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What my zodiac sign taught me about my heritage

By
Peak Web
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I was born on February 25. My mother tells me I was smiling. If that’s the case, it was probably only because I was too young and naïve to realize the odoriferous truth: I was a Pisces.

For those who evaded the misfortune of being born under this subpar cosmic arrangement, I’ll break it down. We’re dead last on the zodiac cycle, probably because nobody cares about us. Our symbol resembles a gigantic “H,” which shows that the twin fish clearly can’t spell, so there goes any career opportunity I might have had in the arts.

The most confusing factor of being a Pisces is this. You know how everyone allegedly hates Geminis for being two-faced? We’re like that too, but at least Geminis have pretty faces; we’re stuck with ugly fish faces.

I like to believe that I’m not really as aromatically repulsive as real fish, but this dual existence is probably the one way in which I feel a genuine rapport with my sign. See, I’m a person of contradictions. Now, I embrace that; growing up, doing so wasn’t quite as natural a process.

I grew up in a vaguely conservative, but still fairly progressive, Afghan household with a loving family and well-defined Eastern values. The environment elsewhere was most definitely not that. I felt consistently out of touch with the people with whom I shared classrooms. I didn’t recognize their artists or find their jokes funny; I didn’t know how to deal with them and remain true to myself.

But the older I got, the more I realized my knowledge of even my mother culture was lacking. Nuances of etiquette escaped me at every family function; switching languages caused words to jumble together into a tapestry of miscommunication.

There was no place where I felt anything besides inadequacy. Progress in one area seemed to lead to regression in another; the happier I was outside my home, the less happy I was within, and vice versa. Knowing that I was far from the only person to experience such a situation, I couldn’t understand what rendered me so incapable of resolving it.

There wasn’t any earth-shattering event which reinvented my perspective; the pressure rose and a dam just broke. Nobody controls what they’re born with — not birthdays, not bodies, not blood. But we can make it all work for us, because it’s usually a sweeter deal than we think.

I saw my identity as the site of some fairytale struggle between the different aspects of my heritage, my personality, my likes and dislikes. But perhaps this wasn’t a war in which one side had to be victorious. Thesis and antithesis could synthesize; two fish could synchronized-swim their way to happiness.

Don’t worry so much about how people perceive your hurricanes of emotion. Learn about your roots instead of expecting the information to magically appear. I’ve been blessed with wonderful friends and family, and I finally feel like I’m on the road to being part of both the Canadian community I was born in and the Afghan heritage I’m linked to.

I might complain about literally every aspect of my life, but ultimately, I’ve accepted the different facets of myself. Including the part with a bizarre vendetta against tuna and marine life.

Zine-phobia runs rampant in the world of Blackbird

By
EIC
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While having a graphic novel that was originally released in France in 2008 sounds like a good idea, the boring plot and artwork makes Blackbird both frustrating and forgettable.

Take a second to picture a world where the distribution of self-published content could have you arrested. Now, imagine a group of rebellious skateboarding anarchists taking the fight to a corrupt government and its crooked politicians through the illegal circulation of zines — a war on censorship fought with blood, sweat, and ink. Sounds pretty cool, doesn’t it?

Well, it isn’t. And by God, is it frustrating.

Pierre Maurel’s Blackbird is a collection of a six-issue zine series originally published in France in 2008, and one that wasn’t really worth collecting in the first place.

I could honestly throw every insult I could at this story — even the kitchen sink just for good measure. Instead, I will simply say that Blackbird is about as captivating as Ferris Bueller’s teacher reading a syllabus, and that this story somehow manages to have slower pace than two sloths making love on their honeymoon.

As for the characters themselves, I am almost speechless. To be fair, a story that has no names for its characters may sound groundbreaking, and even a little inventive. Ultimately, though, it just leads to total disinvestment from the characters and their journey. It also leads to further frustration given that the character designs are so underwhelming, making it hard to know who is who at the best of times.

Arguably, though, the most infuriating element of Blackbird is that we’re never given enough information on any of the characters to feel invested in their cause. There isn’t any sort of character exploration to see what drives them to anarchistic action. Hell, we never even get to find out why they’re passionate about making zines or what their illegal publication is even about.

Blackbird had everything going for it as a graphic novel and yet found a way to under-deliver in virtually every way imaginable. It stands as not only a monument to lazy storytelling but as a marriage between all that is pretentious and dull.

Given the choice between reading Blackbird or doing classroom readings, I would unequivocally suggest the latter.

COMIC: Jeremy’s Excuses 7

By
EIC
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SFU proposes “badass giant mech” as transit alternative

By
EIC
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An artist's rendering of the robot (Credit to Andrew Petter.)

An SFU committee tasked with determining an alternative mass transit option has forced the school to rethink its current bus strategy because of the cost of fuel, shitty Compass Card U-Passes, and unpredictability under inclement weather.

After reviewing many proposals, the committee finally settled on the next generation of commuting options for the Simon Fraser community. The committee surprised the audience, as the press release was originally supposed to announce a new proposal aimed at increasing community participation in the planning process.

Notable rejects stood out as the committee announced its decision late Thursday evening. Using existing roads and transit infrastructure to create San Francisco-style trolley cars was cited as “pretty lame” by a committee representative, while the oft-mentioned gondola proposal was rejected by the representative for being, in their words, “stupid. Let’s be honest with ourselves. A gondola?”

While many proposals failed to meet the committee’s strict criteria outlined at the beginning of the exploration process, the winning proposal has been met with controversy, given that it was proposed an hour before the announcement.

SFU president Andrew Petter announced the winning proposal as “the best thing I’ve come up with today. It wins.” The project, which has been projected for a 15-year completion time and a cost of $1.8 billion, was described by the committee as a “badass giant walking robot with like lasers or whatever.”

The robot will be able to ferry close to 25 students up to the university every half hour. “Picture it. You’re a new student. SFU. You’re all like, ‘holy shit!’ That’s what I want for this community,” a jubilant Petter exclaimed during the five-minute presentation. He continued on, explaining how the project is part of a larger strategy to attract “those anime kids. Gee whiz, they’re rich.”

The project has been met with controversy, with one critic calling it “the most outrageous thing I have ever goddamn heard of, and that includes that crazy gondola idea the drunk guy said at that one meeting.”

In a bizarre turn of events, the committee attempted to appeal its own decision, to which Petter replied dismissively, “I run this town.” Planning will move ahead as funds will need to be raised immediately to start construction.

The president additionally announced that an online contest open to SFU community members will be held to name the first of the two vehicles, so expect another email spam fest asking for your participation to some survey or whatever. “The winner gets like, an iPad Mini or whatever piece of shit consumer electronic toy is in vogue at the moment,” Petter stated. He continued to explain that “iPad minis are the worst. Not a phone, or a real iPad. What are these kids doing with their lives?”

The bid for the service contract was narrowed down to two finalists. “It’s between Chartwells and TransLink. Hold up. Chartwells wins,” Petter announced, stifling giggles as he cited their excellent service and quality track record. Construction is expected to begin by 2030.

The Nix is a raw and real portrayal of life in America

By
EIC
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Nathan Hill's debut novel does not read like one. It reads like one from a veteran author.

Reading good novels can be challenging. At points they may be tough to get through, even if they are still gripping and engaging. Those points eventually make the ending that much more meaningful and poignant. Such is the case with Nathan Hill’s The Nix.

Your average familial and political novel has all the hallmarks of real life. There are struggles with identity, mental illness, belonging, friendship, coming of age, and what it means to love and be loved by others. Yet, through these struggles, there is an underpinning of tragicomedy. In The Nix, characters Pwnage and Guy Periwinkle provide a sense of comic relief from the drama-filled lives of dual protagonists Faye and Samuel Andresen-Anderson, a mother and her son.

It is this mastery of understanding real life that makes Nathan Hill an author who is sure to go far in his career. His writing comes across with the casual grace of an astute observer of the human condition. This is seen most clearly with how familiar the events in the book feel. Although mainly set in Chicago in 1968 and 2011, there is a clear relation to the America of right now.

Though the novel is a complex political drama that spans decades, it is the journey of self-discovery and familial understanding that makes The Nix a powerful statement from this new writer. It doesn’t have a fairy tale ending, or a needlessly destructive one — though by definition the end is “happy,” it does not feel like a classic happy ending. Like real life, it is full of meaning yet lacks closure. The characters continue on past the stopping point of the novel; there will be more successes and failures in their lives, save for the parts of their lives that became entangled with the political end.

The first page of the book is a passage from Inspired Utterances of the Buddha: a famous tale that focuses on blind men describing an elephant to a king. Each man feels different parts of the animal, create different meanings from each part, and defend their descriptions to the end. The Nix is the elephant, and we as readers are the blind men grasping onto whatever meanings we draw from the novel’s 620 pages. This is what makes Hill a great author: he gave us an elephant, and we can take away whatever meaning we choose from it.

Build SFU stadium cancellation grows into controversy for the SFSS

By
EIC
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The blueprint released by Build SFU, previous to cancelling the stadium

What was originally a simple press release has become the biggest issue to date for this year’s Simon Fraser Student Society Board of Directors, and classes have only just begun.

Since the news broke of the Build SFU stadium being cancelled, student athletes have swarmed Simon Fraser Student Society (SFSS) board meetings, the transparency of the board of directors has been called into question, university officials have accused the SFSS of reporting misinformation, and calls have been made for Build SFU GM Marc Fontaine to be removed from the project.

All of this started with the decision at the August 11 board meeting to terminate the project.

Upon receiving the estimates on how much it was going to cost to build the stadium, the SFSS decided to scrap the project because it was deemed to be unfeasible. According to Arr Farah, VP university relations for the SFSS, the cost was going to come in at around $30 million.

“Our budget was only [$]10 million — that’s all students approved,” Farah told The Peak on August 16. “So it was safe to say we just couldn’t afford this project anymore.”

Ryan Yewchin, a former SFU wrestler and a part of the Student Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC), brought forward his concerns on August 24 over the project’s cancellation and how it was being handled by the SFSS. He was told by SFSS executives that he “was quite frankly the only student who had expressed any displeasure.”

The next day, Yewchin and over 70 other student athletes and SAAC members showed up to the SFSS board meeting to protest this. They came with a letter from SAAC president Olivia Aguiar asking why the SFSS wasn’t willing to compromise and negotiate for the stadium before just outright cancelling it. Aguiar also accused the SFSS of “[using student athletes] as a fulcrum to pass the Build projects, to only take the stadium away.”

Yewchin and company are looking for both a solution to the stadium conundrum and answers as to how the situation became so dire so quickly. They have been left feeling unimpressed with the SFSS’s efforts.

“One of the frustrations with the last meeting was that the SFSS was able to say ‘That’s conjecture, that’s not true, you’ve been misinformed,’ even though they wouldn’t go on the record,” Yewchin said. “We don’t know what the SFSS has discussed, we don’t know what they know, we don’t know what they don’t know, so by far the biggest issue with this has been trying to get information from the SFSS to the membership.”

This theme was echoed in a letter from Tim Rahilly addressed to Larissa Chen on August 25. Rahilly, the associate VP students for SFU, told Chen that she and Farah had reported misinformation about the stadium project. He added that his offers of support had not been interpreted as he intended and, perhaps most importantly, that SFU still believes in building the stadium.

 “I can think of three or four decision points during the SUB [Student Union Building] discussion where the project could have failed. What saved that project was a mutual willingness to engage in problem solving,” Rahilly wrote. “Please know that the University remains committed to the Stadium portion of the project. I personally believe there is a way forward achieve [sic] the vision outlined when students voted on this.”

It isn’t just SAAC that is upset with the SFSS, as SFU Athletics are not pleased with how the situation is unfolding. Theresa Hanson, senior director of athletics and recreation at SFU, said in an interview with The Peak that she’s very disappointed with the SFSS’s decision.

“I’m actually really disappointed for our student athletes, for the student clubs, for the student population in general. I’m saddened by the decision that was made by the SFSS,” she said. “SFU students deserve better.”

She said that she was “not in the loop at all” with the project’s progress or lack thereof, and there were no warning signs that the stadium was going to be cancelled. She found out that it had been cancelled via Twitter, further fuelling the claims that the SFSS hasn’t been communicative during this entire process.

“I’m not convinced that the SFSS has been as upfront with all the information to the students, not just the student athletes. [The] decision came at a time in the summer when there were no students around,” she said. “[It is] really important for the SFSS to see that students actually care about this project.

“My understanding is that the university is very committed to wanting the stadium to happen, and to continue to make it happen. As I said earlier, I think our students and our community deserves better.”  

Despite campaign promises from board executives to be open and communicative about what’s happening with Build SFU, the Facebook and Twitter accounts for the project haven’t been used since January. Keeping students updated through these means were part of Farah’s campaign, and in the meeting, he was called out for failing to follow through.    

On top of that, much of the information from board meetings has been discussed during in-camera sessions, meaning there was no way for any outside parties to know what is happening.

The most recent meeting between SAAC and SFSS officials saw students call for the removal of Marc Fontaine, the current general manager of Build SFU who has been involved with the project since its inception.

Fontaine responded to this by saying, “If board wants to replace me, that is their decision. But I don’t feel that they should.” He said that the SFSS and Build SFU are both teams, and that the responsibility for any successes or failures doesn’t fall on one person.

However, Fontaine was criticized for failing to address the concerns of the student athletes, who asked repeatedly why the SFSS felt it was capable of taking on such a project. Fontaine’s response was that the SUB is coming along nicely, but many involved feel angered at the apparent prioritization of the SUB over the stadium.

It is too early to tell what exactly will happen with the stadium, and what the next steps will be moving forward. It could be that the stadium will be revived and altered to fit a smaller budget, or that the current project will be thrown away entirely and work will begin on plans for a completely new stadium.

As for right now, though, the impression from the SFSS is still that the stadium project will remain terminated. Students will have to wait and see if that decision is ultimately the final one.

With files from Nick Bondi.

Juno award winners Metalwood return after 14 years

By
EIC
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0
After a 14-year hiatus Canadian electric jazz band Metalwood is returning to the music scene with Twenty.

Just when we thought they were gone for good, Canada’s premier electric jazz group Metalwood explodes from a gooey, melted mélange of bass-heavy funk, bubbling brass, and rambunctious drum medleys that defined their recordings at the turn of the 21st century.

The two-time Juno award-winning band is now back from a 14-year hiatus with Twenty — an album that pays homage to the 20 years it’s been since the band formed — through an all-new track list that’s pure caramel. Trickled with prominent hues of Weather Report and Miles Davis, Twenty is already being hailed as arguably the band’s best album.

In the midst of preparing for the album’s tour, trumpeter Brad Turner told The Peak how the band first came to be: one day in 1996 Turner expressed to bass player Chris Tarry that he wanted to experiment more on his Rhodes piano. After concluding they would form a band, the musicians reached out to Toronto saxophonist Mike Murley and New York-based drummer Ian Froman, who soon flew out to Vancouver to rehearse.

“We really just started the band to have a good time and play some music that’s — on the jazz spectrum — more electric. [. . .] Then we went into the studio, made a record, and we won a Juno!” said Turner. Their invigoration of improvisation-heavy tunes pioneered a new wave of groovy jazz, which quickly garnered an international fan base nourished with five succeeding albums.

Picking up from where they left off in 2003, Turner said that recording Twenty was all smooth sailing, apart from the fact that it can be difficult to physically bring the band members together to record, given their geographic locations and busy schedules. “We recorded out of a nice studio in Toronto,” Turner explained. “We had 11 tunes to learn in just one rehearsal, that we hadn’t played before. Whenever we have new music, rarely do we have the luxury of having three or four days ahead of the gig to rehearse — it’s basically one two-and-a-half-hour rehearsal.”

Nonetheless, Turner is proud of the album sculpted from this quick rehearsal, and said that he easily noticed how, over the past 14 years, his bandmates’ compositional writing has grown. “They’ve tried to push their compositions in a bit of a newer direction that sort of highlights some of the stuff that I, myself, have (also) been thinking about, musically.

“If you listen to some of our earlier stuff and compare it with our new album, you’ll notice that there are quite a few details that just weren’t there when [we] were younger.”

On a more personal note, Turner said that prominent jazz artists such as Wayne Shorter influenced his compositions in the new album. “It’s more the aesthetic of how he writes — strong melodies, interesting harmonies, things that sound relatively simple but if you try and play them, it’s not as easy as you might think.”

When asked if the band had plans to continue recording new albums regularly, Turner replied with, “It’s possible! Mandate number one is that we make sure we’re having fun while we’re doing this because that’s initially why we started it in the first place. But there really hasn’t been much discussion at all; we figured that if we could get away with doing one every 14 years then there’s no rush apparently.”

Reserve your live fix of Metalwood at Frankie’s Jazz Club in Vancouver, September 9–11.

COMIC: Seagull Square-Zombie Haiku

By
EIC
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0

SFU to build data research hub with funding of $8.35 million

By
EIC
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First looks at the new storage system with infrastructure services director Lorenzo Costantino and his colleague

The technology that we rely on as students could not exist without the innovation and data storage capacity required for big data projects. While computers may be faster, smaller, and more intelligent than ever, data storage is integral to expand the groundbreaking research that can come from high-powered, reliable computing technology.  

SFU has received over $8 million in funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), Major Science Initiatives program, and provincial research and development organizations. This funding will help to build a data storage hub.

This sponsorship means that major computer research projects can now be directly conducted right from SFU’s Burnaby campus. By 2017, according to SFU News, the project conducted by Compute Canada is intended to have approximately 62 petabytes (that’s 62 million gigabytes) of consistent data through four storage platforms from SFU, University of Victoria, University of Waterloo, and University of Toronto.

What is data storage and what does this mean for SFU research capabilities?

According to CFI, a program created by the Government of Canada in 1997, comprehensive data storage is an integral part of maintaining fundamental research and investment across sectors. While this funding is fairly recent, the foundation has invested roughly $360 million in Canada over the last 16 years. The capabilities of data research are abundant and allow for SFU, as one of Canada’s top research universities, to directly aid the growing number of researchers in the field. A report from Compute Canada confirmed that the number of advanced computer researchers has more than doubled in the last five years.

What research will SFU be capable of producing?  

Data research popularity has further garnered attention across media in its abilities to decipher particle physics’ greatest questions, such as the discovery of the particle Higgs boson in 2013 by CERN or continued discoveries in human genome testing. In 2015, Forbes released a list of the top 13 computer research topics, including artificial intelligence research, producing educational tools for students, and better understanding how organisms function through computational neurobiology — all of which rely on dependable computing infrastructure.

SFU isn’t smashing atoms together just yet, but this investment certainly supports the Big Data Initiative approved by the SFU Board of Governors in March. The initiative aims to expand and support big data research across the university.

Through the funding received from the CFI, the Ontario Research Fund, and the BC Knowledge Development Fund, reliable infrastructure is now being built to hold approximately 1,000 GPU devices, 25,000 CPU cores, and 15 million gigabytes of storage disks at SFU Burnaby. In plain terms, the new cyberinfrastructure has the storage of about 12,500 regular dual processor computers. That’s some big data.

Compute Canada’s involvement with the data storage investment at SFU will involve work with companies such as IBM, Scalar, and DDN to build the most up to date form of cyberinfrastructure storage. This funding also provides increased data security within Canada: Compute Canada’s chief technology officer, Dr. Greg Newby, said in a press release that data hubs like this one are “a great solution to address the data explosion we are currently experiencing in Canada and globally.”

With this project, SFU is taking another big step into the 21st century.

Everything you missed during summer vacation

By
EIC
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0

The Summer semester is often much quieter than the Fall and Spring semesters. But if you decided to tune out while away on summer holidays, you missed out on some pretty important news stories.

For starters, the man elected to serve as the president for the Simon Fraser Student Society (SFSS) at the end of the Spring semester barely made it a month before resigning on June 3. Deepak Sharma failed to meet eligibility status, and the president seat has been vacant ever since.

Larissa Chen, VP student services, has been filling in as the interim president in the meantime. She has already said that she won’t be continuing on as president, which means that students will participate in a by-election to fill the position (and the vacant environment student representative position) that will take up the first four weeks of the Fall semester.

That hasn’t stopped the SFSS from making some big decisions, with the most recent being to scrap the stadium portion of Build SFU. Upon getting the estimates back and realizing they were three times as much as the allotted funds for the project, the SFSS decided the project wasn’t feasible and cancelled it within a week.

This move has not sat well with many student athletes, as well as the Student Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC), and those students who are invested in the Build SFU project. The last board meeting of the semester was stormed by upset members of all these parties, and meetings have been held with the SFSS and SAAC to determine if the whole project will remain cancelled or if a stadium can still be salvaged.    

While those battles have been going on concerning the student side of the politics of SFU, the administration has been forced to deal with the alleged mishandling of multiple sexual assault accusations that took place on campus over the past school year.

After a column by Daphne Bramham appeared in The Vancouver Sun which broke the news, SFU administration went on the defensive, with SFU faculty calling for them to be held accountable for not being transparent throughout the accusations and investigations.

All of this took place while the campus is formulating its sexual violence and misconduct policy. They have held town halls and are actively encouraging feedback on their progress. Many concerned students and staff are waiting to see what this policy will end up becoming.  

It wasn’t all bad news, though. Two recent graduates made some big noise for creating a virtual reality game for cancer patients, inspired by their own experiences with health issues. SFU engineers built a bionic arm for the upcoming first-ever “cyborg Olympics.”

The school’s athletics department also hired Steve Hanson to be the next men’s basketball coach, on the heels of Virgil Hill’s resignation last spring.
Time will tell if the upcoming semester will be as noteworthy.

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Simon Fraser University’s independent student newspaper since 1965.

Contact us: [email protected]

© The Peak Publications Society 1965-2024

Simon Fraser University’s independent student newspaper since 1965.

Contact us:
[email protected]

© The Peak Publications Society 1965-2024