Album Reviews: Dirty Beaches, Alice in Chains, and a throwback to The Magnetic Fields

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June 3, 2013

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Placing multinational corporations on the stand

By Alexis Lawton-Smith

After the horrific fire of the Rana Plaza in Bangladesh, I ruffled through my wardrobe and looked at the labels enclosed with each garment. The results weren’t shocking or unexpected, but a sweeping sense of guilt washed over me.

Aside from some jeans, some sweaters and a few jackets which touted a “Made in USA” label, the majority of my clothes were made in China, Vietnam and India. I also found one item that was made in Bangladesh — my favourite pair of boots. I suddenly felt dirty for buying them.

It’s no secret that most companies outsource labour to foreign countries. It’s also no secret that many companies exploit these foreign workers, forcing them to work in unsafe conditions, and often for meagre wages. The term “sweat shop” is part of our vernacular and we all know what it means, yet we do little to stop it; foreign exploitation is proclaimed on many labels, but we turn a blind eye.

When we shop, we look at the price tag, but not the label enclosed. We often don’t stop to think about where the products we enjoy come from or how they are made. I think it’s about time we did. It’s time to stop this intentional denial, and finally help others in less fortunate circumstances.

To accomplish this, citizens must stand up against the sociopathic nature of multinational corporations. The current free enterprise system needs to change, and regulations must be brought in. Without regulation, multinational companies will continue to exploit everything from human life to the environment.

I am not advocating that capitalism needs to be abolished or that outsourcing cannot occur. I am, however, advocating for adjustments in our system to happen. While companies should be able to enjoy a profit, the bottom line should not be more important than human life, human dignity and the environment.

As consumers, we may feel that it is not our responsibility to oppose multinational corporations, but it is. Everything that we buy supports the current system. This support is akin to a direct vote that allows exploitation to continue.

As consumers, we seem to forget that we have an immense amount of power: if we collectively demanded change, companies would be forced to adapt their means of production to suit the demand. Demanding change won’t be easy. It would involve co-ordinating, planning, petitions and boycotts. It would mean giving up some of your time. It may also mean having a little less, so that others have a little more.

Although life in Canada is hard for many of us, are lucky to live here. As students, many of us are drowning in debt and struggling to make ends meet, but the difference in our society is that we have options to better our lives and to enjoy a decent standard of living. For the many factory workers producing our goods, these options are not available; instead, these workers are forced to accept work in dangerous conditions for an unlivable wage.

The poverty that many of these workers face is incomparable to us even at out poorest. Aren’t we willing to help others with far less opportunity? Although it won’t be easy, I truly believe that it is possible for far more people to have a decent standard of living.

As a privileged nation, it’s time that we took a hard look at ourselves in the mirror, past our trendy clothes and iPhones. While we may enjoy all of our stuff, is it really worth the real price tag?

Don’t let questions get the best of you

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June 3, 2013

A case for questioning all questions

By Ben Buckley

One of my favourite clichés in televised news is the way they present stories not as complete sentences, but as questions: “Could eating carrots be slowly killing your children? Details at 11.” It doesn’t matter whether the answer is “yes” or “no.” Simply by asking the question, the reporter has planted the idea, “carrots equals dead children” into your mind. Contrary to our intuitions, questions can be, in a sense, wrong. They can be misleading, if not downright incorrect.

The first kind of “wrong question” is the kind that doesn’t need to be asked in the first place. By asking a question, you are implicitly expressing the belief that the question needs to be asked. In other words, you are saying the answer to the question is probably surprising, in the sense that it might justify something something.

Often, news outlets ask questions, not because they’re worth asking, but because they present the illusion of a nice, marketable controversy. In the words of Doug Henwood, “we can’t tell people what to think, but we can tell them what to think about.”

A concrete example from the past few years would be the question repeated by the Birthers in the United States: “Was the President of the United States really born on American soil?” This kind of misleading question was infamously parodied in an internet meme, asking: “Did Glenn Beck rape and murder a young girl in 1990?”

The second kind of wrong question is the kind that makes assumptions which might not be true. The classic example is an old joke, where the joke teller asks a married man, “do you still beat your spouse?” — the assumption in the question being that the man has ever beaten his spouse.

A more realistic example of this occurs in false dichotomies, where the question gives an incomplete set of choices, as with the question “are you with us, or are you with the terrorists?” A question can also contain a framework of background assumptions. If you ask, “what should Canada’s official languages be?” you are assuming that Canada needs official languages to begin with.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing for a question to contain an assumption, provided that it’s asked in the proper context. If everybody has explicitly agreed that Canada should have official languages, it makes sense to ask which languages they should be. In that case, the question is the result of previous knowledge. The problem is when such questions are used to influence the audience’s beliefs, to introduce an idea into our minds without reason, or to narrow the discourse to an oversimplified set of options. Questions can be used to influence an audience’s beliefs under the guise of innocent skepticism.

Upon hearing a question, our tendency is to try to come up with an answer. But often it is helpful to step back and ask, “Why is this question being asked in the first place? What assumptions does it make, and how much of my time should I devote to its consideration?” This allows us to avoid useless questions and focus on thinking about what’s important.

Letter to the Editor – June 03, 2013

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June 3, 2013

Dear David Dyck,

Re: “Letter to the Editor – May 20, 2013”

I am still away for a few more weeks, but my semesters abroad have not made me forget my time on the board. Stepping away from politics at SFU has given me time to reflect on my mistakes and determine methods to improve my university before I graduate.

I strongly believe in the intellect and ability of the students at SFU. I do not believe that you, David, or any member of the board, believe our fellow students are incompetent and unable to resolve “real problems.”

Anyone starting a new job faces a steep learning curve, and a departmental representative elected to forum cannot learn the ins and outs of student governance in one semester, just as no member of the board can do so in four months.

The first solution is not to ask uniformed or disorganized students to answer difficult questions, but instead to have students elected to Forum for a one year period and empower them via a comprehensive training process, just like the board of directors receives. The result will be a Forum of engaged students.

This type of student government would call for a much larger election and incorporate more students into making real decisions at SFU. Forum would not be made of a small cadre of students elected from each department, but would be organized in a representation by population of faculty body election.

Ideally, these students would already have previous experience in their faculty. The recent special general meeting formally recognizing faculty student unions is an amazing example of how determined our students are for a new form of politics at SFU. The creation of faculty student unions will allow newer students to get a taste of student politics and provide a stepping stone for them to gain experience of how larger forums and student governance work.

Bringing reform to the SFSS will require work and cooperation, but is absolutely necessary and our students are definitely able. SFU is rated number two in the top 50 universities under 50 years old in Canada. As a young institution with a great reputation, we must do our part to fix our broken system.

If you ask me, reform is not only practical and possible, but must happen to reach the democratic benchmark and organizational capacity that most of the student societies of our size have already achieved.

Sincerely,

Kyle Acierno

Poetry has become the proverbial caged bird

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June 3, 2013

The subject is being murdered one worksheet at a time

By Tara Nykyforiak
Photos by Siyavash Izadi

We’ve all experienced the frustration of being forced to read things for class that we didn’t want to. As students, we’ve suffered through lessons of Robert Frost and Shakespeare and afterward, never thought twice of returning to poetry. But why is that? Because of the way it is taught.

Outside, and even inside of university English classrooms, it is regarded as “inaccessible” and “pretentious” and is generally left alone. One merely has to say the word “poetry” and images of finger snapping hipsters is conjured up in the minds of almost anyone. But if poetry has played such a substantial role in our human history — through songs and story-telling and a great chunk of our printed legacy — why is it treated as alien?

Here are some numbers that showcase poetry’s position in our society. BookNet Canada tracked poetry sales in Canada at a mere 73,000 books in 2010, accounting for just 0.12% of total market sales. In comparison, Apple Insider reported iTunes music sales at nearly $1.4 billion in its first quarter of 2011.

This is very disheartening because it proves that an interest in poetry exists in the hearts of many, but this interest isn’t shining through. Lyricists are themselves poets, but this message isn’t conveyed in middle and high school classrooms. It never dawned on me at 15, for example, that Jimi Hendrix was a poet, but I worshipped him as one of my idols.

The problem as I see it begins when it is formally introduced in the school setting. Poetry is presented in a very objective fashion, with attention to devices such as similes, metaphors, and alliteration. Sound familiar? Four to seven years is spent on repetitive matching games that involve pairing lines of poetry with their appropriate devices.

I acknowledge that a high school curriculum needs to be accessible, and that worksheets make this possible. What frustrates me is the outcome. By structuring these lessons like science assignments, more art-minded students become bored and uninspired, and math and science-minded students are annoyed at having to continually match up definitions that don’t interest them.

At the same time, the personal interpretation and self-discovery that poetry awards is ignored in favour of this “poetic mapping out.” It is this personal interpretation and self discovery that should be lauded by English teachers, because it directly aligns with the critical thinking skills that high school curriculums endeavour to imbue students with.

But critical thinking doesn’t just end in high school — it continues at the post-secondary level and branches outward into our artistic culture at large. This means music, story-telling, film, theatre, and many more areas demanding thoughtful and critical analysis.

And what does this do for poetry itself? With free verse and avant-garde approaches dominating the contemporary scene, it doesn’t make sense that such a great emphasis should be placed on mere definitions. English itself is a subject characterized by discussion and debate, so shouldn’t poetry be taught in a much more open-ended way? It would attract more students to enjoy it, that’s for sure, and not leave them running the other way the instant the word “poetry” is uttered.

If I was a high school English teacher, I would hope to pique the interest of my students by making poetry a more intimate and personally involved subject. I would invite them to bring in poetry in any form to the classroom (song lyrics, movie dialogues, poetic prose from a novel, etc.) and encourage them to tell me what it means to them. This should be the case for any ninth grade English class, and would be a very foundational and engaging way of introducing poetry.

Large chain theatres hamper viewing pleasures

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June 3, 2013

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What does that $13 movie ticket actually get you?

By Daryn Wright
Photos by Vaikunthe Banerjee

Walking into the Pacific Cinematheque theatre, it’s clear the people attending this film are of a different sort than those filling the lobby of large, chain theatres.

We are all here to see Sunset Boulevard, a film by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett. The film made its debut in 1950 and has since stunned audiences with its macabre and hilarious plot and cast of characters.

I won’t go on about the film much more — after all, this isn’t the arts section, and you should go see it for yourself — but what I do want to go on about the difference between independent, local theatres, and the ones reeling off blockbuster hits on giant-sized screens.

Pacific Cinematheque is one of Vancouver’s last vestiges of independent theatre, a place where you can expect to see a combination of film noir, Japanese horror, and the entire ouvre of Jean-Luc Godard. The theatre is tiny, with only one screen and a respectable amount of small, red-cushioned seats. The concession offers the necessary popcorn, sans faux butter, done home-style, which I appreciate, and a few select choices of rich chocolate bars or saran-wrapped toffee bars.

It’s simple: no flashy menu boards or endlessly rotating trays of nachos. Posters of the classics line the walls: Hitchcock’s profile, Hayao Miyazaki’s illustrations. These details give you an idea what kind of theatre the Cinematheque is. These people really care about films.

Not too long ago, I tried to see a film at a large chain theatre in downtown Vancouver, which I will leave unnamed. The movie was Cloud Atlas, and it was, regrettably, only being shown in one of the larger, special theatres that require a seating reservation in advance.

My friends and I had planned to meet at the movies and stuff our faces with our favourite movie goodies (sour bubble-gum flavoured bottles and cherry bon bons, please and thank you), but this was rendered impossible by this new feature. The tickets would all have had to be bought by the same person, far in advance, in order for us to even be able to sit together.

I felt robbed of the movie-going experience I remember having as a child and adolescent — which, relatively speaking, was not that long ago. Isn’t this what going to the movies was supposed to be about? Isn’t the whole appeal the ability to meet with friends out in the social world rather than remain holed up alone in a dark basement suite? Isn’t it an excuse to chuckle jovially with friends at Keanu Reeve’s terrible and inconsistent British accent? (My example is dated, but I think you all know what I’m talking about.) But oh, right, I forgot that most people would rather have as little social contact as possible, preferring to be plugged in at all times. But I digress.

What I love about the Cinematheque, and most other independent theatres in general (I’ll include the ill-fated Fifth Avenue Cinemas, which has recently been acquired by Cineplex), is that this social experience has been maintained, despite the changes taking place in larger theatres. You can meet up with friends beforehand without making advance seating reservations, and the theatres actually care about this experience. They also care about films, and this is perhaps most important of all. This is why I won’t be going to a large chain movie theatre any time soon. Give me Cinematheque or give me death.

From Type-A to Type I’m Okay

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June 3, 2013

How being unemployed was the best thing that could have happened to me
By Ljudmila Petrovic
Photos by Alex Ortega

Let’s be honest right off the bat: I embody the textbook definition of a “Type-A” personality. Now, I don’t believe in compartmentalizing or labeling people, but one of the definitive qualities of my personality is that I take on too many things at the same time: I haven’t taken a single semester off in my university career; I have had at least one job since I was in highschool; and I am a compulsive list-maker.
The amount of times I have been confused at the question “but when do you relax?” is frightening. As for “me time,” that’s when I’m doing a class reading I’m enjoying, right?

If you’re cringing and shaking your head at me, fear not, because I recently found myself unemployed. Not only was I not juggling multiple jobs, I didn’t even have one. This neatly coincided with my decision to finally take a summer off from classes. Suddenly, not only did I not need post-it notes to supplement my agenda (stop judging me, ye technology users), I had entire days with absolutely no pencil or highlighter on them.

To top off my new-found funemployed status, I moved back in with my parents for the summer, which meant that I now resembled Will Farrell in Wedding Crashers; in fact, I literally found myself in situations where I was on the couch, wearing a bath robe, and yelling to my mom about goulash (the Serbian equivalent of meatloaf, I’d say). But I digress.

My point here is not that I suddenly went from an overly ambitious, workaholic anxiety case to being society’s leech; I was now an anxiety case that watched a lot more Netflix with my parents’ cats. In my case, this is a positive thing.

You see — and I think there are many Type-A folks that will agree — as much I scoffed at the idea that I needed to relax, the life of the workaholic is genuinely exhausting. I would tell myself that I’m happier when I’m busy, that it gives my life fulfillment. This is true, but there is also a fine line between doing it all and overdoing it, and from where I was standing, I couldn’t even see that line anymore.

Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t entirely idle and I was still doing things, but by my own distorted standards, it was next to nothing. At first, I was anxious and restless, then I slowly began to enjoy having less on my plate. I caught up with old friends, I spent time with my family, and I read books that weren’t assigned to me. I began to see that things happen for a reason — whether it’s a predetermined one or just up to me to find that reason — and I got time to think about where I wanted to take my life from there.

And now, I finally come to my point: sometimes life gets shitty. Sometimes we find ourselves in life situations that make us uncomfortable and that make us anxious. And yet, sometimes these aren’t the situations we should fear — in my case, it was the comfortable rut of overwork that was really the bad situation.

My story may not relate to everyone, as personal narratives usually go. You may not have that much on your plate, you may not have the support system to accommodate soul-searching, or you may still think I’m crazy (but just more of a hippie now). The point is not that you need to relate to any aspect of my story personally; rather, it’s to take life events with a grain of salt and to not take things at face value.
Life has a mysterious way of working. You’re not going to get anywhere bitching about why this happened to you. Embrace it and use it to become a better version of yourself.

This is also not a feel-good Hollywood film (on which I am now an expert thanks to my extensive Netflix viewing). I did not go from being an unhappy and angry workaholic to being a yoga instructor to forest animals, or whatever it is really relaxed people do with their time.
In fact, I rolled my eyes at a yoga instructor for telling me I should take this opportunity to master meditation. I may be challenging my personality, but let’s not get excessive here. No, in the meantime, I found a job. In fact, I found two.

I was the bossy girl in Kindergarten that got all the stickers for being a know-it-all. Hopefully I have better social skills now, but I’m still a version of that girl. I haven’t changed because that’s who I am.

But I did learn that sometimes we have to take a step back from our hectic lives — be that for an hour, a day, or a month — and we have to evaluate if this is what we want to be doing. I’ve learned that you cannot change who you are and you cannot force a different personality upon yourself: if you’re like me, you will never be content with a life of Doritos and Anna Faris movies, and if you’re naturally a more relaxed and easygoing person, you cannot be happy if you’re overwhelmed.

But you can be aware of what you need and you should never ignore an opportunity to make a change in your life. As a bit of a cynic, it pains me that my words are shaping into a combination of a Dr. Phil episode and an inspirational mug, but there you have it.
At a recent job interview, I was asked what I do for self-care. For better or for worse, I am still who I’ve always been, but this time, I actually had a truthful answer.

Overabundant raccoons to take over as new SFU school symbol

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June 3, 2013

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By Meghan Lenz
Pesky creatures expected to dethrone McFogg the Dog as school’s little-known mascot

BURNABY— As many students are probably aware, SFU has for quite some time been inundated with raccoons living on campus. Although they’re pretty fat and not very sneaky as far as raccoons go (or maybe they’re just friendly), these raccoons have quickly found their way into the hearts of a significant amount of the student population.

“We should probably stop feeding them… but they’re cute, in a grungy kind of way,” explained one raccoon-sympathiser, third year Jill Stevens. “Plus they hang out in trees, which I guess is cool.”

Recently SFU has even started promoting the raccoons as a potential new school symbol. If all goes to plan, by this time next year, SFU students will no longer have to cheer for the current outdated and frankly racist-sounding Clan nickname but will instead be rooting on the SFU ‘Coons.

“Now before you dismiss raccoons as sneaky, thieving, disease ridden vermin, remember that our current mascot is apparently ‘McFogg the Dog’” reasoned Tim Bergeron, a supporter for the new mascot. “I did not make that up, first off, has anyone else heard about this supposed dog? I haven’t, however these raccoons are chillin’ in convo mall EVERY DAY.”

“The raccoons are here to support us, what has McFogg ever done?” a bewildered Bergeron continued. “Also, are we Scottish? Is that our thing, because seriously if it is, someone needs to get more bagpipes and kilts involved in our website, maybe then I’ll buy into this McFogg character.”

Unless the amount of tartans on sfu.ca increases exponentially, Bergeron believes that the raccoons are the right direction to go.

“I’m thinking the SFU ‘Rad Raccoons’, because we may or may not be Scottish, but I definitely think we’re rad,” Bergeron suggested before taking a shot at SFU’s mythical rival “thunderbirds”, “We’re definitely more rad than UBC, who’d have a stick shoved too far up their nether-regions to consider the graceful majesty of a raccoon mascot.”

Others have also joined Bergeron in support of the raccoon symbol movement, including environmental studies grad student Duncan Clark who explained just how appropriate the new name would be.

“I think the raccoon symbolizes the meeting of nature and development, as an animal that thrives in an urban world,” Clark rationalized, attempting to get quoted in this article.

“I believe that not only as students, but as members of our community that we could glean a great deal from their example and I fully support the growing movement to adopt the raccoons as our new school mascot. . . feel free to steal that for your press release SFU.”

Finally, Clark offered up the most important component of any modern social movement with his “#RadRaccoons” hashtag idea which is already much more popular than SFU’s original hashtag idea “#LetsMakeACoonOurMascot.”

Snowboarders’ concerns go “Beyond Boarding”

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June 3, 2013

SFU grad and crew are shredding pow while spreading awareness of environmental issues in BC

By Leah Bjornson
Photos by Bill Hawley Photography

A recent SFU graduate and his crew, called “Beyond Boarding,” are travelling across BC to investigate the myriad of industrial projects proposed in the province. According to the crew, a project like Enbridge is only one of many which are destroying BC’s natural playgrounds.

Beyond Boarding was initially created by a group of BC snowboarders who hoped to spread awareness of environmental and social issues in the snowboard community while trying to activate their fellow peers to make positive, green lifestyle choices.

Led by Tamo Campos, Lewis Muirhead, and SFU grad David MacKinnon, the organization uses video and photos to educate the community. The thought is that while not everyone may want to watch an environmental video, you can watch an exciting snowboard video while still learning about industrial projects and how they might affect BC.

“Snowboarders have an innate love for these natural places,” commented Campos, who is in the Global Stewardship program at Capilano University. “They play in them all the time, so they should be the ones on the front line defending them. I think it’s almost like our duty. We’re so fortunate to be able to play in these pristine mountains every day, and we need to take that and consider bigger issues.”

The crew’s plan was to load up a school bus powered by used veggie oil and travel around the province to investigate the various industrial projects and speak with the local communities affected. Additionally, the crew would surf and snowboard as much as possible, all the while getting footage that would hopefully make others want to check out their initiative.

“Its been an insane trip in the sense of how big [the province] is and how much development is being proposed in BC,” said Campos. “It’s hard to see that every single community we’ve been to during this trip is being affected by some sort of industrial project.”

Campos and MacKinnon were especially affected by their experiences at the Sacred Headwaters, a vast alpine basin that is the shared birthplace of the Skeena, Nass and Stikine Rivers. These three are some of the largest salmon bearing rivers in North America that remain undammed, and have supported the Haida people for 13,000 years.

However, they were recently declared the most endangered rivers in our province by the Outdoor Recreation Council of BC. Although a proposal by Shell Canada to to drill for coal-bed methane has been finally quashed, there remains 26 proposed mines in the area with tailing ponds (pollution left over from the mining process) in the Headwaters.

“It’s too easy to become depressed about these issues,” said Campos. “You have to spend half the time you do researching the tar sands and find out what is happening around the rest of the world, what solutions are there in place . . . it’s really kept us going.”

During their travel through the province, Beyond Boarding found several alternatives that give hope for BC’s greener future. Such alternatives include the following: wind power turbines on northern Vancouver Island; a sustainable mining company in the Sacred Headwaters which would provide jobs through environmentally conscious mining, not mountaintop removal; and off-the-grid farms in Smithers, where a day’s power could be created by using the exhaust from burning a 1-foot-by-1-foot bucket of wood chips.

Campos exalted these alternatives, saying, “The best thing we can do to arm ourselves against these projects is to educate ourselves about the solutions . . . In the sacred headwaters, every day the valley was filled with smoke as the forests were being clear cut to make way for the transmission lines. [The company was] burning the stackpiles because they’re not a logging company, they’re a transmission company. It should be mandatory that we do something with that wood, and you think about how that biomass could actually power all these other communities.”

Nevertheless, the boarders don’t feel that a solution can be achieved by individuals acting alone; calling instead for a complete change of mindset, one which might be difficult for many to accept.

“What climate change actually means is we have to totally rethink the way we’re doing things.” said Campos. “Our free market, resource extraction system is not working . . . we’re not going to have the same world 50 years from now. Accepting climate change is accepting that everything we have done up until now isn’t working, and that’s a really hard psychological issue to accept.

“50 years from now when we don’t have the tar sands, what is our country? That’s in our life span.”

Beyond Boarding will be wrapping shooting on their Northern BC project this September, and hope to take their movies on tour, as well as have them available for download on their website, [beyondboarding.org.] While they do have volunteer opportunities available for the right people, MacKinnon says involvement “starts at home.”

As an SFU student who made the decision in his own life to adapt a greener lifestyle, MacKinnon added positively that, “Canadians are as capable as anybody, and if we get people thinking that there is a better way of living, the sky is the limit.”

Check out our interview below with “Beyond Boarding” :

Supreme court case for legalizing prostution

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June 3, 2013