opening night is usually not the ideal time to take in an art show. In fact, the gallery was so packed with wriggling bodies of viewers trying desperately not to spill their drinks that a return trip would be in order. Luckily, HAWC founder and owner Chris Bentzen was happy to receive me the following day.

“Hot Art Wet City is meant to be accessible and fun for both viewers and emerging talent,” says Bentzen. “We rotate

our exhibits to feature both curated artist selections and shows that propose a theme to creators who are invited to submit proposals.”

Boobies & Weiners falls into both of these categories. With over 80 artists displaying pieces in both showrooms, calling the exhibit an orgy for the eyes would be an understatement.

With this in mind, it is only natural that each artist take a unique position with regard to the naked human form. For some, like Vince Hemingson, photography is the medium of choice. In his work, La Lucha Libre, a tag team of oiled and buxom beauties display their signature moves in a large print mounted on aluminum. Only their faces are covered by the characteristic masks of the mexican wrestling tradition.

Still others, like ARGH!, prefer a sculptural approach. Here two skeletons are strategically positioned in a corner, one sitting with protruding golf ball eyes, and a second, kneeling and wearing a wig on her head, which is hunched over in the first skeleton’s lap. It’s the very embodiment of the boner for everyone to see.

Apart from many other tongue-in-cheek representations of our favourite genitalia, the gallery space also plays host to Art or Bust, which is curated by Jenn Brisson. This exhibit-within-an-exhibit features breast casts of women that have known someone with, or who have themselves been affected by, breast cancer. These busts will be auctioned off in order to raise money for the cause.

It is evident that HAWC is doing much more than simply elevating low brow art to a popular gallery status: it is using Bentzen’s tactics of cutting edge event development to create a social environment which fosters community values and a better understanding of underground, outsider and art brut sensibilities. Quite a satisfying change from your average one-night-stand.

ARTS

October 15, 2013

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Photo courtesy of janstevens.wordpress.com

Award-winning author Madeleine Thien grew up in Vancouver and even attended SFU as a student. Her prose is lauded as “elegant” and “deeply empathetic” with “language both precise and lyrical,” handling sensitive subject matter with compassion.

Thien is now returning to Vancouver for eight months — as the SFU English Department’s new Writer-in-Residence. She normally splits her time between Montreal and Berlin: “I left [Vancouver] when I was 28. I’m 39 now and I’m just excited to be back here.”

“I travel a lot, partly due to circumstances and partly for research. If I’m writing about a particular place, I like to immerse myself in it,” explains Thien, who has also lived in the Netherlands,

Quebec City, and Hong Kong, where she teaches in a Masters program. She also lived in Cambodia, surrounding herself with the culture and the politics, which contributed to her 2011 novel Dogs at the Perimeter.

Thien studied english literature and dance at SFU, and later transferred to UBC to complete her degree in literature and creative writing. She also completed UBC’s creative writing MFA program during which she finished her first book, Simple Recipes.

Published in 2001, the collection of short stories received the City of Vancouver Book Award and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Her 2006 novel, Certainty, also received critical acclaim; it has been translated into more

than 18 languages, and won the Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel Award, as well as the Ovid Festival Prize of Romania.

Thien’s current novel-inprogress is about music students at the Shanghai Conservatory in the 1960s. The idea came from “many different things crystallizing,” says Thien. “The students are studying western classical music just before the Cultural Revolution in China.

[The novel] looks at the transmission of ideas and artistic practices, and how political thought travels from East to West and West to East.”

During her time as Writerin-Residence, Thien will be working on her new novel as well as holding office hours to consult with students, and curating and hosting public events. The inaugural reading and reception for the Residency was on Sept. 27 at SFU Woodward’s. “I felt really at home,” Thien says nostalgically.

Previous SFU Writers-inResidence include poets Fred Wah, Larissa Lai, and Daphne Marlatt, Wayde Compton (prior to his position as Director of The Writer’s Studio), and, most

recently, Canadian Métis playwright Marie Clements.

“Anyone in the university and in the community is able to submit,” says Thien, explaining how her consultation hours work. She usually teaches creative writing for fiction but other genres are acceptable too.

“We have an open discussion that will hopefully be helpful for them. It is very individual.

It’s mentoring but it is more a peer-to-peer, writer talking to writer. The best I can do for any

other writer is to give a sensitive reading of their work, being as good a reader as possible and reflecting the work back to them. I learned this from teaching as well as working with my own editor — editing, revising, re-engaging with the piece.”

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The latest actor-turned-director, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, has created a film that really should not work as well as it does. Don Jon feels like a debut film in some ways, but, perhaps because of Gordon-Levitt’s vast indie film background, ultimately feels assured in every aspect.

With perfect pacing, charming performances, and surprisingly relevant themes (given the subject matter), Don Jon is the work of someone who has clearly been around the block.

The reason this film is so surprisingly deep is mainly due to the narrative, which follows Jon (Gordon-Levitt) as he tries to find that special someone. The problem Jon faces however, is his addiction to pornography, and his need to feel reality through seeing other people having sex.

Consider checking out one of Vancouver’s many new restaurants and breweries this week.

Gringos, located in Gastown’s Blood Alley, has replaced Judas’ Goat and will now be serving up Mexi-Cali style tacos and Micheladas. While the weather may be past patio season, the new place features six seats outside, so warm up with a few margaritas. Also recently opened is Brassneck, Main St.’s newest addition to the beersavvy neighbourhood. Located at Main and 5th, Brassneck is a brewery, growler shop, and tasting room. Pay them a visit and try some of the best beer in the city.

October 15, 2013

Part of what makes Don Jon so good is its portrayal of the fantastical, one-sided world of pornography: for Jon, it is more enticing than a human relationship, causing him to never be fully satisfied. The ability to take a subject like porn addiction and pull

something strangely life-affirming out of it — while remaining stylish and humorous — is difficult to pull off.

The film successfully balances the right amount of humour and drama. Gordon-Levitt’s hyperbolic portrayal of the “guido”

The Chan Centre for the Performing Arts is launching their 2013/2014 season with a performance by the Kronos Quartet this Saturday, Oct. 19. Kronos at 40 will celebrate the ensemble’s 40 years of innovation with the world premiere of Philip Glass’ String Quartet No. 6, selections from Kronos’ acclaimed album Floodplain, and a premiere

by Montréal-based composer Nicole Lizée. To make the evening even more special, Philip Glass will be attending the event and giving an exclusive talk to ticketholders before the concert.

Check out chancentre.com for more details.

This Thursday, Oct. 17, SFU Woodward’s will be hosting a screening of Sugar in the Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema. The screening is part of a series of events called Reel Causes, which is a non-profit society that organizes screenings of high quality films at Vancity Theatre and SFU every month. Sugar is about a group of homeless kids trying to survive on the streets of Venice Beach. Sugar, the title character, is a young girl suffering from PTSD after losing her entire family in a horrific car crash. Tickets are available in advance or at the door, and range from $10 – $15.

Check out sfuwoodwards.ca/ events for more info.

stereotype, made famous on the television series Jersey Shore, is just one of the many ways in which he takes the film to comedic heights. He loves his family, his car, his home, his friends, his church, his ladies, and his porn; these elements of Jon’s life all

This Wednesday, Oct. 16, the Museum of Vancouver will be launching Play House: the Architecture of Daniel Evan White. White, who has never been exhibited before, once worked with Arthur Erickson (who designed these hallowed halls) and Geoff Massey. Over the 40 years of his career, White has designed over 100 houses, each more unique than the last. He has been called quiet and buddha-like, and he once said that he “could not paint like those he admired,” but his architectural work became a work of art, speaking for him. The opening reception of Play House is free for MOV members and $15 for non-members.

intersect with one another, creating an engaging character arc.

The movie isn’t too serious, but it also isn’t too light-hearted.

Some may dislike the Julianne Moore section of the film, which goes for a more emotional punch than the previous acts, but it is extremely pivotal to Jon’s character development.

The score, composed by Nathan Johnson, who has worked on previous Gordon-Levitt productions such as Looper and Brick, is exceptional. It ranges from electronic-heavy and sporadic, to slow transitions and classic romantic comedy cues. In fact, every technical aspect of the film is exceptional, including the editing.

If you’re looking for a good date movie, Don Jon might be it, but even those who just want a good film will find plenty to enjoy.

Anchored by a great cast of charismatic actors — Scarlett Johansson among them — Don Jon is more than just a fluffy comedy about porn addiction. It’s about compromise, and understanding that a relationship is not just about making yourself happy.

This Saturday, Oct. 19, Eastside Flea is putting together another gathering of vendors in the Wise Hall, located at Adanac St. Running from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., the flea market attracts all kinds of vendors, including vintage clothing and shoes, jewelry, housewares, and furniture. Check out the piles of $2 clothing articles, or browse vintage reconstructed jewelry pieces handcrafted by local artists. This time around, there’ll also be recycled furniture from J&S Reclaimed Wood and some retro concert posters from the 1970s. Check out the Eastside Flea Facebook page for more details and other flea market dates.

DIVERSIONS / ETC

October 15, 2013

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CLASSIFIEDS@ THE-PEAK.CA CLASSIFIEDS@ THE-PEAK.CA CLASSIFIEDS@ THE-PEAK.CA CLASSIFIEDS@ THE-PEAK.CA CLASSIFIEDS@ THE-PEAK.CA CLASSIFIEDS@ THE-PEAK.CA CLASSIFIEDS@ THE-PEAK.CA

Across 1- Very, in Versailles 5- Cowboy display 10- Meat and sandwich source 14- American retirees group 15- Inner self ( Jung) 16- Space 17- Designer Christian 18- The act of securing 20- Standoffish 22- Paris’s Pont ___ Arts 23- Bluffer’s ploy 24- Stogie 26- Not shes 27- London inhabitant 30- Noisy 34- Texas border city 35- Salmon that has spawned 36- Freddie Mac and Fannie ___ 37- Ratatat minus the rat 38- Like spinach 40- Circle dance 41- DC bigwig 42- Pillar 43- Hindu incarnation

45- Portend 47- Exceptional ability 48- Attempt 49- Real name of Chrono Trigger’s Marle 50- Author Asimov 53- Indian province with Vasco da Gama 54- Clock faces 58- Headed north 61- Langston Hughes poem 62- Ballet skirt 63- Hint 64- Years in old Rome 65- Corrida cries 66- Retract 67- Christmas Down 1- Victory noise 2- Train’s road 3- The old switch____ 4- Toothed wheel

5- Batman villain ___ al Ghul 6- Eventually 7- Gambler 8- Big birds 9- Implement used when rowing a boat 10- Napkin fabric 11- ...___ saw Elba 12- Optical device 13- Must’ve been something ___ 19- Build 21- Discover 25- Study of rocks 26- Line for hoisting a sail 27- Fastener 28- Western 29- Stretch the neck 30- TKO caller 31- Overact 32- Gogol’s “___ Bulba” 33- A long time

35- Comic: Krazy ___ 39- Closer to East than Southeast 40- Ham and pineapple 42- Make thirsty 44- Empty 46- Condition 47- Monetary unit of Tonga 49- Words referring to things 50- Division preposition 51- Redding’s genre 52- Commedia dell’___ 53- Enter 55- ___ extra cost 56- Solitary 57- Dirty 59- Heat meas.

60- Susan of “L.A. Law”

23: WEDNESDAY RETHINKING DEVELOPMENT SFPIRG presents a critical panel and discussion about the international development industry and international volunteerism.

1:30 - 4:00 p.m., Harbour Centre 1700

Hope to see you there!

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SPORTS

The men’s golf program at SFU is one filled with historical success, but in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, the team disbanded. Fortunately those days are over, and since it’s reinvention in 2008, the men’s golf team has been steadily building momentum.

In the Clan’s first three seasons in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) the men suffered due to a lack of experience and a short roster, finishing at the bottom of the conference standings. Last season, with the addition of a strong group of freshmen their potential became evident: although they fell short of a regional qualifying performance, placing third at the Great Northwest Athletic Conference championships, the future looked bright.

It is a day that every team counts down to, and, thankfully for the SFU volleyball team, it came three weeks earlier this year than it did in 2012. The Clan women were able to get in the conference win column as they won their first GNAC match of the season, beating the Central Washington Wildcats in five sets.

The Clan got off to a hot start, topping the visitors in a hotly contested first set, winning 25-21. The Wildcats, a nationally ranked program in 2012, were fierce competitors battling back and shutting SFU down in the second and third

October 15, 2013

Fast-forward to present day, where, following the completion of the fall portion of their new 2013 season, the men sit undefeated against all GNAC competitors, having had the most fall success since rejoining the Clan family several years ago. Led by head coach John Buchanan, the team is proving that they are ready to play in the big leagues.

sports editor email / phone

Adam Ovenell-Carter sports@the-peak.ca / 778.782.4560

a tournament open to the top 50 teams in Division II of the NCAA. Their performance saw them lose only to higher ranked teams, and, once again, they did not lose to a GNAC competitor.

Belle was the team’s top finisher, placing 14th individually, thanks to rounds of 78, 73 and 80. Following his performance Belle was named the GNAC Golfer of the Week.

To close out their season, the men traveled to the Chico State Invitational, where after battling through heavy weather culminating in the cancellation of the final round of play, the team finished fourth overall. This time it was sophomore Bret Thompson, last season’s GNAC Golf Fresh-

Their performances in the fall season have been very good, placing in excellent positions at all three tournaments in the short preparatory season. Championship season begins in February 2014, and their head coach knows there is still work to do.

“We have so much potential this year, and I see us fighting for the GNAC championship title,” said Buchanan following the Clan’s recent performance at the Chico State Invitational.

“I would like us to be able to qualify for regionals, but we need to see a bit more consistency. I have guys shoot an 80 in the first round then a 70 in the second; if we can harness that ability and be more consistent then we would really have some impressive performances.”

In the first tournament, the Clan started strong at the Western Washington Invitational, led through the three rounds by captain Mike Belle. Belle carded rounds of 76, 71 and 70 to place in a tie for seventh overall and lead his team to a top-three finish. The tournament also marked the first collegiate play for freshman Kevin Vigna, an Eddie Hogan Cup and Pacific Northwest Junior Boys’ Amateur Championship winner from this summer.

The following week the men finished eighth at the Golf Week Division II Fall Invitational,

man of the Year, who led SFU through the tournament finishing in a tie for third place.

Thompson was in great position for the win before gale-force winds ripped through the course forcing the final round to be terminated before its completion.

Thompson carded rounds of 73 and 69 to earn third position.

Following this performance the men improved in the national rankings moving from 49th to 36th overall in Division II — the team debuted at 77th in the 2012-13 season. The men will now turn their attention to training as they prepare for the upcoming championship season that begins in February of the new year.

“The spring season is different, there is a big break between now and then,” said Buchanan. “The men will really have to focus in the offseason here to come back ready to play, especially in the poorer conditions that accompany the second season.”

Having already accomplished a lot in the fall season the Clan golfers will be back in 2014, rain or shine, and ready to compete for their best season in the NCAA yet.

sets by margins of nine and four, respectively.

But it was in the fourth set that this 2013 team showed their new-found confidence and potential as the teams traded points throughou a long, hard set. The set went past the usual winning mark of 25 points, as the Clan battled to hold the Wildcats from the win before finally scoring two consecutive points to force the fifth set with a win of 30-28.

SFU took charge in the fifth, hungry for the victory, as the score quickly became a sevenpoint margin in the home team’s favour. The Clan took the match three sets to two, winning the fifth set decidely, 15 to 8. The win brought SFU’s record to 1-2 in the GNAC, an early season victory for a team that has historically suffered in conference play, bringing hope and excitement to the team.

Unfortunately, two days later, the Clan were unable to hold their

win streak, falling to the Northwest Nazarene Crusaders in four sets. The home team put NNU away in the first set before ultimately dropping the final three for the loss. All four sets were very competitive battles.

Over the course of the weekend, Brooklyn Gould-Bradbury had 94 assists, 61 in the CWU game alone, as she led her team to their first GNAC victory of the season. Alanna Chan and Alison McKay tallied 45 and 27 digs

respectively on the defensive end while Kelsey Robinson led the offence. She recorded 32 kills and 36 digs over the weekend while Amanda Renkema had 25 kills and 10 assisted blocks and Madeline Hait added 29 kills.

SPORTS

Simply uttering Peyton Manning’s name is enough to induce nightmares for NFL defensive coordinators. Manning has been as close to unstoppable as one can be in the 2013 season: as of Week 5, he’d racked up 1,884 passing yards, 20 passing touchdowns and only one interception. Suffice to say, he leads the NFL in all those categories; the league average is 1,200 yards, just seven touchdowns and four interceptions.

The statistics show Manning is on a tear for the ages, and opposing defenses have yet to come close to slowing him down. How do you stop the man? While he seems an immovable force, Manning is only human, after all.

A win for the defense on first down would encompass limiting the Denver offense to as much as one yard on the play. Manning is arguably the most cerebral quarterback of all-time: when Manning sees a run defense, he opts out to a pass play and vice versa, giving him unlimited options. Stuffing a first down play limits Manning’s options, making his offense more predictable.

A second and long play is generally a passing down in order to

October 15, 2013

make third down more manageable, which allows the defense to prepare for the pass by bringing in an extra defensive back. Manning doesn’t have to pass on second down, as a run play is still very much available, but it still does limit his options, ever so slightly.

Third downs have been no issue for Manning, as the Broncos rank first in third-down conversion percentage, but constantly putting Manning in a precarious position applies more pressure on the offense throughout the game.

The best defense is a great offense, and the best defense against Manning is to keep him on the bench.

Dallas provided a strategy in their Week 5 tilt with Denver, owning possession for much of the first quarter and jumping out to a 14point lead.

Successful runs, short passes and third down conversions are keys to sustaining six, even sevenminute long drives, which often end in seven points. These are the types of drives an opposing offense must produce in order to be successful against the Broncos. Denver is still able to score in lightning quick fashion, so this is by no means foolproof strategy, but it might go a long way in beating the Broncos over the course of a 60-minute game.

It is no secret that Peyton Manning is not the fleetest of foot; he sits in

the pocket and conducts his aerial assault without much movement.

The conundrum is that, while a defense can’t let Manning sit in the pocket unpressured, he is also able to get rid of the ball quickly.

Pressure must be applied, but it’s got to get to him fast.

A defense can’t allow Manning to get his feet set, or else, say good night. Quick pressure won’t happen every play; it requires a good rush move inside or to blow past the blocker. The blitz doesn’t even have to end in a sack. It can be just enough to get in Manning’s kitchen to disrupt his timing. A rushed Manning may even force a bad enough throw to result in a turnover.

Sometimes greatness doesn’t slow down, and it sure seems that way each time Peyton Manning has stepped onto an NFL field this year. Maybe the best way to stop the man is a perfect game, or perhaps, just a little luck.

In the NFL, the “zone-blocking” scheme is a powerfully simple approach to blocking assignments that allowed the Denver Broncos to ride to back-to-back Super Bowl championships in the late 1990s, helping put the cap on John Elway’s illustrious career.

Then-head coach Mike Shanahan didn’t originate the system (that honour is bestowed on the legendary Vince Lombardi and Alex Gibbs) but is perhaps the most famous example.

Given that professional sport inherently breeds a copycat environment, “zone-blocking” is installed in every football team’s playbook. It also legalizes a brutally unfair rule that is emblematic of the continued legislation that marginalizes defenses.

In ‘man’ schemes, offensive linemen are assigned individual defenders to block. But some exotic defensive alignments disguise and alternate how defenders will play — dropping back in coverage or rushing the quarterback — potentially ruining manto-man assignments.

The ‘zone’ scheme simplifies this. An offensive lineman is now responsible for a ‘gap’—a region of the field where a defensive player may rush the quarterback.

This simplifies pass protection and is enormously valuable in the run game: linemen no longer have to account for moving parts.

But perhaps more importantly, this scheme also ludicrously legalizes the ‘cut-block,’ where an offensive lineman can dive at any defensive player’s knees and ‘cut’ him down. This creates lanes for a running back, and cleans a quarterback’s sight for quick passes thrown parallel to the line of scrimmage. It also allows a 300 pound man to hit another athlete in his knees, and roll up on him.

This is idiotic in an age where player safety — greatly driven by fear of lawsuits — is given paramount importance.

The NFL swears that former defensive linemen and their coaches are okay with the rule, but that is inconceivable.

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Offensive coaches childishly complain that banning cutblocks would eliminate the run game and create size mismatches in pass blocking. Why is there no hue and cry when defenders are buried under pages of rules that make the game almost impossible to play cleanly and fluidly?

Even more absurd, the rule allows offensive linemen to cut defensive players in the open field away from a play while the defender is, essentially, defenseless. However, if a defensive player delivers such a block, they are lambasted and hit with flags and fines.

Ndamukong Suh, who has a history of extra-legal activities after the whistle, was assessed a mind-boggling $100,000 fine this season for delivering a cutblock on an interception return.

In the pre-season, San Francisco 49ers offensive lineman Joe Looney threw a cutblock on Minnesota Vikings defensive-tackle Kevin Williams. Looney was not flagged, fined, or suspended; but his teammate, nose tackle Ian Williams, was not so lucky.

Two weeks ago Williams was the victim of a cut-block and collapsed with a broken ankle that ended his season. Again, no discipline, neither during nor after the game. The list of these egregiously unfair examples is too exhaustive to detail.

After Williams’ injury, Giants defensive tackle Cullen Jenkins gave an interview to Sports Illustrated where he bemoaned the protection denied defensive linemen: “. . . people are getting hurt and it’s their livelihoods in jeopardy just because someone wants to take an easy block.”

He continued, pondering why “those types of things are ignored when we do everything to protect other players.”

The NFL already hosts a fleet of bizarre double standards, allowing offensive players to lean on defensive backs downfield and stiff-arm would-be tacklers (in the face), while enforcing protections (on quarterbacks, in particular) that players are coached to take advantage of.

The cut-block is just another in a sea of inequalities, but is one of the few that could potentially ruin and end careers.

How about equal protection for all? Not just for those that, as Gred Bedard of Sports Illustrated succinctly states, “put up fantasy statistics.”

24 SPORTS

October 15, 2013

championship is going to be a dog fight,” said head coach Alan Koch, after the loss to the Falcons.

It took a full half against SMU for that regroup to really get going, but just two minutes into the second half, sophomore forward, Colin Jacques, opened the scoring for the Clan, giving his team a lead it would not relinquish.

After their first loss of the season, the SFU men’s soccer team was looking to get back into the win column last weekend as the team visited Saint Martin’s University in Lacey, WA. Like their record, it wasn’t a perfect effort, but the Clan pulled out a 2–1 victory against the Saints on the road, further cementing their spot at the top of the Great Northwest Athletic Conference.

After dropping a game against their biggest rivals, Seattle Pacific, on the road, the Clan needed a bounce-back effort as the team wouldn’t play at home again until Oct. 12 (after time of press). “We need to re-group and increase our collective focus ahead of our next match . . . This conference

The Clan women’s soccer team has seen its share of struggles since joining the Great Northwest Athletic Conference, but despite not having cracked the win column yet this season, the ladies aren’t throwing in the towel.

SFU faced the Central Washington Wildcats in what was shaping up to be their most contested game of the season; battling back and forth throughout the first half of play at Terry Fox Field, as the Clan controlled the majority of the play over the first 45 minutes.

Unfortunately, a break in momentum caused a successful counter-attack for the ‘Cats, as the visitors were able to put their first goal away in the 40th

Fellow sophomore, Ryan Dhillon, would double the Clan’s lead in the 68th minute, and a Saints goal in the 83rd minute proved to be too little to late for the home team. Freshman keeper Brendan Watson stayed solid, earning the win for SFU. It wasn’t as pretty or dominant a win for the Clan as the team would’ve hoped, but after a disappointing loss just days before, any win was welcome.

minute. Two minutes later however, in a speedy turn-around, the Clan ladies raced back down the field as Jessica Marano netted a corner kick by Karm Jawandha for her first of the season to tie the game at one.

After the half, the Clan fell behind again in the 56th

“We are very happy to bounce back and get the win and the three points,” said Koch. “I still feel that we can play a lot better than we are right now. If we had buried our chances in the first half we wouldn’t have been in a close match at the end.”

Though the team still has much to improve on, it is still

minute, but were able to create a second comeback 11 minutes later, resulting in their first two-goal game of the season.

This time it was Jessica Hadden off a Sophie D’Souza cross into the six-yard box that tied the game as the score moved to 2-2. Unfortunately the Wildcats

easily at the top of the conference: SFU had a 9–1 record at the time of press, second-place Seattle Pacific was sitting at 6–1–2. This ranking speaks volumes about the level of talent on the team, and to its ceiling, if there is one.

The Clan do have some ground to make up in the National Soccer Coaches Association of America (NSCAA)

rankings, as they dropped from first- to ninth-place in the Div. II poll after their defeat. But the team is built to improve on its win against SMU, and continue its trend back upwards.

Perfection is expected from this team, both internally and from its fans. Perfection is unattainable now, but expect the team to find a way to make up for it.

were able to capitalize on a breakaway opportunity in the 75th minute and their 3-2 lead would remain uncontested throughout the remainder of the game. The Clan’s heart was evident in their two comeback attempts, demonstrating a resilience fans can look forward

to watching the remainder of the season.

Two days later the ladies were unable to stop 23rd ranked Seattle Pacific University Falcons, falling 3-0 at home. Karm Jawandha had two shots on goal and Katrina Abel rang one off the post but the home side was unable to seal the deal. The Clan’s two losses drop them to 0-6-2 in the conference with eight games remaining in the regular season.

After the weekend, goaltender Meg Wilson picked up the SFU Student Athlete Advisory Committee athlete of the week award, thanks to her assistance to the team during an injury ridden period.

With both of their goaltenders out with injuries, the Clan had been using midfielder Teagan Rae Sorokan in net, but Wilson, a sophomore post on the basketball team stepped up and offered her services to the team taking over the net-minding role and showing what the athletes refer to as “The Clan Family.”

October 15, 2013

COMMUNITY PHOTOS October 15, 2013

photo editor email / phone

Mark Burnham photos@the-peak.ca

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HUMOUR

October 15, 2013

humour editor email / phone

Brad McLeod humour@the-peak.ca / 778.782.4560

NEW YORK — Making the natural leap from print magzine to

Leon Zhang / The Peak

David Woo / Flickr

VANCOUVER — A distraught vegan was submitted to Vancouver General Hospital last week claiming to be “tainted.”

Zach Whitney, a 27-year-old vegan man, checked himself into the hospital Saturday at approximately 3pm, telling emergency staff that he had ingested some vegetarian nut burgers which he later found out may or may not have contained trace amounts of egg.

“I’ve failed! I’ve failed! I am not worthy. I am no longer… vegan,” Whitney reportedly cried out repeatedly upon his arrival at the hospital before eventually curling up in the corner and rocking gently back and forth.

Distraught, Whitney would not leave the premises until he was “cured” and repeatedly asked hospital staff to pump his stomach. After hospital staff refused he then attempted to drink a bottle of bleach to induce vomiting.

This led to doctors having to wrestle the bottle -JORDANO TONIAL, THE PEAK away from him before hospital security escorted him off the premises.

Multiple sources confirmed Whitney then spent the rest of the day shuffling up and down the street mumbling, “who am I?” “The man showed no signs of having been poisoned,”explained Dr. Jeremy Lai, who witnessed the incident. “In fact, he was in perfect health but he kept on screaming, ‘I’m dying, I’m dying’ and asking me to pump his stomach.”

“It was a long day,” Dr. Lai continued shaking his head, “I’m just glad its over.”

WASHINGTON — After watching Space Jam with his daughters Malia and Sasha over this past weekend, President Barack Obama made a public challenge to the Assad regime: a game basketball to decide the fate of Syria.

The stakes will be high; with a win the Assad regime would be given back full-autonomous control of the country, while a loss would mandate a final surrender of their sovereignty rights.

“I think this is a marvellous opportunity for us to put this matter to bed once and for all,” explained Obama in response to the American populace who found his urge to strike the Assad regime militarily to be “too costly, too violent, and too time-consuming.”

According to Obama, the basketball game offers a cheaper, faster, and hopefully less violent resolution. The match would be played in the Syrian capital capital of Damascus and would be between the best -BRAD MCLEOD, THESyrPEAK players from the United States Congress and the ian Leadership.

When asked about the United States’ chances of winning, Obama noted “If Bin Laden is any indication of the average height of the radical middleeastern leadership then I think we may have some trouble in the paint, but if we focus on solid defensive fundamentals, I think we can pull this off.”

NEW YORK — Taking the logical next step for a magazine company facing the decline of print media, National Geographic has announced that they will soon be releasing their brand’s first ever energy drink.

Inspired by fellow periodical turned drink Playboy, National Geographic hopes that their new beverage National Geographic: Unnatural Energy can help further promote their brand and make them the fortune their boring, insightful, well-researched magazine never could.

“We really hope this works out — the whole magazine racket has gotten pretty tedious,” explained Declan Moore, National Geographic society and magazine president. “An energy drink will be so much easier. No more travelling or researching and we definitely won’t have to proofread anything since no one would drink these things if people actually looked at the label.”

While the drink has not yet been created, Moore -JORDANO TONIAL, THE PEAK has already developed an iconic yellow can and hopes consumers of energy drinks are as stupid as he assumes and will buy their product based on recognition alone.

While the actual flavour is expected to essentially be a direct copy of the Playboy Classic drink, according to Moore, it would not be the first time they’ve copied from Playboy.

While Obama has not yet selected his roster, sources close to the White House say VP Joe Biden has been trying to impress the president recently by tossing paper balls into trash cans in the oval office.

Unfortunately, Biden was effectively humiliated thought, when Obama asked him to jump over said trash can.

“The TV channel, the interesting articles, the naked people . . . we got it all from them,” Moore explained, “now, I know we may not be as sexy as Playboy, but we guarantee that just like everything else we produce our energy drink can be just as effective in getting the job done as theirs, as long as you keep an open mind.”

President Obama’s public challenge didn’t come without some competitive taunting, however, mentioning in his speech. “It’s time for us to settle this like men. By trying to put a ball through a hoop more times than the opposing team . . . unless of course, you’re scared . . .”

Moore also speculated on the future of a ‘printto-drink’ trend in media by saying, “Playboy is the biggest innovator in our industry and I wouldn’t be surprised to see every magazine become some sort of energy drink within the next five years, if not sooner.”

HUMOUR

SURREY — Despite living within six feet of him for the past seven years, a local middle-class family from a nice, normal neighbourhood has only now become aware that the man who lives next door to them is in the ghetto and struggling to get out.

Joel Harrison, who lives with his wife and three kids in Surrey’s Newton area — an area they have always believed to be a pretty typical suburban town — was absolutely shocked when he found out that their 29-year-old neighbour, Duncan Stevens, lived in a “real shitty part of town.”

“I couldn’t believe it,” explained a flabbergasted Harrison, mystified by the revelation. “I always just figured since he lived on the same street as us, we were in the same place but now that I found out the

October 15, 2013

truth, I thank God I don’t have to live where he does.”

According to Harrison, Stevens revealed his tough living conditions one night when they were all returning home at the same time.

“We had just been flying a kite at the park when we saw Duncan coming down the street complaining about an encounter he had on the bus,” Harrison said.

“Although I wasn’t too shocked to hear that there was a homeless person yelling at a bus stop, which happens occasionally in my town too, I knew he must be from a different world when he mentioned how he ‘grew a thick skin living in the streets.’”

“It didn’t click for me right away and I asked him if he had grown up in Detroit or Somalia or something but when he said ‘no, I mean here . . . you know, it’s pretty damn ghetto’ I realized how close-minded I had been.”

It was then that Harrison said he realized that “the ghetto” isn’t really like on TV or in the movies or in the dictionary under the word “ghetto.”

“It’s not a fixed place, you don’t have to be part of a minority . . . anyone can find themselves in the ghetto if they’re not careful,” Harrison said, in a frightened voice. “I’m just relieved that the people who seem to get stuck in them near me are almost exclusively local rappers.”

As if the revelation about Stevens wasn’t enough of a shock, Harrison soon discovered that he and his family knew plenty

of people who came from ghettos without having had any idea.

While browsing through his Facebook page he discovered that Stevens wasn’t the only one listed as currently living in “the ghetto.”

“It’s insane, I couldn’t believe how many of my friends from the same socioeconomic class as me were so hard off,” Harrison continued, as he scrolled through page after page of people complaining about the “ghetto-ass” and “welfare” conditions they lived in. “Lots of them are really educated too. How do you end up in a ghetto after getting a degree from ‘The School of Hard Knocks: University of Life’? It’s ridiculous!”

Harrison said with the number of ghettos popping up all around BC, he’s now in constant

fear about where he can safely take his family, who have never experienced these kinds of thirdworld conditions.

“It’s so hard to keep track.

First I read from people in Newton that Newton is the most dangerous place in the world, but then I turn to my friends from Whalley and it turns out

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that Whalley is the worse” Harrison said, dumbfounded.

“Then I read from people in New Westminster who say that Surrey is nothing compared to the shit that goes down where they are, but then again that’s child’s play when matched up against what it’s like in East Pender Harbour according to this guy I know from East Pender Harbour . . .”

Exhausted by his discovery that he lives in such a dangerous world, Harrison quietly excused himself to rejoin his family for a backyard-barbeque, saying in conclusion, “It’s scary out there for a lot of people . . . I’m just so glad I live in a nice community. I can’t even imagine having to live in some of these places, like nextdoor, what a rough area!”

28 LAST WORD

Women who wear a hijab or a burka often have to deal with harsh criticisms. Being a feminist, I have never had a problem with any woman covering any part of her body — or exposing it, for that matter — as long as she has not been forced to do so.

It’s infuriating to hear the suggestion that all women who cover their heads or their bodies have been brainwashed into doing so by a patriarchal society, especially since I most often hear this complaint from fellow feminists.

Pakistani television network Geo’s animated series Burka Avenger offers a response to critics. The show revolves around a super heroine named Jiya: an intelligent and compassionate teacher by the day, and a brave and strong fighter who prevents girls’ schools from shutting down by night.

Her fighting style is as unique as the series itself: she uses books and pens to attack her opponents, highlighting the program’s very prominent message of the pen being mightier than the sword.

Her opponents are Vadero Pajero (a corrupt politician), Baba Bandook (an evil magician) and, above all, literacy. They share the mutual belief that a girl’s place is in the kitchen. In the first episode, the two are depicted discussing how pointless it is to educate a girl, considering she will just end up getting married, taking care of the home, and preparing meals.

features editor email / phone

Max Hill features@the-peak.ca / 778.782.4560

This series could not have been released at a more crucial time in Pakistan. Malala Yousafzai, the 16 year-old Pakistani women’s rights activist who was shot by the Taliban in the head for fighting for an education, recently became the youngest Nobel Peace Prize nominee.

In a speech to the United Nations, she argued, “The extremists are afraid of books and pens. The power of education frightens them. They are afraid of women. The power of the voice of women frightens them.”

October 15, 2013

completely against the idea of a girl acquiring an education — after all, what could possibly be more dangerous than an educated woman?

The Burka Avenger has inspired controversy. Many critics have expressed their disappointment over the fact that Jiya covers herself with a full burka when she could have explored other options, such as a shalwar kameez, a traditional dress worn by men and women in Pakistan.

Blogger Bina Shah expressed her disapproval by bringing forward the

Aaron Haroon Rashid, the creator of Burka Avenger, had Malala’s story in mind while coming up with the theme of the show. The shutdown of girls’ schools by the Taliban inspired his idea of a female protagonist who fights for literacy and women’s rights.

The series revolves around a small fictional village called Halwapur, a device meant to target the lower and the lower-middle class viewers of Pakistan who may not understand the importance of sending their girls to school.

Though these issues rarely surface in the Western world, there are still many families in Pakistan who are

point of view that “Pakistani girls and women need to know that their natural state of being is not hidden away, shrouded by yards of black cloth to make their presence in society acceptable, safe, or halal . . . It will horrify me if little girls start wearing burkas in imitation of their hero, because that would be indoctrination of the worst kind.”

Haroon, on the other hand, has made repeated attempts to defend his creation by saying that the burka is the only culturally appropriate costume for a Pakistani super heroine, as she could not have possibly been dressed in a revealing costume like Wonder

Woman or Catwoman. Furthermore, during the day, Jiya chooses to wear her shalwar kameez without a hijab.

Burka Avenger is influential and noteworthy in many different ways. It has made significant attempts to diminish the divide between different kinds of feminists in Pakistan — the ones who choose to cover themselves and the ones who don’t. The series acknowledges the fact that women who cover themselves can also play their part in changing the world, and that their clothing doesn’t really matter when it comes to their passion for women’s rights.

The show encourages the perception that women who don burkas are independent, free-thinking citizens who are capable of whatever Jiya is capable of. Burka Avenger will help parents of young girls to get accustomed to the idea that, even if they do send their daughters to school, these daughters will not end up losing their cultural roots — something many Pakistani parents fear.

I hope that Burka Avenger will continue to make a difference in Pakistan, a country on the brink of political turmoil, with neverending drone strikes on one hand and fear of the Taliban on the other. If nothing else, the program will challenge traditional gender roles and stereotypes in Pakistan, and could inspire a nation of young women to become the leaders of tomorrow.