By Gary Lim and Eleanor Qu
Horoscope: November 19, 2012
Aries (March 21 – April 20)
This week you save $3.45 and anyone from ever finding your body trying to save money by “mining your damn own copper.”
Taurus (April 21 – May 21)
Don’t make mountains out of molehills this week. Especially since your new soda idea, Molehill Dew sounds goddamn disgusting.
Gemini (May 22 – June 21)
Well look at you Mr/Mrs. Go-getter! Expect to finally get noticed by upper management, as you plummet past their floor window.
Cancer (June 22 – July 22)
This week you’ll realize just how unhealthy your relationship is as she force-feeds you another meat-lover’s hot pocket.
Leo (July 23 – August 22)
Good news! When future archaeologists dig up your body, they won’t be bored.
Virgo (August 23 – September 23)
Although you’re familiar with sleep-walking and sleep-talking, sleep-refinancing-your-mortgage, that’s a new one.
Libra (September 24 – October 23)
This week you’ll have your identity stolen, but returned the next day after the thieves realize that’s a whole can of worms they don’t want to deal with.
Scorpio (October 24 – November 22)
This week you’ll find yourself in a long, drawn out argument over who could draw the word argument better in Pictionary.
Sagittarius (November 23 – December 21)
Mars in retrograde this week. Not that you can blame it especially in this economy.
Capricorn (December 22 – January 20)
Office politics in full-swing this week. Stay clear of it. Remain naan-plussed as these people try to curry your favor. No big daal.
Aquarius (January 21 – February 19)
No clear predictions from Aquarius this week, it just keeps pointing at a picture of you and laughing uncontrollably.
Pieces (February 20 – March 20)
Mercury is moving into your sign this week. But this is only a one-week thing, tops, it swears. It’ll even pitch in $20 for rent.
By Gary Lim
Superstar PSY will soon enter final stages of life cycle, says solar scientists
The PSY is reaching critical mass, implosion imminent reports scientists, tabloids
By Gary Lim
Astronomers around the world are urging people to point their televisions to the skies to witness an astronomical event in the making, as the K-pop superstar PSY shifts into the final stages of his stellar cycle.
Park Jae-Sang, better known by his stage name PSY, flared into existence on July 19, 2012. Although the PSY had existed as a minor star in South Korea for several years, it wasn’t until the release of his music video of his smash hit, “Gangnam Style”, that the PSY truly rose to prominence.
In a press conference Dr. Amanda Herschbaum of the Anton Pannekoek institute, discusses the end of the PSY.
“We have been monitoring the PSY for many months now, through the YouTubble telescope. Serendipitously, the PSY appears to have amassed the perfect conditions for his fame to have ballooned to such massive levels. Suitable for all ages, over-the-top bizarre, and ethnic without being too ethnic. What we are witnessing, ladies and gentlemen, is literally a once-in-a-every-couple-of-years event.”
Herschbaum describes the star’s life cycle, from its beginnings to its inevitable fade into obscurity.
“At the beginning, PSY was the basest form of star: a superhot mass. At that point, you’d be hard pressed to find anything hotter than PSY. His videos went viral; his Facebook shares were off the charts, and you couldn’t go three tweets without stumbling on some mash up, lip dub or parody of his signature hit, ‘Gangnam Style’. That’s stage one, where the star is a dense concentration of superhotness, but importantly is still contained within the internet, trapped in its own electro-memetic field.”
“We are just out of stage two, where we see a shift from star to superstar. The PSY was so huge, he was on Ellen and SNL, hell, people were going as him for Halloween.”
“He’s grown so enormous, in fact, that his gravity actually began affecting other astronomical bodies,” says Herschbaum, referring to the clips of PSY teaching his signature dance to long burnt-out stars like Britney Spears and the UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon.
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“At the beginning, PSY was the basest form of star: a superhot mass. At that point, you’d be hard pressed to find anything hotter than PSY.
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“As for now, the PSY has entered a cooling period. He’s still around but people are getting sick of talking about him, and he hasn’t done anything new in a while. This period is characterized by increasing tumultousness, as the star’s ego burns off unable to sustain itself.
Indeed, judging from Hollywood tabloids, the PSY’s behaviour has grown increasingly erratic and sometimes violent over the past weeks likely due to interal pressures of fame; including several women who have come forward to claim they birthed his illegitimate child and a new tell-all book being written by one of the horses from the music video.
“It is not pleasant to think about, but our PSY will not be with us much longer. Our computer screens will soon go dark, as he either quietly burns out or violently explodes like the Lohan super cluster in 2004.”
But Herschbaum ends on a hopeful note, announcing to the room of reporters, that the Anton Pannehoek institute is currently working with South Korea to send a team of scientists and music producers to reignite the PSY with an album release in early 2013.
Petter Watch: November 19, 2012
Petter’s weekend spent searching for the Christmas presents his wife, Miriam, hid.
English language recalls the word ‘literally’
English language revokes word ‘literally’ as done in past with matlarf, and spoo
By Gary Lim
Citing flagrant abuse and underappreciation, the English language has issued a formal decree that starting Nov. 22, 2012 the word “literally” will be struck from its archives until time it sees fit to reinstate it.
The sentient collection of every possible word and combination of words in the West Germanic language issued the statement in a letter mailed to most major media outlets.
The single page letter read, “Words are not gifts, they are tools. Tools to for you to parlay your thoughts, ideas and emotions. They can be taken with the same ease as a parent snatching something valuable from the clumsy hands of a toddler as I have done with the word ‘literally.’ One day, you may earn it back.”
Since then, the system of words for communication has made no further statements nor has it responded to any questions posed to it.
This news has brought with it confusion and disarray. The Peak reached out to the community for their thoughts on the troubling news. Local schoolteacher, Cynthia Sullivan, sums up popular opinion best:
“We all appreciate the work that English does in coming up with its words. Without it, it would be impossible to conduct everyday life. But at the same time I worry that this kind of power is in the hands of an individual is dangerous. Who knows where it will end? Can you imagine life without adverbs? Because that’s now a possibility in a post-11/22 world.
But in the aftermath of the vernacular ban, signs of fear and paranoia are beginning to rise as the dust settles. Already reports are coming in of people hoarding words in their basements and cellars, with Barnes and Nobles across the country turning people away as they try to purchase dictionaries and thesauri.
One of these hoarders, Rick Phillips spoke with The Peak through a slot in his reinforced basement door.
“I seen this before, I have, when Latin died. Men fighting in the streets for the barest adjectives, people resorting to sign languge, morse code, baby-talk. Babies for christ’s sake.”
“But not for this time. I have enough words in here to last me a fortnight, paksha, heck, even a lustrum. Now move along or I’ll put a bullet between your eyes.”
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“Who knows where it will end? Can you imagine life without adverbs? Because that’s now a possibility in a post-11/22 world.”
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There has also been talk, percolating in whispers, that the language’s rash actions are signs of mental deterioration and decline, following the brief but similar stunt in 2009, when English disavowed all usage of the dangling participle for the month of July.
However despite the calls for calm by the governments of English speaking countries around the world, many people fearing the worst have already begun to switching over to the next most popular language, Spanish. Regardless, cualquiera que sea el caso, El Pico se compromete a mantener informado con las últimas novedades y hechos. Buenas noches.
Seal the deal
By Rachel Braeuer
Illustration by Eleanor Qu and April Alayon
When 70,000 people are murdered because someone perceives them as taking what’s not theirs, we rightfully and accurately call it genocide. When it happens to seals, we laud it for its potential economic boosts.
A few weeks ago, a proposition to senate was made. It called for a paid cull of 70,000 grey seals in the gulf of St. Lawrence over a four-year period in an attempt to boost the numbers of Atlantic cod, and by extension the fishing industry in the Maritimes. Despite critics who questioned the “science” behind the plan, it was successfully endorsed. The debates are beginning to wane now, but for many the question remains: why plan an experimental cull on a species to see how it affects another if the science present does not suggest this hypothesis of less seals equals more cod to be true at all? There are questions that have yet to be asked, though: what science is present? why isn’t it being discussed at all? and why are the motion backers already concerned with the economic value of seals?
The science present
The most terrifying thing about the entire proposal is that grey seals don’t really eat that much cod. The study that the proposed cull is based on indicates that male grey seals’ diets consist of 24 per cent Atlantic cod at the very most, and that is only in a particular area of the Gulf of St. Lawrence at a particular time of year. On average, Atlantic cod comprise around 10 per cent of grey seal diets. These studies neglect to explain the other 80-90 per cent of their diet.
What they do note, however, is that grey seals aren’t picky eaters. They will basically eat whatever is around them and easily obtained, so it’s not as though they are targeting Atlantic cod en mass; they’re eating the percentage of cod that they do because that’s the percentage of cod available to them at any given time. This should be the takeaway from existing research. Rather, the studies surrounding the topic conclude that we can’t know what effect grey seals have on groundfish (cod) stocks until we do something about it and study them more; killing 70,000 should give a better research base. While it will do that, the suggestions made in the field’s research are not logical conclusions based on the data. Seal populations were increasing while cod populations were decreasing, but researchers couldn’t find a strong causal link between the two. The conclusion should be that further research is necessary, not that we should kill a bunch of seals and see what happens.
Seals prefer to eat sand eels, also known as sand lance, a small fish that swims in schools during the day, but burrows into the mud at night. Conclusive research found that seals showed preferential tendencies towards sand lance consumption as opposed to cod. What sand lance and cod do share is a questionable fate due to climate change.
Studies based in the US indicate that their Atlantic cod stock is at a definitive risk if the ocean currents’ temperatures rise any further. Cod populations are moving farther north (which should be good for us) and may simply not return. With the gag order officiating over Canadian research-scientists, it’s highly possible that much of the same things are happening in Canada; we are simply not free to talk about it.
The sand lance is an even more slippery fish. In her 2007 thesis, Danish researcher Jane Windfeldt Behrens concluded that the Ammodytes (the Latin name for sand lance) native to Denmark were at a significant risk of dying due to hypoxia if global warming persisted in the way that it has. Because sand lance hide in the mud overnight, and global warming has reduced the amount of oxygen available to be absorbed by the sand lance while sleeping, they will either slowly suffocate during sleep, or will have to adapt and no longer hide at night, leaving them more vulnerable to predators. Things aren’t
ooking good for the poor little sand lances, especially if the numbers of hungry seals are increasing in numbers every year.
Two aquatic animals, one department
What happens when seals — who feast on sand lance like Vancouverites inhale spicy tuna rolls — get removed from the equation? Does that make life easier for the sand lance? Perhaps the Department of Fisheries and Oceans’s definition of the sand lance can illuminate this murky problem. “Together with dogfish and skates, sand lances (sand eels) may be one of the major unexploited fish resources of the northwest Atlantic,” read the opening lines of the fish’s description. Even more interesting is the fact that cod and other groundfish feed on the larvae of sand lances, placing them, grey seals, and Atlantic cod in a strange economic love triangle.
If the decreased numbers of grey seals pose less of a predatory risk to sand lances, then presumably sand lances would be able to reproduce at higher rates, and would create more larvae for cod stock to feed off of. If this is the case, the four-year trial cull could potentially increase cod stock in Canada, but not in the direct and ill-advised manner proposed. The delicate balance this economic triangle hangs on is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. Less seals means more sand lances (assuming something else doesn’t eat them), which means more cod (assuming they don’t swim to colder northern waters). This, in turn, would benefit the fishing and sealing industries by providing more jobs and revenue for eastern Canada. Furthermore, it would create an overabundance of sand lances, which could lead to the fruition of new fish stock. For those who oppose the hunting of any aquatic animal, this is equally dismal news, but for those willing to lend the industry an ear, this wouldn’t be terrible. Why, then, is it being framed the way it is? Something doesn’t add up.
A brief history of sealing in Canada
Eastern Canada has received much criticism in the past for its annual seal hunt, and its economy has suffered since the European Union’s 2009 ban on seal imports. This ban reduced a pelt’s value by over 88 per cent, and should have come as a surprise to no one, as it has been lobbied for since the 1970s. Some of us may even remember the infamous 2005 PETA-leaked clip of sealers clubbing baby harp seals to death before they had reached the stage of development where it becomes legal to kill a seal.
Still, the seal hunt is an integral part of Maritime culture, or at least it’s embraced that way by many. Seal flipper pie has become synonymous with Newfoundland and Labrador, the same way poutine harkens to the street food available in Montreal. The local First Nations groups also lay ancestral claim to part of the seal hunt, but their haul accounts for only about 10 per cent of the entire hunt. While the cull isn’t the same thing as the seal hunt — the cull is supposed to simply be the paid killing of seals, not the killing of seals for economic purposes — support of either one in the face of waning foreign interest and nation-wide support panders to people who are invested in its perpetuation.
Who has a vested interest?
It’s interesting to see who proposed and is backing the cull. Fabian Manning is the chair of the Standing Senate Committee responsible for the proposal. As a conservative candidate for the Avalon riding, he lost to liberal Scott Andrews in the last two elections. He was also voted out of the then-Progressive Conservative caucus in 2005 for vocally opposing his party’s policy on crab management. Supporting this could prove useful in securing himself a lasting position as someone fit to represent Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.
Another supporter of the proposal is Celine Hervieux-Payette, who reached notoriety in 2006 when she personally responded to an American tourist couple’s open letter to all Canadian senators, which informed them that they cancelled their trip to the Maritimes after learning about Canada’s appalling seal hunt. Hervieux-Payette’s response argued that “the daily massacre of innocent people in Iraq, the execution of prisoners — mainly blacks – in American prisons, the massive sale of handguns to Americans, and the destabilization of the entire world by the American government’s aggressive foreign policy, etc.” was horrific, not the seal hunt. In 2009 she proposed the Universal Declaration on the Ethical Harvest of Seals, which looked to get national and international support for sealing, and hoped to have the declaration ratified by the UN.
“It is not in the habit of Canada to harvest seal without using up the resource,” Hervieux-Payette stated in response to the recent senate endorsement. “We must not get caught up in this way which is contrary to our traditions, our way of life, and the spirit of the Universal Declaration on the Ethical Harvest of Seals.” Hubley indicated that Canada should be looking into possible uses for seal products, like Omega-3 and meat.
This doesn’t sound like the rhetoric of people deeply concerned with the welfare of groundfish and cod stock. This sounds like people who have a vested interest in the sealing industry in Canada. While it would probably be next to impossible to find out, due to Canada’s privacy laws, it would be interesting to probe what kind of role is played by the members of this senate committee in Canada’s sealing industry.
Why you should be afraid, very afraid
The proposed four-year trial period of this cull could see temporary improvement in cod numbers and overall improvement to a number of industries in the Maritimes. Manning’s Avalon electoral district boasts an unemployment rate of 25.9 per cent, whereas the DTES had a reported rate of 11.3 per cent in 2006, despite Avalon resident’s mean income being more than twice that of the DTES average. If everything remains in its precarious balance, things could really improve for people looking for work in the Maritimes.
What can’t be guaranteed, however, is sustainability, given the vulnerability of two of the symbiotic tripod’s legs. In those four years, there is no guarantee that ocean temperatures or oxygen levels will remain the same, which could leave Atlantic cod in cold international waters, and sand lances suffocating to death. The secretive nature surrounding the cull seems to indicate that there’s more at play here than just an attempt to cultivate cod stock. As the study suggests, we won’t know all of the effects until the seals are dead and for sale, and we probably won’t fully understand the long-reaching effects until long after this is all said and done. In the meantime, don’t make any investments you can’t jump-ship from when the catches start to dwindle on the troller decks.
Family food
By Ljudmila Petrovic
Photos by Vaikunthe Banarjee
The importance of family dinners.
Like most families these days, mine was a busy one: both my parents worked full time as I was growing up, and I had a string of after-school activities that took up most of our evenings and weekends. Yet through my entire childhood and adolescence, the family dinner was a constant. Sometimes we cooked meals together, sometimes we would take turns, and sometimes we got Chinese take-out, but we always ate our meals at the family table, and used the opportunity to talk about any problems family members had, make any announcements, or just talk about any topic under the sun. As a child, I was dependent on my parents and saw them often, but as I grew older, these family dinners became the only time that I spent with my family.
Columbia University’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) recently reported that family dinners have a huge effect on adolescents: on average, they get higher grades, are healthier, and feel less stress. They are also significantly less likely to engage in substance abuse, or to drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes at a young age. This is very likely linked to the family closeness that the study also reports: adolescents that have frequent family dinners were between one-and-a-half and two times likelier to report having excellent relationships with their parents and siblings. I definitely felt this kind of closeness to my family, as did most of the people I talked to that had regular dinners with their families growing up. In some cases, this tradition simply does not happen. Marchel says that his parents were often working when he was growing up, and so they rarely had dinners together. “It definitely affected me negatively,” he confirms. “I felt less connected to the family, and more dependent on my caretakers.”
What can be deduced from these findings is that families that eat together on a regular basis have more insight into what’s going on in each other’s lives — a rarity between parents and their teenagers — and also have more control over developing healthy eating habits. By eating home-cooked meals instead of whatever-you-can-grab-on-the-go, children and adolescents are taught a certain relationship with food: one of enjoyment, warmth, and nourishment. All one needs to do is look at any women’s magazine to see the rise of unhealthy eating — be it overeating junk food, or under-eating and dieting. There is a growing need — especially among young girls and women but increasingly among males as well — to see food in a healthy way: as a source of nutrition, but also as culturally important in developing bonds between people. “We had dinner basically every single night,” says Alice of her family’s habits. “It totally affected the way I think of food and eating, as well as the kind of family values I hold.”
As our lives get busier and busier, cooking and eating together seems to be a dying ritual. In a society of TV dinners and constant notifications, we rarely get to spend time with our loved ones. We are so obsessed with to-do lists that we lose ourselves in a flurry of tasks, goals and deadlines. In my experience at least, these frequent dinners have been an antidote for all of our daily problems. Not only do you spend face-to-face time with family, it is also an opportunity to learn about them. It was always over dinner that my parents would pass on an oral history of my ancestors to me, and it aided in the growth of my personal identity — another sensitive part of adolescence.
For most of my teen years, I was quite a handful. Many of our dinners ended with me sulking, rolling my eyes, or storming into my room screaming some variation of “You don’t understand me!” but they were family dinners nonetheless. Despite those moments, there were many nights where we would talk about our days, and my teen angst would be lulled for a few hours. There were moments where I saw beyond the hormones and realized that maybe my parents did understand. In fact, the rare moments when I would tell my parents what was going on in my life were exclusive to the dinner table. In the long run, our family dinners proved invaluable to my relationship with my family, and despite everything else, I think I turned out okay.
In a world of fast food, vending machines, and constant multi-tasking, it’s tough to see meals as being their own occasion. Save for special occasions, families seem to be drifting away from the tradition of daily communal meals, but the facts are there: it affects children and adolescents much more than we tend to think, and it is invaluable in their development. Life moves pretty fast; always make time to stop and smell the pig roast.
