January 15, 2013

TRU considers itself ready for H1N1 Pg. 2

The Omega Thompson Rivers University’s Independent Student Newspaper

Volume 23, Issue 15 January 15, 2014

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News

Editorial & Opinion

Life & Community

Arts & Entertainment

Sports

Pages 1, 2

Pages 3, 9

Page 5

Pages 6, 7

Page 11

Accolades not closing, yet Jessica Klymchuk Ω News Editor

Elevator access to the fourth floor via the new elevator that scales the outside of the building is not yet available.

(Sean Brady/ The Omega)

Law school starts semester in new facility Jessica Klymchuk Ω News Editor As the $24.5 million renovations to Old Main which began in September 2011 come to a close, law students and faculty are settling into their new 40,000-square-foot home.

The third and fourth floor of Old Main opened for classes on Jan. 6, but a grand opening will be held in the spring, near convocation, according to vice president of administration and finance Matt Milovick.

Although the building is fullyfunctional, some cosmetic details remain unfinished. A circular staircase between the third and fourth floor is not complete and the area around it is still a construction zone.

Milovick said the staircase would be delayed by two weeks following the opening of the space.

The renovations were originally scheduled for completion in September of 2013, and then delayed to November 2013. Milovick said issues with completing the ceiling caused the final delay.

“The ceiling is curved and it’s a complicated process,” he said. “It all got resolved but it did create about a two-month delay.”

The renovation of Old Main was former vice president of administration and finance Cliff Neufeld’s last project at TRU. Neufeld retired in 2013 and his successor,

Milovick, credited him with much of the development of the university saying “he built the majority of this campus.”

“It’s quite fitting that this be his last project, and what a showpiece it is for the university,” he said. “We are all quite proud of it. It’s an amazing facility.”

Stantec and Diamond and Schmitt Architects won the design bid for the revitalization of Old Main in February 2011.

TRU interim dean of law Anne Pappas was looking forward to the law students returning for the winter semester to a space that has been designed specifically to their needs.

Both Pappas and law professor Richard Oppong reiterated the importance of the law school being able to have its own space and develop an identity.

“They have all the things they didn’t have for three years, so it’s going to be awesome,” Pappas said.

The new facility includes a silent reading room, a law library, student lockers, several meeting rooms and classrooms that have been acoustically designed to make discussion easier.

Pappas said law classes are very interactive and other classrooms don’t accommodate dialogue as well as is required.

The facility also includes a moot court room to simulate court proceedings that were previously

being carried out in flat classrooms.

Oppong, who was also on the building committee, called the moot court one of the most needed aspects of the new facility.

“It’s going to make a difference because it’s a simulated learning experience and while you can do it in a regular classroom, it’s not the same experience as when you’re in a room with a raised dais for the judge and tables that emulates a courtroom,” Pappas said.

“I’m very excited about that because I think the students are going to feel very differently going through it here.”

Pappas said services and amenities will be easier for students to access because they won’t be scattered.

There is reserved space for career services, admissions, and permanent space for the Student Law Society and clubs.

In the Brown Family House of Learning, law faculty were sometimes sharing an office with two other professors, making it difficult to meet with students on a drop-in basis, which Pappas said is how the law school operates. Now they all have their own offices.

There will also be space for the legal clinic and the legal information centre.

See FIRST GRAD Pg.

2

Despite earlier reports, no decision has been made to close Accolades.

However, changes are expected in response to budgetary constraints.

“We are in discussions around reforming the operations of Accolades,” said vice president advancement Christopher Seguin.

A press release from TRU media relations and communications manager Diana Skoglund said discussions are exploring options related to the culinary arts program, and that TRU is looking to have an alternative plan in place by the fall 2014 semester.

In regards to whether or not Accolades will close in the fall, Seguin said TRU is going to work to avoid shutting down the restaurant, which was recommended by the national restaurant guide Where to Eat in Canada.

“We are going to do everything that we can to not have that happen, including reforming practices and looking at hours of operation,” he said.

The release said the budgetary restraints that are currently affecting the culinary arts program include faculty and staff salary increases and the lack of a general funding increase in many years. The release said the two per cent increase in tuition revenue will not cover rising operating costs as well as annual costs continuing to rise due to inflation.

“For the last recent years our budget has been frozen, meaning every year we have to do more with less.

“That includes the recent labour settlements, it includes everything that we pay more every year for,” Seguin said. “So we have to find ways to become more efficient.”

TRU plans to reduce its operating costs by 5.1 per cent for the next two years.

The press release said students would not be negatively affected if any changes to the operation of Accolades were implemented and their training needs would still be met.

Accolades is run by students on the professional cook two program, which they take in their third and final semester in the culinary arts program. Students spend their final 14 weeks of the culinary arts program working afternoons and evenings preparing dishes for Accolades and its six-course menu.

In a 2012 interview for a documentary on the culinary arts program, professional cook two instructor Ron Rosentreter said Accolades allows students to show more presentation and fine dining skills.

“It has a very high reputation, so when they come out of here they are very prepared to go out and work in a fine dining restaurant,” department chair and instructor Ed Walker said in the documentary. “We try to make this a very real experience.”

TRU states in the press release that the highest priority amidst the discussions regarding program changes is that students continue get the most effective training “Our main priority is to ensure that those students that are being trained using Accolades have the same quality experience and we will do so,” Seguin said.

Accolades is facing reform after budgetary constraints force discussions about changes to the culinary arts program for fall 2014.

( Jessica Klymchuk/ The Omega)

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News

January 15, 2014

Pilot projects aim to reduce waste on campus Karla Karcioglu Ω Roving Editor It might not always be easy to see the work TRU’s department of environment and sustainability does on campus, but they are hoping people at TRU will notice their new composter.

The department recently acquired a Jora Kompost 5100, an industrial, state-of-the-art in-vessel composter for a six month on-campus pilot project.

They have placed the new composter in the bottom floor of the Culinary Arts building. The location was chosen for several reasons, according to environmental programs coordinator James Gordon.

The first reason is because the composter would get a continuous supply of food scraps from the culinary arts program. It will also see a lot of foot traffic, which could aid in the department’s goal to help educate people on campus about composting.

Gordon acknowledged that he has heard concerns about smells and rodents that are common with compositing, but he wants to reassure people that neither is a concern when composting is done correctly.

“There’s an art to it and a science to it,” Gordon said, adding he has been composting for a long time.

The department has hired coop student Allysha Sorba from the natural resource sciences program to run their composting pilot project.

Sorba will be in charge of maintaining small and large composting bins that will be placed around campus and then brought to the composter. She’ll also be responsible for monitoring the

composter and conducting research on campus composting.

Sorba said the project is “fairly impressive for the university” and called it a cool opportunity for the school and a stepping stone for her own future career goals.

In a press release from Jan. 7, the university said it hopes to reduce waste on campus “by up to 275 kilograms a week.” Gordon said the composted materials will likely go to horticulture or other uses on campus and may be used as gifts.

Director of environment and sustainability Jim Gudjonson said that despite already being busy with a number of projects, the department couldn’t resist the opportunity to bring a composting project to TRU. At the end of the pilot project, the department will determine if it’s worth continuing composting on campus, Gudjonson said.

The department plans to hold a naming contest for the Jora 5100 composter in the near future.

In conjunction with the composting pilot project the department is planning to conduct a overall analysis of the campus’ waste management systems, to address the cross contamination between trash and recyclables at current waste stations.

“There is a lot of confusion as to what goes where,” Gordon said, “There’s different sized bins, sometimes different colour bins and they’re just kind of around in no particular system.”

The department plans to pilot a number of zero-waste stations located in key areas around campus that offer students four choices: landfill garbage, recycling, cans/ bottles and composting.

One major problem Gordon thinks needs to be addressed is

Environmental programs coordinator James Gordon stands beside the small portable composting containers which will soon be located across the campus.

(Karla Karcioglu/ The Omega)

the confusion over what can and cannot be put in the recycling bins.

Although numerous bins still say paper only, Gordon said TRU is on the same recycling system as the City of Kamloops, so anything you recycle at home can also be recycled on campus.

The proven philosophy, according to Gordon, is that “if you give people all the options, in a single location, with a good looking system that is well labelled, you’re going to get a much better participation rate.”

The department plans to implement the zero-waste stations early in the winter semester and will monitor their success through till the end of the academic year.

From there, they will do an analysis of the system and propose solutions to make improvements.

Dirty recycling at TRU slows group’s efforts The Beattie School of the Arts autism program has been collecting TRU’s bottles and cans for the last nine years as a way to fund their programs and to help the autistic students feel like they are doing something worthwhile.

Debbie Dillman, the district resource room teacher for autism, appreciates the opportunity for her students, but the effort is not without issues.

The biggest concern Dillman has is how dirty the TRU recycling is. She said most of the kids’ time is spent sorting between garbage that’s been carelessly thrown in the recycling bins and dealing with half-full day-old coffee cups.

Dillman said the kids also spend a lot of time taking the lids off all the bottles, now made mandatory by the recycling depot. “It adds about half an hour to 40 minutes,” Dillman said.

“It is not a nice job at all,” she said, “but it really benefits the students.”

Dillman takes the students out to restaurants twice a year to help teach them proper etiquette. The group also goes bowling about eight times per year.

Dillman recalled a day when the students were supplied a hot pizza lunch by the trades program and were given hats with the trades logo.

“It really made the kids happy,” Dillman said.

First grad class gets University prepared for H1N1 to finish in new home Karla Karcioglu Ω Roving Editor TRU manager of health and safety Stacey Jyrkkanen is monitoring B.C.’s H1N1 influenza cases, but she has no immediate concerns about the TRU community.

“I don’t see it as a big issue at the moment,” Jyrkkanen said, noting that if it were to become an issue on campus, TRU does have a contingency plan.

The plan is the same one TRU used for the H1N1 outbreak of 2009, which the World Health Organization categorized as a phase 6 global pandemic in June, when nearly 30,000 cases were confirmed in 72 countries.

According to Jyrkkanen, health authorities work with doctors’ offices and medical clinics to keep tabs on flu cases by having doctors report the number of influenza-like illness to the Interior Health Authority.

Those numbers don’t confirm H1N1, which can only be determined with a blood test, but it helps create data to track the illness. If the health authority spots clusters or trends in the data, Jyrkkanen said they will then issue a notification to doctors in the area and then the health authority will take over and then implement their protocols.

If that notification is received at TRU, the Pandemic Planning Preparedness Committee will engage. It consists of key members of the university and external consultants from Interior Health Authority, Public Health Agency of Canada and the B.C. Centre for Disease Control.

The university has separate plans for students, employees, residences and parents because each group has unique needs.

The TRU contingency plan includes three main priorities for the university: “to preserve and protect the health, safety, and wellbeing of all members of the University community; to continue to operate as normally as possible to minimize the disruption of instruction, research, and the day to day activities in the workplace; and to provide responsive communication to all members of the University community during and post pandemic influenza.”

Right now Jyrkkanen recommends getting a flu shot, washing your hands, wearing a face mask, coughing or sneezing into your shoulder or elbow as opposed to your hands, not touching your face, and staying home if you feel sick in order to prevent the spread of

any flu symptoms.

In 2009 Jyrkkanen said there was a number of cases on campus, luckily not enough to shut down the university. She doesn’t expect the same amount of cases this flu season.

“It’s not something we are concerned about,” Jyrkkanen said, “but we will be keeping an eye out.”

Medical health officer Rob Parker works for the Interior Health Authority. He said that over the last few weeks there have been increasing influenza lab reports.

The death of an Okanagan woman in her 50s was the first confirmed H1N1 death in B.C. of this year’s flu season.

Parker said that B.C. and the Interior are still in an upswing and we haven’t peaked yet. He expects more flu activity in the next several weeks and urges people to go get the flu shot because it’s not too late.

Alberta has recently started providing mass immunizations to tackle the outbreak of H1N1.

It takes two weeks for the flu shot to become effective. Parker said supplies are limited and doctors may soon begin to run out.

Those looking to get a flu shot can check with the TRU medical clinic by calling 250-828-5126.

From LAW SCHOOL Pg.

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The legal clinic will see law students providing legal advice to clients and taking files to court under the supervision and direction of law faculty and lawyers. Pappas said they hope to have the law clinic running for the fall 2014 semester.

The legal information centre will open this January and will be a resource for legal information.

It will not provide legal advice or handle files.

The law school will also have a judge-in-residence in the new facility and Pappas said she thinks lawyers will be dropping in more often now that the law students will be easier to find.

“I think for the community, for Kamloops, it’s going to be a really rewarding experience being able to come to the law school and assist students in an ad hoc kind of way,” Pappas said.

She said she is curious to see how TRU plans to present the law school, considering it’s not stand alone and the entrance of Old Main is not an entrance to the law school.

“As you come into Old Main I don’t know that you get that feeling that it’s a law school,” she said.

They also expect to see organizational changes in the next couple of years since there isn’t currently enough office space for a full law faculty of 18.

Right now there are 11 faculty members who are all accommodated in the new space but expansion will mean that the Masters of Business Administration program, which is currently using offices at the end of the third floor, will have to adjust.

“I suspect ultimately to come to a time when they will have to decide on whether those people should be there,” Oppong said, “because this is a new school so we are definitely going to expand. So I think that will definitely come up very soon.”

TRU’s first law class will graduate this spring. Pappas said she is very impressed to see the inaugural class completing their last semester of study in the new building.

“We are certainly grateful to the university for putting in all the effort to make sure that we have it, especially for those that are going to graduate,” said Oppong.

“It’s very important that they spend some time in the building before they graduate.”

Editorial & Opinion

The Omega · Volume 23, Issue 15

The Omega www.truomega.ca

January 15, 2014 Volume 23, Issue 15

Published since November 27, 1991

editorialstaff

Conferences add another dimension to your education

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Mike Davies

editor@truomega.ca

250-828-5069

@PaperguyDavies NEWS EDITOR

Jessica Klymchuk news@truomega.ca @jjklym

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR

Courtney Dickson arts@truomega.ca @dicksoncourtney SPORTS EDITOR

Adam Williams

sports@truomega.ca @AdamWilliams87 ROVING EDITOR

Karla Karcioglu

roving@truomega.ca @0_kmk_0 SCIENCE & TECH EDITOR

Mark Hendricks

sci-tech@truomega.ca @MarkHendicks5 COPY/WEB EDITOR

Sean Brady

copy@truomega.ca @iamseanbrady

omegacontributors Alexis Stockford, Danya LeBlanc, Ashley Wadhwani

publishingboard EDITOR-IN-CHIEF * Mike Davies INDUSTRY REP* Sylvie Paillard FACULTY REP* Charles Hays STUDENT REP* Travis Persaud STUDENT REP* Hugo Yuen STUDENT REP* Adam Williams

letterspolicy

Literary and visual submissions are welcomed. All submissions are subject to editing for brevity, taste and legality. The Omega will attempt to publish each letter received, barring time and space constraints. The editor will take care not to change the intention or tone of submissions, but will not publish material deemed to exhibit sexism, racism or homophobia. Letters for publication must include the writer’s name (for publication) and contact details (not for publication). The Omega reserves the right not to publish any letter or submitted material. Opinions expressed in any section with an “Opinion” label do not represent those of The Omega, the Cariboo Student Newspaper Society, its Board of Directors or its staff. Opinions belong only to those who have signed them.

Editor’s Note Mike Davies Ω Editor-in-Chief Week two.

I hope you have all settled back into your respective grooves and are looking forward at what lies ahead rather than missing your time off.

I did some looking forward this past week myself.

I was at the annual Canadian University Press (CUP) national conference (NASH) in Edmonton (my third such event), which once again reinforced my love for what I do — and what I want to continue doing.

I highly recommend the experience.

“But that doesn’t make sense, Davies,” you say. “I have no interest in being a journalist.”

To which I reply, “I bet there’s something similar out there in your field. You should go to it.”

Conferences are a fantastic way to question what you’re doing — and we should always be looking critically at what we’re doing.

One student’s first attempt to quit smoking

All material in this publication is copyright The Omega and may not be reproduced without the

Cariboo Student Newspaper Society (Publisher of The Omega) TRU Campus House #4 900 McGill Rd, Kamloops, B.C. V2C 0C8 Phone: 250-372-1272 E-mail: editor@truomega.ca Ad Enquiries: accounts@truomega.ca

Wellness Matters

Follow us on

Jessica Klymchuk Ω Guest Columnist

Twitter:

There are several things you could choose to do that are scientifically proven to kill you, like jumping off a skyscraper, running into high-speed traffic or going skydiving without a parachute. But me, I chose to smoke.

I don’t know why I started smoking.

Maybe it had something to do with realizing the Pink Ladies really did look cool when they smoked and taking a drag made Tyler Durden the badass he really was. It definitely wasn’t because I had a death wish.

The World Health Organization says tobacco use is responsible for 12 per cent of all deaths among adults 30 and over and 71 per cent of all lung cancer deaths.These stats tell you something you already know: smoking is really

@TRU_Omega “Like” us on Facebook.

Do it.

Seriously.

I did all this while making connections in my chosen industry and cultivating what I’m sure will be life-long friendships.

“That was probably pretty expensive,” you say.

Well, yes it was. But I would say most things that hold value are.

And there are ways to make it decidedly less damaging to your bank account.

The Comprehensive University Enhancement Fund (CUEF), for example, is a pool of money that you all pay into as part of the cost of attending this institution.

They take applications from students to access this money to further their own education, whether by going to conferences, bringing in guest speakers, performing independent research or going to competitions in their field.

Between that fund and doing some small fundraisers (collecting bottles, for example), six delegates went to Edmonton for four days of learning, networking and community building at a very minimal personal cost to them.

That final cost hasn’t been assessed yet (the CUEF works as a reimbursement) but it’ll likely be in the $200 per student range.

You could spend that on a hardpartying weekend, I suppose, but I think you’d find that less rewarding.

Take a look at what there are in terms of opportunities like this in your chosen field, and if you have experiences like this to share, let us know and we’ll help you do that so that others can learn from them, too. editor@truomega.ca

But it made me look cool

copyright

(Correspondence not intended for publication should be labelled as such.)

Classrooms don’t have a monopoly on being the location for learning, and those who choose to learn exclusively via lecture from professors, textbooks and testing are doing themselves (and their industries) a disservice.

How many of your classes bring in experts in your prospective field to talk about their experiences and regale you with stories of paths to success they’ve seen taken?

How many of the top (insert your chosen career here) show up and take questions from you about how to follow in their footsteps? How many put on hands-on workshops in the field and encouragingly critique your skills?

And during how many of these visits by top professionals do you get to mingle with hundreds of other prospective (insert that career again, except pluralize it) from across the country to create a network of colleagues before you’re even out of school?

At this most recent CUP NASH, for example, I became friends with Chris Jones (of Esquire and ESPN fame), learned from digital enterprise entrepreneurs about the business of the Internet (a topic not offered in our journalism program), listened to Robyn Doolittle (now famous for her internationally-recognized coverage of Rob Ford for the Toronto Star) discuss diligence and required skillsets for the modern journalist and got to be a part of what might most accurately be called an extravaganza involving one of the most divisive and controversial figures in Canadian media, Ezra Levant.

bad for you. Health Canada tells you this right on cigarette packages: heart disease, oral cancer, stroke, blindness, bladder cancer, and chronic bronchitis etc. – “Just breathing is torture.”

Tyler Durden didn’t get lung cancer and the Pink Ladies never hacked their way through their day at Rydell High due to an increasingly problematic smoker’s cough.

However cool I decided smoking made me, three months ago I decided to quit. I decided that my addiction to a more expensive brand of cancer sticks was a blow to my student budget and smoking made me feel like I could throw up anyways. So why not give it up?

Easier said than done. Duh. Health Canada says nicotine is as addictive as heroin. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention did a study that showed only 6.2 per cent of smokers were able to successfully quit in 2011.

I lasted three days. After that I lasted about two months before sneaking another.

However, I don’t think I completely failed. Having a handful of cigarettes in three months is a great improvement from two packs a week but no cigarette comes without risk. I’m fighting a battle that many smokers are familiar with.

Ninety per cent of quitters relapse and it’s usually within the first three months.

To avoid this imminent relapse you should have a strategy, which I did not. I

quit cold turkey because I only smoked five times a day anyways, which is the hardest and the least effective way to quit. Studies show that 25 per cent of smokers who use medication to help them quit will stay smoke-free for over six months. If you’re a heavy smoker, quitting cold turkey won’t work.

Nicotine replacement therapy – the patch or the gum – is the most common aid for quitting smoking. E-cigarettes – the cigarettes of the future – are getting popular too, but they aren’t approved for sale by Health Canada. These help with nicotine withdrawals, sans the tobacco.

Even without meds I didn’t suffer from withdrawals, like insomnia or nervousness, and my cravings only lasted a couple weeks. So why did I cheat?

Booze. To successfully quit an addiction you have to know your triggers and my biggest trigger is alcohol. It’s also brutal to be around friends who smoke. Luckily, stress is not a trigger for me.

Know your triggers and wear armor to battle – keep your hands busy, avoid smoking areas, change your routines to avoid places and times where you would normally smoke and, most importantly, remind yourself why you want to quit.

This is a continuing struggle for me.

The good news is that smokers who quit before they are 35 have mortality rates similar to those that never smoked at all.

There is still hope for me after all.

3

People still think “friendzone” is a valid concept?

Tom Luke The Muse (Memorial University) According to a disturbingly large number of young males, the “friendzone” is an undesirable relationship with a woman wherein one befriends said woman, is nice to her, and for some incomprehensible reason, she doesn’t have sex.

References are often made to being “put in the friendzone” after an unsuccessful attempt to ask a woman out on a date, or sometimes the term implies that women should assume that any guy that befriends them is obviously only looking for a sexual relationship, and thus should know better than to try to be platonic friends.

Despite every blogger with the slightest bit of self-awareness writing a takedown of it, despite the fact that even that great bastion of internet misogyny, reddit.com, has rejected the term, despite all that, apparently it’s still necessary to tell people: women are not vending machines that you put kindness tokens into until sex comes out. If someone wants to be your friend, that is good. That is the win condition of social interaction. Friendship with a woman is not a “zone” where you lurk until you can make sexual advances, and you can’t complain about being there.

Was that so difficult?

You are never, ever owed sex, under any circumstance. If you hang around a girl, incessantly giving inoffensive compliments and never actually owning up to how you feel, you are not entitled to sex. If you helped her home from a party this one time when she was drunk and put her to bed without sexually assaulting her, congratulations, you meet the minimum standards for a decent human being. You still aren’t entitled to sex. To use another vaguely unsettling analogy, you don’t get brownie points for not being a rapist.

A person’s body is entirely their own.

No one should ever have to do a thing with their body that they don’t want to do and I can’t believe I have to explain that to the university students that will be reading this. Were you not taught in preschool that touching people who don’t want to be touched was bad? Is it not obvious that that logic applies to expecting other people to want to be touched?

The “friendzone” is never something I see women complaining about.

It’s a construct that guys use to simultaneously whine, glorify their own lack of confidence, and induce women to have sex with them. With regards to the last of these, it’s certainly not the only construct, but it’s the most pernicious and easily the most laughably illogical.

Please. Just stop.

I’ll acknowledge that, theoretically, there are girls who will never outright reject a guy because having someone that’s so obviously in love with them hanging around is a nice boost to their self-esteem.

I’ve never met one of these mythical specimens, but they certainly could exist. This behaviour might make them unpleasant, it might make them manipulative, but guess what? It doesn’t entitle you to sex with them. If sex is the only thing you were looking for, then clearly you shouldn’t be friends with her in the first place.

It’s embarrassing that people have to be told this. I’m a male. A straight, white, cisgendered, middle-class male descended from Anglo-Saxon protestants. I’m as privileged as they come, and if I get this, why the hell can’t the rest of you?

Science & Technology

4

January 15, 2014

Science can be beautiful

TRU professor of microbiology hosts art exhibit to show the beauty of bacteria Mark Hendricks Ω Science & Tech Editor Communication is one of the most difficult challenges faced by scientists. Explaining highly technical research to people who don’t have a scientific background is not only very challenging, but vital to the continued support of research being done.

Naowarat Cheeptham is a professor of microbiology at Thompson Rivers University and is currently researching cave microbials in an effort to find new bacteria with antimicrobial properties that could be used in future vaccines.

“As a scientist I’m responsible for communicating at different levels, so I thought, how can I show people that not all bacteria are bad,” Cheeptham said. “I want to communicate to a larger audience about the work that I do and how it’s relevant. Art is this vessel of communication that allows me to reach that.”

The collaboration of art and science may seem strange to some, but to Cheeptham it is a natural extension of the research they are doing.

“Over the year I have collected lots of scanning electron micrographs, and they are so beautiful,” Cheeptham said. “Today we label people, if you’re a scientist you’re a scientist,

if you’re an artist you’re an artist, but our brains have two sides, scientist and artist, I want to show my students that it’s OK to explore.”

The exhibit has artwork by students, a poem by a TRU faculty member, and pieces by an artist from Victoria.

“Each of them would get inspired by these scanning electron micrographs and produce visual art in different forms,” Cheeptham said. “The main goal of this is to communicate about cave microbial research we do at TRU to public sectors.”

Cheeptham believes that this art exhibit will have real implications for her classes at TRU as an added benefit.

“I’m foreseeing that if I have this project, hopefully I can make students more engaged, I want to make my microbiology courses that I teach relevant to them,” Cheeptham said.

“I can make them see through this that it actually is relevant, that being a scientist can actually have an impact on their lives The opening reception for the exhibit is Jan. 17 at 6:30 p.m. at the Kamloops Art Gallery. The exhibit will be there until March 22.

Cheeptham plans on holding the exhibit for the next three years and is currently looking for anyone interested in participating for next year.

This 2D representation of cave bacteria in the colonies they live in will also be at the exhibit.

This week in science New evidence of human migration paths, narcissism and social media, and stars that are leaving us?

Mark Hendricks Ω Science & Tech Editor

New early paleoindian sites found in North America Nearly 20 archaeological dig sites have been found off the western coast of California on Santa Rosa Island.

These sites have been dated between 11,000 and 12,000 years old and show definitive proof that early humans existed there at the end of the last ice age.

This suggests that at least some early humans migrated south from Alaska along the coastline instead of travelling inland and using the ice-free corridor that was important to the predominant theory.

This is an important discovery, as finding proof of coastal habitation of paleoindians (those who first inhabited the American con-

tinents) has been difficult since the sea levels now are different than they were in the last ice age.

What was coastline for the paleoindians 12,000 years ago is now underwater for us.

Find out more: http://westerndigs.org/

Link found between social media use and narcissism A recently published study in the online journal Sciencedirect has found a positive link between the amount of tweets a person creates, the amount of status updates a person posts on Facebook and narcissistic tendencies.

Narcissism is found to be the primary driver for an individual’s desire for Twitter followers, which in turn causes a person to tweet more.

There is a generational gap between the social media platform

New research published in Sciencedirect has linked frequent twitter usage with narcissistic tendencies.

(Image by Andy Melton/Flickr commons)

of choice for narcissists. College students with narcissistic tendencies tend to post more updates on Twitter.

Older individuals with narcissistic tendencies will post more status updates on Facebook.

The generational gap is believed to be due to the fact that younger generations grew up with Facebook as a means to communicate. Adults who did not grow up with Facebook are more likely to need a reason to post status updates.

Find out more: http://www.sciencedirect.com/

Catapulting stars out of the Milky Way Astronomers have found a new group of 20 hypervelocity stars that are leaving them baff led.

Hypervelocity stars are stars that are moving at such a fast pace that they are actually leaving the gravitational pull of the Milky Way. Astronomers had previously found 18 hypervelocity stars and believed that they were the result of one of a pair of binary stars passing too close to the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. These new stars shatter that previous theory however as none of them appear to have originated their trajectory at the center of the galaxy.

Several theories have been offered as to why this could be the case but as of yet none have been strong enough to persuade their colleagues, so for now this remains an astronomical mystery.

Find out more: http://science.time.com

(Image courtesy Jon Fulton)

Age of Geeks: Tech trends to blow minds in 2014 Vishal Pandey Nexus (Camosun) The year 2013 was really big in technology sector. It had Google glasses, smart watches and the evolution of 3D printers. But all of that is past now, so what’s next?

What can we expect in 2014?

Well, we can’t answer, but we can predict. Here’s a list of the top technology innovations and rising trends that we can expect this year.

Curved displays Towards the end of 2013, we had a glimpse of what curved displays will be like in smartphones like Galaxy Round and LG’s G Flex. Many were impressed, but some questioned its advantage.

Regardless of what individual opinions are, we can surely expect this curved screen technology to be used in future devices, including some smartphones and tablets.

Operating systems Firefox, Blackberry and Ubuntu have already announced their presence in the smartphone market.

In 2013, we heard about Firefox OS, BlackBerry 10, Sailfish OS, Ubuntu Touch and Tizen, not to mention many others. But we can predict that Android, iOS and Windows Phone will remain the leaders in 2014. One thing is certain: competition will bring

innovative ideas to the table, which will be good for the industry as a whole.

Budget-friendly devices With the increased popularity of Nexus devices, which provide top-notch hardware in a budgetfriendly price, we can be certain that the trend is towards these kinds of devices now. The average consumer is now more aware and conscious while buying phones, and the companies know that.

This trend will continue to rise in 2014, so more and more Nexus-like devices will be ready to roll.

Wearable technology Smart watches and Google glasses are just a start. In 2014, be prepared to welcome the innovative and more portable devices with even smarter technologies. Google is already set to launch Glass 2.0, which will add more functionality to the privately released glasses device and is said to be available to public consumers sometime in 2014. Smart watches are another exciting innovation that will surely rise in 2014, given the trend towards portability.

This is just a glimpse of what we can expect in 2014. But we never actually know what’s in store until it arrives on store shelves and online, so be prepared for technology news that could blow your mind this year.

Life & Community

The Omega · Volume 23, Issue 15

5

News you missed over the break regarding student governance in B.C. First there was this....

The CFS in B.C.

Canada’s largest student lobby organization losing its grip on B.C. campuses Laura Rodgers CUP B.C. Bureau Chief

VANCOUVER (CUP) — The Canadian Federation of Students (CFS), Canada’s largest student lobby organization, held its annual general meeting at the end of November — and was met with protesters who painted the organization as litigious and unsympathetic to its member schools. The B.C. arm, CFS-BC, remains embattled, with a string of recent lawsuits over schools wanting to leave. So where is CFS-BC currently, and what does their future hold?

Two B.C. student unions hoping to leave both CFS-BC and the national CFS raise new questions about CFS’s future. These two unions — at Kwantlen Polytechnic University and Capilano University — cite expensive fees and a closed-rank structure as reasons for wanting out.

In September, student associations from fifteen schools across Canada indicated they were going to take steps to leave the CFS (including Capilano and Kwantlen).

They called it a “mass defection” to underline their seriousness. Kwantlen and Capilano have since collected enough petition signatures in order to mount a referendum, and once the respective schools’ administrations

confirm the validity of the petitions’ signatures, the question will go to voters.

However, past referendums to leave the CFS have been fraught with controversy. When the University of Victoria Students’ Society embarked on a quest to leave (they characterized it as the hope to leave both the national CFS organization and CFS-BC), a referendum showed students supported the move. But the CFS launched a lawsuit, claiming that while the referendum supported leaving their national lobbying efforts, UVSS had to stay in CFS-BC. The referendum put the question of leaving the CFS in general terms, but CFS-BC chairperson Kate Marocchi contends that the question needed to address the B.C. organization specifically — and petition organizers should’ve known that.

“Since then, representatives of [the UVSS] had been very difficult to work with,” she said. She said it was unsurprising that the union, which was asserting its desire to leave CFSBC in court, didn’t want to operate as “part of a collective” within CFS-BC. The UVSS and CFS-BC quarrelled for some time, but in March of this year CFS-BC reversed their position and actually voted to kick out the UVSS — over non-payment of member fees.

It also took a legal battle for the Simon Fraser Student Society to leave

the CFS, a conflict which was finally resolved in 2012. Kwantlen mounted a similar challenge back in 2008, which was ultimately unsuccessful.

Marocchi refused to comment on what happened with the SFSS, or the previous issue with Kwantlen, saying that these events happened “before her time.” Although a group of students protested outside November’s annual general meeting, she said she didn’t go outside during the protest and could not comment on anything the protesters were furthering.

At the UVSS, when the petition to leave the CFS was launched, another student created a “counter-petition” asking students to support staying in the organization — with the aim of invalidating some of the original petition’s signatures. Marocchi said she couldn’t comment on whether any counter-petition was in the works at Kwantlen or Capilano because it’s “any member’s right” to launch a counter-petition to stay in the CFS after a decertification petition is received.

So, of CFS-BC’s six university student union members, two are jostling to leave (there are also eight college student union members).

Marocchi said she characterizes the overall health of the B.C. organization as strong, with “good relationships with government [and] strong member locals.”

CFS has been lobbying the government for years to “drop fees,” with negligable results. (Image courtesy Joey Coleman/Flickr Commons)

...and then there was this.

New provincial student alliance created in B.C. Laura Rodgers CUP B.C. Bureau Chief VANCOUVER (CUP) — There’s a new student lobby group in B.C., and they’re ready to take the CFS on for size.

The Alliance of B.C. Students (ABCS) voted to incorporate as a society the last weekend of November.

They’re a group composed of the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) Alma Mater Society, the Graduate Student Society of UBC, the University of Victoria Students’ Society, the Capilano Students’ Union and the University of the Fraser Valley Student Union Society.

All told, they represent over 140,000 post-secondary students in B.C. While they don’t have a full lobbying platform yet, they’re focusing on the issues of core academic funding, student aid and student loan reform. They’re also committed to staying nonpartisan, decentralized and “member-driven,” with an “easy-in, easy-out” policy so member schools wishing to leave won’t have to hold referendums.

UBC-Okanagan, Kwantlen Polytechnic University and the B.C. Institute of Technology’s (BCIT) student societies had delegates at the meeting, but didn’t join up yet.

And as CFS-BC, the only competing

provincial lobbying group, continues to lose members in B.C., ABCS can expect their numbers to grow.

While the group currently plays the role of a CFS-BC alternative, they’re insistent on establishing their own identity rather than being defined by what they aren’t. In the words of

“

really looking for the membership to [give] direction on students priorities for the year.”

The structure so far is simple with each member society picking one representative to sit on the ABCS board, and they elect four officers: a chair, vice-chair, administration

We’re pretty excited to get this group formally going and really start to talk to the government again about post-secondary education.”

—Colum Connolly, ABCS Chairperson

newly-elected ABCS chairperson Colum Connolly, a UBC grad student, “We’re defining ourselves as a member-driven organization, and

officer and financial officer.

The idea of a non-CFS-BC provincial lobby group has been in the works for over a decade,

according to Kwantlen Student Association general manager and former UBC AMS president Jeremy McElroy. He said interest waxed and waned for some time, but when SFU and Kwantlen held referenda to leave CFS-BC in the late aughts things really started to take shape.

Talks continued into 2011, and a loose and unofficial lobbying coalition called Where’s The Funding (WTF) was formed — with student associations at UBC, UVic, Capilano and the University of the Fraser Valley as they major players. By 2012, associations at UNBC, BCIT and Kwantlen, as well as UBC’s graduate student society, had also agreed to support WTF. WTF was never really a unified movement, though, and the few campaigns they launched, such as sending a glut of 6,000 Valentine’s Day cards to the advanced education ministry in Victoria, received little press attention.

McElroy said frustration soon grew over the looseness of the WTF coalition.

“The organizations…realized it was difficult to get things done without centralized leadership, without a formal cost-sharing agreement between schools,” he said.

By the spring of 2013, the group had refashioned themselves as the less-obscene-sounding ABCS, with

a renewed sense of purpose. Much of the work in this stage was done by UBC AMS vice-president external Tanner Bokor.

He said the ABCS has kept lobbying goals pared-down from the start — some interested organizations had different political priorities, they agree on wanting more core funding, better student aid and reformed student loans.

ABCS then started working out their plan to incorporate this past April. Bokor said the incorporation structure was decided to be a “middle ground” between a grassroots organization and a formal society.

While hashing out these details, the group also sent a lobbying delegation to the legislature this past July, to meet with newly-installed Liberal ministers and talk up the ABCS agenda.

ABCS won’t be lobbying to lower tuition like the CFS does, but they do have a policy in place opposing any removal of B.C.’s current 2 per cent-per-year tuition cap for domestic students.

And as far as their next steps, Connolly says they’re eager to bring delegates together again and start hashing out plans. “We’re pretty excited to get this group formally going and really start to talk to the government again about postsecondary education,” he said.

6

Arts & Entertainment

January 15, 2014

Book review: Naught a Bimbeaux Ashley Wadhwani Ω Contributor It’s difficult to like a book that perpetuates the idea that women need love like bread needs f lour.

However, Morgan Rose’s tell-all book, On Becoming Naught a Bimbeaux: The Smart Woman’s Guide to Finding Her Prince

Without Ever Kissing Another Frog gives a slight twist to the stigma of a female’s need for a male companion in an easily accessible and engaging tale of the pathway to love.

Rose, who has a master’s degree in psychology, seems to know more about the female and male psyche than the general population and does have some

(Image courtesy C’Mon UP Productions)

useful and empowering points for us females.

Each part is put in the order of a follow-along journey beginning with “Part One: Me,” where she acknowledges the most important part of the journey to finding Mr. Right: loving yourself. According to Rose, love with someone else ultimately begins with finding the strength to love you first.

Rose shares that in order to love yourself there are certain notions on love and life that women need to decide for themselves such as: excavating our own truths on love, accepting the first love of your life, differentiating what our love lives should be like to what they are and will be, trusting your intuition and how powerful any women is and can be.

Rose also includes a part titled “Part Two: The Bridge,” which includes unique perspectives on the biology on bonding and graphology, or the study of handwriting. The chapter on the biology of bonding was by far the most interesting chapter in the entire guide, and Rose can be applauded for her ability to take the complex chemistry of the brain and make it so easily comprehensible.

Although interesting, the usefulness of this chapter is questionable and I can’t help but think that a lesson in graphology will cause some awkward conversations between a woman and said prince when she is caught analyzing a hand-written grocery list.

“Part Three: He” takes a female psychologists perspective on the mind of a man and translates it into useful guidelines for the Mr. Right Now, Mr. I’ll Be Right Back and Mr. Always Right.

The question then is, how do woman feel about guides that simplify personalities down into categories?

One would assume there is more to a man than what is suggested.

In “Part Four: We,” Rose’s voice can finally be heard in a more personal way. She could not pick a better closing chapter to end her guide.

From the perspective of a young empowered woman, the book can be shallow, and some chapters could have been left out— for example the one on makeup. This chapter talks about a traditional cause of insecurity for women, their looks, while in today’s society women are working to take the focus off of appearance and place more importance on character.

Rose mentions the “Halo Effect” which suggests that a person’s appearance to others activates pre-notions of your life being positive or negative subconsciously. Studies aside, it would be refreshing to have appearance left out of things just once because of how focused mainstream media already is on external beauty.

The book often feels like a generic guide to love. If Rose had added more personal experience or specific scenarios, the book might actually create a sense of community among the women reading the book.

It’s also difficult to simply like a how-to guide on love that markets the idea of fairytale princes and the ultimate significant other when the equivalent to a males version of these kinds of books are like that of The Game by Neil Strauss. Until someone writes a book that portrays more than the traditional, old-school relationship roles between woman and men, preferably one that ignores all precedence that females long for love and think about it every second of every day, I‘ll be avoiding the self-help

relationships section of the bookstore.

However, when it comes to guides like this one, Rose writes in an ideal way that allows the reader to follow along and most importantly understand the concepts she is presenting. Rose’s format which includes relative quotes, terms with definitions and stories of different woman that pertain to the chapter lays out her messages in clear ways, making her ideas accessible to all sorts of women.

Recently read something you loved?

Something terrible?

Tell others about it by sending us a book review! arts@truomega.ca

or editor@truomega.ca

Book review: Better Than We Found It Alexis Stockford Ω Contributor Darrell Park taps into the power of the people in his book, Better Than We Found It: Simple Solutions to Some of the World’s Toughest Problems, published in the spring of 2012.

From better education to green energy and peace in the Middle East, Park examines a variety of issues and explains how ordinary people can work to resolve them.

The book’s greatest strength is that it relates everybody to worldwide problems. Park gets readers thinking seriously about the issues that affect their world and offers solutions “without lots of technical jargon or hard-toread footnotes” and “[offers] the opportunity for readers to become everyday activists without having to spend lots of time doing so,” as his introduction states.

Most of Park’s ideas are insightful or, at the very least, thought-provoking. I especially enjoyed the sections that focus on environmental issues.

Park argues strongly for the adoption of clean, renewable energy and offers some very interesting ideas on how to make

the transition attractive to both the consumer and power companies.

His ideas on incorporating social media into school curriculums were interesting from a student perspective. More and more aspects of our society are based online, and it only makes sense to equip our younger generation with the tools to handle this new environment responsibly.

Park squeezes more than 50 topics into 250 pages. Let’s do a reality check here. Most of these problems are huge. Any single one could take up a book all on its own. As a result, almost all of the issues Park discusses are oversimplified.

His arguments rely on logic and common sense rather than science and statistics. While this makes the book easy to read, it also affects Park’s credibility with more discerning readers.

Argument without evidence is little more than a rant, and at times Park skirts dangerously close to that line.

I also found some of Park’s ideas impractical or f lawed.

For example, corruption in assigning American military contracts is an important issue, but the public has very little inf luence on this process.

The average consumer has nothing to do with potential military contractors and those companies have little reason to take general opinion into account.

Park’s proposed solution relies on an unprecedented level of public pressure on a government that even Park admits is heavily influenced by big business.

Another of Park’s ideas revolves around mandatory national service to foster greater connection between youths and their country.

This idea has some serious logical gaps. Being required to build roads or perform manual labour won’t necessarily foster patriotic feelings in youth. To the average person, this plan sounds like labour conscription and a massive violation of individual rights.

While it presents narrow and oversimplified views of world issues, Better Than We Found It is still worth the read. It makes a decent attempt at empowering average citizens to take on issues they have always regarded as out of their control.

While it’s not a roadmap to solving all of the world’s problems, it is a starting point for people to expand on solutions themselves.

(Photo by Alexis Stockford)

The Omega · Volume 23, Issue 15

Arts & Entertainment

7

Album review: Tiny Army: The D Holmes Sessions Danya LeBlanc Ω Contributor

C.C. Trubiak’s Tiny Army, The D. Holmes Sessions

Having spent each year since I was four at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival, I would never try to compare C.C. Trubiak’s Tiny Army: The D Holmes Sessions, released in December 2013, to mainstream music.

In the album release, Trubiak is described as being similar to Mumford and Sons and James Taylor, but this is far from the truth.

His vocals do not seem to appropriately match the instrumentals, creating a noticeable disconnect in the harmony.

His album is definitely not something that would appeal to a broad or general audience, as the majority of it is very slow.

It could put you to sleep if it were not for the unexpected high notes.

Of all the tracks on the album, “Illusions” stands out because of the additional vocals that make up the chorus of the song.

The church gospel-sounding chorus creates a harmony that is missing in many songs on the album.

Most songs are more country than catchy, but this one seems to share both characteristics. It is climactic, slowly building up to the powerful chorus and making the song easier to follow.

The limited instrumental at the beginning of the song helps present the vocals better than any other song.

One downfall is that the word “illusions,” for which the song is obviously named, is said about 20 times too many.

After listening to “Blue,” also named after the number of times the word is used in the song, it appears Trubiak has a rather limited vocabulary. The song’s lyrics are extremely simple: “I get blue just dreaming of you / sweet dreams of you make me blue.”

This break-up song, like the album, lacks depth. This is evident in the lyric “you and only you / you broke my heart in two.”

The album sounds better the second listen though – it’s quite jarring the first time you hear it. However, even on the first listen through, the song “Room to Grow” stands out.

In short, it is simply a beautiful composition.

As Ronan Keating might say, Trubiak says it best when he says nothing at all. The track is a short instrumental just over a minute long and seems to have more emotional depth than any other song.

Tiny Army: The D Holmes Sessions is a great listen if you give it a chance. I would recommend it as background music to listen to when you’re studying, as it definitely will not be a distraction.

His music is relaxing, but energetic and if you enjoy folk or bluegrass music, you’ll have a greater appreciation for his use of the banjo.

Film review: The Wolf of Wall Street Alanna Fairey The Cord (Wilfred Laurier) WATERLOO (CUP) — It’s all fun and games until someone becomes motivated solely by greed. At least, that’s what you learn from Martin Scorsese’s, The Wolf of Wall Street.

Collaborating together for the fifth time, three-time Academy Award nominee Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Jordan Belfort in Scorsese’s satirical biographical black comedy. Based off his own memoirs and experiences, the film chronicles Belfort’s unbelievable climb from a young eager stockbroker novice, to a casualty of the infamous Black Monday catastrophe, to a silvertongued con artist.

Belfort proves to be such a natural born salesman that, seemingly as soon as he creates his own firm, he and his motley crew of salesmen, including Donnie Azoff (played by Jonah Hill) have more money than they know what to do with. So what do they ultimately decide to do with that extra cash? They blow it on yachts, trophy wives, hookers and obscene quantities of cocaine, obviously.

From the moment the movie begins, Belfort is forthright about the ecstasies of money — the drugs, women, cars and other toys it allows him to buy, and above all the rush of acquiring more — and indifferent to anything else.

Soon the firm and its unorthodox methods attracts the attention of an ambitious FBI agent (played

by Kyle Chandler) who vows to imprison the drug-fueled Belfort.

Belfort eventually gets indicted for money laundering and securities fraud.

Scorsese uses the life of Belfort to teach a tale that has been told a million times over: greed is bad, drugs are bad, consumerism is bad, self-indulgence and instant gratification is bad. However, we as the audience only acknowledge these themes through Scorsese’s usage of dark humour and satire.

By having DiCaprio’s character breaking the fourth wall, the imaginary “wall” between the audience and the character, Scorsese utilizes the character to appeal to the audiences about the vices that have the potential to build — and ultimately diminish — great people.

As a self-proclaimed Leonardo DiCaprio aficionado, I personally believe that this was one of his best roles thus far. Only playing a villain one other time in his lengthy career, DiCaprio morphs into a man that embodies an unbelievable shallowness and lack of insight, traits not seen in DiCaprio’s previous roles.

Belfort is a thoroughly despicable excuse for a human being, but one whose charm, which is a direct result of DiCaprio’s still-boyish grin, makes aggressively despising him

almost not possible, and you as an audience member feel guilty for it. It says something about DiCaprio’s attractive charm that you almost want him to get away with the crimes he is knowingly committing.

Already nominated for a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Belfort, I would be shocked if DiCaprio doesn’t get an Oscar nomination (or even the award finally).

An impressive performance comes from Jonah Hill, who portrays DiCaprio’s buck-toothed sidekick and right hand man.

Known for being typecast as an overweight goof with a tendency to make one too many fart jokes, I was at first hesitant if Hill would be able to carry on a demanding role alongside actors such as DiCaprio.

This movie showed audiences that Hill is much more than the “funny fat one.” He shows an impressive range of his acting ability as a so-called “serious” actor — proving Moneyball was no one-off success — while being sure to still pay homage to his comedic roots.

Something that is duly worth noting is the depiction of sex in this movie. If you are expecting the sex scenes to be loving and tender, you’re putting your money in a place where it doesn’t belong.

The sex scenes are raw and unemotional. The nudity, from both the women and DiCaprio himself, happens so frequently

that the audience becomes immune to it and potentially unfazed by it all. This continues to go with the theme of superficiality.

Though the film certainly does deserve the hype that it has been receiving in the media, there are a few f laws that stop this movie from being extraordinary.

The most notable is the length.

Just a minute shy from being three hours, the film tends to repeat itself, showing one scene after another of grown men getting high, participating in orgies and behaving badly at the office.

(Photo courtesy Red Granite Pictures)

While the running time could mirror the film’s argument that extravagant excess is dangerous, Scorsese could have proved all that he wanted to prove in two hours, at the most. Maybe even less.

Whether you see this movie because of the multi-layers of scandals, the clever filming or because DiCaprio, The Wolf of Wall Street will not disappoint.

You’ll walk out of the theatre knowing that there will be a sufficient amount of Oscar buzz surrounding this movie.

8

Feature

January 15, 2014

Kidnapped in Syria Journalist Susan Dabbous talks about her terrifying ordeal Alena Khabibullina The Dialog (George Brown College) TORONTO (CUP) — Italian feature film The Border was one of the most talked about movies at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). To recreate the frightening reality Syria as it currently is, a country where civil war is continuing at full strength, director Alessio Cremonini involved nonprofessional actors and refugees.

After working for more than a year on Syria at that time, Italo-Syrian journalist Susan Dabbous was invited on board as a co-writer and a specialist in real refugee stories. The movie’s plot — the risky journey of two deeply religious sisters, Fatima and Aya, who f lee towards the Turkish border after Fatima’s husband decides to defect to the Syrian Free Army — was familiar to Dabbous.

“What is important to me as a journalist, this movie is very realistic. Even if it’s not a true story, I was connecting different ones that I have heard from real refugees. So I knew how it works.

If you defect, then you have to protect your family. Your family becomes a refugee because you have a pretty big problem with security. For women it’s even worse because you can be targeted for other abuses,” said Dabbous. “It is one of the few movies about Syria during the revolution or during the war.”

The cinema’s conf lict, starting in Latakia province, became fateful for Dabbous, who ended up kidnapped in Syria. On April 4, 2013, she and three Italian male journalists were kidnapped in the same area by an Islamic group Jabhat al-Nusra, affiliated with al-Qaeda. “It was just a coincidence. Our life is strange, really strange,” said Dabbous.

About 15 minutes after arriving in Ghassaniya to film a desecrated church, under the guidance of a local priest Father Francois Murad who was living in the village with three others when most Christians f led due to safety reasons, Dabbous and her colleagues from Italy’s Rai TV were kidnapped.

Accused by Jabhat al-Nusra of being spies, the journalists were kept in captivity until April 13 while the Italian government was making all the efforts to release them with the support of a mediator.

“In my case they were quite convinced that I was a spy. So this was very dangerous,” she said. “Thanks God the Italian government did well. When they were in touch with the group, they said four of them are Italians and Susan is also Italian even if she has a Syrian origin.

The problem at that time during negotiations was they wanted to free just the guys and

to keep me there.”

Dabbous’s mixed background (born in Syria, grown up in Italy, and based in Lebanon) was working against her. Even being originally Syrian, at that time she thought “the land where she was born could be the land where she was going to die”.

“They were very confused by my character. They don’t accept that a woman works and works in a war zone, travelling while she is not accompanied by any family member,” she said.

“The problem was also that my father is Muslim and my mom is Christian. I was a very targeted mix for them.”

Being the only woman in the village, Dabbous was following all the rules and Muslim traditions to get the respect of the rebel group: she didn’t talk without their permission, and she was learning Koran along with cooking.

“I found if they wouldn’t respect me, they may abuse me, and that was the most terrible thing because there were tons of them, 50 to 70 fighters. If you start thinking about it for one second, you become crazy. So I said ok, I am originally Muslim, I can be Muslim, and I want them to respect me,” said Dabbous.

After being released, Dabbous was going through a physiologically unstable condition and hasn’t returned to Syria. Later this year Dabbous found out that Father Fransua had been shot in June.

“I was not very surprised because it was quite evident that they hated him and they had beaten him. He was not afraid to answer them. He was dealing with people with weapons, knowing they have very terrible terroristic ideology. He was dealing with them defending his place and his church. He was trying to keep sort of dignity but that time I was terrified and I was doing exactly what they

Journalist Susan Dabbous, whose story is being told in The Border, Alessio Cremonini’s film which premiered at TIFF this past year.

(Photo courtesy Gianni Cipriano)

70 killed since March 2011.

According to Dabbous, about two journalists are being killed every week carrying out their work in Middle East and this number is constantly growing.

“It has got a lot more difficult for journalists to safely report inside Syria. The situation is very chaotic and out of control.

There are lots of different armed groups. Some of them are attached to al-Qaeda and are keen to make money by kidnapping foreigners.

Some still have connections to the Syrian government who wants to capture foreign journalists.

There are lots of threats. It is very dangerous to cover Syria and it is also very hard to cover it properly. It —Susan Dabbous, is very hard to get around the Journalist kidnapped in Syria country safely and it’s difficult to be free to talk to whoever you want,” said wanted,” said Dabbous.

Dabbous.

According to a press freedom “But I think it is still important barometer published by work because there are still Reporters Without Borders 25 terrible things happening to the journalists have been killed Syrian people every day and and 14 foreign journalists are it has become a hidden war. imprisoned or missing — 60 Outside Syria we don’t hear or citizen journalists and netizens see many of the things that are have also been imprisoned and happening on the ground.”

“

In my case they were quite convinced I was a spy.”

Opinion Feature Is Bitcoin the currency of the future?

The Omega · Volume 23, Issue 15

Esther Tung The Peak (SFU) BURNABY (CUP) — In the span of a single day, Bitcoin has gone from being seen as “fake online money” (as succinctly described to me by a bouncer), to being recognized by the U.S. Senate as a force to be reckoned with. After recently concluding their two-day hearing on the digital, decentralized currency, officials ultimately came forward with positive comments on Bitcoin, sending its value skyrocketing to a peak of $900 in fiat money — for a few moments, anyway.

At the same time, the Vancouver Bitcoin Co-op was signing their incorporation papers, a milestone that was filmed by NHK, Japan’s national broadcasting channel.

Some enthusiasts are saying that Bitcoin has reached its first tipping point. Its every move is tracked in the headlines of mainstream press, while governments around the world are acknowledging its legitimacy as a means of exchange for goods and services.

The Canada Revenue Agency has elected to treat Bitcoin like legal tender in terms of how businesses and individuals file their taxes, though there has been no d i s c u s s i o n around additional leg islat ion yet.

Germany recognizes it as legal tender, while the Hong Kong Monetary Authority said they would not regulate it.

H o w e v e r , B i t c o i n companies and entrepreneurs are still regularly being denied bank accounts.

The press headlines aren’t always favourable. Still in its infancy, Bitcoin’s infrastructure is plagued by security concerns.

Investor mania and shadowy acquaintances alike are cause for scepticism from the average person.

Bitcoin’s reputation for being the currency of choice in online black marketplaces, particularly the notorious website Silk Road, often precedes it, even as the value of the global illegal trading system stands at $400 billion. Advocates argue that buying illegal drugs on Silk Road, which make up 70 per cent of their inventory, is the harmreduced alternative to buying ecstasy from a street dealer.

Because buyers could rate and review products, it was easy to find high-quality drugs at competitive prices.

Think a whole market of Walter Whites circa the first season of Breaking Bad. Bigscale cartels and drug lords aren’t the ones f locking to this particular corner of the Internet.

Even the Secret Service said during the Senate hearing that high-level criminals have not moved towards using Bitcoin and other P2P (peer-topeer) currencies. Centralized currencies continue to be the go-to choice during criminal activity, because every transaction conducted in Bitcoin is recorded in the system’s public ledger. It is a common misperception that digital currencies can be completely anonymous and private.

marijuana through three separate markets. “On Silk Road […] our online drug buys were visible to practically anyone who took the time to look,” he writes.

This is certainly true for the average user, though — like cash — there are more sophisticated ways to launder Bitcoins.

Yet precisely because of its decentralized nature, Bitcoin can never be c o m p l e t e l y untraceable and a n o n y m o u s , though it still retains a reasonable measure of privacy compared to credit cards. If someone hacked into the transaction records of a merchant, they would have access to enough information on your credit card to use it. But because your Bitcoin wallet’s private key — which is required to gain control of the wallet — does not get recorded in the same system, your currency remains relatively safe.

The largest threats to the legitimacy of Bitcoin are the security loopholes and inefficiency of trading the currency. At this point in time, the quickest, easiest, and safest way to buy and sell Bitcoins is in person; ironic for a currency that is prized as being the high-tech way of the future. In the —FAQ last month, there has also been a Bitcoin.org rash of trading platforms around the world being compromised, as well as the China“Bitcoin is not anonymous based GBL shutting down and and cannot offer the same level taking $4.1 million in user of privacy as cash. The use of money with them.

Bitcoin leaves extensive public To be fair, it’s more accurate records,” the FAQ of Bitcoin.org to call this an outright scam than states. Forbes staff writer Andy hack. Advocates of Bitcoin say Greenberg has also documented that the users involved could have the ease of connecting his easily prevented this snafu by “experimental” purchases of immediately transferring their

“

back to the decentralized cur-

“

cannot offer the same level of privacy as cash.”

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buying Bitcoin and buying shares on the stock market is that you don’t have to buy one entire Bitcoin. Like fiat money, it can be broken down into millions of parts, and you can convert any dollar amount you want into the cryptocurrency.

So, in the end, the bouncer was right.

Bitcoin is fake online money. But after all, Canadian dollars are fake money, too — they just use paper instead of code. Both currencies only have as much —Gavin Anderson value as the people who use Chief scientist, Bitcoin them think they do. Both can be easily lost or stolen.

Government policy may currency around in whichever never get to a point where you way they please, and are not can pay your taxes in Bitcoins, necessarily a secure way of but the widespread adoption storing your money. of a secondary currency in a However, even large-scale, country is not unheard of. Peru, reputable exchanges like Mt. Gox Uruguay, Cambodia, Vietnam and Canadian Virtual Exchange and Afghanistan accept U.S. have been taking inordinately dollars as easily as if it were long times to process user legal tender, and it may well be verifications and cash-outs, a developing country that finds leaving money vulnerable for itself at the forefront of the longer than necessary. worldwide Bitcoin revolution.

For now, Bitcoin is still largely The more unstable the national a playground for those with currency and the less a people disposable income, much like the trusts its government, the more stock market. It would be a poor visible the benefits of Bitcoin move to invest any money in become. For example, the Cyprus Bitcoin that you couldn’t afford government wouldn’t be able to lose. While general consensus to confiscate the money from a is that digital currencies are an citizen’s Bitcoin wallet, because inevitable part of our future there is no one central power to economy, it’s not a guarantee inf luence and exert power over. that Bitcoin will be the choice Citizens can rest easy knowing cryptocurrency that becomes that their money is relatively safe adopted in the mainstream. inside their digital pocketbooks.

Since its inception, rival As Gavin Anderson, the currencies (or hopeless clones, chief scientist at the Bitcoin depending on how you see Foundation, told Forbes it) have been established, magazine: “Bitcoin is designed to such as Litecoin, Peercoin, bring us back to a decentralized and Namecoin. Though less currency of the people.” popular than Bitcoin, each of The greatest success of digital these currencies have their own currencies will be to keep the advantages. Litecoin, like its powers that be in check and name implies, allows for shorter allow people a way to gain more transaction times, making it control of their finances. So more feasible for transferring where “real” money has failed microtransactions. us, I say, let cryptocurrencies The difference between lead the way.

Bitcoin is designed to bring us

Bitcoin is not anonymous and

life.changing

currency to an online “wallet,” created by a service explicitly for the purposes of storing Bitcoins, such as Blockchain, or to a wallet created on their personal computer. After all, Bitcoin exchangers — like banks — have the power to move

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rency of the people.”

Coffee Break

5 8 2 4 7 3 1 8 4 9 4 3 7 5 2 9 7 7 6

“Edible Arrangements”

8 5 4 6 9 7

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MYLES MELLOR AND SALLY YORK

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January 15, 2014

crossword

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5 3 1

5 3 7 9

2 3 1

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Across

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Puzzle of the week Puzzle of the Week #11 – Good Bets?

You are at a carnival. One of the midway games involves flipping three coins each marked with a 2 on one side and a 3 on the other. You pays your money, and you takes your chances. Each coin is flipped randomly.

In each game, you win the product of the face-up numbers on the flipped coins in dollars.

In the first game, you pay $16, and you are paid as above.

In the second game, you pay $20, but there are two sets of flips, and you get paid according to the better set of flips.

In the third game, you pay $12, but there are two sets of flips, and you get paid according to the worse set of flips.

On average, what can you expect to win/lose in each of these games?

Which of the three games is the best to bet on, and would you bet on it?

This contest is sponsored by the Mathematics and Statistics department. The full-time student with the best score at the end of the year will win a prize. Please submit your solution (not just the answer but also why) by noon the secondto-next Wednesday to Gene Wirchenko <genew@telus.net>. Submissions by others are also welcome. The solution will be posted the Wednesday after that in my blog (http://genew.ca/) and in the Math Centre (in the HOL, fourth floor study area). Come visit: we are friendly.

1. Holy man 5. Annoyances 10. Like some columns 14. Baker’s need 15. Fancy tie 16. Stalactite site 17. Sandwich bread 18. Bathroom item 19. Hands 20. Indian restaurant fare 23. Coarse file 24. Disaster 25. Fragrant oil 28. Canal site 30. Bloodstream fluid 34. Start to like 36. Miss-named?

38. “___ Time transfigured me.”

- Yeats 39. Fine produce 43. Apply 44. Flatter, in a way 45. Building blocks 46. Fine thread 49. Polar worker 51. Idiotic 52. Gorbachev was its last leader (abbr.)

54. Floating, perhaps 56. Celebratory meal, probably 62. Basil, e.g.

63. Accustom 64. Enthusiasm

66. Advocate 67. One who makes dreams come true 68. Dead against 69. Rude person 70. Good point 71. Bit of choreography Down 1. Chop (off) 2. Tel ___ 3. Allot, with “out” 4. Word riddles 5. Yesteryears 6. Break 7. One who crosses the line?

8. No charge on the bridge?

9. It is best stainless 10. Absorb 11. Henry VIII’s last wife 12. Always 13. Wet, as morning grass 21. Third of nine 22. Newspaper div.

25. Bad 26. Foot bones 27. Genealogical diagrams 29. Sweetheart 31. Peach dessert 32. Dress up 33. Literature Nobelist Hermann 35. Lab eggs 37. Flight board abbr.

40. Table centerpieces

41. Bye word 42. Windfalls 47. Felled trees 48. Medium ability?

50. Imaginary land of supernatural beings 53. Goatlike antelope 55. Precipitation 56. Great Lakes fish 57. Deli sandwich 58. Jason’s ship 59. Women in habits 60. Tiny payment 61. Can’t take 65. Mouth piece

E G G S

L O O P

S O L O

I O T A S

M I R T H

F L U O R

RANDOM JOKE A horse walked into a bar.

Several people got up and left because they realized the danger of the present situation.

Got a joke? Got a comic? Send ‘em in and we might run ‘em.

editor@truomega.ca

M A P A Y E D E N E S

E A N N D E N O L N I P C A I N S T T M I M P D I A G N E E X O N N S S

L G A L A R C O P A R A B E N A S E Y S D A N E H E L E S A V I K I R S S E T O R B I T O O N E P E N D

C Z A R

S P H E R O I D

N O U N

A G N E T E E

I D E A L

T E R S E

A N K A L R A I S A N T L C L U E L M

S A S S Y E Y E S

LAST ISSUE’S ANSWERS

sudokuhard

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Sports

The Omega · Volume 23, Issue 15

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Newspaper closure a “tremendous loss” for WolfPack Adam Williams Ω Sports Editor With the Kamloops community still in shock after the unexpected closure of the Kamloops Daily News last week, thoughts around the community are turning to the impact that the loss of the publication will have on a number of organizations.

At Thompson Rivers University, one organization that will be particularly hardhit is Wolf Pack Athletics. Larry Read, sports information officer for the Wolf Pack, said on Jan. 6 the athletics department is left to wonder what will happen without what was previously its most regular source of publicity.

“I think it affects us tremendously,” he said, adding that although the other media around the city provide excellent coverage, only The Daily News and its reporter Mark Hunter had covered the team on a daily basis for more than seven years.

“We’re hoping that Kamloops This Week picks up the slack, but it’s a tremendous loss.”

Read said there’s also the potential that the repercussions of the 83-year-old publication’s demise will be far more reaching than many would expect. The media coverage, and events that are facilitated by a publication like The Daily News, are part of the recruitment package TRU has used to attract athletes to

its teams. That will now have to change.

“When we talk to parents and athletes, that’s part of what we say to them,” he said. “Aside from the university and what they offer here that brings these kids in, are our community activities and the coverage that we get — it’s unparalleled.”

For Colin Carson, setter for the Wolf Pack men’s volleyball team, a decrease in exposure for the program itself is disappointing, but it won’t change how he feels about the city he has called home for the last five years.

“I don’t think it impacts how I feel playing in Kamloops,” he said. “Obviously it’s unfortunate Wolf Pack athletics is losing some of its exposure.”

A leader both on and off the court for the Wolf Pack, Carson has been the subject of his fair share of media stories in his time at the university. He said it’s enjoyable, though it wasn’t a huge factor in his decision to leave his hometown of Prince George to come to Kamloops, and he sees no reason why it won’t continue despite the newspaper’s closure.

“It’s obviously exciting and it’s nice to see,” he said. “That being said, I still think in a city like Kamloops, because it is a little bit of a smaller city, you’re still going to get pretty good coverage and a lot of people are going to know who you are.

“I still think Kamloops is a great place for that.”

While setter Colin Carson is disappointed in the closure of Kamloops’s daily newspaper, since there will be less coverage for the team, it doesn’t affect the pride he feels in playing here.

(Photo by Andrew Snucins)

WolfPack Jan. 9 to 12 Bites The Wolf Pack men’s basketball team was involved in a pair of tight games on the weekend, coming out of one with a victory and another with a defeat.

TRU picked up a victory in its first Canada West action since Nov. 30, with a 100-95 overtime victory against the University of Regina Cougars on Jan. 9.

The Wolf Pack outscored the Cougars 48-40 over the final two frames in order to force overtime and pulled ahead of their hosts with a 19 point extra quarter. Josh Wolfram led the team with 19 points and nine rebounds, while Tallon Milne had 17 points and seven rebounds. Reese Pribilsky had 16 and Will Ondrik and Troy Grant had 15 apiece.

TRU followed up the victory

with a 74-70 loss against the Brandon Bobcats.

It was the second game TRU played without Ta’Quan Zimmerman, who missed a week of practice because of a death in the family.

Ondrik and Milne both had 12 points. Wolfram again led, this time with 23 points and 11 rebounds.

TRU is in second place in the Canada West’s Pacific Division and will be home to face the third place University of the Fraser Valley Cascades on Jan. 16 and 17.

After suffering through a dismal 99-39 defeat at the hands of the University of Regina Cougars, the Wolf Pack women’s basketball team rebounded to win 62-59 against the Brandon Bobcats.

Kassie Colonna’s 17 points led the Wolf Pack and Taiysa Worsfold put up 14 points and 12 rebounds for the double double.

The women will also be home to the UFV Cascades on Jan. 16 and 17.

The Wolf Pack’s men’s volleyball didn’t show too much rust following the holiday break,

playing to a pair of victories against the Brandon Bobcats last week.

On Jan. 9, the Wolf Pack won out in a 3-2 match with a big performance from hitter Brad Gunter. Gunter had 30 kills in 57 chances, two service aces, 14 digs, one solo block and four block assists.

TRU won its sixth straight the following day on Friday, with a 3-0 defeat of the same Bobcats.

The team is 10-4 and sits tied for second place with the University of Alberta Golden Bears in the Canada West’s standings.

Wolf Pack women’s volleyball lost their 13th and 14th-straight matches on the weekend, backto-back 3-0 defeats at the hands of the Brandon University Bobcats.

The Wolf Pack men’s hockey team defeated the Simon Fraser University Clan by a score of 3-1 on the weekend.

Tyler Berkholtz, Colton Schell and Brodie Gibbon found twine for the Wolf Pack, which now sits in a three-way tie for first with the Selkirk College Saints and the Clan.

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January 15, 2014

Membership Advisory Winter Film Series: Art of Steel | Jan 16 Gabrielle | Jan 30 Down River | Feb 13 Inside Llewyn Davies | Feb 27

$5 Student tickets at the Members’ Services Desk!

NIGHTS

TRUSU Annual General Meeting Wed | Jan 29th | 7PM Students’ Union Building Agenda available at trusu.ca /TRUStudentsUnion

@TRUSU15

trusu.ca