By Jacob Samuel at The Daily Snooze
Join the Club: Sepak Tekraw Club!
New to SFU? Missed clubs day? Finding it hard to make friends? Tired of sitting alone on Friday and Saturday night playing Settlers of Catan over Skype? Well I’ll bet there’s a club that can expand your gaming horizons! JOIN THE CLUB is the new feature of some of SFU’s lesser known clubs!
This week we highlight . . .
The Sepak Tekraw Club!
Sepak Tekraw is a Malaysian and Thai sport that translates loosely to “kickball” but this isn’t your grandma’s kickball club! “It’s like volleyball on steroids with kung-fu mixed in,” says club co-president Alex Razak, “Don’t let the volleyball part fool you. It’s more hardcore than any sport you’ve ever tried. I guarantee it.”
So far the club has only two members, Alex and his twin brother Ryan, who co-preside over the club. The club is looking to expand membership to form a team or two to compete intramurally. “In Malaysia they call us the Double Dragons. Our signature move involves Alex doing a backflip off my chest and spiking the ball towards our opponents. One time he shattered a man’s ankle with one of his infamous strikes,” states co-president Ryan.
Sounds like fun! Alex and Ryan meet everyday to train at West Gym at 5:00 a.m., so meet with them, sign the death and grievous injury waiver form, and join the club!
Survey begins search for WebCT replacement
By David Dyck
University looking for a general assessment from student body
Last week, SFU launched a survey to gauge student opinion on a new Learning Management System to replace the current WebCT. WebCT is to be replaced by another learning management system (LMS) in 2014.
The survey is part of the first phase of the WebCT replacement program, and is taking place alongside focus groups and public forums. It will end in May of 2012, with the beginning of phase two: the “selection and implementation planning” phase.
The survey is made up of over 30 questions, with a $150 random prize draw. According to project organizers, the survey has garnered over 4,500 responses in the first week. The survey will be available to students until Monday, January 30.
Stacey Robinsmith is an SFU graduate student who has over 10 years in education experience. He’s worked with WebCT and other LMS in classroom settings, and described WebCT as “clunky” and not as intuitive as it could be. Robinsmith took the survey last week, but thought that it was too broad to be very effective. “They were pretty weak questions. The example would be: how important is it to be open, [or] user friendly? . . . who is not going to say that they want one that’s easy to use or open so that I can understand that system?” he told The Peak. Robinsmith stated that he would have liked to have seen questions about what platforms others have used, and their experiences with them. “More questions that they could have looked into were open source solutions. I don’t know if that’s on their radar or not,” said Robinsmith. He added that he was impressed with how long the consultation process is going for, and that he had been invited to a consultation group.
Mark Bachmann, communications officer for the Teaching and Learning Centre, responded to these concerns. “Obviously everyone wants an easy to use platform, but the survey will let us know for example how strongly they feel about a certain aspect of the LMS. For example, if ease of use comes in very, very high, that’s a factor we’ll take into account when we compare two systems that might be similar otherwise,” said Bachmann. He added that although they will not get specific answers from the survey, they plan to get those from other parts of the consultation process, such as the focus groups and open forums.
There are two more open forums this week on Burnaby Campus, on January 24 and 25 at Student Central.
Mystic Gary: Weight Loss
By Gary Lim
Dear Mystic Gary,
I hate myself for this, but over the Christmas break, I might have overindulged just a teensy bit too much. An extra piece of shortbread here, a warm mug of festive spiced rum there. Who really even knows many times I splurged? (My thighs, that’s who!)
But to tell you the truth this happens every year and I spend the rest of January working off my holiday jelly-belly in time for Valentine’s Day. It can’t be good for me. I’ve tried Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, South Beach, heck, even North Beach! Just kidding about that one.
Well Mystic Gary, I was hoping you might now one of those oriental remedies made from rattlesnake skin or any other ooglie-booglie that might give my metabolism a kick in the behind.
—Lady Already Regretting Diet
Dear LARD,
Don’t be ridiculous. Compote of snakeskin for weight loss? You might as well be taking powdered badger thighbone. Hahaha. But the time for laughter has been completed. Now onto serious matters, oh LARD, the weight of your plight flattens my soul like so many crumpled lawn chairs.
Now as for any Chinese remedies, traditionally a paste made from powdered shark fin heated in shell of galapagos turtle is said to be very good for building of strong leg muscles as well as metabolism, though that’s mostly from having to outrun the animal rights activists.
Personally I would recommend acupuncture. Not only because acupuncture is already recommended by many doctors for everything from pain relief to giving metabolism a boost but because the threat of being pierced with hundreds of tiny needles, which are then later set on fire, is a great motivator for losing of weight, as well as silence from any political dissidents. I’m looking at you SFP!RG.
May the Year of the Dragon help burn off those pesky calories,
—Mystic Gary
Movie review: Red Tails
By Will Ross
It’s important that films start to have casts that feature visible minorities, but Red Tails is just counterproductive to the cause
Red Tails has everything you’d expect from latter-day George Lucas, who produced the film and directed reshoots. This will delight everyone except fans of well-crafted movies. Red Tails is the story of black pilots proving to white people that racism is bad because they are equally or more capable of shooting down aircraft. It’s a depiction of race relations which is as honest and responsible as its claim to being “inspired by actual events.” Sure it was, just like the creators of Spider-Man were inspired by seeing an actual spider.
Granted, the Tuskegee Airmen were a real group of heroic black pilots who proved their worth in combat by amassing an exemplary record. Red Tails dramatizes this by having them make monumentally stupid decisions for which they are not punished, like piloting four planes against a heavily defended airfield. They slaughter Germans with videogame efficiency and earn begrudging accolades from brass. “You chalked eight kills in the air!” (By my count, it’s not possible that they got more than five on that mission. Nice proofreading, guys.)
Then that happens four more times. Red Tails’ repetitiveness is hell — which, we are unconvincingly told, war also is — and its episodic narrative isn’t helped by the complete lack of development or insight of its stock types (I refuse to call them ‘characters’). Every performance is terrible; unavoidable, with dialogue like, “This red paint will definitely make these planes distinctive!” Even more so with a plot that refuses to give them any ambiguity or intrigue: the film’s moral seems to be ‘black people have the right to the same clichés as everyone else!’ Not the Luftwaffe, though: they’re restricted to being zee evil Germans, cartoon villains whose deaths are unqualified victories.
I don’t have space to properly diss Red Tails’ aesthetics. It’s an ugly, ugly movie: uniform lighting, clunky tonal shifts, choppy editing, and CGI backgrounds that scream, “Oh my God, somebody forgot to finish me!” It’s so incompetent that major portions of the film are out of focus.
I must credit Red Tails for its political courage, though: it’s refreshing to see a film brave enough to give its sole female role no characterization or purpose beyond being the object of the male lead’s affections.
Word on the Street: SOPA/PIPA
By Gary Lim
“Arrr, why ye be asking me fo-arrr? Now gangway lest ye yearn for feel me cutlass!”
Victor Barbarossa
Wrong kind of pirate
“I never trusted the government’s internet and set up my own Bar-Net for my online needs.”
Gregory Barnett
Man in tin foil hat
“*CENSORED*“
Wikipedia
Information repository
“Who’s pushing my soap through the crab grass? I need that for my laundry!“
Moira Eddleston
Werther’s enthusiast
“No comment. Just the wet schlorping sound of an industry fucking over the commonfolk.”
Hollywood
Industrial Complex
