Imprint_2008-05-30_v31_i03

Impr int The university of Waterloo’s official student newspaper

Friday, May 30, 2008

vol 31, no 3

imprint . uwaterloo . ca

How green is my campus?

Part 2 of 6: The spaces we inhabit, page 13

The future of student housing The City of Waterloo develops a long-term housing plan — but how will it affect UW students?

And do local residents believe the plan goes far enough?

joyce hsu

Jamie Damaskinos assistant news editor

W

here students should live, how those buildings should be constructed, maintained, and managed, and where the line between the community and student revelry should be drawn, are debates that have been raging since the first UW party keg was tapped decades ago.

For some, the city’s long standing plan fails to address student needs, for others it’s deemed harmful to neighbourhoods meant for families, while others argue it is neither environmentally nor community friendly enough. Despite these criticisms, City Hall remains steadfast in its commitment to current development plans.

City Hall has been working under a 25-year “nodes and corridors” development plan. The purpose of this plan is to provide student housing in the form of multi-level apartments along specific nodes and corridors of the city so that students no longer have to occupy single-family homes.

The nodes are areas that have been identified by the city as having increased student growth.

These nodes include areas like up-town Waterloo and the corner of Westmount and Erb streets.

The corridors are high-traffic roads that surround a residential zone, which was designed for single-family permanent residents — like Columbia, University and King Streets. Along these streets there is a mix of commercial buildings and high density residences.

According to Ward 6 City Councillor Jan D’Ailly, development in these areas should relieve the tensions that currently exist between permanent residents and student residents.

“Part of the purpose of [these plans] was to allow higher density development, in this case, around the university along those nodes and corridors, [which] would take pressure off of students living in those permanent residential areas,” D’Ailly said.

The fundamental path we are going down is starting to work, D’Ailly said.

However, D’Ailly warns there will be some transition time; it may seem as though things are getting worse.

The seemingly endless streams of studentrelated disturbances — such as loud partying,

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vandalism and public urination — frustrate permanent residents.

Residents have been critical of poor bylaw enforcement in the past. D’Ailly stated that the city is in the process of working out a better system for enforcing bylaws.

“It’s true, we have to do more, better with bylaw enforcement. Certainly this year we’ve made a major effort with the police involved as well,” D’Ailly said, commenting on the city’s improved policies for dealing with irresponsible students. “We had a ‘no tolerance’ program last September. We saw a great reduction in terms of misbehaviour by the students.”

Unfortunately, the Waterloo Regional Police could not be reached to comment on the program.

Furthermore, City Hall is working on new legislation aimed at encouraging landlords to take a more active role in improving the upkeep of their homes. “We’ve gone to the province, ourselves in conjunction with other university towns and asked for additional powers from the province to be able to regulate our rental housing, all non-apartment rental units. We now have the ability as a city to be able to license rental units.”

D’Ailly said.

The new legislation will give the city more latitude for dealing with irresponsible landlords.

“So if, for example, you have a lot of noise complaints coming from a property, the legislation will enable us to deny a renewal of your licence.

That will put pressure on the homeowners to comply with what our actual bylaws are.”

In February of this year, Oshawa passed a similar bylaw that was aimed at taking full effect in May. The bylaw limits the amount of rental bedrooms per house to four. This could drastically limit the amount of available student housing in the area.

Despite Oshawa’s bold move, the nature of rental licences and how they will be applied in Waterloo has yet to be confirmed. The city is currently working with other University towns to determine how these licences can be effectively applied. The changes are to be set in motion this fall.

“The report will come to council in October with a series of recommendations in terms of how we can apply the rental licensing across the city,” D’Ailly said.

See HOUSING, page 4

News

Imprint, Friday, May 30, 2008 news@imprint.uwaterloo.ca

Working out a new sound at CKMS Proposal details plans to save the UW radio station, which loses funding in September

Dinh Ngunyen & Joyse Hsu

Ashley Csanady staff reporter

C

KMS may change its name to 100.3 Sound FM, revamp its programming schedule, and strengthen ties to campus as part of a new proposal to save the station once its student funding ends August 31, 2008. The proposal will be tabled by CKMS’ board of directors June 9.

The station lost its funding following a referendum last February to remove the $5.50 a term student fee that previously supported the station. In efforts to remain viable once the funding is cut off, the station released a proposal last week, outlining not only how the station plans to remain fiscally sound, but how it can be improved and better reach out to students. The proposal, if passed by their board, is part of an effort to get Feds Council to allow CKMS continued use of their current location, the Bauer Warehouse at the north of UW’s Research Technology park, for one year. This will allow them time to implement the changes.

“Many, if not all, of the issues raised during the referendum have been catered to in the proposal,” said Ira Sherr, head of the “No” committee during the referendum.

(Note of clarification: due to the wording of the referendum question, the “No” committee was the side that supported continuing student funding).

Former “Yes” committee head, Jeffery Aho, was slightly more reserved in his praise and stated, “I don’t believe it addresses every issue,” but he did add it was a good start to rebuilding and rebranding the station.

What can only be described as a total overhaul of the station’s governance, direction, and content, the proposal was put together by the new president of the board of directors at CKMS, Steven Krysak, as well at the newly ratified position of student funder liaison, held by Cole Atlin. Some of the most drastic changes include the name change — and all the implied rebranding possibilities — and cutting all but two paid staff positions — a

promotions and advertising co-ordinator and an administrative assistant. The board hopes to replace the technical co-ordinator with an engineering student willing to take on the position, while the station manager’s position is financially unrealistic without a significant increase in their funding, according to Atlin.

For funding, the current plan requires community members of the station to pay $50 a year as “Friends of CKMS,” community volunteers to pay $30 a year, and student volunteers to pay $10 a year.

Although the plan is obviously not enough to fully support the station, Krysak

According to the Sound FM proposal, all programming will be re-evaluated and re-scheduled to be more student friendly. A morning show, a noon-time top ten, and a different genre block of music each night of the week are just some of the ideas laid out.

Even existing shows will need to re-submit demo tapes to be re-evaluated as to whether they fit the new direction.

The programming changes seem to be part of an effort to address how communitydominated, as opposed to student-dominated, the station has become in recent years. This, for Atlin, is one of the biggest problems with the station, along with lacking an on-

For Atlin, it’s not that students don’t want a radio station; it’s that they don’t like what they saw in CKMS. ... They want to make a station students really want to listen to ... to ingrain it in UW. explained the full extent of CKMS’ financial plan in an e-mail to Imprint, “We will have around $14,000 in the bank by the end of August going into September, and with the expected advertising revenue, that will grow even higher. We are also pursuing grants and other forms of funding. Advertising was not a huge part of the proposal because mostly it’s not changing. The only difference is that it is much more important, and there will be a bit more of it.”

If more advertising is necessary for the station’s survival, it might be problematic, as @UW editor and former Imprint editor-inchief Tim Alamenciak pointed out, “Who’s going to advertise on something nobody knows anything about?”

Aho echoed a similar sentiment when he stated, “I think the issue is that students don’t really know what CKMS is.” An issue that seemed to be well addressed through the proposal but, for Aho, the real strength of the proposal is the numerous programming changes it details.

campus space, and the sporadic nature of the programming.

For Atlin, it’s not that students don’t want a radio station, it’s that they didn’t like what they saw in CKMS. She added that, with this proposal, they “want to make a station students really want to listen to. We want to ingrain it in UW.” “CKMS deserves another shot if students decide they see a value in having a radio station on campus,” wrote Feds President Justin Williams in an e-mail to Imprint. “I really think that the proposal presented by CKMS goes a long way [in addressing] the issue of student engagement within the radio station. I think it has the potential to start a process that create a truly campus radio station.”

Creating “a truly campus radio station” is a priority throughout the proposal, as it states interest in working with UW Athletics to broadcast games and events, with student services like GLOW to help promote events or even run their own programs, and Imprint or the Daily Bulletin in an effort to cover campus news and events.

Current station manager Heather Majaury said that working with Imprint would be the realization of a personal dream and seemed very enthusiastic about the idea. Alamenciak, on the other hand, was not so rose-tinted in his view. He saw little benefit in the proposed relationship for Imprint, said any official support would need to be outlined at the governance level, and said “the only way Imprint would do anything with this is out of the kindness of their heart. To illustrate his point, he used past attempts at a similar relationship that was too onerous for Imprint’s already busy staff.

Current Imprint editor-in-chief Maggie Clark said she is awaiting feedback from members of the undergraduate student body.

“I want to hear how open students are to this concept, whether they think it would be useful, and where they see the future of media on campus.”

When asked what needs to be done immediately to save the station, Krysak said, “Promotions, fundraising and volunteer recruitment. We need to get our name out there to the new students coming in, we need money to operate, and we need volunteers for the new schedule as well as to help take over duties from our current staff.”

The difficulty in volunteering for CKMS has long been an issue. Majaury, Atlin, and Krysak were all firm that the seemingly extensive volunteer process is necessary for volunteers, as they need to know the rules and how to run the equipment.

“Since most of our staff will be gone soon, there is a lot of work that needs to be done. Students can volunteer to work on programming, admin, technical or music-related positions. There is also the fundraising, promotions and social committees and the board of directors which all always look for students to join,” explained Krysak, meaning that students don’t necessarily have to be trained to use all the technical equipment to help the station out.

See SOUND, page 5

4

News

Imprint, Friday, May 30, 2008

Housing: student needs

Continued from cover

In the meantime, D’Ailly is encouraging residents to visit with their student neighbours in order to prompt better relations. “If you know who your neighbour is, you tend to respect them a little more.

“I figure there is a tipping point of about 50 per cent permanent residents and 50 per cent students,” D’Ailly said.

“Once you get more than 50 per cent students then it’s very difficult for permanent residents to welcome the students because it’s no longer their neighbourhood.”

Additionally, D’Ailly encourages students to take initiatives towards building a better relationship with the permanent residents. “Treat your neighbours as you would treat your neighbours back home.”

Although there are many changes on the horizon, certain permanent residents remain skeptical. Deborah Easson, spokesperson for the Northdale Area Residents Coalition, does not believe the changes will be effective in reversing the damage done to her neighbourhood.

Easson has lived on the corner of Albert and Columbia for five years and she claims that the situation has gone from bad to worse. Easson stated that she is tired of the constant parties that take place in her neighbourhood.

“The neighbourhood is broken, it’s dysfunctional,” Easson said.

Easson believes that the proactive zero-tolerance policy is simply not working effectively. “It’s an interesting idea… but it’s just not working,” Easson commented. “Proactive zerotolerance is a wonderful phrase but it’s kind of empty and meaningless.”

According to Easson, there are certain disturbances that the police simply can’t handle: “If I see a guy urinating on my front-lawn… I don’t know who he is. If I call bylaw or the police, by the time they’re here he’s gone. I can’t go out and ask for his ID.” Easson believes that the saturation of students in her neighbourhood has to be lowered before any effective changes can take place. She contends that more diverse development is required to revitalize her neighbourhood. “Waterloo’s motto is diversification; well they don’t have

photos by jamie damaskinos

The City of Waterloo is seeking to change the housing zoning around the University of Waterloo in an attempt to preserve houses like the one shown here for families in the region. closure,” Whaley said. “Such institutions form the basic building block of family neighbourhood…”

Whaley believes in a similar vision as Easson. He believes that upzoning the neighbourhood will encourage diverse development, which, according to him, is the key to energizing the community.

“My vision for this area is to create a 21st century ‘ecotopia’ that would include a mix of uses, from lofts for the 6,000 high-tech workers in the

“Unfortunately in communities with post secondary institutions, it is commonplace for inappropriate actions by anyone in their late teens to mid-twenties to be blamed on the greater student community...”

— Justin Williams, Feds President

diversification right now.”

According to Easson, the city’s development plans should cater to more than just student developments.

“We’re so close to the tech park,” she said, “I don’t understand why they won’t even think of housing for these tech workers.”

Mark Whaley, city councillor for Ward 5, echoes Easson’s criticisms of the city’s current development plans. “The ‘status quo’ solution brought forward by staff is actually a negative step in the evolution of our community,” Whaley stated.

Whaley asserts that the neighbourhood lacks the necessary amenities required for creating a strong community.

“The two primary schools have long shut down. One church has been torn down and another is slated for

neighbourhood, to innovative student housing forms, to accommodations for the thousands of people who work as university staff.” Whaley stated.

Whaley, however, is outnumbered by his contemporaries on city council.

According to him, he is the sole proponent of upzoning the neighbourhood on the council.

Justin Williams, president of Feds, said that the Federation of Students was busy at work monitoring the ongoing zoning debate.

Williams stated that not just permanent residents, but students are victims in this debate as well. Williams believes that the issues don’t stem from students alone.

“Unfortunately in communities with post secondary institutions, it is commonplace for inappropriate actions by anyone in their late teens to mid-twenties

In the current plan, students are encouraged to live in large apartment complexes such as the one shown here, at the corner of Lester and Columbia Streets. to be blamed on the greater student community,” Williams contends. “This often negates and underreports both the incredible contributions of students to their communities, and the simple fact that those university students who do participate in said actions are a miniscule minority of the overall population.”

Feds has been working with an organization called Town and Gown in order to determine appropriate

solutions to the ongoing debate.

“This body allows us the opportunity to advocate for student-supportive policies from the city, and to maintain a crucial student voice at the municipal level,” Williams stated.

Williams is encouraging students to take a more active role in their community in order to better improve relations with permanent residents.

He reminds students that they are not just “visitors” but “full-time citizens of the community.”

“All of our students should feel encouraged to express themselves as full members of the community.

This means continuing to engage in community work…” Williams said. jdamaskinos@imprint.uwaterloo.ca

News

Imprint, Friday, May 30, 2008

5

Campus Events Casey Song reporter

Maggie Clark editor-in-chief

Post-earthquake rehabilitation As relief work moves into a new stage, meeting the China quake-victims’ needs for food, water, medication, and housing remains a challenge.

On May 12, 2008, Chendu, Sichuan province, China was hit by one of the deadliest natural disasters in 30 years – a 8.0 magnitude earthquake that resulted in an estimated 67,183 deaths with 20,790 still missing.

The quake also resulted in many geological threats to the Chinese people. Relief professionals were racing Wednesday to relieve pressure on a dammed river above the Beichuan region, as it threatened millions of quake victims living downstream.

Engineers are hoping to relieve the pressure on the dam in a week’s time the New York Times reports.

Due to poor road conditions caused by the earthquake, it is extremely difficult to transport large amounts of relief material to the victims in some of the worst-hit areas.

As the summer weather closes in on Chendu, maintaining public hygiene and preventing epidemic outbreak is becoming another top priority.

Victims of the quake were mostly school children and residences. The natural disaster made many children orphans and left elderly and disabled without family support, causing psychological trauma to the survivors.

According to a report issued by the earthquake relief headquarters of the State Council Tuesday, rehabilitation in the quake-hit zone will promptly start after relocating a number of towns and villages.

Funded by various channels, including the government budget and public donations, a team responsible for rehabilitation will start to evaluate geological conditions and select new sites for relocation.

—With files from Mainstream news of China and the New York Times

Cyclone Nargis update Cyclone Nargis swept across southern Myanmar on May 2, 2008. Through the fertile Irrawaddy Delta and into Yangon, the nation’s main city, the cyclone took lives and destroyedhundreds of thousands of homes, resulting in a tally of an estimated 22,500 deaths and 41,000 missing. The total population impacted by Nargis including the survivors is more than 2.4 million people.

On May 8, Red Cross flew in six tons of shelter supplies and distributed 15,000 water purification tablets.

Eight tonnes of supplies arrived from Kuala Lumpur on May 9, along with relief supplies to distribute in the delta region from Red Cross and UNICEF. The World Food Program also contributed 38 tons of highenergy biscuits, which arrived in Yangon on Friday. The biscuits are sufficient to feed 95,000 people with first rations.

By May 9, villages in the Ayeyarwady delta had been reported destroyed. According to the Interna-

tional Federation, victims of Nargis are in urgent need of clean drinking water, food, medication, hygiene kits, shelter materials, and mosquito nets after the natural disaster.

—With files from New York Times and American Red Cross

UW Debate Society Meeting Tuesday, June 3 5:15 p.m. – 7 p.m. @ RCH 301

Debate Society France’s “Bernardos” get life general meeting, tournament signMichel Fourniret and wife Monique up, debates, and Olivier will spend at least 30 and practice in British 28 years in prison for the rape and Parliamentary style. murder of seven girls and women, New members according to the Globe and Mail. By the time Fourniret, now 66, is able encouraged to attend. to seek a reduced sentence, he will likely never reap the benefits of freedom. Olivier is 59. The children and women they collaborated to assault and murder ranged between 12 and 22 years old.

The trial proved emotionally charged for French society, according to France 24 and the Globe and Mail, as Fourniret, “the Ogre of the Ardennes,” had first been convicted of sexual assault in 1967. When he started writing to his future wife, he was in prison in the 1980s for multiple sexual assaults.

Olivier stood accused of helping Fourniret select and capture his victims, as well as burying their bodies. The courts found her guilty of playing a part in at least some of the murders and a rape. Olivier herself testified tthat she and Fourniret replayed their crimes during sexual intercourse.

This case raises questions for French society about the strength of their judicial system; the Globe and Mail reports that French authorities, through a lack of proper co-ordination, lost the opportunity to apprehend the couple after Fourniret’s first murder in 1987.

—With files from the Globe and Mail, France 24 and EuroNews

New era for Nepal 85 years after winning its independence from Britain, the country of Nepal, wedged between India and China, is no longer a monarchy.

According to the Associated Press, the road to Nepal’s federal democratic republic originated in 1951 when the hereditary monarch set up a more modernized cabinet system.

Then in 1990 Nepal saw the institution of multiparty democracy and a constitutional monarchy — though at the cost of hundreds of Nepalese lives. On Wednesday, May 28, Nepal’s Constitutional Assembly (CA) voted to “transform the country into a republic,” according to the New York Times.

King Gyanendra, the last monarch of a Hindu kingdom, was given 15 days to step down from his throne.

His palace will be turned into a museum within a fortnight, and he loses all privileges, according to the BBC, save those afforded to regular citizens.

Associated Press intelligence suggests that the conceding of a 10-year fight for Nepalese communism, on the part of a Maoist insurgency, paved the way for Nepalese citizens to unite under the CA and bring down Nepal’s “god-king.” The CA has two years to arrange for a new constitution.

—With files from Associated Press and the New York Times

the Google Games.

Get together with four friends and register. Can’t find a team? Sign up as an individual and get placed in a team.

UW Poster campaign for Red Cross starts May 30 SLC and WLU campuses

UW and WLU students are working with Google Games: the Red Cross to Registration raise money through Saturday, June 7 grassroots awareness 9:30 a.m. – 4 p.m. @ Festival Room, SCH initiatives, including a poster campaign and social network groups.

Compete for victory The campaign’s in challenges that test your creative and slogan is “Unknown Problem, Simple mental ingenuity at

Solution,” and urges student donations.

Keep an eye out for posters and events in the coming weeks!

Photography 101 Tuesday, June 3, 2008 5:30 p.m. - 7 p.m. @ EIT 1015 Free to all The UW Photo Club is hosting a campuswide workshop for interested beginners and independent learners of photographic best practices. A good opportunity to develop your shutter skills (then volunteer for Imprint!)

Sound: Radio changed for UW? Continued from page 3

Majarury and Atlin were also particularly vocal about the need for a space on campus, but according to Vice-President Internal Andrew Falcao, that is not a realistic goal in the near future.

Falcao also explained that the long-held belief that a hope for a Feds Radio — no matter how impossible due to the organizations inability to obtain a CRTC licence — is a bit of a pipe dream that sped out of control.

Feds Radio is logistically impossible and just a passing comment people latched onto, Falcao explained.

Aho and Sherr seem to agree in that should the proposal come to council, it should be passed to give the station a year to shape up; however, Aho has many more reservations and would want to be assured it was the proposal he saw and not another one that is allegedly circulating around CKMS. Sherr was much more adamant in his support, and wrote, “Students need a radio station for the same reason that students need a newspaper. It’s their voice. It’s a means of expression, and it’s a way to hear other opinions and views

from sources that aren’t directly mainstream or have other agendas.

Corporate or not. It’s always good to have options and alternatives, and a radio station run by students for students is an alternative to the larger, mainstream stations that don’t have any student focus.”

Since a concentration on student seems to be what CKMS currently lacks, but what the proposed Sound FM focuses on, Sherr may just get the campus radio he, and so many others, have been looking for. acsanady@imprint.uwaterloo.ca

6

News

Imprint, Friday, May 30, 2008

Islam information for all

Andrew Abela

The Islamic Information Center at the University of Waterloo hosted Islam Information Week from Tuesday May 27 until Thursday May 29. The Centre provided interactive workshops and lectures with the goal of informing students about the Muslim religion, outside of the many world cultures that practise it. Above, co-ordinator of the centre Aijaz Bag talks about Islam with Columbia Ice Fields worker Andrew Paiboumsai, at the poster display in the SLC Great Hall. Lecture topics ranged from the status of women in Islam to presentations of the “Miracles of the Qur’an.” Waterloo imam Sheikh Abdul Mannan Syed presented “Islam 101” and, in conjunction with the Islamic Information Centre, arranged for a visit to Waterloo & Wellington County’s only mosque. The week ended yesterday with a lecture by Shabir Alli, entitled “Does God Exist?”

Israel’s 60th anniversary prompts Palestinian “Nakba” awareness event Students for Palestinian Rights hosted a full-day event for students and community members, aimed at increasing awareness of Palestinian struggles with Israel in relation to what the United Nations calls “Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

“Nakba” or “Catastrophe” is the name Palestinians use to refer to the fall-out of Israeli sovereignty. Israel achieved independence May 14, 1948 through a UN Partition Plan that the Arab League and Arab Higher Committee rejected.

In the ensuing Arab-Israeli war, the UN estimates that over 700,000 Arabs have since fled the country of Israel.

Students for Palestinian Rights shared films and resources arguing that this is an act of ethnic cleansing.

Left: Palestinian artist Ibrahim Shalaby displays his artwork, which he says touches upon both political and cultural aspects of Palestinian existence.

Maggie Clark

The week before, new campus group “Israel on Campus” celebrated Israel’s 60th anniversary with the sharing of cake at a small booth in the SLC’s Vendor Alley. Both events were reported as peaceful and well-attended.

Opinion

Imprint, Friday, May 30, 2008 opinion@imprint.uwaterloo.ca

More pressing matters Friday, May 30, 2008 Vol. 31, No. 3 Student Life Centre, Room 1116 University of Waterloo Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1 P: 519.888.4048 F: 519.884.7800 http://imprint.uwaterloo.ca Editor-in-chief, Maggie Clark editor@imprint.uwaterloo.ca Advertising & Production Manager, Laurie Tigert-Dumas ads@imprint.uwaterloo.ca General Manager, Catherine Bolger cbolger@imprint.uwaterloo.ca Sales Associate, Laura McQuinn Systems Admin. vacant Distribution, Mitch Sanker, Christy Ogley Intern, Dylan Cawker Board of Directors board@imprint.uwaterloo.ca President, Jacqueline McKoy president@imprint.uwaterloo.ca Vice-president, Sherif Soliman vp@imprint.uwaterloo.ca Treasurer, Lu Jiang treasurer@imprint.uwaterloo.ca Secretary, vacant secretary@imprint.uwaterloo.ca Staff liaison, Peter Trinh liaison@imprint.uwaterloo.ca Editorial Staff Assistant Editor, Dinh Nguyen Lead Proofreader, Ashley Csanady Cover Editor, Michael Gregory News Editor, Andrew Abela News Assistant, Jamie Damaskinos Opinion Editor, Guy Halpern Features Editor, Tina Ironstone Arts & Entertainment Editor, Emma Tarswell Science & Tech Editor, Adrienne Raw Sports & Living Editor, vacant Photo Editor, vacant Graphics Editor, Joyce Hsu Web Administrator, Sonia Lee Systems Administrator, vacant Production Staff Mohammad Jangda, Paul Collier, Steven R. McEvoy, Sherif Soliman, Susie Roma, Megan Ng, Rosalind Gunn, Peter Trinh, Ryan Lee, Alicia Boers Imprint is the official student newspaper of the University of Waterloo. It is an editorially independent newspaper published

by Imprint Publications, Waterloo, a corporation without share capital. Imprint is a member of the Ontario Community Newspaper Association (OCNA). Editorial submissions may be considered for publication in any edition of Imprint. Imprint may also reproduce the material commercially in any format or medium as part of the newspaper database, Web site or any other product derived from the newspaper. Those submitting editorial content, including articles, letters, photos and graphics, will grant Imprint first publication rights of their submitted material, and as such, agree not to submit the same work to any other publication or group until such time as the material has been distributed in an issue of Imprint, or Imprint declares their intent not to publish the material. The full text of this agreement is available upon request.

Imprint does not guarantee to publish articles, photographs, letters or advertising. Material may not be published, at the discretion of Imprint, if that material is deemed to be libelous or in contravention with Imprint’s policies with reference to our code of ethics and journalistic standards.

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Next staff meeting: Monday, June 2 12:30 p.m.

Next board of directors meeting: Wednesday, June 4 11:30 a.m.

The media’s memory needs to be jogged

I

was going to write this week about the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) — specifically, their recent decision to revisit new media’s exemption from broadcaster requirements.

CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein told the Globe and Mail, “Our intention is not to regulate new media, but rather to gain a better understanding of this environment and, if necessary, to propose measures that would support the continued achievement of the Broadcasting Act’s objectives.” This matter raises huge questions about the future of net neutrality, and certainly requires a column all its own.

But then I discovered that Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh is still in prison in Afghanistan, still appealing his death sentence for allegedly questioning Islam in his journalism. And I threw down my pen.

One of the most frustrating things about news media is that — as much as we complain about the over-saturation of certain stories, like the Mulroney-Schreiber affair — when a story gets dropped, readers are liable to think it’s become a non-issue, that whatever made it newsworthy in the first place has since been resolved.

Yes, when nothing has changed it can be difficult to keep filing articles about any situation. (Unless, of course, it’s the U.S. Democratic primary.) But, before long, the fact that nothing’s changed itself becomes a story. And this was the case with the Globe and Mail story that reminded me of two things: Kambakhsh’s ongoing plight, and the tenuous development of media democracy in Afghanistan as a whole.

Kambakhsh was convicted on January 22, 2008 of “blasphemy” — printing off and sharing an online report that questioned women’s rights in Islam, asking questions about women’s rights in his journalism classes, and adding three paragraphs to an article on the subject that

included the following: “This is the real face of Islam … The prophet Mohamad wrote verses of the holy Koran just for his own benefit.”

Kambakhsh’s trial lasted four minutes. He was refused any legal counsel. He was sentenced to death. And although his story made international headlines, coverage about Kambakhsh fixated more on speculation about his brother being the true culprit than on the real, underlying problem of why media freedoms are so desperately non-existent in some parts of the Middle East.

Today, Kambakhsh denies that he would ever write what he did. Even if he does go free at this juncture, there is a very strong chance that any spark of journalistic independence in him has been crushed. Still, Canada is at war — and ostensibly with the goal of creating democratic peace in Afghanistan. In this light, Kambakhsh represents something much more than an individual case of gross injustice: he represents our culture’s equally gross neglect of the role the media plays in laying the foundations for lasting democratic representation.

Accountability and transparency are basic tenets of democracy: we need to know there is a system of checks and balances in place to temper the power of any one leader, and to provide a basis for human equality. To this end we try to maintain many different “pillars” — judicial, legislative, executive, and media.

We get justifiably upset when any one of these branches tries to unfairly influence the other.

We don’t want judges making laws (which differs, I feel, from having them interpret living documents); we don’t want Stephen Harper telling the media what they can and cannot do.

Intrinsically, because the bulk of our population has grown up in this culture, we know the walls between these organizations need to be sturdy for freedoms to survive.

Yet, that same intrinsic belief might also make us take our freedoms for granted. We are, after all,

an exceptionally skeptical generation. The media has an agenda, we say. Politicians aren’t trustworthy. And yet we are also immensely fortunate.

So fortunate that we should perhaps think very hard about whether skepticism alone is enough to rest our laurels on. Yes, Kambakhsh is not the first journalist to be victimized by a system of political intimidation — in Afghanistan, or elsewhere. Yes, there are catastrophes and gross injustices occurring every day all over the world — genocides, the indoctrination of child soldiers, the unending poverty of some cultures, the stark oppression of others, the consequences of hate in all communities great and small. And yes, we may never be fully satisfied with our own legal, judicial, executive, and media pillars.

But another aspect of democracy is its consistency — a consistency that should really be practised by all four supporting elements. In Afghanistan, this means that media freedoms need to be entrenched and defended, just as much as open elections. And here in Waterloo, for me, right now, and at least throughout the rest of this term (if it takes that long), it means I can’t let go of Kambakhsh’s plight, and what his circumstances say about the absolute importance of media freedoms throughout the world — as well, of course, about one of the most fatal flaws of news coverage.

So from here on out, I’ll keep you posted on just how many days it has been since Kambakhsh’s captivity, and sentencing. Yes, it’s just one person; one situation: but isn’t that another tenet of democratic equality? That every person counts, and every single person can make a difference? editor@imprint.uwaterloo.ca

Days since Kambakhsh’s arrest, as of the dateline: 216 Days since Kambakhsh’s sentencing: 129

Two-spirited but not accepted

I

buy my cigarettes in cheap cartons from a native reserve on Walpole Island, a chunk of unceded territory near my parents’ house. Like any other errand, I try to make my stop as quick as possible, but once I leave there’s something about the island that I can never shake. I always find myself driving around while I’m there, exploring the muddy dirt roads and overgrown thickets until I’ve wasted much more time than I had intended.

I’ve brought my brother on a few occasions, because I thought that the atmosphere of the island would get to him as well. And, although one of his professors has done a photo-essay of Walpole, Andrew’s interest in the island isn’t nearly as intense as mine. He snaps a few pictures of garbage on the beach and broken playground equipment before getting tired of waiting around for me; he refuses to come back.

The island doesn’t have the same effect on him, and it took me some time to figure out what it was about the island that catches me. The island, the native people who are just getting by, the graffiti covered signs, and half burnt down houses bring back something in me from my early teen years — I’m recognizing the feeling of desperation on the reserve.

For most people who fall into the queer category, it’s a familiar feeling from one’s formative years, the not knowing, not understanding, fighting against yourself and people around you. It’s the same way you can recognize without knowing that someone

is conflicted. With the queers it takes hold for a while when puberty kicks in and your life isn’t moving in the same direction as your peers.

For the most part, you adjust, get things on track, and move beyond desperation and on to your life.

But on the island, and other reserves across Canada, the feeling of desperation never seems to have left, and with good reason.

The feeling when stepping on the reserve is recognizing that a whole group of people is conflicted and moving in a different direction than the rest of Canada. Natives in Canada have higher rates of unemployment, poverty, diabetes, drug abuse, alcoholism, depression, and suicide than the general population.

When I pull out the facts I’m not surprised that the atmosphere of the reserve reminded me of the troubles of the queers. Gays also have higher rates of drug abuse, depression and suicide, as well as higher rates of HIV/ AIDS and some other diseases. Both gays and natives are presented from the get-go with findings that prove their lives are bound to be miserable. Gays have their homophobes and natives have the racist townies outside the reserve; what happens when these two intersect?

We’ve all heard about Two-Spirits, the aboriginal understanding of what we call gender identity and sexual orientation. It was common among native tribes to classify gender not through modern binary standard but along six classifications: straight men, gay men, intersexed or transsexed individuals,

gay women and straight women. The inner three along the spectrum were seen as those with two spirits, gay men having the body and work ethic of a man while also having the sensibilities and sexual inclinations of a woman, with the opposite true of gay women and differing combinations for transsexed individuals.

We’ve heard that those who have been imbued with the spirit of both male and female are regarded as valuable members of the community and are seen in high regard, using their insight to both sides as mediators and peace makers within the tribes. And to those with this nugget of knowledge, it’s no shock that many think Two-Spirits hold the same regard in today’s native communities.

Reality check. This view, despite the fact that it casts the aboriginal community in a good light for their openness and acceptance, also connotes that the lives and ways of native people haven’t been drastically altered by the presence of European settlers and other immigrants to the land that was once theirs.

These gender categories do still exist and are used by some rather than the LGBT labels, but attitudes toward gays, lesbians and TwoSpirits in urban native families and on the reserves fell in line with the rest of Canada a long time ago, and that includes homophobia and prejudice. The result is a culmination of two high risk groups that leaves Two-Spirit and GLBT native youth in a sad situation.

See TWICE, page 8

8

Opinion

Letters Had a reaction to one of our articles, editorials or columns? Write a letter to the editor at letters@imprint.uwaterloo.ca Re: Faith in reason — May 16, 2008 I’m tired of seeing elementary apologetics in this paper pretending to be journalism. In her May 16 article titled “Having Faith in Reason,” (page 7), Monica Harvey presents the extremely weak “first-cause” argument for God and fails to address the most base and obvious criticism of it. She seems completely unaware of any sort of rebuke, which she could have easily found by spending five minutes using Google or talking to someone outside her bible study group. Namely that of: “If God created the universe, then who created God? If God doesn’t need a creator or a beginning, then neither does the universe.”

Next we see an attempt to co-opt the respect and admiration science has worked so hard to obtain by using quotes from scientists to perform an argument from authority. It’s essentially the same as saying “better listen or God will punish you”; instead we hear “someone smarter than you thinks THIS.” Again, Harvey fails to see even the basest flaws in such an argument, such as the fact that no similar argument would ever convince a theist! I could give her quotes from someone like Richard Dawkins (worldfamous evolutionary biologist and Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford) saying that “Religion is ridiculous and is therefore deserving of ridicule.” Or point out that 93 per cent of the National Academy of Scientists do not believe in God, even though they live in a country that is 86 per cent religious. This would be a pointless exercise, however, because theists pick and choose authority figures that match with things that they already believe.

Such information wouldn’t even cause them to critically examine the reasons they believe in an imaginary man who we can never see direct evidence of, let alone change her mind.

If Imprint wants to run trite apologetic bullshit like Harvey’s article, it

Imprint, Friday, May 30, 2008

Questioning the existence of Christ?

seems only fair that a proper rebuttal and clarification of facts of the same size be run on the same page.

— Jim Walkoski 3B mathematics

Re: Pissed off to be paying — May 16, 2008 After having reviewed anonymous’ article in Imprint, I was disgusted with the obvious lack of facts and rigour involved in your “research”. There are numerous points that I do not agree with, and others that are flat out wrong: 1. I am interested to know who “a couple of people” are who gave you your figure of 60 per cent. Being a Waterloo student, you should know it is prudent to back up your facts with a citation.

2. The Athletic department encompasses much more then varsity athletics.

Campus Recreation is included in the Athletics department, and provides services such as First Aid courses, swimming lessons, fitness classes, intramural leagues, as well as numerous clubs and events. If you have ever worked out at the PAC, CIF, used the pool, played pick-up basketball or borrowed a towel, your fee has been put to good use.

3. As a varsity athlete on the track and field team, I paid for all of my own equipment, uniform, and my “personalized varsity sportswear.” Our team and the athletes on it also fundraise throughout the season to help with costs.

4. Last time I checked, varsity athletics were open to anyone willing to try out. Yes, you need to make the team.

But, I also pay Feds fees that support clubs such as the Aboriginal Students Association, African Students Association, and Jewish Students Association to name a few. Being neither Aboriginal, African, nor Jewish, it is quite apparent that I am supporting clubs that I will quite likely never be a part of.

5. By signing your letter anonymously, it is quite apparent that you do not feel strongly enough about this issue to take a significant stand.

While all students have the right to know where their money is being spent, I am extremely disappointed that you would try to skew the results in a manner such as this.

— Cindy Willits UW Varsity Track and Field

See more letters on page 9

55

I

t seems there are as many people dedicated to spreading the word that Jesus Christ didn’t exist, as there are spreading the word that he was the believed Son of God, from whom Christianity gained its roots.

It is almost impossible to approach this topic impartially. What you believe and how you feel about religion will ultimately determine your point of view and consequently alter your conclusion. There is evidence for both sides, and, while the burden of proof rests on the shoulders of the “Christ existed” team, it is still difficult to convince either side the other opinion is even possible — let alone true. Sometimes shadows on Mars are easily mistaken for teapots, and conversely a teapot could hide in the many craters on Mars’ surface.

What is more important than debating things such as the evidence, or the lack of evidence, is recognizing some fundamental things we can all agree on despite whether or not a historical Christ actually existed.

With almost 2.1 billion Christians, the influence that Christ has on the world is undeniable, but even more important to consider is the

symbol He represents. Christ has been recognized by three major religions as at least a good moral teacher, and, if He did exist, He was humble, compassionate, and wise even when suffering the ultimate betrayal. As a symbol for Christians, He is the hope of redemption for mankind and the epitome of unconditional forgiveness and love. Even compared to more contemporary influential figures, Christ has qualities and values that could inspire even Oprah.

Christ taught forgiveness, love, the act of sharing, not judging others, focusing on our personal sins, and even ensuring there is enough wine at weddings. These are good lessons that everyone should take to heart, no matter who taught them, fictional or not. While some people do atrocious things in the name of Christ, you should recognize that Christ never taught people to bomb abortion clinics or protest gay marriage; ironically, He spoke against such acts and treatment toward other people.

Even if we did all decide that Christ existed there is the even larger question of whether or not he truly was the “Son

of God,” and what that means exactly.

It is difficult to recognize His teachings and disregard all the times he was proclaimed to be the “Son of God” or the times He was referred to as God. It is also possible that this has been misinterpreted, as even the term “Son of God” is scattered throughout the Old and New Testaments with various meanings. This subject divides several major religions which is the last thing Christ, real or not, would want.

So, in the search for truth, the only thing Christian believers can really do is stay true to the spirit of Christianity. Maybe we will never really know if Christ existed, and maybe it isn’t even impossible for such a man to have lived. The truth is that Christ taught us something and if you believe in those lessons, He lives through your thoughts and actions. We can’t let this divide us because that’s just stupid. It is not in physical or historical evidence that you will find the truth; it is in understanding each other that you will truly know who was or wasn’t and only then will the “truth set you free” John 8:32. mharvey@imprint.uwaterloo.ca

A private affair

H

ome to many of Canada’s first European settlers, birthplace of countless leaders and revolutionaries, Canada would not be the same without Quebec.

With that said, it was only 13 years ago that Quebec narrowly voted against independence in a referendum.

Currently, 51 of Quebec’s 75 Members of Parliament are members of the Bloc Quebecois. Their party’s most recent electoral platform summary speaks only of problems with the Federal government intruding on Quebec’s rights under the heading of “democracy,” reminding voters that “sovereignty will ensure that the people of Quebec can make their own decisions.”

Despite the Bouchard-Taylor Commission’s recently released report on accommodation in Quebec suggesting more accommodation and help for newcomers, many in the province are still up in arms. Commenting on the report, the Bloc clings to our Conservative government’s controversial motion, declaring “that this House recognize[s] that the Quebecois form a nation within a united Canada.”

The Bloc alters this thought, suggesting that “the people of Quebec form a nation.” The difference is subtle. Both acknowledge that there is a nation of Quebeckers, but the

Bloc posits that everyone in Quebec is part of this nation, complete with common values that should be further entrenched in Quebec.

The Globe and Mail reports that they also suggest the Federal government stop collecting taxes in favour of Quebec collecting them and writing the Feds a cheque. Quebec should also be able to withdraw from Canada’s multiculturalism laws, to establish French language pushing regulators similar to the CRTC, and to engrain Quebec’s language law more deeply in the province.

Quebec’s push for control and distinctiveness stretches back decades, from provincial Parti Quebecois member Daniel Turp’s recent petition to have a .qc internet domain similar to the domains granted to sovereign countries, all the way back to a rule that survived for two years in the NHL draft that permitted the Montreal Canadiens to turn in up to two picks in the draft a year to receive picks before all other teams, picks that could only be used to draft French Canadian players.

Without acceptance, Canada would not have been the final destination on the Underground Railroad, nor would we host countless refugees and immigrants from around the world seeking a better life. Quebec Premier

Jean Charest was correct to denounce the Commission’s recommendation that a large crucifix be removed from the provincial legislature, the CBC reported. He rightly said that it represents Quebec’s history and heritage, a difficult point to argue.

The needed change is still accommodating others, the difference between the House’s declaration of the Quebecois nation and the Bloc’s view of all Quebec residents making up that nation. If Quebeckers want to cherish their heritage, nothing is stopping them from doing so, just as countless cultures have done for centuries.

People and the world have seldom thought fondly of those who promote their beliefs to the exclusion of others.

A historical crucifix does belong in the provincial legislature, but it is also right that swearing in at a trial should not be forcibly done over a Bible, nor should any girls in Quebec be forbidden from attending school in a hijab. By all means, culture should be preserved and cherished, but not at the expense of leaving individuals with the choice of either adopting it or being excluded from society. If coercion is necessary to perpetuate a culture’s existence, is that culture worth preserving? adodds@imprint.uwaterloo.ca

Twice: Two spirits, twice the problem Continued from page 6

465 PHILLIP STREET LOCATION ONLY

746-6893 LIMITED TIME OFFER

Two-Spirit males are at a higher risk for suicide than other aboriginal males and white gays.

Two-Spirit youths in urban areas are more likely to become street kids with the guys more likely to become male prostitutes and rent-boys than their heterosexual counterparts and white gay counterparts. Finally, Two-Spirits have a much higher risk of abusing and becoming addicted to drugs, and

sharing dirty needles. These kids are in many instances the highest risk group in all of Canada.

Because the problem is so large and tangled, the solution isn’t an easy one. Empowering native youth and contributing to social institutions for Two-Spirits within the native community isn’t limited to involvement with native reserves. It’s important to remember that aboriginals in Canada also face difficulty in urban centres and

institutions designed for gay youth don’t necessarily apply to Two-Spirits.

Recognizing the need for a different approach to native issues in urban Canada is all the general populace can do right now. It might not seem like much, but recognition of the issue is the first step towards a solution that works for everyone and one step away from desperation. tmyers@imprint.uwaterloo.ca

Opinion

Imprint, Friday, May 30, 2008

Letters, continued Re: Pissed off to be paying — May 16, 2008 [Anonymous]Your opinion about our $124 fee that goes to Athletics is valid. But as was noted, that whole fee doesn’t go to varsity sports.

But I disagree with you, especially because you put down varsity athletics at our school. I am not a varsity athlete, but I do play intramurals, and I have a lot of respect for those athletes who rep our school, as well as take on full course loads.

I am pretty big on that whole “school spirit” thing, which you obviously lack, and sadly our university as a whole lacks. Students should care about their varsity athletes because these are people who are achieving outside of academics who are putting Waterloo’s name on the map for things other than engineering. For example, did you know we have an Olympic swimmer on campus? Yeah, neither did I until I read last weeks Imprint.

Lastly, you seem to be preoccupied with varsity clothing... which I don’t even know if that’s what the fee is for. But I’m OK with paying for our football team’s tracksuits seeing as this university doesn’t provide them with a home stadium [ Editor’s note: UW home stadium is currently in the works] with their colours to play on.

More funding for varsity athletics, let’s be more well rounded. Not everyone is an engineer at Waterloo.

— Tanya Casole-Gouveia

Recreation and lesiure

Re: Pissed off to be paying — May 16, 2008 To begin, I believe it is important to make the reader aware that I play varsity sports and am a three-year member of the school’s rugby team here at UW. The first and most obvious inaccuracy in Mr. Anonymous’ article is his belief that the varsity program is some sort of thrift store, whose job it is to cloth the school’s athletes.

The “personalized sports wear” seen around campus is paid for by the athletes themselves. It is a cost that is additional to our funding from the school, the money we raise and the team fees we pay. The fees paid to athletics only makes up a portion of the funding for varsity teams.

From personal experience, I know that each member of my team paid $100 in my first two years and $150 this past season to supplement funding from athletics. On top of the money paid from our own pockets, there are donations from alumni and corporate sponsors. Furthermore, many teams hold fundraising events. Within the last four months, the rugby team held a high school camp, the hockey team a competitive tournament, and the football team has several fundraising events including a successful super bowl party at Bomber. According to an interview done by Imprint with Judy McCrae, UW’s athletics director, “Athletics gets the bulk of their funding from what they raise themselves.” And

right now, the bulk of what they raise comes from alumni donations.

The fees also subsidize intramurals and cover the costs of the PAC and CIF. Without those fees it would not be possible to have open pool, gym and squash court times. It would be impossible to play in an ice hockey league for $180 a term. We would not be able to walk into PAC or CIF and use the weight rooms without charge. Not all students make use of the services provided by their Athletics fees, but according to Athletics director Judy McCrae 75 per cent of students are involved some activity offered by the Athletics and Recreation department. Similar to the bus pass that allows many students a means of transport to and from school, or the school’s dental plan, or the writing center, funding athletics with a student service fee allows all students access to good services, even if some choose not to partake.

— Derek McCubbin

Art/history

Re: The world after CKMS — May 16, 2008 As a student volunteer at CKMS, I have a little bit of an inside view of what goes on, although I can’t go into details. It seems like things really are going to be changing over the summer for CKMS and I think that the students should be aware of the results of the referendum that occurred a few months ago.

As you know, CKMS’ student fund-

Campus Bulletin CO-OP/CAREER SERVICES Prerequisite Workshop Information – since the activities in some of the workshops build on the material presented in online modules from the Career Development eManual, you will need to complete the pre-work(as noted in the chart below) as a first step before registering for a face-toface workshop. If you have submitted any of these modules in PD1, COOP 101 or Co-op Fundamentals for Engineering, you have satisfied this requirement and may register for the workshop.

Interview Skills: Preparing for Quetions – complete module Interview Skills. Interview Skills: Selling Your Skills – complete module Interview Skills. Networking 101 – complete module Work Search. Work Search Strategies – complete Work Search.

Wednesday, June 4 – Career Exploration and Decision Making – 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., TC 1112.

STUDENT AWARDS FINANCIAL AID 2nd floor, Needles Hall, ext 33583.

Please refer to safa.uwaterloo.ca to view a full listing of scholarships and awards.

PLEASE NOTE: effective May 1, 2008 we can no longer accept the UW Watcard as a form of ID. Acceptable government photo ID includes valid drivers license, passport, immigration card, or citizenship card.

Some spring 2008 grant cheques have arrived. Stop by or call the above extension.

June 4 – last day to submit OSAP Reinstatement Form to add spring term to fall only term (for co-op students).

OSAP Application deadline (full funding) for spring only term. Deadline to submit OSAP Signature Pages and Supporting Documentation for spring only term.

CHURCH SERVICE St. Bede’s chapel at Renison College offers worship on Sundays at 10:30 a.m.

Come and walk the labyrinth the second Thursday of each month, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. For more info contact Megan at 519-884-4404, ext 28604 or www.renison.uwaterloo.ca/ministry-centre.

VOLUNTEER

City of Waterloo, 519-888-6488 or volunteer@city.waterloo.on.ca has many volunteer opportunities.

Check out the website today.

Volunteer Action Centre, 519-7428610 or www.volunteerkw.ca, has many opportunities available – visit the website or call today!

The Kitchener Youth Action Council is currently seeking volunteers aged 14-24 who are concerned about issues facing youth and young adults across Kitchener. For more info e-mail youth@kitchener.ca.

The tri-Pride Community Association is looking for people to get involved with various projects leading up to Pride Week 2008 which will take place during the month of June. For more info e-mail info@triPride.ca or www.tri-Pride.ca.

Summer volunteer opportunities with Family and Children’s Services of the Waterloo Region. Summer buddies, reading club, special events assistants and drivers needed. Contact 519-576-1329, ext 3411 or volunteer.services@facswaterloo.org.

Volunteer Board of Director Secretary position available immediately to May 1/09, at Imprint Publications,UW. Email president@ imprint.uwaterloo.ca for more info.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

“Morning Drive Radio Show” – 6:30 to 9 a.m., www.ckmsfm.ca, click on webcast for the latest news, traffic,

school closures, interviews and a great mix of music! To get your important events on the air, e-mail morningdrivel@yahoo.ca. If you have an interesting person that CKMS should interview call 519-884-2567 between 6:30 to 9 a.m....qualify for a prize!

The Grand House Student Co-operative is a non-profit housing co-op comprised of architecture students from UW, community members and professionals. Workshops are being organized on environmental techniques, solar power, non-toxic materials and more. For info/registration visit the website at www.grandhouse. wacsa.org.

UPCOMING

Sunday, June 1, 2008 “Shed A Light On AIDS Walk” – starts in Victoria Park at the statue of Queen Victoria. The Walk is to raise funds and awareness for programs within Waterloo Regions only AIDS service organization.

For info call Lynn at 519-570-3687 or volunteer@acckwa.com.

Friday, June 6, 2008 “A Special Arts Evening” – 7 p.m. at Victoria Park, Clock Tower. Call 519-7412912 for more info.

Saturday, June 7, 2008 10th Annual Charity Golf Classic of Bereaved Families of Ontario-Midwestern Region will be at Conestoga Golf and Country Club beginning with registration at 11:30 a.m. and shotgun start at 12:30 p.m. For more info call 519-894-8344 or www.bfomidwest.org/golf.

Think you got game? Compete for victory in challenges that test your creative and mental mettle at the Google Games. For registration/questions: googlegames@ google.com.

Sunday, June 8, 2008 4th Annual Day in the Park: K-W Non-Violence Festival – music, friends and good times is being held at Victoria Park Island from noon to 10 p.m. For more info www. kwhm.org.

ing from Feds was removed effective at the end of August.

By the end of June, it is likely that almost all the paid staff will no longer be employed by CKMS. Still the station faces many difficulties: being evicted from station property by the University of Waterloo at the Bauer warehouse and meeting bills such as insurance, internet, phone, and office station materials. Also a solid commitment from volunteers will be needed to fill in for staff duties, legal responsibilities, training and operational expertise.

I myself am filling two timeslots, 3 – 5 p.m. on Tuesdays, NeoVibeSolarium (trance/hardcore) and a late show Saturday nights from midnight with a wider variety of music. In addition to my airtime, I am also helping enter new releases into the station library, and a wide variety of music is sent to the station.

I‘m not sure what the situation is with Paul Heap, the very experienced news co-ordinator, I’ve had the benefit of hearing his news broadcasts, and they are both warm and informative.

I’m not really sure what will be going on with Bill Whirlie, the technical coordinator, and along with that what will happen to Palindrome studios.

While Palindrome is undergoing some renovations due to fire code issues with the old burlap sound isolation, I am guessing that the studio will again be available — but who is going to co-ordinate and manage it?

CMKS is still a tremendous local resource, and while there may be many changes by the end of June, CKMS, in my opinion still could use the support of the student body, to offer student oriented programming, and provide a resource, as a media outlet, and facilita-

9

tor for studio production.

Since the referendum, there hasn’t been much notice by Imprint or otherwise on what is occurring at CKMS as a result of the referendum. CKMS — while undergoing major changes and it seems, unofficially a gradual disappearance of the paid staff — faces major issues even outside of financial continuance.

Act now before it is too late: if you were one of the 1,000 or so students who supported CKMS continuing to exist, we really do need to co-ordinate now before it is too late. We must ensure that CKMS doesn’t lose its physical location, and we must ensure that CKMS stays integrated with university life, groups like WPIRG, and Waterloo Athletics, and numerous other university institutions — not to mention the facilitation of media to cover FEDS events and postings.

Currently, half the board is students from UW — this may all change by the fall, and dissolution of the compact with the community and campus needs to be avoided.

You can contact me if you would like to help with Save CKMS (Round 2: the real deal), this isn’t about a funding formula but about survival of the station because a loss of the physical structure and manpower and expertise needed to keep the station running legally. While funding may play into it, if the University honours the 10 year old lease and continues providing free use of the Bauer warehouse then CKMS’ direct operating costs are mostly negligible. However, I, unofficially speaking, feel CKMS really does require the university’s support.

— William Ashley

CKM volunteer

Imprint, Friday, May 30, 2008 news@imprint.uwaterloo.ca

SPORTS

Friday, June 13/08 Internet Gambling: Current Situation and Future Trends – Dr. Williams, University of Lethbridge, will discuss the history of internet gambling and its prevalence world-wide, from 10 to 11 a.m., Community Hall, Albert McCormick Community Centre, Waterloo.

Saturday, June 21, 2008 Uptown Country Festival – Regina Street, beside City Hall. Check out www. uptowncountrywaterloo.com for all info. on the stars, vendors, etc.

Attention female slo-pitch players – coed league, Sunday mornings, May 4 to August 24. No long weekends. Kitchener. $65. E-mail evansmatthew@rogers.com.

Row for Heart – learn to row: register a crew of five or as an individual. Eight week lessons start the week of June 16.

Call 519-571-9600 or www.fitforheart. ca for more information.

FOR SALE

LOST & FOUND

Cambridge brand new E-Bike less than 4 kms. Travels 50 km on a single charge.

No license or insurance required. Asking $1,295. Please call 905-699-4034.

Found: a bracelet in REN 2102. E-mail description and contact information to wordchick@gmail.com (put “bracelet” in the subject line) and I’ll get it back to you.

Classified HELP WANTED

Weekend counsellors and relief staff to work in homes for individuals with developmental challenges. Minimum eight-month commitment. Paid positions. Send resume to Don Mader, KW Habilitation Services, 108 Sydney Street, Kitchener, ON, N2G 3V2.

University of Waterloo Student Security Services is looking for outgoing and motivated individuals currently holding a valid Ontario “G” class licence to become part of RideSafe team. For more information and to apply, e-mail your resume to uwpss@uwaterloo.ca.

Support person needed for 14 year old boy with autism. Support for summer camps and weekend outings in the community and supervision within the home during the school year. Must be creative with activity planning, altruistic in your desire to work with a special needs child and must have own vehicle.

Laurelwood subdivision. $12-$13/hour depending on experience plus .37/km.

Call Deborah 519-746-1584.

HOUSING

Attention Cambridge School of Architecture students! Live conveniently and comfortably right across the street from school in this beautifully renovated apartment. 4, 8 and 12-month leases available with excellent signing bonuses and rental incentives! Call Darlene or Joanne at 519-746-1411 for more details.

Lovely three bedroom home with one plus half baths, basement and garage in Laurelwood, Waterloo. Appliances are available including washer/dryer. $1,245/month plus utilities. Long-term lease prefered. Available June 1. Please e-mail Tracy at tracy_morgan2@hotmail.com or call 519-886-8219.

Room for rent for a quiet individual in a detached house near both universities. Parking and all amenities. Please call 519-725-5348.

Summer sublet – May to August 08 – $300+negotiable. Call Jason at 613-9895210 or kenkaniff02@hotmail.com.

10

Comics & Distractions

POSTSCRIPT

Imprint, Friday, May 30, 2008

BY GRAHAM MOOGK-SOULIS

IMPRESSION, BY JIM & LAN

BY PETER N. TRINH

GUEST COMIC

BY SONIA LEE

Now you know why they call it a “con”...

Prostitution ring on campus

S

ounds implausible, but on June 4, 1993 Imprint reported that the “Black Orchid Escort Service” was open for business at a room in the Married Student Apartments (MSA) on UW’s campus. Flyers advertising Black Orchid’s “services” and rates were distributed to residents on Lester and Philip St. An Imprint staff member had inquired further at the time, but upon arriving at MSA he was informed the escort had unfortunately cancelled their appointment. A representative of Black Orchid did however tell Imprint that math and engineering students, as well as UW staff, were frequent customers. An eviction notice was issued for the rented room at MSA, and police laid no charges.

Comics & Distractions

Imprint, Friday, May 30, 2008

Crossword Maggie Clark

Across 1. Droops 5. Room for experiments 8. Latin for to be: second person singular, imperfect tense 13.You might use a hoop to do this 14. ____ the Red 16. Circular staircases wind about this 17. Norse god of war, for one 18. Effuse 19. Incongruities between an understanding of reality, and what happens in reality 20. Rank directly below group captain 23. An official language in South Africa 24. The opposite of seme, in Japanese 25. At the beginning or end of each month, your rent is this 28. Pro-choice advocates are sometimes called this 33. “Notre” in English 36. Short form of “hurrah” 37. Ezra Pound’s middle name 38. Untouched, as in food 41. Light boat used to tender to larger vessels 42. Macbeth was one of these, of Cawdor 43. Place 44. Not a Number 45. Generally not seen in a democracy 49. To choose to do something 50. Female sheep 51. Sees to 55. Canada’s Wonderland, for one 60. Books of the Bible accepted as Scripture 62. The longest river in Africa 63. “In ___ of” 64. A sequence of eight 65. To size up or study (slang) 66. Pertaining to a mountain range between Europe and Asia 67. Plaster used in sculpture 68. Convened with 69. A crumbly clay mixture used as fertilizer for lime-deficient soils Down 1. Demonstrates 2. Relating to sound

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To the drunk girl that spilled wine on my shirt and puked in my shoes: how you doing? *wink*

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3. Gleam 4. Buddhist concept meaning “assembly” 5. Building blocks for all ages 6. A species of poisonous plant with arrowheaded leaves 7. The chemical element that “goes both ways,” according to its symbol 8. From “enaid,” meaning soul or life 9. Ecological communities formed through ecological succession 10. A knight or samurai is this 11. Even, to Shakespeare 12. Crafty 15. A colour and kind of short 21. Corn comes on this 22. Neolithic tone tool 26. Phoenician colony near Carthage 27. A German city; also, the first five letters in “the bare ________” 29. Agamemnon’s son 30. Hillary did this for presidential candidacy 31. Latin for “not” 32. A positively or negatively charged atom or molecule

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Dear Sparkles - You sit alone in Psych 338.

The sparkles on your jeans caught my eye when you walked out of class. I’ll make your eyes sparkle more than your jeans if you let me. I’m the brunette staring at you from the back of the room. See you soon - Your future love

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What is your worst off campus housing story ?

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by Michael Gregory

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You called my house from some UW calling centre.You have a sexy voice; do you make house calls ? - Star sixty-nine

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Maggie Clark

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33. Perform better than 34. Uncool 35. The inputs in a chemical reaction 39. Common insect 40. Hot beverage, not coffee 41. Liquid forming in infected tissues 43. Regular amount paid for an insurance policy 46. Clive ____, ____ Wilson 47. Individual Time Trial 48. A “sword and sandal” film 52. Nigerian currency 53. Causing dejection 54. Item Hamlet famously holds in a graveyard 56. Several extinct species of flightless New Zealand birds 57. To free from ties 58. Or 59. Where little birdies dwell 60. As a university student, you might feel like one of these in “the machine” 61. Card denoting one or eleven in black jack

May. 16 solutions

editor@imprint.uwaterloo.ca

“Someone broke my windshield and didn’t come to tell me.”

Aliya Kanani 1b english

“Having to tip-toe into my parent’s house after a late night at work.”

Andres Fuentes Feds VP education

“A cold cellar disguised as a room.”

“Roomates having loud sex the night before my exam.”

Biology graduate studies

3a sociology

Darryl Jones

Dunja Miskovic

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9 8 5 4 2 8 Thanks to the girl at UWshop for fitting me with my Math ring. This may be a bit direct, but given the chance, I’d like to put a ring on your finger too. Come to my convocation and we’ll grab lunch with my folks after. L.L You’re in my PSCI 260 tutorial (Sec 103).

Your understanding of Aboriginal Affairs reallys turns me on. - Your little “Poke-mehontas Remember that time we talked about that movie after our History class, “All Quiet on the Western Front” ? I’ve been meaning

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“Basement flooded — they pumped the water out the side of the house.”

Farhan Lala

“ My place wasn’t finished when I moved in.”

Krista Mathias

Health studies and gerontology

4b legal studies

to ask you if you’d like to get wild on my southern front. Call me.

I saw you studying Econ a few days ago in the SLC. You hi-light in pink; it’s cute. I’ve been hoping you’d come by again, but I haven’t seen you. Please come back.

You drive the Ridesafe van. I’m on the pill.

Drop me off last this Friday night ? I’ll be wearing the Lulu pants. - ‘Friday I’m in love’ Missed a connection? Wanna break the ice?

Send your missed connections to distractions@imprint.uwaterloo.ca

“Landlord had an Inukshuk built on our front lawn.”

Lizzy Kaempffer 2b health studies

“I live in UWP — it’s perfect.”

Natalie Long

2b health studies

How green is my campus?

A six-part series on environmental sustainability at UW

Part 1: The Way We Eat

May 16, 2008

Part 2: Spaces We Inhabit May 30, 2008

Part 3: Stewardship and You June 14, 2008 Part 4: Human Communities June 28, 2008 Part 5: High Tech, Low Impact July 11, 2008 Part 6: Growth for the Future July 25, 2008

Sustainability is...

1. The measure of how and what we consume, and the impact those choices have on our ability to maintain present practices indefinitely.

2. How we inhabit buildings and similar surroundings — are we building for today and tomorrow?

3. How we share communal spaces: are we protecting the longevity of natural resources, flora, and fauna as well?

4. How we interact and build social networks together, to spread awareness and to entrench more environmentally-friendly living habits.

5. How we develop and treat new technologies, as well as other consumer goods: Are we enhancing our society in ways that reduce waste and promote habits that can be sustained over time?

6. How we plan for tomorrow — are we learning from the past, and leaving a better mark for generations to come?

How green is my campus?

Are we really green in our innovation?

Guy Halpern staff reporter

E UW: The facts show, it’s not me — it’s you

Rosalind Gunn staff reporter

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n the case of UW vs. Green, it is not a matter of the institution falling short of modern expectations, but a matter of us, the students, failing our own green initiatives.

To generalize, a day in the life of a UW student: fall out of bed, get dressed, go to school, buy a double-double (in a wax-lined paper cup), buy some breakfast wrapped in wax paper tossed in a paper bag, go to some classes, then buy some lunch. For lunch, one will hypothetically have a slice of pizza, held on a cardboard plate, a can of soda, and a non-recyclable bag of potato chips. Smiling at how dead-on I am in my description?

I’ve described only one student and already I’ve filled a grocery bag with garbage — most of which is not recyclable. Multiply this one student by about 25,000 students (enrolled at UW) then by 5 days a week. That makes 125,000 grocery bags of garbage per week in a regular term. Yet, frighteningly enough, we will not even come close to the astronomical levels of waste production that occurs on this campus.

In an interview with UW Custodial & Grounds Director, Tom Galloway, numbers were discussed.

For the 2007 fiscal year, an audit was conducted, which looked at the waste production of buildings such as the DP, MC, SLC, the V1 food services, as well as a UWP Residence. The findings showed that UW produced a grand total of 2088 tonnes of waste and 359 tonnes of recyclable materials.

Excluding the architecture campus in Cambridge, it costs $167,000 of UW’s funds to cart the waste off of campus, $21,000 for just cardboard, and $8,600 for the cans, plastic, and glass. I’ll do the math for you: that is a whopping $196,600 being thrown in the garbage. Take into account, that these costs do not include the cost of having custodial staff to collect the waste from every room in every building.

Aside from the fact that UW students are producing so much garbage, some of us are adding to the malady by improperly disposing our waste. Of the total waste produced on campus — that’s garbage including recyclables — 57 per cent of it is divertible.

Of that 57 per cent, we are recycling only 29 per cent of it. 14 per cent of it is not making its way to blue and white bins; it is being thrown into garbage cans.

Maybe not everyone is aware of the differences in

coloured bins. Here’s a handy guide; black: garbage: food, and non-recyclables; blue: cans, plastic, and glass; white: paper.

Galloway discussed the prospect of UW moving from private garbage pick-up (that for which we have to pay) to the city system, which comes out of our taxes, meaning a much smaller hit on the UW bank account. It also means more extensive recycling; under our current system, items such as tinfoil cannot be recycled.

Junk aside, another facet to measuring UW’s ecological footprint, is looking at resource consumption.

Going into this exploration, I expected to find our campus cutting corners and discrediting the merit of being eco-friendly. As it turns out, UW has, in fact, the lowest electrical consumption per square foot of all Ontario universities since 1981.

In an interview with Rick Zalagenas, Director of Maintenance & Utilities, I found that he is a great advocator of cutting down on resource consumption. “In the grand scheme of things, with the last 20 years, our electrical load has stayed pretty constant,” says Zalagenas. “To maintain status quo on the load is really quite the feat.” And it is, especially considering the growth rate in population and buildings this campus has undergone.

A major project contributing to this result is lighting, the installation of energy-efficient lights all over campus.

The fact of the matter is that when weighing the cost-benefit of electrical cutbacks, among other resource consumption cutbacks, it is indeed beneficial to invest in newer, more conservative technology.

Electricity prices can rise significantly on the market — especially during the summer. Using an energy-efficient alternative has an obvious positive result.

Other areas that have been altered to reduce campus consumption are refrigeration and air regulation.

Cooling plants and new refrigeration units being implemented all over campus within the last 6-7 years have led to a 30 per cent decline in electrical load (measured in kilowatts per tonne).

An enormous contributor to waste production and energy consumption is the residential portion of the campus. Are residences doing enough in regard to recycling and energy consumption?

Students polled from various residences generally agree that recycling and waste management is well-handled in the residences. Receptacles are made

apparent and frequent in the hallways. However, as Ethan Lerner, an electrical engineering student who lived in Ron Eydt Village, says, “The problem with recycling came within the rooms, where they only provided us with a garbage can... since people were generally too lazy to walk to the common or laundry room, there was a lack of recycling.”

Alexis Biermann, an Honours history student, said that dons do not push the importance of recycling enough, “or that the consequences [are not] harsh enough for people who [don’t recycle].” She suggests seminars for new students on recycling, as well as punishments for people who do not do it properly. Bierman’s idea is not too far out there: the city of Guelph has a three garbage bag system in place, with fines for persons who do not comply with the system.

There is one encouraging success story in the residences: that of St. Paul’s winning the Residence Reduction Challenge 2008. The challenge was “fully embraced by the students and staff at St. Paul’s College,” said Rob McAllister, St. Paul’s dean of student services. They were awarded two first place awards for “The Greatest Support” and “The Lowest Ecological Footprint.”

How did they do it? McAllister explains, “Our Residence Life Team keep students motivated through floor meetings, posters, and newsletter updates. The success was achieved by reducing water consumption, increasing our recycling efforts, and making sure lights and equipment were turned off when not required.”

The problem of unsustainable actions does not lie with our Plant Ops; it lies with us, the students. St. Paul’s College is proof positive that the residences can indeed reduce consumption levels and very easily.

For information on recycling, go online at www. wastemanagement.uwaterloo.ca for a comprehensive guide. There you can find more information on properly disposing of waste and recyclables.

Something you may not know is that old cell phones, instead of being tossed in the garbage, can be taken to SLC rooms 3102 or 1001 for the Phones for Food charity, For more information on UW’s resource consumption and green initiatives, check out www. environment.uwaterloo.ca/index.html.

nvironmentalism, in this era of widespread public concern, sometimes feels like a mid-century war effort. The governments of the world are enacting wise, far-reaching plans, but you too can do your part. Install compact florescent light bulbs, low-flow shower heads, and well insulated windows; buy a hybrid to drive to your local market, and then throw the organic waste into your vermicomposter. Working together, we can save the world from the evils of global warming and environmental degradation.

Yes, I’m cynical; as a journalist, it tends to come with the territory. Any simple solutions to the massive environmental problems facing the world seem, for lack of a better descriptor, too easy. Humanity worked long and hard to get itself into the mess it’s in today, and it stands to reason that salvation will only be reached through some sort of dramatic reordering of society.

Thankfully, that is not entirely the case. Slightly modifying our habits to increase our energy efficiency won’t save the world on its own but it still stands to have a significant impact on our greenhouse gas emissions.

The David Suzuki Foundation claims that in Canada alone there are $30 billion in savings to be had from more efficient energy practices. The University of Waterloo, as a self-proclaimed centre for innovation, should be at the forefront of this movement toward greater energy efficiency. Is our school really “Green with Innovation,” or is our administration just blessed with a very slick marketing team?

The answer to that, like the answer to any broad question, depends on the criteria used to judge. According to a bulletin posted on the university’s “Green with Innovation” site, UW “has consistently performed better than the Ontario university system average in terms of energy efficiency per square meter.”

With so many well-endowed academic institutions in the province this is impressive in its own right. The website goes on to describe the installation of compact florescent and high-pressure

sodium light bulbs in conjunction with occupancy sensors at locations throughout campus, as well as low-flow shower heads and reduced-flow plumping.

That said, walking through the campus at night reveals many buildings still lit, despite their apparent emptiness. Anecdotal to be sure, but a more telling criticism may be found in the university’s refusal to sign the Talloires Declaration. The document is a “ten-point action plan for incorporating sustainability and environmental literacy in teaching, research, operations and outreach at colleges and universities,” according to the website of the Association of University Leaders for a Sustainable Future. Almost all of Canada’s major universities have signed on, including the University of Toronto, the University of British Columbia, and McGill University. The reasoning behind UW’s refusal to sign requires more research and paper than this article affords, but there is much to be learned from the experiences of other Canadian campuses.

The University of British Columbia (UBC) arguably has the most advanced sustainability program of any school in Canada.

It was the first to have a sustainability office and the recently completed Ecotrek initiative led to core building energy use reductions of 20 per cent, water use reductions of 30 per cent, and greenhouse gas emission reductions of 15 per cent. The school buys green power credits from BC Hydro, thereby ensuring the expansion of renewable energy production on the local grid.

Taken as a whole, the Ecotrek initiative will result in savings estimated at a minimum of $2.6 million annually.

Although less developed than UBC’s program, Concordia University in Montreal has also had some success with implementing a more energy efficient campus. Through an ambitious retrofitting program, they’ve reduced their energy requirements, managing to remain the most efficient school in Quebec for the past nine years. Refreshingly, they’re also candid about the challenges that lie ahead: in 2006, they completed their first emissions audit for the campus, revealing that in 2005-2006 they produced over 13 000 tonnes of greenhouse gases. Perhaps most excitingly, their recently completed John Molson School of Business is LEED

(Leadership in Energy Efficiency and Design) certified, a difficult to achieve classification.

With all that said, UW is doing well in terms of improving energy efficiency. According to their website, its energy use levels are 40 per cent lower than the average commercial or institutional user on the Ontario grid. Partially through federal funding, the school has retrofitted a growing number of buildings with much more efficient heating systems, and a significant amount of heat that was once vented through Plant Operations’ large smokestack is now trapped and used to heat buildings.

The school is clearly applying new, more efficient technologies and is performing well in relation to its regional neighbours, so it’s tempting to conclude that UW’s “Green with Innovation” slogan is meant with all earnestness. However, there is a significant difference between what UW has accomplished in terms of efficiency and what schools like UBC and Concordia are attempting to do. By enshrining sustainability in official university policy and making it an important goal to lead by example, both schools have demonstrated a commitment to innovation that makes our slogan ring comparably hollow.

While Concordia has, for instance, created two new administrative positions dedicated to campus sustainability, Waterloo saw the close of WATgreen, a flawed but productive program for greening the campus. UBC and Concordia have both built LEED certified buildings, yet the new Accounting building’s much vaunted green-roof was cancelled due to concerns about cost. At the most fundamental level, UW needs to live up to its own hype; if it truly wants to be leader in efficiency and green innovation, signing the Talloires Declaration and thereby affirming an ideological and financial commitment to sustainability would be a step in the right direction. The school’s progress in becoming more efficient is laudable but requires re-examination in light of what other leading Canadian institutions are accomplishing. ghalpern@imprint.uwaterloo.ca

rgunn@imprint.uwaterloo.ca

Part 2 of 6: Spaces We Inhabit joanna sevilla

joanna sevilla

Green thoughts from staff in...

Talking “Green” with Dr. Roger Mannel, the Dean of Applied Health Sciences David Yip staff reporter

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n Winter 2008 Imprint reported that plans for a Central Sustainability Office were not approved by the school administration. Dean Roger Mannell of Applied Health Sciences weighs on the decision.

We believe in Waterloo that good initiatives and innovations come from localities. While I do think it’s important to co-ordinate, I don’t think the decision at this point in time to not support an office of sustainability suggest that there wouldn’t be a some kind of attempt to coordinate and facilitate things centrally, and I do expect to see that function just not [in the form of an] office.

We’ll continue to look at it over time, I would hope both centrally initiated incentives and thinking at the central level that will also be promoted. If there are good ideas that emerge within a faculty, then maybe it should be picked up and spread across campus, so I think we need a central component to that.

Mannell was also asked about the environmental initiatives that take place with AHS itself. In addition the campus wide initiatives on recycling, AHS has also looked at reducing energy use in its newest building, reducing paper use, especially through double-sided printing, as well as research into healthy communities.

A couple specific things we’re doing, we’re part of campus wide initiatives to recycle, waste management and all those kind of things. The Hallman Institute for Health Promotion, that is our most recent building, we certainly looked at lighting and a whole range of things that would make it more environmentally friendly, we don’t have a green roof though. But we have tried to do things, new modern blinds that allow us to control temperature more effectively.

We’ve just gone to a program that just came out of our computing department, our IT group inside the faculty, we’re replacing all our printers with duplex printers so we can print both sides and all our student printing is now duplex and that’s the default, so if you want to go one-sided [you have to go out of your way to change it]. So we’re looking at a variety of initiatives such as that, encouraging recycling.

That’s the kind of level we trying to encourage people […] we’ve done away with memos and a lot of paper, post everything on department websites. Online reports rather than paper reports.

We have a major initiative, a healthy community initiative, it’s linked to our public health research group and that’s also being linked to the school of planning, in Environmental Studies. We’re really part of a group that’s looking to trying to take the lead on sustainable communities that are healthier communities. Walking is definitely an initiative, a doctorate student I worked with, he did his thesis on designing communities that are more walk-able and what kind of recreational and other amenities that will foster more walking.

Among one of the major initiatives was the Zerofootprint project. Zerofootprint is a website that allows calculation of an individual’s carbon footprint and contains suggestions for reducing that footprint. It was launched in Winter 2008 with a friendly competition between ES and AHS, though all on campus were invited to join.

It only seems fair that the Faculty of the Environment threw down the gauntlet, but we were quite happy to pick that up, we’re the two smallest faculties as well. We’ve collaborated arrangements and programs with ES and the whole idea of the environment and health is critical because they are [linked]. What we hope of course is that it will help us focus on what we do in our daily work lives and the other activities we do here, and that each faculty, staff member and student will take it over into their personal lives.

Mannell was also asked about potential challenges or obstacles to developing environmental and sustainability initiatives in his faculty but also on campus.

I think certainly in the initial stages, a communication function could be useful. If there are some innovations that look like they’re worthy of a university-wide implementation we’d need some central co-ordination, whether that’s done through a committee or what function I’m not sure at this time.

“Over the years, we developed the first level of recycling, and that kind of stuff, and as a faculty, we have a lot of experience on doing research on how you change lifestyles, but with a focus on health. It’s becoming so clear that the environment we live in is so linked. Certainly from an academic, research and teaching program side of it, the challenge is of course to make that part of our daily lives. But the Zerofootprint is a way of generating awareness in the community. The real challenge is lifestyle and how you change it. dyip@imprint.uwaterloo.ca

Applied Health Sciences In the interest of maintaining a

truly ongoing poll of students from all faculties across campus, we’re moving our polling data to imprint.uwaterloo.ca.

On a scale of one to ten, with “ten” being very important, how important do you feel environmental sustainability should be to your faculty? And are you willing to see more of your faculty’s financial resources dedicated to environmental sustainability?

Photo Feature

Imprint, Friday, May 30, 2008

17

dinh nguyen

A rock lodged into one of the side windows of the EIT building.

Campus Clicks

Student expression though the lens of a camera. Share your art with us!

Light breaking into the St. Jerome cathedral.

thomas dimson

Machinating in a nook of the mathematics and computer building.

Steven R. McEvoy

Please note: If you are submitting a photo for consideration that clearly features another person, you must have their permission to send that photo to us for publication. That aside, happy snapping!

Send your campus photos, along with the names of consenting individuals in the photos and a brief description, to photos@imprint.uwaterloo.ca.

Features

Imprint, Friday, May 30, 2008 features@imprint.uwaterloo.ca

Altruism after devastation

David Yip

staff reporter

David Yip, a former UW student and Imprint staff reporter who currently resides in China, provided an account of his experience as well as his perspectives of the recent earthquake. He was lucky that he personally was not affected by the disaster. Yip details the situation as it is known to him and how it has affected him as a resident of China and as a Canadian.

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n early May, an earthquake struck the Sichuan province of China, centering on Wenchuan Country. I found out about it the same way many did, on the six o’clock news on TV. Early reports were sketchy, with news of around 5 ,000 dead; by the time I woke up it was clear that it was a significant disaster.

The casualties were in the tens of thousands, and the catastrophe quickly took over every form of media in China. It also dominated the consciousness of every resident of China that I met regularly — who are mostly part of my extended family.

As the scale of the disaster became apparent everyone pitched in to help. Where I am now is Guangzhou, the biggest city in one of the most prosperous areas of China. In comparison, Wenchuan is one of the poorer areas in Sichuan, which itself is one of the poorer provinces in China, supplying much of the migrant labour in the country. My grandmother’s caretaker hails from the province, although her family was unaffected. Here specifically, there was a sense that the rich should definitely help the poor. People rich and poor donated to the cause, including schoolchildren, at least one beggar, industrial tycoons, corporations themselves, and many everyday people.

As the media covered the mass mobilization of troops to the relief effort, the individual actions and announcements of Chinese political leaders and local media also covered relief efforts by individuals. Donation centres for money to the Chinese Red Cross and blood sprung up around major shopping areas in Guangzhou,

and continue to exist. People lined up for hours to donate blood. Many charity concerts have taken place featuring political figures, military figures and business figures, as well as the usual musical and film celebrities. Fundraising took place in Hong Kong and Taiwan as well, and I’m sure in other overseas communities in Canada and the U.S. There is also a donation box in the foyer of my apartment complex, and it wouldn’t surprise me to find the same at many others. Many of my relatives have asked me if I’ve donated — I have and most people I know here have done the same.

A three-day mourning period took place while I was travelling, and signs posted at tourist spots reminded people to observe the moment of silence, even while travelling. For those three days all television channels only broadcast news about the rescue efforts, with all regular programming being suspended. Other entertainment such as karaoke was put on hold for the days of mourning.

Foreign media have praised the unusually open coverage of the disaster, noting that journalists quickly rushed to the quake zone in defiance of a coverage ban, which itself was quickly reversed.

As for myself, the entire experience — which is still ongoing — is quite new to me. I’ve never been in a country which has suffered such an immense natural disaster — 67,183 dead at last count — and I have guiltily noted to myself that I am used to hearing about natural disasters from a distant Western perspective.

Earthquakes, tsunamis and such are things that happen “over there,” and prompt the usual outpouring of donations and sympathy, but you can still watch your favourite shows. In short, after a while I began to tire of hearing about it, as terrible as that sounds. Here, earthquake coverage still dominates the media, although its focus has shifted from finding survivors to the so-called “quake lake.” This lake was formed when a landslide dammed a river, and there are worries that this dam could burst, threatening quake survivors downstream. In addition,

aftershocks continue to disturb the area.

The disaster has also obviously involved me as a Chinese person. The disaster has solidified unity in Chinese people around the world and an outpouring of patriotic sentiment. Emotional outpourings of support for the relief effort both in spontaneous gatherings and organized ones as in charity concerts and rallies have involved many cheers of “Go China!” and many references to “Zhonghua Minzu,” roughly translated as the “Chinese nation,” a multiethnic entity.

Being in the middle of this sentiment is new to me, since Canada, where I have spent most of my life, has never recently been an intensely patriotic country. That said, no natural disaster of this scale has recently struck Canada either.

Again the feeling is a slight tinge of guilt, as if I do not feel as involved in the disaster as much as I should be.

The earthquake has also involved me as a Canadian person. The Chinese government made a point of thanking foreign governments involved in the relief effort. On May 17 President Hu Jintao expressed “heartfelt thanks to the foreign governments and international friends that have contributed to our quake-relief work.” CCTV (Chinese national television) set up a website entitled “Our lovely international friends” detailing the condolences and contributions to relief work made by foreign governments. I searched out the main page for a reference to Canada on the main page, among stories acknowledging Germany, Mexico, Cuba, the U.S. Japan, Mauritius, and Kyrgyzstan. Instead Canada was somewhere in the middle of a long list, with separate stories noting Canada’s financial and material contribution as well official condolences. While I was a bit disappointed that Canada didn’t make the main page, Chinese-Canadian relations are a bit chilly right now, and prominence on the main CCTV page was given where it was due out of respect (The UN, the United States, the United Kingdom) and to new and old Chinese allies (Japan, Russia). dyip@imprint.uwaterloo.ca

Tina Ironstone features editor

As Features editor I sought out to find the Canadian and the Waterloo connection and perspective on the situation; below is my account on the disaster.

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Yushi hu

t has been two weeks since an earthquake shook Western China with a devastating blow.

The earthquake began with its first damaging tremor at 2:28 p.m. on May 12, 2008. The epicentre of the earthquake was located in the city of Wenchuan. Areas in and near the epicentre were the recipients of much of the havoc as most of the buildings and structures came crashing down and left thousands dead, trapped, or injured. In the mountainous areas around Chengdu, the earthquake toppled 80 per cent of the buildings like places of business, homes, and schools, which left many trapped and over 10,000 dead. The damage was mostly confined to larger, more urban areas and nearby towns. The city Chengdu has a population of 10 million and was affected by the earthquake located around 96.5 kilometres away from the epicentre. Unfortunately this was not the last of the catastrophic turmoil to strike China as it was hit with a large aftershock. China’s Sichuan province was hit with a 6.0 aftershock, which according to CNN destroyed 72,000 homes in the area. In Juyuan, a collapsed school left 900 people trapped with frantic family members distraught over loved ones caught in the school. In Shifang there was the explosion of two chemical factories, which produced ammonia and was leaked out into the surrounding areas. This earthquake and the aftershock have caused tremendous damage to the area. A new issue from the damage is “quake lake,” a river that was dammed by the earthquake.

As well there are several dams that are listed as “at risk” for breakage. It is at times like this that helped is needed more than ever and countries across the globe are lending a much-needed hand to this disaster-wrought country.

In Canada, we have put forth effort to help

with the earthquake. The Canadian government has put forth a promise: for every dollar donated by citizens the government will match it. Alongside this donation the government also put forth a million dollars to the International Federation of the Red Cross for immediate aid for earthquake victims. As well the McGuinty government has also pledged a million dollars to the Red Cross. The Canadian Medical Assistance Teams had a team arrive last Sunday in Chengdu, China and some of those members will try and gain access to Burma to provide help. The Chinese Canadian National Council are also holding and have held numerous fundraising events to help aid China.

Among local aid efforts the University of Waterloo Chinese Students Association (UWCSA) has set up a booth in the SLC to seek donations for the victims of the earthquake. The stand had four students eager to answer any questions and accept donations for the cause. UWCSA members at the booth remarked that the disaster is terribly sad but it seems distant and it feels that there is not much we can do to help. Yet every little bit helps and that everyone can make a difference. The effort put forth by these individuals is tremendous.

The disaster has definitely encouraged UWCSA to increase awareness and donations of their free time. A terrible disaster such as the earthquake can bring out qualities of compassion and caring which the UWCSA and all donators have shown.

The most important message the UWCSA wants everyone to know in terms of donation and relief efforts is “not to connect politics with the cause.

The two are very separate things.” Be altruistic and help the cause.

If you are interested in donating to UWCSA efforts please contact or visit Toll-free phone number: 1-800-418-1111 Website: www.paypaq.com/redcross/new/index.php Facebook gr oup: www.facebook.com/gr oup. php?gid+30695220784 (UW Student support for China Earthquake.) tironstone@imprint.uwaterloo.ca

Features

Imprint, Friday, May 30, 2008

19

the road to recovery

Part two of a three part series: McEvoy chronicles his experience with an injury on the job, an employer who doesn’t understand and several months of treatment Steven R. McEvoy staff reporter

In the summer of 2005 I was working as a foreman for a landscaping company. One Monday morning my boss told the crew not to meet me at the site because we had a side job to do.

We drove our trucks and trailers out from Kitchener to Ayr to pull some conduit for an electrician. When we arrived in Ayr, the electrician did not have any conduit. He wanted to run pipe under ground from the house to a shed at the back of the property.

Most of the PVC pipe we had on my truck was one inch diameter for residential irrigation.

The electrician wanted a wider pipe to run a few wires through. So, we unravelled an old partial role of one-and-a-half-inch pipe that was in my trailer to see if it would reach from house to shed. It did, but just barely. So we rolled the pipe back up and began to pull it underground with a ditchwitch.

My injury occurred because of many factors. To begin, we went to do a job without being prepared or knowing the details. I was standing in the centre of a loose role of pipe that was now taller than I am, trying to keep it spinning so it would feed into the ground without kinking. The electrician saw me struggling and helped from time to time. However, I was standing in a roll of pipe with both arms extended fully above my head, one leg kicking the roll backwards as it fed, and I eventually injured my shoulder. I felt the pain right away, but I worked through and got the pipe pulled.

When I went to dig up the other end of the pipe, I could not drive my shovel into the ground because of the pain. I drove back into Waterloo to meet my crew at the Open Text building on North Campus to get to work for the day. By the time I met them, I could not lift my arm and was having shooting pain down my whole arm.

I called my boss to tell him I was going to seek medical attention. He gave me a hard time, saying I just wanted the day off, or that I hurt it on the weekend and was scamming him. I persisted and had one of my crew members drive me to a clinic.

After being examined by the doctor, I was told I probably had a strain or sprain in the shoulder, and they prescribed an anti-inflammatory and two weeks of light duty. Those modified duties included no heavy lifting and no repetitive movements at or above shoulder height.

I called my boss and he went ballistic, yelling and screaming at me on the phone. He decided he would not pay me just to be the supervisor and in his words “stand around doing nothing,” so he ended up paying much more through WSIB for me to be off and at home. He said I had to get someone to pick me up and take me to the office to fill out the WSIB paperwork. I spent the next two weeks taking it easy with my arm in a sling.

On the Sunday evening before I was to return to work, I called to find out if I was to go to a job site or to pick up the rig at the shop.

He asked if I had medical clearance

and I said no. He insisted I see a doctor before he would allow me to return to work. Fortunately for me he insisted so because even though I felt much better, my shoulder, in reality, wasn’t. When I went back to the doctor, she did a series of tests for range of motion, mobility, and functionality of the shoulder. She was not happy with the results and referred me for physiotherapy and eight more weeks off work.

Two days later, I found myself at Kinetex Rehab. I had an extensive intake interview and a series of tests with a specialist. Then I began a physiotherapy routine for more than a year. I went to physiotherapy five days a week most weeks. It was a mix of treatment, ultrasound therapy, acupuncture, electrical stimulation, manual stimulation, and home exercises with elastics and a ball and light weights. A few days after I began treatment, I had an ultrasound scan of the shoulder done.

The scan revealed a tear in the supraspinatus tendon, which I later learned is the most often injured part of the rotator cuff muscles.

During one of my first visits I was told that shoulders often take a year to heal and I laughed out loud. I had cut off casts in the past and returned to work or sports from other injuries — what was so special about shoulders? One of the benefits of having treatment at Kinetex was seeing many Kinesielogy students from UW doing their placements, and talking with them as my process went on and on.

My life changed drastically. I went from being a very active and fit university student, to someone who read, worked on the computer and went for physiotherapy.

I started to gain weight and, as the weeks dragged into months, it also started having a psychological effect. I even looked at returning to former jobs. I went and talked with previous managers at Starbucks and Chapters, yet neither would hire me back with the restrictions.

After four months off work, WSIB required that I visit with a surgeon and consider that option.

So off I travelled to St. Joseph’s Hospital WSIB upper body clinic in London, Ontario. Fortunately this surgeon was not eager to cut.

He extended treatment times from January 2006 repeatedly until August 2006 when the decision was made to go ahead with surgery, as the shoulder was not showing marked improvement or recovery.

And I was then put on the waiting list for surgery. During this time I submitted almost 100 job applications hoping for work that would meet my limitations, yet never even received an interview.

That sums up the narrative part of the journey, but what about the WSIB, my boss, and all the issues surrounding that? My first adjudicator with WSIB was excellent; he worked my case from the injuring in 2005 until January 2007. My boss was very difficult to deal with; every time I was assessed and treatment was extended he would get mad and flip out on the phone.

In December when he laid off the rest of the crew, he got mad and screamed at my adjudicator on the phone because he could not grasp

that he would have to pay me over the winter even though he closes the company during this period because I was injured and could not find work that met my limitations.

My boss was not the wisest man; he said at the beginning that he did not want me on site with modified or light duties. WSIB would have charged him much less if he had tried to have me back to work but he was unwilling to do so.

When we talked he would berate me and accuse me of faking again. I told my adjudicator that I had spent the whole evening before the injury with friends over playing cards and had witnesses that I was not injured on Sunday.

When I ran into my boss around Christmas at a store, he called me fatso because of the weight I had started putting on and yelled across the store calling me a faker. I shared this information with my adjudicator and the boss was rebuked for inappropriate behaviour.

In September of 2006, I got a call telling me my surgery date had been set. I would need an escort to take me to London for the surgery and would be in a sling for 8-12 weeks after. When I received this call, I had a four week old baby at home.

It seemed I was going to be out of commission for helping with the baby and helping around the house. Yet a whole new phase in the journey of recovery, the journey back to work, was about to begin.

Next issue I will chronicle the process from the day of the surgery, through a Labour Market Re-entry (LMR) Plan, to being employed again.

In that piece I will examine: changes in my WSIB case management, outside contractors to WSIB who actually performed the LMR, and starting a new job in a different field.

Tifa Han

Disclaimer: Experiences with WSIB and employers vary greatly. This occurrence is McEvoy’s personal experience with WSIB and his employer. As previously stated in part one of the series, the WSIB has been accused of favouring employers and issuing rebates to employers who have had fatalities at the workplace, (http://www.dailycommercialnews.com/article/id27250). When it comes to an injury on the job make sure you seek medical attention: you cannot be fired for it.

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Arts & Entertainment

Imprint, Friday, May 30, 2008 arts@imprint.uwaterloo.ca

UW students venture to the land of anime Nicholas Terwoord special to imprint

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Dinh Nguyen assistant editor in chief

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hile many students travelled to Toronto individually or in groups, like WATSOC and Ctrl-A (UW’s anime club,) to partake in the festivities of Anime North, others chose to approach the conference with deeper commitment. With different seminars and events running simultaneously, the gigantic convention was spread between two hotels and the Toronto Congress Centre (by Pearson airport) — and in each hotel UW’s own left their marks as they helped to run and organize activities.

In the Double Tree Hotel, where most of the main attractions took place, UW student Sonia Lee (2B environmental engineering) helped run the “Café De*lish” event. On the Saturday of the anime con, Lee and others dressed up as maids imitating anime series characters to serve sweets and beverages. As usual, the line up for the event was lengthy, reaching well over 100 people. For about $12 a seat, paying customers were allowed to sit down at a café table for up to half an hour.

There, they were served pop, tea, coffee, and desserts prepared by the hotel and decorated by the “maids.” All profits from the event were donated to the Sick Kids Foundation.

In front of the Doubletree Hotel, yellow school “shuttle” busses arrived and departed regularly to take Anime North participants up the street to the Renaissance Hotel where the gaming and yaoi (homoerotic anime fiction) attractions were held. In the gaming sector of the

Renaissance were many role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, Munchkins, and Magic the Gathering, with former UW student, Scott Houston, and full-time Campus Tech Shop employee, Jason Rochon running events. Together they organized and took charge of many card games, such as Gloom, and board game tables like the popular Settlers of Catan.

Across the street from the Double Tree was the Toronto Congress Centre, where an art gallery and the dealer’s room were. The art gallery displayed work submitted by various anime fan artists and the dealer room was simply a space sealed off where anime merchandise dealers from all around could come to see their goods.

Many of the dealers, like Scaredy Cats Costume of Kitchener come quite a distance and do not want to haul everything back with them after the convention. As a result, on Sunday, the last day of the Anime North weekend dealers tend to price down, and offer discounts on merchandise. Wise shoppers tend to purchase items that are likely to sell out quick and wait ‘til “sale day” for things they want that do not go as fast.

The Congress Centre also offers space during Anime North for artists to reserve for a fee to sell their arts in form of commission as well as craft.

While many come here to do business, others come for the experience. If you’re interested in getting involved with Anime North either as a staff member or volunteer, or want to reserve an artist table, check out their website at www. animenorth.com. dnguyen@imprint.uwaterloo.ca

f you happened to be driving towards the Pearson International Airport last weekend, you may have caught a glimpse of something that happens just once a year — mobs of people wearing cat ears and costumes. On May 23, Anime North started its festivities, the fourth largest Anime convention in North America, and the largest of its kind in Canada.

This was my fifth year at the three-day fanrun convention, and my first time organizing a large group of people to come with me.

This year, I organized a trip with a group of roughly 80 UW students and other community members as an event held by the Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture (WATSOC).

Planning for the trip had been on-going since October, including room bookings and pass organization.

Things got started early on Friday morning as I handed out the weekend passes to participants at the Davis Centre. Until one p.m., I sat out in the main area of DC, boxes full of weekend pass packages, greeting people and doing any last minute preparations for what would no doubt be a great trip. As the bus left Waterloo, we all waited in anticipation for our arrival at the Doubletree Hotel, where our adventure would begin.

Anime North is a convention focused primarily on Japanese animation and Japanese culture, but also includes gaming culture; it has roughly 14, 000 attendees, and it isn’t surprising that the event alone takes up two hotels (the Renaissance and Doubletree hotels) as well as most of the Toronto Congress Centre (not counting other hotels in the area booked for accommodations).

After we arrived and everyone was checked in, things really got going. I’m a generalist when it comes to anime, so I spent a lot of my time taking photos of cosplayers (a portmanteau of the words “costume” and “player,)” attending discussion panels, checking out artist’s alley (an area where artists can sell goods, like fanart), and the dealers room (a place where vendors can sell goods, like anime and manga). Of course, there are many other events that take place, like the masquerade, guest panels, workshops, contests, and the anime music video competition.

I spent a lot of time attending panels and bouncing back and forth between hotels. One of the more interesting discussion panels that

I attended was “Fan to Pro,” hosted by a few regular panelists who had taken their skills in fandom and applied it to their careers. Panelists talked about the different skills that fans learn, — from organizational skills to technical skills and how they map to real world careers, along with general advice to be successful in your career. Another panel I attended was “Amateur Voice Acting,” where attendees not only learned the tools necessary to do quality voice acting in their own home, but also had the opportunity to practise their skills. In one activity, volunteers from the audience had to try out their narrative voice by reading a movie trailer as written by a random audience member.

Of course, for every serious panel, there were more light-hearted panels. “How not to get a con girlfriend” came up with some hilarious ways to avoid getting a girlfriend at a convention — along with a less humourous story about a one-night stand leading to demands for alimony payments). “Hentai Fetish 411” went through all sorts of different types of animated porn from the commonplace to the bizarre — with hand-checks, and commentary, of course; “Fic Fic Fic Boom” was a satirical look at writing fan-fiction and other fan-works, or a guide to writing the worst stories imaginable, as the case may be.

There’s a lot more than just panels though.

Throughout the weekend, there were many people, young and old, bright and excited in costume, moving in droves down airport road, or toward the Congress Centre. On numerous occasions, con-goers gave out free hugs to passers-by, and cosplayers had no problems with the countless requests to have their pictures taken.

It was remarkable how friendly and helpful everyone was!

As our bus left the hotel on Sunday, it was a bit disappointing to leave such a high-energy, diverse event. It’s an event that you just have to experience to really understand the excitement of it. The convention offers a variety of different events for both ‘casual’ and ‘hardcore’ anime fans, as well as general gamers, and those interested in the arts (cosplay is just costuming after all, and there are many arts and crafts events that take place over the weekend). There are still many aspects of Anime North that I haven’t yet experienced, even though I’ve been attending for five years now. You can find information on Anime North at www.animenorth.com; with luck, WATSOC will be organizing a trip again next year.

Photos by Peter Trinh

Photos from top left: Anime Convention goers assemble outside the Toronto Convention Centre, many dressed as their favourite characters. Inside anime fans peruse the booths and the goods on sale.

Above: A group of convention-goers play board games at one of the many games tables.

Arts & Entertainment

Imprint, Friday, May 30, 2008

21

Quick and sharp, to a degree Exploring the pros and cons of flash animation

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oing against one of my personal promises, I decided to go to the Anime North Convention last weekend. Considering that I’m not heavely into the anime scene, I didn’t enjoy it much last time. But since a good buddy of mine was planning to go, I thought I’d bite the bullet and go again.

Oddly enough, one of the panel discussions at the event was on the current animation industry— things like: “you’re screwed if you’re only going to do classical animation,” and “your social life is going to disappear.” I’ve heard all this many times before. Hence, I left five minutes into the panel. The only interest I have in getting into the media industry today is to either be a comic artist or some form of media illustrator and graphic designer.

One thing did catch my interest at the panel though. While I knew that 3D animation is the most common form in the world, I didn’t realize how big Flash animation was, especially in Canada. To those who don’t know, Flash animations are those smooth, yet rubbery-like videos, clips, and games you see on some popular websites like www.

homestar r unner.com and www.shockwave.com.

The name of the style comes from the program that’s usually associated with making the animations: Adobe Flash. The program uses vector and automated tools to assist in making cartoons, which makes the creation process much faster than classic animation as long as an animator knows how to use the program. This makes the workload smaller and more cost-effective than other methods of animating. So far, the most inexpensive way to create an animation is through Flash which, if you consider typical CanCon entertainment, makes perfect sense why Canadian media has adopted it as its most common method.

However, the artwork in Flash animation has less of a chance at looking as gritty and, in a matter of speak-

ing, hand-drawn as many of the classic Looney Tunes and Disney cartoons. The look

you get is Tifa Han

Muxtape: the new MySpace?

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ude, have you heard the new Cut Copy track “Out There On The Ice?” No? It’s so golden…you need to hear it! Why don’t you check it out on my Muxtape? What’s that? You don’t have a Muxtape account? Seriously, dude, Muxtape is the new MySpace.

All across record stores, music blogs, and Facebook walls, the music elitists are talking about Muxtape. In the words of the music snob, Muxtape is an online mix tape through which one can share and hear their favourite 12 tracks with their closest friends by going to their Muxtape page. For example if you wanted to hear all of Imprint’s current favourite tracks, you would go online to www.imprint.muxtape.com What makes Muxtape so appealing is that it simplifies the way individuals can access and listen to new music. By allowing users to upload their favourite tracks, it promotes an alternative method in which music appreciators can showcase their “eclectic” musical tastes to the masses easily with the click of a mouse.

Major record labels are shitting in their pants due to a multitude of problems which includes

the rapid decline in profits, the increase in illegal downloading, peer-to-peer file sharing, and album counterfeiting.Muxtape avoids committing any of these crimes by limiting its users to the options of either streaming tracks for free or paying to download.

In contrast to the highly touted music blogs Hypem, Palmsout, and BrooklynVegan, Muxtape promotes musical diversity and identity in a more personal fashion. When reaching the homepage, users are encouraged to browse various other users accounts by clicking their username resulting in the potential discovery of 12 new songs that may, or may not, open your eyes to different genres and artists, while attaining a higher appreciation of music.

Muxtape, unlike MySpace, truly lacks all the useless bullshit in which MySpace has succumbed to relying on. Muxtape thrives off of Internet anonymity. To elaborate, there are no friendlists, blog-walls, photo albums, or capability of writing a personal biography. It is simply a hub for listening to music.

As society becomes more dependent on internet technology, and the music industry shifts into the apex of global digital use via its consumers, Muxtape is a clever, yet simple model of peer-to-peer file sharing.

By avoiding the cliché, prying characteristics of MySpace, this personal music blog does exactly what a blog should do, and that is to hear new, interesting music for free. hcolosimo@imprint.uwaterloo.ca

See Imprint’s current favourite tracks online at www.imprint. muxtape.com

a lot more crisp, sharp, and digital.

As well, the animation moves in a more robotic fashion than classical animation; take a look at Nelvana cartoons like Atomic Betty, Delilah and Julius and 6teen, and you’ll get my general meaning. The heads bob, the limbs move, and the backgrounds shift along, but for the most part Flash-animated characters seem like their parts move either on simple joints or pistons. As a person who grew up under the ways of classical animation, it throws me off when I see a character walking with only his/her legs and head in

motion — while moving forward in a heavy bob — but their arms or shoulders stay firmly in place as possible.

To be honest, I’ve never been a big fan of Flash animation; I could never see it as an independent form of television media. The production in cartoons like Odd Job Jack and Aqua Teen Hunger Force look a bit half-assed in comparison to cartoons like Samurai Jack and Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends.

Like I said before, it makes sense that studios in Canada prefer Flash cartooning: Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law moved from cel to Flash in order to cut costs and save time from drawing so many quick-moving scenes. True enough, when the shift in styles happened, much of the animation work was done in both Atlanta and Vancouver.

The animation world is expanding, so I might be harsh in what I’m saying. But there’s a lot for professional Flash animators to improve upon before I can really enjoy a Flash cartoon on TV. Those annoying text-message commercials don’t help me feel very positive. ptrinh@imprint.uwaterloo.ca

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Arts & Entertainment

Imprint, Friday, May 30, 2008

cd review Scarlett Johansson Anywhere I Lay My Head Rhino-Atlantic

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here will be many great debates as well as an ocean sized divide regarding the reception of Scarlett Johansson’s debut album Anywhere I Lay My Head. Scarlett’s “interpretations” of Tom Wait’s songs can be seen in both a positive and negative light. In that, it is the angle in which you choose to view this display of musical ingenuity. But what it ultimately comes down to is the fact that Johansson will either be considered a respectable, multi-talented artist or the butcher of Wait’s genius.

The actor/singer crossover is nothing new. Johansson has finally crossed that narrow threshold, joining the all-star studded list of “actors” gone singer, including Hiliary Duff, Lindsay Lohan, and Paris Hilton (a very loosely defined actor). However, it should be noted that Johansson is by far a better actor than her peers. That ultimately, makes this endeavour harder to appreciate. Even I myself was curious to see if she could pull it off.

As for the record, it’s evident that Johansson is well connected within the realm of indie producers, artists, and iconic rock legends. With a supporting cast that includes producer David Sitek, Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, members of TV on the Radio, and the avatar of rock and roll David Bowie himself, it is apparent that there is no shortage of musical talent and creativity.

However, this supreme cast truly showcases the inexperience, primitiveness, and one-dimensional side of Johansson’s ability as a vocalist.

It becomes overtly visible that Johansson’s voice possesses a derivative style, timbre, and feel to that of Irish vocalist Sinead O’Connor. On tracks “Falling Down” and album opener “Anywhere I Lay My Head” her voice brings memories of O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares To You.” However, on tracks “ I Wish I Was in New Orleans” and “ Town with No Cheer” we get a true idea of the real sound and range of Johansson’s voice in which producer Sitek dubbed “Tinkerbell on cough syrup.”

At times, Johansson’s voice almost seems secondary in favour of Sitek’s engorged production.

On tracks “Green Grass” and “No one knows I’m gone,” Johansson’s voice appears severely altered with an ever-present reverb heavy vocal tone. More so, this over produced sound brings up the notion of artistic merit and capability with respect to Johansson as a vocalist. Ideally, if Paris can sing, why can’t Scarlett?

movie review

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Steven Spielberg Paramount

With this release, I can see two very probable outcomes. One is that any Wait’s fan will be displeased with the Johansson’s covers and Sitek’s musical interpretations and boycott her next film.

Second is that Johansson fans will adore the album and disregard the creativity of Wait’s or the notion that if you replaced Johansson with any other vocalist, the end result would ultimately be the same. So does Johansson have a future in the music industry? I don’t know… The only things I do know is that she is a talented actor; she has a laundry list of cool indie friends, and a smoking body. Damn you Ryan Reynolds! Damn you and your chiseled abs!

— Hunter Colosimo

Wyrd Sisters Wholly Festival Distribution

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he long-awaited and much anticipated fourth CD and fifth album from the Wyrd Sisters is finally widely available. The Wyrd Sisters are known for their deep harmonies, passionate lyrics, and penetrating music. Historically, their songs have been about violence against women, politics, clear cutting, the Montreal Massacre, and other political issues. This album is a turning point into the internal; they state that as their audience has changed so has the music.

There is a “spiritual quester” feel to this album — a searching and a struggling. This CD captures the events in the lives of the band members and the sentiment of the audience as it ages, matures, and moves towards inward change as the means for external change.

Every one of the 12 songs on the CD is immensely enjoyable. From the opening track Mary (Wholly) which states: “Mary, I think you’ve got something to say/ but what kind of language will you wrap your tongue around/when 2000 years have worn you away?/in your belly/in your breast/where you work where you rest/ when you come, when you leave/holy/we believe...” a song about Mary, the mother of Jesus, and if she has meaning today, to the incredibly humorous final track “Faucet” about a woman’s love with her tub fixtures which starts with: “My sexual preference is my bath tub faucet/you might say that I’m in a water closet/my tank is too small and my water bill is high/but my faucet and I get happily by/faucet and I/bye bye

I

went into this film with fairly low expectations, knowing full well that revivals of classic film heroes seldom work out well.

I still, however, expected to be entertained with, at the very least, a B-action movie. Sadly, I was even more disappointed than I expected to be. By the way, this review may spoil the movie for you.

The Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls is a truly pathetic attempt at reviving the Indiana Jones franchise. Basically, the movie takes Prof. Henry Jones out of the classroom and on a quest to find the Crystal Skulls, El Dorado, and friends from the past. From the very beginning the viewer is taken to the warehouse where the ark of the covenant was placed at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Here, we find out that this warehouse is Area 51 and that what the evil communists (Nazis have been replaced with commies in order to reflect the passing of time between the films) want to find is aliens. From that point on the movie became utter shit.

George Lucas and Steven Spielberg reunited to bring back Harrison Ford for the role of Indiana Jones, but it seems as though the two men had no original ideas and decided to recycle plot lines and scenes from their past films. The movie begins with a bunch of wild and crazy ’50s teens egging on military men to race evocative of Lucas’ American Graffiti and the drag race that, hilariously enough, Ford is in. The reminiscent scenes just kept coming. Everything from Close Encounters of a Third Kind and E.T. to Star Wars to Jurassic Park is referenced. Now, I would have been fine with a few references to other Indiy films, but watching the entirety of Lucas and Spielberg’s

bye/I’m a hydrasexual...”

Yet my favourite must be “The One That Never Was” with guest vocalist John Schritt, who with lead vocalist Kim Baryluk produced an incredible piece sung in counter point.

The album is a great addition to the Wyrd Sisters canon and will be fun for a fan of folk, blues, or a jazzy kind of music. This is a great Canadian trio who have given of themelves, their life and struggles in their music, and the lyrics and power of the vocals will speak to almost any listener. So give it a listen or take a journey through the Wyrd Sisters repertoire, begin the voyage with Leave a Little Light, then journey into the Dreaming next listen to the Raw Voice, after that try some Sin and Other Salvations and finish with Wholly.

— Steven R McEvoy

Iron Maiden Somewhere Back in Time Sony

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elieve it or not, another release from Iron Maiden hammers down our doors. Less than two years after the release of their latest album, A Matter of Life and Death, a greatest hits CD has been unleashed to coincide with their Somewhere Back in Time World Tour. In an unprecedented move, Iron Maiden has made the album available for free download from their official website. The catch is that you can only play it three times, and then must either delete or purchase it, and the tracks are not compatible with Macs or iPods since they are protected in WMA (Windows Media Audio) format.

The album contains greatest hits from Iron Maiden’s first seven albums, and has received positive reviews from mainstream metal magazines such as Kerrang and Metal Hammer.

Somewhere Back in Time does not really bring anything new to the table, and might not be too valuable for the true Iron Maiden fan who is familiar with all Iron Maiden albums — as countless as they are. However, for all others who want to get a glimpse at the chaotic universe of Maiden metal, and listen to songs from the time when mummies and ancient Egyptians were — and still are, judging from this album — enough of rock stars to appear on metal album covers, Somewhere Back in Time - The Best of: 1980-1989 is definitely worth your time, and should you really like it, your money.

— Sherif Soliman

film history parade across the screen was a tad egotistical, but just a tad.

In this movie, Indiana is joined by Mutt (Shia LeBoeuf) and Raider’s heroine Marion (Karen Allen). LeBoeuf could not have been a worse choice for Mutt, a rebel-without-a-cause style teen. I realize that it’s shallow, but a role that is attempting to bring back images of James Dean to put the viewer into a ’50s frame of mind should be attractive, and if not attractive rugged enough and a good enough actor to make up for lacking good looks. LeBoeuf of course is neither of these. Cate Blanchett is also introduced to the Indiana franchise as Irina Spalko, Jones’ communist foe. Luckily, Blanchett chose to create a character that is indeed just that: a character of every communist stereotype from old 1950s cartoons. By doing this, Blanchett brings some levity to the movie and brings back the one liners and comical fight scenes that made past Indiana Jones movies what they were.

Really, this film could only have been saved with a plot re-write, taking away any reference to aliens and going back to the mythological stories that originally made the Indian Jones trilogy interesting to watch. Honestly, didn’t we all hear enough conspiracy theories about how pyramids and the Nazca lines were made when we were six? The Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls seems to be an attempt on Lucas and Spielberg’s part to bring back a fading character in a time when franchise films are at their height. All we get though is a multitude of bad one liners, sorry attempts to reference Indiana’s past adventures and past in general, and ridiculous CGI action scenes that would have been much better had the actors done a few stunts.

— Emma Tarswell

Arts & Entertainment

Imprint, Friday, May 30, 2008

23

Book Review Musicophilia Oliver Sacks Knopf

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or decades now, British neurologist Oliver Sacks has made a secondary career for himself by writing about quirks of the mind. In his earlier works, Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Sacks conveyed marvels of the human brain through patient anecdotes that were precise, distinct, and utterly precious. A neurological impairment that left a man unable to describe common objects by name; autistic twins who spoke in prime numbers; the short-lived positive effects (and resulting psychological impairments) of L-Dopa on encephalitis lethargica patients: These were the trademark tales Sacks’ professional experience brought forth. And they were wonderful.

But the problems with Musicophilia, Sacks’ most recent work in this vein, start very early on.

Cataloguing a variety of intersections between music and the brain — music therapy, late life musical compulsions, musical “earworms,” music aversion, why we crave sad or happy

music, and the recollecting of “lost” music with age — Sacks certainly does not lose any of his earlier awe or tenderness for matters of the mind. There is absolutely a measure of love to his stories, and the humanity he finds in them.

But the scientific method is sorely wanting; there is no cohesion to most of the examples forwarded in this volume, and no greater insight emerges from tales that often feel meandering, or even redundant.

My skepticism began when Sacks first marked upon what made music such a fascinating subject in relation to the brain: its utter detachment, in contrast with language, from the concrete or “the real.” A fair argument, when dealing with pure sound, but Sacks instead launches into a series of anecdotes involving both classical and lyric-based music — and never acknowledges this overlap between language and sound. This makes it difficult to swallow some of his arguments about associative incidents — or rather, his conviction that many of these abruptly-arising songs aren’t triggered by any particular aspect of one’s surroundings. Personally, I know if I’m in a poor mood, Morrissey’s “Just do your

best and / Don’t worry” might pop into my head. Or “Fools Rush In” might take centre stage when I’m in love. Neither song has a tone commonly associated with the emotion conveyed in the lyrics: you need to know what the lyrics mean to make those connections complete. But beyond even basic associations, language is lyrical, and any neurological overview of sound that doesn’t grapple with how the language and music centres of the brain interact is inevitably lacking.

The book grows tighter and more similar to his previous works as it progresses: the last few chapters, far more clinical in nature, add a muchneeded sense of structure to Sacks’ accounts. But the damage caused by not effectively defining his terms linger; like the streams of looping, incomplete music he comments on throughout this work, Musicophilia seems caught up in its own fragmentary nature. A decent volume for those who want the excuse to ruminate broadly about music and the human mind, Musicophilia is a disappointment for anyone hoping to be more effectively enlightened about any of the connections therein.

— Maggie Clark

Musical foresights Imprint’s music festival previews Emma Tarswell arts editor

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s the summer months approach quickly and the weather gets warmer and sunnier, students throughout Southern Ontario look to head out to the bars, the parks, and the ampitheatres to partake in the music festival tradition. Imprint has taken the liberty to give you a little preview of the festivals taking place in Kitchener-Waterloo and the surrounding areas.

North by Northeast (NXNE) Kicking off this summer’s music festivals is NXNE. Taking place in Toronto this is a three day event, from June 12 to June 15, that includes mostly indie bands from around the world. In its 14th year, NXNE will host over 500 bands in venues across Toronto.

This years line up is primarily unknowns, making it an excellent opportunity to check out new music from Canada and hear what is going on in the international scene. This festival is unique in the fact that concert goers can also take in a few films and conferences.

All the films have some type of relation to music like this year’s films on Blondie and The Rolling Stones.

This festival is definitely for the true partier with Toronto bars staying open until 4 a.m.

What more do you really need?

Edgefest After doubling in size in 2006, with Our Lady Peace headlining the early-summer “Edgefest One” and Yellowcard leading the late summer “Edgefest Two,” the quintessential Canadian summer festival haltingly took the year off in 2007.

Returning to the limelight, Edgefest 2008 displays an eclectic lineup, with hard-edged headliners Linkin Park and Stone Temple Pilots, followed up by the softer Sam Roberts.

Traditionally, however, fans of the festival are more likely to seek out talented lesser-known bands than they are to crowd to the stage in an attempt to press the flesh with well-known celebrity skin. Those of the real Edgefest mindset are more likely to look for such acts as the Arkells, the Flatliners, and Attack in Black at the Downsview Park-hosted event on July 12.

Hillside Festival Closer to home, but no less proud of their place as one of the summer festivals here in Canada, the annual Hillside Festival celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. Those attending the birthday celebration are in for a treat, as

Hillside demonstrates its usual diversity by bringing in such wide-ranging acts as the Bourbon Tabernacle Choir, The Speakeasies, The Cowboy Junkies, and the Born Ruffians.

If you’re planning to dig into this three day event, July 25-27, be sure to snap up one of the remaining tickets quickly — both the full weekend passes and the full-day Saturday passes are sold out, leaving potential Hillsidegoers with few remaining options. The ticket shortage is a chronic one, due to Hillside’s intimate environment: the event is held on a tiny island in the middle of the lake at the Guelph Lake Conservation Area, making it a little bit cooler to have a high-summer festival in a venue surrounded by water. Yet, little room to grow has meant that tickets are now usually snapped up within hours of their release, and while it’s still possible to secure tickets for the remaining days, the savvy Hillside-goer knows that there’s actually a better way to get in to the festival: volunteer.

Hillside has been proudly volunteer-run since its inception in 1984, and each year nearly 1,000 music and art lovers pitch in to help make the weekend venue a success.

In exchange for approximately 20 hours of volunteerism, Hillside patrons are treated not only to access to the full festival, but also to meals and exclusive camping sites on Guelph Lake Island itself.

Virgin Festival Rounding out the choices this summer, music fans will be able to take advantage of one last venue before the weather returns to our predictably Canadian winters. The choice is a good one, the increasingly popular Virgin Festival. A two-day event that boasts Canadian locations in both Calgary and Toronto, as well as sister festivals around the world, the Virgin Festival arrives in the “T-dot” on Friday, September 6, and Saturday, September 7 this year.

Enjoying its novelty as the rising star of one of Canada’s rising summer lineups, Virgin Festival Toronto 2008 is packed with top names. The Foo Fighters, the Kooks and the Constantines are leading acts in the Friday night lineup, while Oasis, Paul Weller and the Weakerthans are scheduled to bring fans to their feet on the Saturday. The big-name lineups don’t come cheaply, though, as fans will be shelling out more than $90 for one day or nearly $160 for both days. These costs take into account the cost of the ferry ride to Toronto Island, where the event has been held since its inaugural appearance in 2006, as well as an involuntary donation to the Virgin Group’s not-for-profit arm, Virgin Unite. etarswell@imprint.uwaterloo.ca

Sonia Lee

Science & Technology

Imprint, Friday, May 30, 2008 science@imprint.uwaterloo.ca

Science and Technology Research at UW Part One

Aletheia Chiang reporter

Bacteria and biology

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or most of us, even the slightest mention of “bacteria” is enough to elicit gorey visuals of poorly kept public restrooms, mouldy food, and garbage. We envision nasty, wicked germs running rampant, multiplying uncontrollably, and meddling into our business. It’s enough to make us, at least, mentally, cringe.

But for Danielle Nash, a recent UW undergraduate in biomedical sciences, there’s more to bacteria than unwashed hands and unhygienic surfaces. She studies bacteria outside of the context that we typically associate with the microscopic gremlins.

Along with her supervisor Prof. Trevor Charles, professor of microbiology, their work uses genomics tools to investigate gene functions in a family of bacteria called the Rhizobiales.

“The Rhizobiales include a lot of bacteria that interact with plants and animals,” said Charles during an interview. “Some of them are pathogenic and some are symbiotic.”

What then, is pathogenesis and what is symbiosis?

Pathogenesis, put simply, is the way a microbe causes disease in its host.

Symbiosis, on the other hand, describes an intimate relationship between microbe and host, where the two organisms exist together in very close association. (Yes, almost like a love story.)

In the lab, Nash and Charles study the details of such a relationship, investigating Sinorhizobium meliloti, an organism which fixes nitrogen on alfalfa plants in symbiosis. A mutually beneficial friendship that on the root of the alfalfa, and these bacteria provide the means through which most of the non-fertilizer nitrogen makes its way into the plant.

On the pathogenesis side, they are studying Ochrobactrum anthropi, a human pathogen.

“Ochrobactrum is an interesting organism because it seems to be very versatile,” said Charles. “[There are] some strains that infect humans, some that infect animals, some that form root nodules, some that form

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plant tumours, and some that degrade xenobiotic compounds [—] contaminants in the environment.”

One of Nash’s possible summer research projects includes developing Ochrobactrum as a model organism.

“A model organism is an organism that has been very well studied and well characterized,” she explained. “It’s chosen because it’s simple enough to be easily studied, but complex enough to be representative of more complicated organisms for specific processes.

“For instance, things like cell division and cell cycle could be studied in yeast. Things like nitrogen fixation and interactions with multicellular organisms can be studied with something like Ochrobactrum.”

Prof. Charles emphasized the need to have an underlying understanding of how bacteria interact with other types of organisms. He said that the only way to understand their functions is to understand what the genes are doing: “In the context of genomic projects, you might think that if you have the genome sequence of an organism, you know everything about the organism,” he said. “But what the genome sequence actually reveals is how little you know about the organism.”

He pointed out that most of the genes that scientists uncover through their sequencing actually have unknown functions.

The goal, he said, is to study the bacteria in terms of their physiology, their biochemistry, how they get nutrients, and how they signal between themselves and between the host plants that they’re infecting.

For Nash, these are important aspects of research.

“You pick a problem or a process to learn about, and your main goal is to learn about it — not just to show that this is how it works necessarily,” she said. “If it doesn’t work how you thought it would, then that is still valuable information as well.

“Developing every model organism involves better characterizing it — so doing basic research,” she later added.

The basic research side of things, she explained, is trying to learn how things work. The applied research

side is “trying to work with those things, given the knowledge that the basic research has led to.”

For Charles, a fundamental researcher, basic research is the overlooked — but much more significant — aspect of research.

“One of the major challenges [in our field] is to get funding for basic research,” he said. “The applications are not necessarily possible without tool development.”

“There’s value to both sides of things,” Nash acknowledged. “But take something like mechanical engineering.

That could never come about without physicists learning about forces and how things work. Basic science is a prerequisite to applied science.”

Still, Charles insisted that although applications may be useful, even they shouldn’t be the primary objective of basic research.

“You don’t want the fundamental research to be constrained by existing ideas,” he said.

Nash added that we can’t come up with a potential application first, without having the research first providing the knowledge of how things work.

The acquisition of knowledge is really the basic thing, said Charles: “I think that children inherently have this sense of wonder and discovery, without necessarily wanting to discover application,” he remarked. “They just want to know how things work.”

And that kind of natural curiosity, he said, is really what should be at the heart of science.

When asked how they explain to people the value of the work that you’re doing, Nash described that for basic researchers, the value system is not skewed towards applications for humans.

“Should all research be carried out just to make things that are for people?” she asked. “Or are there other reasons for trying to understand how things work?”

These are the deep-rooted questions that drive scientists like Nash and Charles to pursue their field.

“Otherwise,” Nash said, “you wouldn’t find the research intrinsically satisfying or rewarding.”

Danielle Nash plans to attend graduate school to pursue her interests in synthetic biology.

Concrete matters for civil engineering

hat is a road? And why are roads so important?

These are questions so shamelessly elementary that you can’t help but be stumped, at least for a little while, before attempting an answer. But they are fundamental questions that Professor Susan Tighe, associate professor of civil engineering and associate director of UW’s Centre for Pavement and Transportation Technology (CPATT), answers with matching shamelessness.

“A lot of people drive down the road and they just see black or white,” Tighe said. “But there’s a lot of engineering that goes in it. And the only time [people] really realize it is when it’s closed or if it’s failed.”

In Tighe’s lab, the emphasis is on “pushing the boundaries of innovation.” Much of this translates into finding new ways to incorporate “green technology” into pavement design and building. A sampling of her team’s current projects include: recycled concrete roads, pervious pavement technology, and reusing shingles in pavement.

Lining the top of Tighe’s filing cabinets is an impressive display of numerous cross-sections of various types of pavement. Jodi Norris, CPATT’s civil engineer technologist, helped me understand concrete as the grayish, stoney, rigid stuff; asphalt as the black, more flexible stuff; and interlocking as the overlaying of bricks, such as the arrangement found on a crosswalk.

Vimy Henderson, a masters student working in Tighe’s lab, is researching pervious pavement technology. She explained to me that essentially there are three types of pervious pavement: pervious concrete, porous asphalt, and permeable interlocking concrete pavers.

Norris, who compares the pervious structure to a Rice Krispie square, said that the traditional way to deal with storm water run-off is to have curb, gutter, and catch-basin. Pervious pavement technology, then, is an attempt to provide a cost-effective and environmentally friendly alternative, by allowing the water to seep through the concrete “Rice Krispie.”

“If you go to any Wal-Mart, Zehrs, or even if you drive down University Avenue, somebody has designed

that parking lot and that road so that if it were to rain for five days straight, all the water would be collected,” said Norris.

But she said, that’s at the cost of having unused space from curb, gutter, and sewers; and from a commercial standpoint, having unused space is simply uneconomical.

“Even if you look at subdivisions,” Norris continued, “there is always a pond. You wouldn’t know it, but all the houses in that subdivision are sloped towards that pond. When it rains, that’s where the water is supposed to go.”

Those ponds, Henderson pointed out, are a safety hazard, particularly for children.

“A child could kick his soccer ball into the pond, try to fetch it, and drown,” said Henderson. “The subdivisions have to put up big fences around the pond.

And even then, children still drown, or fall through the ice in the winter.”

“And it takes up space;” added Norris “a huge pond could be money for someone else. You don’t need a pond if the water’s going through the pavement.”

Taking me down to their lab, Norris and Henderson showed me the bread and butter of their work: big machines and real samples cut straight from their CPATT pavement test track, located at the Waterloo Region landfill site off Erb Street.

Henderson, whose work specifically focuses on pervious concrete, calculates the stress, the strength, and the stability of the pavement.

“There are things we test before we pave, and also things we test as we pave.”

Real-time data is given by installing sensors into the roads in order to monitor what’s happening in terms of things like temperature, texture, colour, and water content. Henderson said climate change is also an important factor that influences the way they design roads, because materials stretch and compress according to environmental stress.

“This stuff can work in Florida,” she said, motion-

ing to the asphalt and the concrete, “because it only gets hotter there.”

But in Canada, with more freeze-thaw cycles and additional rainfall, Tighe’s team is currently researching how the pavement can address climate change.

Ultimately, though, Norris pointed out that the real, practical implementation of these innovative pavements begins at the contractor level.

“Say you’re in your kitchen just making batches of chocolate chip cookies, all day long,” she illustrated animatedly. “Then all of a sudden someone says, ‘I want walnut.’ Then what are you going to do?”

“To get started in anything, people have to be trained, [buyers need to be convinced] that they want to buy this concrete, people at the concrete plant [have to be taught] how to make this pavement, said Henderson.

“There’s always a learning curve.”

Norris added that there might also be different materials needed to lay it down and different equipment needed to test it.

But, Henderson insisted, the incentive comes from the everyday person who wants to see this pavement on their driveway, in their parking lots.

“It could mean 20 more parking spaces, or two more houses.”

When it comes to the bigger picture, Tighe drew the parallels between a good economy, a good quality of life, and a good road network.

On a daily basis, Tighe reminded us that any society’s ability to transport goods and services depends on their transportation network. In the same way, having access to an education and to health depends on getting to school and getting to hospitals. And if we can make that road network cost-effective and address the changing environmental conditions, then that same society has ground to thrive. “[The transportation network] is paramount, essentially, and yet most people take it for granted.”

So, the next time you’re tempted to curse at that road closure or that pothole, just take the long way around it.

Science & Technology

Imprint, Friday, May 30, 2008

25

Stigma makes me (and you) sick

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“Spastic.”

“Freak.”

“Brain Dead.”

“Psycho.”

“Scary.”

hose are just five of the most common words spit out by 14-year-old English schoolchildren when researchers asked them to describe people with mental illness.

Even at such an early age, these students have already internalized negative stereotypes. Taken alone, these words may seem like insignificant schoolyard taunts. But when combined with research that suggests that the societal stigma surrounding mental illness may be one of the most common contributors to the delay or outright refusal of people to seek or stay in needed treatment, to accept diagnoses, and to seek support for their mental health needs from both their peers and employers, it becomes clear that society’s views on mental illness need to change.

The body of literature on mental health stigma is large and, at times, contradictory. Although researchers disagree about the directness and strength of the effect of stigma on health-careseeking behaviours, few researchers or mental health care professionals disagree that stereotypes and discrimination associated with mental illnesses have a very real, deleterious effect on the people dealing with them on a daily basis.

In support of these conclusions, the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) has “identified combatting the stigma of mental illnesses and preventing discrimination against people with mental illnesses as one of the most pressing priorities for improving the mental health of Canadians.”

Some would argue that the CMHA is blowing things out of proportion.

They are, after all, in the business of mental health advocacy, and it’s kind of their job to stand on a soap box for these sorts of things. In their report on mental illnesses in Canada, however, the CMHA presents some pretty compelling data, suggesting that mental health concerns affect a large number of Canadians, particularly adolescents and university-aged youth, and are problems that affect the nation more than discomfort with the subject may allow us to admit: • In 1998, suicide accounted for 24 per cent of all deaths among those aged 15-24.

• “20 per cent of Canadians will personally experience a mental illness during their lifetime.”

• “In developed countries, mental illnesses (major depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder) account for four of the 10 leading causes of disability.”

-CMHA These numbers indicate that mental illness is not a rare occurrence. However, the degrading stereotypes that many people use in reference to it establishes an il-

lusory “us” and “them” division, separating the average person from the “loonies.” Through derogatory language, our reluctance to accept mental illnesses in workplaces, and our acceptance of hyperbolic, inaccurate, and sensationalized media portrayals of the adverse affects of some mental illnesses, we ostracize a great number of people — many of whom are dealing with difficult symptoms that demand support and social acceptance as a vital part of recovery.

Stigma not only contributes to reluctance in seeking mental health care, but also to accepting a diagnosis. A prevalent stereotype exists that portrays the exhibition of many mental illnesses, including post partum depression and anxiety disorders, as people “faking it” for attention or other personal gains.

With society reinforcing these ideas, people with these symptoms may convince themselves that they aren’t really sick — that it’s all in their head.

This can prevent people from getting help they really need.

Similarly, stigma can contribute to patients’ reluctance to agree to drug therapy, even when the benefits of psychopharmaceuticals have been clearly documented for their symptoms. Many health care professionals are faced with the “fake happiness” argument that some reluctant clients give — that taking a “happy” pill will just make them high, and give them a false sense of joy or stability — that if they were to take the drugs, they would just be “faking it,” and that they don’t need it.

If a diabetic needed insulin to stabilize her condition, she wouldn’t argue that she doesn’t need it — that she shouldn’t “fake” her blood sugar levels.

And yet, patients who require drugs to stabilize their neurochemistry regularly argue just that, and stigma supports this skewed view of psychological health.

Some patients also fear medication as a final indicator that they are truly “nuts,” and associate it with the embarrassing stigma of taking “crazy pills,” rather than with the fact that their ailment is a real illness with an equally real and tangible treatment. Although there are many legitimate non-drug treatments for many psychological ailments — either alone or in combination with medication — refusing to even consider drug treatment based on the surrounding stigma is dangerous especially with the considerable potential benefits that some drug treatments offer.

As young adults, students should have a particular interest in this topic.

A review of the relevant literature shows that many mental illnesses first develop in adolescence, and thus have an effect on education and subsequent career plans. Furthermore, universityaged persons constitute a great proportion of mental health care patients, have a disproportionately high death

rate due to suicide, and may be more prone to be both perpetrators and victims of mental illness stigma. Students, therefore, may be particularly interested in reducing mental health stigma — so how do we do it?

A 2007 paper by Patrick Corrigan and John O’Shaughnessy Jr., published in the journal Australian Psychologist, suggests three main routes to diminishing societal stigma against mental illnesses: protest, education, and interaction. To apply these strategies, try writing letters or boycotting media outlets that portray mental illnesses in an inaccurate fashion — like T.V. shows that show depression patients as lazy and uninterested in getting better, or drug addicts as uniformly unredeemable. Another way to do this is to get involved with Mental Health Advocacy groups, like the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA). You can check out their website at www.cmha.ca.

Groups like the CMHA also play a part in the second stigma-busting strategy: education. Consider volunteering with the local Grand River branch (cmhagrb.on.ca) and getting involved with public education campaigns. Another way to educate others is to use the appropriate language in every day conversation; refuse to call people “crazy” and speak with empathy about people with mental illnesses, and others may follow suit.

Lastly, don’t be afraid to interact with people with mental illnesses.

There are only a small fraction of mental illnesses that are associated with a propensity for physical aggression, and not all patients with these illnesses will necessarily become violent — many never will.

Isolating people doesn’t contribute to psychological well being. Humans are social creatures, and consistent social deprivation would drive any of us “crazy.” If someone you love seems to be exhibiting symptoms of mental illness, don’t abandon them.

Rather, support them and encourage them to get the help they need.

Perhaps most importantly, if you are experiencing mental health concerns, don’t be afraid to reach out. Telling others about your problems may be scary, and yes, because of stereotyping, does involve some social and emotional risks, but there are lots of safe places to get confidential support. On campus, UW Counselling Services on the second floor of Needles Hall (UW telephone extension 32655) provides free, individual counselling to UW students and staff. Additionally, the emergency room at Grand River Hospital (on King Street, accessible

by GRT Transit bus routes) admits psychological emergencies. If you or someone you know needs help, they can access services there. If someone is in immediate risk of suicide or self-harm, call 911. agaetano@imprint.uwaterloo.ca

Correction and apology The cover art for last week’s Science & Technology section wrongly contained a segment of a photo by Angelo Alaimo (www.flickr.com/photos/loafer), who did not give permission for his work to be used. Imprint apologizes for the error.

emran mahbub

Helpful Numbers UW Police (available 24 hrs/day)

519-888-4911

Mobile Crisis Team (available 24 hrs/day)

519-744-1813

UW Health Services

519-888-4096

Crisis Clinic at Grand River Hospital

519-742-3611

K-W Distress Line

519-745-1166

Telecare Distress Line

519-658-6805

K-W Sexual Assault Support (24 hour line)

519-741-8633

Sexual Assault Treatment Centre

519-749-6994

26

Science & Technology

Imprint, Friday, May 30, 2008

The truth about sexual orientation Adrienne Raw science and technology editor

Dangerous bacteria recruited in fight against HIV and cancer

Advaxis, Inc. a biotech in North Brunswick, New Jersey is currently initiating the second phase of testing of an experimental drug to fight cancer and HIV using a dangerous bacterium that causes food poisoning. Listeria monocytogenes is a bacterium that contaminates vegetables, dairy, and meat. Infections caused by this bacteria kill about 500 people a year in the U.S. and cause severe food poisoning in about 2,000 more. Scientists intend to use Listeria as a weapon against HIV and cancer because of the strong immune response it creates in the body. Medical researchers intend to create a modified version of the Listeria bacterium that is less dangerous as a bug, still prompts a strong immune response, and is capable of getting inside tumours. Once inside the tumour, the bacterium will prompt the body’s immune system to destroy the tumour. Other research into Listeria monocytogenes includes work by Darren Higgins from Harvard Medical School, to find a strain of L. monocytogenes that stimulates the immune system but does not reproduce in the body, and Anza Therapeutics which is attempting to make vaccines that employ dead Listeria bacterium that are unable to reproduce but still prompt an immune response.

The use of L. monocytogenes remains far in the future. It will be at least five years before researchers can identify the best vectors for the vaccine and 10 more before there is a licensed vaccine.

Lake Washington fish evolves... in reverse

A new study on evolutionary changes in a population of tiny, spiny fish called sticklebacks that live in Lake Washington shows the dramatic effect humans can have on the organisms in our environment. In the 1960s, a $140-million (U.S.) cleanup endeavour turned Lake Washington, at the time a 300,000-acre cesspool, into a much cleaner environment. The cleanup left the three-spine stickleback without the protection from predators previously afforded to them by the low visibility.

In response to the increased threat, the fish underwent a rapid evolution to an older version of itself. Today’s Lake Washinton sticklebacks are armorplated, a throwback to their marine ancestors. This reverse evolution is rarely documented in nature. Before

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the cleanup only six per cent of sticklebacks were fully armored. Now 49 per cent of the fish are fully armoured and another 35 per cent are partially armored.The biggest shock for scientists was the speed with which these fish underwent the drastic evolutionary change; the majority of the change occurred between 1968 and 1976.

Jupiter gets a new spot

A third giant red storm that has flared up on Jupiter’s surface is evidence of the global upheaval being experienced by the solar system’s largest planet. The new storm joins Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, a storm three times the width of Earth that may have been raging for over 340 years, and Red Spot Junior, a recently developed storm about the width of Earth that developed in 2006. Scientists are still unsure what makes these giant storms turn red but theorize that the violent winds may stir up material, such as phosphorous-containing molecules, from deeper in Jupiter’s atmosphere that undergo chemical reactions that turn them red when exposed to sunlight.

New measurements based off images from the Hubble Space Telescope and the New Horizons spacecraft show that the cloud band containing the Great Red Spot has changed from a quiescent band to an incredibly turbulent band, and that Red Spot Junior’s winds are also increasing in ferocity. The new observations show a period of global upheaval on the gas giant that might be connected to a decades-long cycle, proposed by UC Berkeley’s Phillip Marcus, that suggests that changing wind patterns destabilize Jupiter’s atmosphere, leading to major changes in the planet’s appearance.

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n 2006, CBS reported the story of an extraordinary family and their children, Adam and Jared. What made their story memorable was the unmistakable difference between the nine-year-old twin brothers. While Jared took pride in his G.I. Joe collection and loved playing “Battlefield 2,” Adam adored Bratz dolls and his favourite game was “Neopets: The Darkest Faerie.” In a publicized letter from the boys’ mother, Danielle, she discovered the seriousness of his feminine tendencies when he attempted to cut off his penis at the age of three. Adam was later diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder. His story is not only amazing in its existence, but also greatly influential on the debate regarding factors that determine sexual orientation.

Sexual orientation research has travelled in a pendulum motion since the early 20th century, when Freud proposed that family dynamics compose the sexual orientation of an individual.

At this time, homosexuality was globally categorized as a mental illness along with schizophrenia and paranoia. This position was upheld for some time and later challenged with the liberation of Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, and Transgendered (LGBT) members of society, causing the new wave of research linking homosexuality to biological factors.

With sociological approaches in question, the public turned to science for answers. New studies focusing on animal experiments, particularly with rats, gained popularity and soon diminished due to a lack of credibility — because

humans, unlike in animals, do not solely depend on their hormones to engage in sexual activity. But even when human research was conducted, the answers were controversial and intangible.

More importantly, the question itself of what makes people homosexual gained momentum, as the possibility of scientific evidence concerning genetic predisposition of individuals would take a stab at long-standing religious beliefs and customs associating homosexuality with sin. Consequently, AIDs could no longer be justly identified as a divine punishment for homosexuality.

Unfortunately, science failed to provide vivid, precise answers, but the first signs of progress were noted when researchers considered the balance of prenatal hormones in the womb. During embryo development, a female will become a female without the aid of hormones: the Wolffian duct simply reducing in size. Males, on the other hand, need two separate hormones: androgens for the function of the Wolffian duct and a Mullerian inhibiting hormone for the suppression of female characteristics. Because each embryo has the features of both genders in early development, it also has the possibility of a biological error happening in this process, which can theoretically affect the sexuality of the future child. Richard Pillard from the Boston University School of Medicine theorizes that the Mullerian inhibiting hormone could have a role in organization of the brain, and its postponement or failure to

kick in could stall defeminizing of the embryo.

It may surprise you that science is just as infested with theories about human sexuality as any other discipline.

Problematically, the human body is just as complicated a unit as it is amazing.

The scientific importance of families such as those of Adam and Jared is that they lay the foundation for scientific research by disengaging theories of social learning that explain sexual orientation as a primarily learned behaviour. As one of the children showed strictly heterosexual tendencies, the parenting environment alone could not be the cause of Adam’s behaviour — because if it were, both boys would elicit homosexual tendencies. On the other hand, they also trample genetic theories, because monozygotic twins such as Adam and Jared have an identical set of genes, and should share the same sexual orientation if genetics were the cause.

If you were looking for an answer in this article, I am unfortunately unable to give it to you. Science is unable to identify what causes sexual orientation at this time, and whether homosexuality is a predisposition or a choice remains a mystery. But the choice that is already available and desperately needed is acceptance — not simply tolerance, as the latest humanitarian campaigns call it. We need to accept that the only path to a more peaceful society is through unity in the resolute objective to advocate diversity.

Taylor Helferty

array, they will create a sensor that is like having thousands of cameras in one — over 12,000 cameras, to be more precise. This camera would be able to measure the distance to every bump and part of someone’s face and produce a 3-D image. When this technology hits the market, the average number of photo albums per profile will probably be 30.

pictures of what happens in the core of cyclones. The planes fly 300 feet above the ocean surface and transmit data about pressure, temperature, wind, and humidity back to researchers. Three hundred feet may not sound very high, but this height is where the critical transfer of energy from sea surface to storm occurs. With a better understanding of a cyclone’s core and the energy transfer between sea and storm, intensity forecasting can be improved. Cyclones can be dangerous and leave little time for evacuation due to very sudden changes in their intensity.

alomako@imprint.uwaterloo.ca

Amphibian evolutionary missing link found

A 290 million-year-old fossil recently rediscovered in the collections of the national Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. may be the evolutionary missing link in the amphibian family tree. The “frogamander,” officially dubbed Gerobatrachus hottoni, looks like a salamander with a stubby tail and froglike ears.

As the specimen shares features of both frogs and salamanders, scientists believe it may be evidence that these two amphibians shared evolutionary origins. Gerobatrachus hottoni fills in the gap between one fossil group hypothesized to be the ancestors of modern amphibians (temnospondyls) and the earliest frogs and salamanders. Experts caution, however, that it is difficult to confirm that Gerobatrachus hottoni is representative of a common ancestor of frogs and salamanders because there is only one specimen and that specimen is not complete.

— with files from Scientific American, NewScientist.com, and National Geographic News araw@imprint.uwaterloo.ca

staff reporter

3-D cameras coming soon!

It may be a long time before we can pick one up at the nearest electronics store, but they are on their way. A 3-D sensor was developed at Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering in Jena, Germany and can take 3-D photos of objects using no wires, enabling the camera to go places where tethered cameras can’t. The sensor has two cameras that act much like human eyes and a projector in the middle that casts stripes on the object. The object’s shape can then be deduced from the alterations to the natural shape of the projection. This technology will probably remain in the hands of crime scene investigators. As for the rest of us, Stanford electronics researchers are building a camera around a “multiaperture image sensor.” By shrinking the pixels on the sensor, grouping them together in arrays of 256 pixels each, and placing a tiny lens on each

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Recording the birth of a virus

For the first time ever, scientists have been able to record the birth and assembly of a virus inside a living cell.

Pictures, which were published in Nature on Sunday, May 25, 2008, are taken with a microscope that projects light at an angle instead of straight on. Viruses were previously studied in frozen states or through biochemical analyses. With this breakthrough, many questions can now be answered, and viruses such as HIV can be better understood and studied. “The use of this technique is almost unlimited,” study co-author Nolwenn Jouvenet told Nature. With a technique offering this kind of insight into how a virus runs itself, breakthroughs in medical science may be just on the horizon.

Remote controlled planes to study hurricanes

U.S. researchers are preparing to use small, unmanned planes to fly into the eye of cyclones to better understand how they work. These tiny planes — measuring seven feet long, weighing 28 lbs, and costing between $50,000 and $80,000 — can be controlled by a satellite and send back much clearer

Banshee races for top media player for Linux

Banshee Media Player for Linux has released its second beta for version 1.0, and it’s looking like it may bring it to the forefront of open source media players.

They have rebuilt the media player from the ground up, overhauled the interface, created tighter integration with internet radio Last.fm and the Brasero CD burning software, and it can now play videos — including video podcasts. It also uses much less resources and starts up faster than previous versions. Although it is still in beta, it is making fast progress towards a full release and is looking to take the spot for the standard media player for Gnome Linux distributions, rivaling the popular KDE media player Amarok. For all you media lovers using Linux who wanted videos and music in one player — as well as the ability to watch your favourite video podcasts — keep an eye out for the latest release of Banshee. Beta 2 can be downloaded from the Banshee team repositories.

Sports & Living

Imprint, Friday, May 30, 2008 sports@imprint.uwaterloo.ca

Students in the homefield

Dinh Nguyen

Top: Second year therapeutic recreation student, Faith-Anne Wagler, recreates a scene from The Matrix to avoid multiple speeding balls from the opposing team during a “friendly” game of dodge ball.

Top: Just a regular game of regular free hand frisbee between regular math students on B1 Green before the future Nanotech building arrives. (From left to right: Michael Dumphy and Chris Subich)

Bottom: Mechanical engineering grad student Brock Watson watches in awe as goalie Bahman Hadji and mathematics Master student Peter Willamson fight over the invisible ball during an intramural soccer practice.

Bottom: The fight between good and evil begins. Pratik Mehta (black shirt) rises to block Raj Shanghavi’s (white shirt) jump shot in a game of world dominating basketball between two accounting financial management students.

Warrior coach walks hall of fame Achievements made by Women’s Varsity Hockey head coach Geraldine Heaney during her early years as a hockey player earns her a spot in the International Ice Hockey Association Hall of Fame.

Dylan Cawker imprint intern

I

t’s no coincidence that a lot of today’s sports superstars started out in their respective sport at a very young age. Sidney Crosby, the Pittsburgh Penguins sniper, began his hockey career at the age of three, meanwhile Tiger Woods, arguably the most dominant athlete ever, took his first golf swings at the age of two. These are two very extreme cases, but still, it isn’t very common to see an athlete start a sport in their teens and go on to dominate it internationally — which is just what Women’s Varsity Hockey head coach Geraldine Heaney did. Earlier this month, she got admitted into the International Ice Hockey Association Hall of Fame (IIHF).

Unlike Sidney Crosby and Tiger Wodds, Heaney didn’t begin her player her all-star sport at a young toddler age — she had to wait until her teen years. This is partly because, being born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Heaney didn’t did not live in a hockey hot spot and therefore was not exposed to hockey in her childhood. She did however participate in games such as soccer, basketball, Gaelic

football and even the crazy Irish sport of hurling— which is a contact sport that involves teams running around a soccer field with wooden clubs smacking a ball that is harder than a baseball in mid air. Playing so many sports at such a young age must have improved Heaney’s athletic ability. Mix that athleticism with a fiery Irish competitiveness

as a solid defenceman but only started to draw comparisons to the great Boston Bruins offensive defenceman after scoring a very big goal in the 1990 inaugural Women’s World Hockey Championship, when she made a tie-breaking shot between Canada and the United States.

Heaney also competed in two Olympic Games. In 1998 her team earned a silver medal

Heaney also competed in two Olympic Games. In 1998 her team earned a silver medal in Nagano, Japan, losing to the United States in the Gold Medal match. But in 2002 the Canadian team got their revenge and you have someone who is all set to be a hockey player.

Heaney got her start in hockey at the age of 13 playing for the Toronto Aeros and winning six provincial championships. Known to the many as “the Bobby Orr of women’s hockey,” she was the only woman to be featured on the Hockey Night In Canada’s top ten goals of the 1989- 1990 season. Heaney was always known

in Nagano, Japan, losing to the United States in the Gold Medal match. But in 2002 the Canadian team got their revenge on the Americans after defeating the U.S.A. 3-2 on American soil in Salt Lake City, Utah. This earned Heaney her first Olympic Gold Medal and marking the end of her career as a hockey player.

Some of Heaney’s other accomplishments include being named Top Defenceman at the

1992 and 1994 World Championships, and again at the 1999 and 2001 Esso National Championships , a gold medal with team Ontario at the 2000 Esso Nationals, being named OWHA’s Most Valuable Defenceman in 1987 1988,1991-1992 and 1992-1993. In 1992 and 1994 she also took the blades off her skates and replaced them with wheels, competing in the World Roller Hockey Championships — winning gold in 1992 and silver in 1994.

After looking over Heaney’s international stats there was no question that she should have been included in the IIHF group with American Women’s superstar Cammi Granato, Russian Men’s team sniper Igor Larionov, and one of the games greatest players, if not the best, Mario Lemieux. Playing in 125 games internationally for Team Canada, Heaney scored 27 goals, and adding 66 assists for a total of 93 career points; this puts her on top all time for points by a defenceman and fifth overall for Team Canada.

Heaney continues next year as the head coach of the University of Waterloo women’s hockey team where she hopes she can lead them to a CIS title. dcawker@imprint.uwaterloo.ca

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Sports & Living

Imprint, Friday, May 30, 2008

fitness Book Review Lose Fat Not Faith Jeremy R. Likness Golden Summit Inc.

I

t has been said that the way to make quick money in the book publishing industry is through self-help or weight loss. This book, Lose Fat Not Faith by Jeremy R. Likness, does not really fall into that category. It is written with a passion for the subject and is based on the author’s personal experience and self-transformation. There are a number of factors that make this an exceptional book, and even more so an extraordinary fitness book: First is in the way it is structured, as each chapter is written in two parts. It begins with the meat of the matter, teaching about health, fitness, wellness, followed by the personal narrative of Likness’ journey from being unhealthy to Mr. Health. Likness gives numerous examples from his own fitness journey and some for those he has helped along that path.

Lose Fat Not Faith is written partly around the philosophy from Body

for Life by Bill Philips, a book that repackaged and remarketed principles widely known to bodybuilding experts, making it easily understood to the general public. The major difference is that Lose Fat Not Faith, goes into much greater depth on some of the non-physical health factors, weight loss, and weight management. It deals with issues of stress, family life and work factors that can help or hinder a person’s desired physical transformation.

This book has a very holistic approach to health and fitness. It presents the argument that in order to make lasting changes in your life, those changes must begin from the inside — transformation starts in the heart and in the mind and then works out in the body.

In the book Likness states that: “Physique transformation is about more than simply losing weight. You will find that your life changes in many ways, too. You adjust to new clothing, a new image in the mirror, even a new sense of energy that allows you to achieve more during the day. Spiritually and mentally, you

may change as well. Although these changes are almost always positive, change itself can be something that we fear. For this reason, it is important to understand what changes to expect to better prepare yourself as the process unfolds.� Once the physical changes start to become more evident, you will have both positive and negative comments from people in your life. Likness helps to provide some tools for dealing with both types. An example he gives is that if you have been overweight for a long time, you might not be accustomed to compliments, you will have to learn how to receive them and take some of them to heart.

The techniques in Lose Fat Not Faith, if applied, can be a great tool for helping a person achieving greater health and well being. This can be a factor to a longer and happier life. If these goals are things you have been thinking about, or have started working on, pick up this book to help boost your resolve and efforts to make your lifestyle changes. — Steven R. McEvoy

Warriors turned champions

at golf tournament

Dinh Nguyen

assistant editor-in-chief

A

Tues, June 3 @ 9 p.m.

dding yet another notch to their victory belt, the Warrior men’s golf team brought home the first place title from the Canadian Junior Golf Association (CJGA) Humber Invitational tournament with 623 points. The defending champion team from Humber College fell shortly behind with 597 points.

The event, which was held at the 6,800 yard Mystic Golf Club in Ancaster, Ontario, crowned many individual winners. Among them stood Adam Wilson, Jimmy Latta and Matt Sim, UW students that have been selected to play as individuals in the Royal Canadian Golf Association Championships (RCGA) at the University of Victoria in British Columbia on May 26 to 29. Here the top six players will form team Canada’s university-level golf team and will

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go on to compete in Africa in August at the International University Sports Federation (FIUS).

Another honourable mention is Arts and Business student Garrett Rank, who scored a total of 150 points, missing a two man playoff by one swing and tying for third.

Sadly, Rank will not be joining Wilson, Latta and Sim at the RCGA in late May. With a total score of 583 points in two days, the UW women’s golf team earned a silver medal at the CJGA Humber Invitational, they too will be traveling as a team to B.C. for the RCGA come late May. Among them is team captain Tiffany Terrier who earned a individual bronze medal with a two day total of 168. Unfortunately, she too will not be competing individually in B.C.

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