Porno Death Cult: faith and faithlessness

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March 3, 2014

Everyone believes in something — it’s how we survive life and deal with existence. “We’re all dealing with the same things, we just use different tools to cope,” said Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg.

Whether you’re Christian, Bhuddist, athiest, or none of the above, you’ll find something to relate to in Friedenberg’s new dance-theatre work Porno Death Cult. The show is about faith, what that means, and figuring out what you believe in.

Friedenberg, an SFU Contemporary Arts alumna, has been interested in these types of themes for a long time. Her previous work, Highgate, also dealt with death, but in a much different way. This time around she’s more interested in the abstract side of things versus whether or not the coffin will be the right size.

The inspiration for this show came as she was walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain, an 800km pilgrimage that is older than Christianity.

She found it very interesting that people have been walking that same route for thousands of years as a means to connect with faith. Of course there are Catholics walking the trail, but Friedenberg said that there were also people of many other religions and nationalities.

“They became more muscular and there was this rock star looking guy on a cross.”

– Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg, choreographer and writer

“It made me interested in what we do to cope with life and existence,” said Friedenberg. “The show explores the idea of faith and faithlessness — it’s a continuum, and it changes for most of us.”

The title for the work emerged during this pilgrimage, before she’d even thought of creating the piece. She was charmed by the little towns and cathedrals, and noticed that the statues of Jesus along the way began to get better and better lookingw. “They became more muscular and there was this rock star looking guy on a cross.”

They also got bloodier: “The Spanish really go in for that sort of thing,” she laughed. Friedenberg noticed that the majority of the people in the cathedrals were women, and she thought: “This is like a porno death cult,” and the name stuck.

“The central character, Maureen, is lonely,” explained Friedenberg, “she’s going through an archetypal journey to find faith and what she believes; to find salvation and how to act the right way.” Maureen draws on Christianity, yoga, Bhuddism, and revivalist faiths in order to try to find what she believes in.

“It’s comic at times, but it’s a tragic journey,” said Friedenberg. “There are glimpses of the exaggerated Vancouver or California yoga teacher, and there’s a little bit of sexy Jesus,” she laughed.

While some might wonder if this show will offend, Friedenberg assures that she is not making fun of any religion, but exploring the idea of faith in general. “I’m not lampooning, but there is humour,” she said, “you’ve gotta have a sense of humour.”

Along with choreographing the show, Friedenberg also wrote the textual element, and her husband, Marc Stewart is the composer. “He’s pulling from all kinds of spiritual practice and ideas like chanting and spiritual music,” she said.

Another element that adds to the show is the visual art exhibition in the Firehall Arts Centre Gallery. Alice Mansell, the show’s costume designer, and Mickey Meads, the set designer are presenting PDC: In Progress which showcases photos from the show and mixed media. This is a rare occasion when the art in the Firehall Gallery directly relates to the show in the theatre.

As Friedenberg said, “The show starts as you enter the lobby.”

Free textbooks for popular courses

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EIC

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March 3, 2014

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VANCOUVER [CAPILANO COURIER] – BCcampus and the provincial government are collaborating on an initiative that will give students free access to online textbooks for some high demand classes.

Textbooks are one of the most pricey, but essential, elements of post-secondary schooling, and BC’s Open Textbook Project is welcome news to both students and professors alike. Nearly 300 students have already reaped the benefits of the open textbook initiative, each saving about $146 compared to their regular textbook fees.

The BC Open Textbook Project is an initiative that was launched by the Ministry of Advanced Education and BCcampus. Their goal is to provide free open textbooks for the 40 highest enrolled first- and second-year courses in BC.

There are three phases to the processing of the project. Phase one involves the reviewing of existing open textbooks, phase two is the adaptation of existing open textbooks and finally, phase three creates new open textbooks.

Some of the notable early results of the Open Textbook Project include a collective savings of $11,220 for physics students at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, where each of the 60 students saved $187. A database management class at Douglas College consists of 35 students who saved a total of $5,600 through Open Textbook, each of the 40 students in a statistics class at the Justice Institute of British Columbia saved $100, and $2,060 was saved by 20 management students at Northwest Community College.

Capilano University professor Rajiv Jhangiani didn’t notice any particular drawbacks to open textbooks; students who aren’t accustomed to using online texts are always able to print PDF copies of the book, which only cost a small fraction of the softcover hard copy.

“The good news, I suppose, is since then, around December of last year, BCcampus uploaded my revision into their online repository and they have an agreement with SFU that means that SFU will provide a print, bound softcover version,” Jhangiani said.

“It’s certainly possible for an open textbook to have higher quality.”

– Rajiv Jhangiani, Capilano University professor

He added that this printed version will not just be a simple coiled, spiro-bound text, but a proper bound version: “To any student who wants it at-cost, the 300-page textbook that I co-authored currently costs students about $13.”

Faculty members are still more inclined to use textbooks released by major educational publishers; according to Jhangiani, the extra resources provided by publishers make traditional textbooks attractive to teachers.

“I think there are some very good reasons why faculty choose to adopt traditional textbooks from the large educational publishers like Pearson or McGraw-Hill,” he explained. “Part of the reason is the quality of the product, part of it [is] the test banks and research manuals that comes with that.”

Despite this, Jhangiani believes that open textbooks will soon be capable of providing further resources. “It’s certainly possible for an open textbook to have higher quality, or even give it higher quality because you are able to revise it much quicker than a traditional textbook’s five-year review cycle; you’re able to keep up to beat in terms of cutting edge research,” Jhangiani said.

He continued, “I think the ministry is now funding programs that allow for development of ancillaries and so on, so I think eventually we’re going to get to a point where I don’t see a good reason why faculty members would stick to traditional textbooks — if the only difference is the cost to the students.”

BC Open Textbook aims to finish the original 40-subject area this year. Many of the textbooks under revision are US-centric and faculties are working to revise them into Canadian editions.

Commuter survey explores transit tactics

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EIC

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March 3, 2014

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“Have mercy, been waiting for the bus all day;” this lyric was true for ZZ Top in the ‘80s, and is true for students today. Beginning next week, SFU Facilities Services will launch an online survey which will ask students for the details of their daily commutes.

Students answering the survey will have the opportunity to explain how they travel to campus and why they choose to do so in that manner.

Facilities Services, which is co-sponsoring the survey with SFU’s Sustainability’s Office and the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions, anticipates that students will mention challenges such as bus pass-ups and the commute length, among many others.

This survey will provide a baseline for ways in which SFU can improve its transit situation as well as intercampus connections.

The idea originally grew out of the BC government’s initiative to reduce carbon emissions by 33 per cent below 2007 levels by 2020. Since the Burnaby campus is primarily a commuter campus, transportation to and from the main campus contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), explains SFU’s Sustainability Office’s website. As part of the desire to create a more sustainable culture, the office pegged transportation as a key area for improvement.

However, in order to make those improvements, there had to be some sort of empirical backing. “How can we prove anything if we don’t have good data?” Elizabeth Starr, campus planner, Facilities Services, explained.

Facilities Services had previously conducted traffic surveys about road capacity, parking situations, and traffic demand, but had never specifically addressed energy use. Starr said, “The type of data we have gathered before did not tell us about commuter GHG emissions.”

Furthermore, one of Facilities Services’ responsibilities is campus planning and development; therefore, they felt it was important to understand how students arrived at and travelled between SFU’s three campuses.

“We need to know what will serve our students best,” said Starr.

Students might even see the statistics from this survey in the classroom; according to Sustainability Consultant Justin Bauer, the Geography Department could eventually use the data in their Spatial Interface Research Lab. “So [students] are not only answering the survey, but then they get to do the analysis on something that is local and important,” explained Bauer.

The data from the survey will identify the age of participants using certain types of transit, as well as the location of those participants. Bauer imagines this will help SFU target distinct populations who face different transportation and mobility issues.

Although Starr was hesitant to claim that the survey would solve all of students’ transit issues, she did say it could provide avenues for improvement: “The data will help to identify transit and transportation issues and help to plan for the future, but its not about promising immediate change.”

The survey will be launched on Mar. 10, to close on Apr. 6. Students will be contacted to respond to the survey via their SFU Connect emails. After crunching the numbers, SFU Institutional Research and Planning and Facilities Services will jointly publish the results.

Lean times as opportunity for reform in Venezuela

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EIC

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March 3, 2014

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For 14 years, Hugo Chavez drove Venezuela down the path towards “Bolivarian Revolution” which sought to retract the country from the neoliberal mould that American influence had long pressured Latin America into accepting. Robust additions to welfare programs, price controls, and foreign aid to socialist neighbours were made in order to achieve these ideals.

And, for over a decade, it worked (sort of). The Venezuelan poor, after years of neglect, now had a champion catering to their needs, their desires, their aspirations. And all this was channeled through the incredibly charismatic mouthpiece that was Chavez. It is more than understandable why such a constituency would cast aside cautious incremental progress in favour of Chavez’s outlandish dreams.

But the piper must be paid. Over the course of Chavez’s presidential tenure, Venezuela’s oil exports dropped by nearly half while spending promises for populist goodies skyrocketed.

Unsurprisingly, the economic fallout has been acute. Inflation for 2014 has averaged around 40 per cent, according to a report by Scotiabank Economics, down from 56.2 per cent in 2013, according to Business Insider, all part of a much longer trend.

Necessity is the great destroyer of ideology.

The very Venezuelans that the Bolivarian Revolution sought to protect — the poor — are now suffering from it, and the right-leaning middle-classes even more so. No longer can the government afford to insulate its citizenry from the faltering economy.

Chavez’s successor Nicolás Maduro is facing the bulk of the blame. But let’s not fool ourselves that it is his fault alone. For over a decade the Venezuelan citizenry has accepted sugary populism in lieu of achievable reforms. Voters ultimately deserve the people they elect and support.

And while Chavez chipped away at Venezuela’s democratic integrity through media censorship and tolerance of his supporters’ voter intimidation techniques, the country never completely left the orbit of democracy. Chavez’s political ambitions sprouted from a soil of legitimate popularity. Ultimately, it was ordinary Venezuelans who went along with the Bolivarian Revolution, and they bear responsibility for it alongside their wayward leaders.

Beset by the protests of the vengeful middle-classes, Maduro has lost much of his mandate and will have a hard time governing from now on. While it’s likely his people will retain power for another election or two, they have lost their political mandate to transform the country in their image. Bold moves that characterized the Chavez administration will no longer be palpable with the general population, and Maduro will have to be cautious.

Whether this is good or bad remains to be seen. It is an old mantra that lean times beget good policies, as fat times beget the bad. Crises leave less room for political theatre and necessitate pragmatism. But they also accentuate political differences, which can obstruct governments from feeding their nations the harsh medicine they may need.

Maduro is a committed disciple of the Bolivarian Revolution — he would not have been Chavez’s handpicked successor otherwise. But necessity is the great destroyer of ideology. Economic and political realities will force Maduro’s hand towards economic reform, regardless of how fervent the anti-government protests remain.

Tippy Top Ten: Midterms

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EIC

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March 3, 2014

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Here are the Tippy Top Ten signs you failed your midterms last week…

10. Answered every question with “C” on oral exam

9. Tutorials were cancelled this week but only for you

8. Apparently Marshall McLuhan isn’t the Green Lantern’s alter-ego

7. Instead of a smiley face, your test had a barfing emoji

6. Accidently used a number 3 pencil on scantron

5. Professor keeps telling you about assignments you’ll be doing next semester

4. This is the first time you’re hearing about any midterms

3. You plagiarized from the washroom’s hand-washing instructions

2. Started off essay with phrase “Listen dude”

1. Turns out the kid you cheated off of was only half-Asian

Clan overpowered by Wolves

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March 3, 2014

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Less than a week after putting up their highest single-game point total against NCAA competition, the Clan couldn’t keep their offence going in an 82-71 loss to the Western Oregon University Wolves on Wednesday.

In the first game of their season-ending road-trip, the Clan couldn’t hold onto the ball. Fifteen turnovers plagued SFU’s efforts, especially after getting off to a rough start. It wasn’t until four minutes had elapsed and the Wolves had already put up 13 points that SFU hit its first basket of the game.

However, that kick-started a 14-0 run for the Clan, giving the visitors their first lead of the game with 12 minutes to play in the first. Unfortunately, it was short lived. After a period of trading baskets, the Wolves went on an 11-0 run of their own to pull ahead 36-30 towards the end of the first half.

SFU stuck around, trailing just 41-40 after 20, but in a battle of runs, WOU took a decisive 56-45 lead off an 11-1 run, a lead they would not relinquish.

“On the defensive end, we just wore down in the second half,” said head coach James Blake. “They started getting us on the offensive boards. Going down the stretch, that was ultimately what led to our demise.”

Senior Ibrahim Appiah grabbed a season-high 19 rebounds in the game, but even that wasn’t enough. Neither were Sango Niang’s game-high 30 points.

On that pair’s effort, Blake added, “Overall I’m happy with the effort. We have some great individual efforts and some things to build on.”

The loss drops the Clan’s record to 10-15 overall, but a dismal 3-14 in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference. With the season over — the Clan played their final game after press time — Blake must hope that, even with key players moving on, there’s enough to build on for next year.

Social media lie detector

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March 3, 2014

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All of you uninformed Facebook-gossipers will soon have to critically think about what you spread online! Researchers from the University of Sheffield are currently developing a social media lie-detector to separate fact from fiction on various social websites.

Pheme technology examines a source’s reliability by seeking corroborating information and by tracking the evolution of online discussions of various topics. Kalina Bontcheva, a Pheme senior researcher, said in an interview with the Deccan Chronicle, “Pheme will be able to identify false information by looking at the news source, conversations that stem from the tweet, and even the tweet’s language.”

In a world rank with uninformed web-gossip concerning every topic under the sun, this type of technology seems a little ambitious and even intimidating. If it succeeds, though, it could not only spotlight those who fall into shameless Internet gossip-traps, but also benefit media industries that have deteriorated in recent years, including today’s news media.

In a time where the state of journalism is rapidly worsening due to corporate interests, capitalist influence, and lack of thorough investigation, Pheme could be a starting point for steering mainstream news reports in the direction of truth and greater public service.

Currently, reporters all over the world, including many from the CBC, are relying on social media to write and deliver their stories. Social media has transformed the way news is created, dispersed and delivered. But, reporters are now wrongly seeking validation of facts simply through social media. I’ve even seen posts on Globe and Mail asking the public to verify the components of in-development news stories.

Pheme could provide more accuracy to those speedy, cheap-to-cover headlines.

Are the responses trustworthy? Maybe. Are they biased? More than you’d think. Most importantly, are these news sources questioning them appropriately? I don’t think so.

Social media has provided a plethora of journalists with an avenue for laziness. Before networks came into play, reporters had to be passionate about what they wrote, to independently and thoroughly investigate any story, rather than simply relying on the plentitude of shady sources available online.

Why use other, more efficient means for finding truth when you can ask Joe Schmoe on Twitter? Who cares if he’s politically biased and may not know all the facts? The story will be out real quick. Then we can move on to more pressing matters, like which celebrity has been cheating on which.

Of course, this isn’t the case for all journalists; there are many individuals and alternative news outlets dedicated to reporting the objective truth, and I applaud them!

But by instantly searching for validity in current events, Pheme’s fact-checking technology would not only help demand that those slacking, computer-based reporters think critically about their jobs, but may also help provide accuracy to those speedy, cheap-to-cover headlines.

As there is no turning back from online methods, Pheme may actually bring about new attitudes toward the subjects journalists cover, and the way they must cover them.

Put simply, I would rather have fewer reliable stories, than more of lower quality. I would rather be uninformed than misinformed. Hopefully, Pheme will discourage rumour-based reporting and aid journalists in their sometimes overwhelming pursuit of news.

Women take root in STEM studies

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EIC

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March 3, 2014

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On February 21, Techcrunch published an article with the headline, “Women outnumber men for the first time in Berkeley’s Intro to Computer Science course;” it reported that 106 female students had enrolled versus 104 male students in this very technocentric course.

You might wonder why anyone is even reporting such a small statistical difference about which gender dominates in an introductory computer science course. For me, this small but significant step brings up important issues that are relevant in our current techno-savvy world.

By recognizing this gender gap, tucked away deep within the structures of academics in technology, we can pinpoint problems and create solutions to improve women’s participation in all levels of technological advancement and development.

Female role models offer examples of careers women may not have considered possible otherwise.

As a female technology user, I have had experiences where my knowledge and work have been belittled simply because I have a vagina. It’s frustrating, to say the least. The stigma that drives this belittling is an example of why women still have a low visibility in technology fields, despite being as well-educated as men.

Based on a study released by Statistics Canada this past December, women are still underrepresented in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and computer science) fields. According to 2011 StatCan data, only 39 per cent of STEM graduates between ages 25 to 34 were female.

Numbers such as these are a reminder that arbitrary male-dominance still exists in these fields. However, seeing an increased number of female students in computer science programs disrupts the assumption that women are afraid of technology and are not “wired” to understand technology as well as men.

Another issue is the huge gap between male and female participation in the tech industry. Analyzing labour market outcomes of university graduates in 2011, the unemployment rate gap for men with a STEM university degree was just 4.7 per cent while it was seven per cent for women. If women are educated in technology, why are they so much less visible in the field?

My guess is that the biggest unstudied barrier for women in entering the field is that we value men in the tech industry more than women. We do this by default. This is not to say that men are better or more intelligent than women, but we have been shaped by patriarchal ideologies to think that women and technology do not mix, that women are not interested in learning about technologies. This assumption misrepresents and holds back women from participating in the industry.

Male-centric models of workplace processes and practices have been embedded within the industry and keep women from being completely successful in the world of tech: “Boy’s clubs” and gender-bias for job positions are big hurdles that women face when seeking opportunities to use their own knowledge and skills.

Personally, I have worked in a place where higher-paying and more technocentric jobs are allocated for and given to male employees while women are hired to fill in jobs that provide nurturing and assistance with lower wages.

I believe that attracting more women to STEM fields and having high-profile role models in tech such as Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer and Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg can help restructure and narrow the gender gap in the technological field today and in the future. Female role models mean women are able to take themselves out of the patriarchal ideology STEM fields face. They offer examples of careers that women may not have considered possible otherwise.

Only when we see women as legitimate participants in the industry will changes follow through.

Go Gold or go home

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EIC

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March 3, 2014

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If you are anything like the members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), then you will probably say that the Olympics are not about winning or losing, or the number of medals a given country has won. And you may very well be right.

However, we competitive, greedy human beings naturally value winning and losing over much else. Especially, it seems, when we are spectators.

Because of the IOC’s view, though, there is no formal ranking on how to “win” the Olympics, or what qualifies as the official score; it varies depending your location.

If you are most of the world, the number of gold medals determines who is “winning” with ties broken up by the number of silver and bronze medals. However, if you’re in the United States or watching NBC, it’s the total medal count that matters, regardless of colour.

Counting total medals rather than gold medals implies that a gold medal is equal to a bronze one, that it is irrelevant whether you place first, second, or third; you’ve just got to place in the top three.

Although the US was fourth in number of gold medals these Olympics, according to their counting system, they cruise to second place with their bronze medal wins.

This does not make a large difference in Sochi, but in Vancouver, their system planted them firmly atop the standings with 37 total medals while the system rewarding the number of gold medals strongly favoured Canada.

You can call me biased in my belief that the gold medal system is better, as it favours Canada, but those who win truly, should win it all — not because they’re second or third.

Earning an Olympic silver or bronze medal is no small feat, and deserves proper recognition, but the system should be weighted in favour of the actual winner. At the very least the system should recognize gold medals as better than silver medals, and silver medals as better than bronze.

The Sochi Olympics, for all the concerns prior to the Opening Ceremonies, were an unquestionable hit. Russia, with 13 gold and 33 medals total, was the runaway winner by both counts.

But it won’t always be that easy — and for a two-week event that’s all about determining who’s the best, it’s a shame that we can’t properly determine who had the
best Olympics.

On the political fence

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EIC

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March 3, 2014

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Over the last weekend of February, the federal Liberal party held its national policy convention. Liberal supporters waited eagerly to hear about how Justin Trudeau is going to lead us into a brave new world, while Conservatives and New Democrats stood ready to criticize the young leader.

While Liberals did leave the weekend feeling excited for their future, those expecting to hear the plan were left wanting.

This event was billed as a policy conference and one of its highlights was to be the unveiling of Trudeau’s plan to help the struggling middle class, something we have heard him repeatedly say is a priority for his government.

All we knew going into the conference was that education, trade, and infrastructure are central to this plan. With the conference over, that’s still all we know as the Liberal leader made more fluffy promises without any substance.

It will be interesting to see over the next year whether this potential PM will actually choose to have an opinion.

The little he did say made him sound like a more charismatic Stephen Harper. He wants the federal government to support provincial education policies, when the Conservatives have already dedicated the entire northern and resource strategy to skills training.

Concerning trade, the only black mark on Conservatives’ record is the failure to secure American support for the Keystone pipeline but the trade deal with the European Union more than makes up for that. Conservatives also plan to spend $14 billion in infrastructure over the next decade through the Building Canada Fund.

In other words, the three central parts of Liberal strategy for victory in 2015 are already being handled by the current government.

Much to the chagrin of Conservatives looking on, Trudeau dances on the political fence, promising a right-leaning economic program while offering liberal social policies. He suggests an expanded role for government, but says government interventions must be tightly targeted.

He also mentioned, again vaguely, that his government would spend even more generously than the Conservatives have, which means more debt or more taxes, when Canadians are so close to regaining a surplus budget.

If that isn’t enough to worry you, Trudeau still believes that “the budget will balance itself,” if only we focus on investment. The Conservatives once again jumped all over this, flooding Twitter with quotes from former Liberal Party leaders from Ignatieff to Chretien about the absurdity of a self-balancing budget.

Among the few solid policy commitments we got from Trudeau were things we already knew, or variations on a theme. The legalization of marijuana came up once again, but most Canadians already know that he’s in favour of that.

Senate reform was also a topic of discussion, and the Liberal leader said that if elected, he would appoint members from other parties to the Senate. That’s funny: a few weeks ago Trudeau said he would create a non-partisan committee to look after Senate appointments.

The big announcement, the one most likely to cause problems for Trudeau leading into 2015, was the resolution passed to call for the decriminalization of medically-assisted suicide. So far, Trudeau has continued to stay on the fence on the issue, saying that it is worth discussion and debate, but that he has reservations. It will be interesting to see over the next year whether this potential prime minister will actually choose to have an opinion.

This strategy may make him appeal to both political sides. But there is great danger: those walking on the middle of the road tend to get hit by trucks.