I don’t know about cavewomen, but this is what I gather

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chezmichelle/ /BY NC 2.0

A day before my interview with the Toronto Star and I’m writing a critical post about one of their articles.

I don’t think this is a bad thing. Actually, I think it’s important for journalists to be honest with one another and to offer constructive criticism. Truth to power, right? Even when directed at specific works by writers with more seniority. (Don’t hate me, Cathal Kelly. I’m just some rookie that calls it like I see it.)

Here goes.

My critique is aimed at this recent article in the Toronto Star: Nature’s laws of shopping: Men hunt, women gather. I hope you read it for context before deciding whether or not you agree with my reservations.

FROM THE ARTICLE

As soon as you set foot in the mall, the friction begins.

She wants to amble around to the Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic and Roots, but can’t quite remember where any of those stores are. (This will be contradicted later. Wait for it…)

He knows exactly where he’s going and wants to practically run there, get the thing you’re looking for and flee as if the food court were on fire.

Now we know why. (This is way too definitive a statement to blanket the evidence that follows.)

Power to the Podcast

My friend Lewis, lost in his headspace

This is long overdue. I’m secretly addicted to an unhealthy number of podcasts. If you aren’t also obsessed, then you obviously need to meet a few greats. I’ll add to this post as time goes on, but in a curious break from my die-hard CBC fanfare, I’ll begin with two awesome shows based south of the border.

This American Life

As Ira Glass famously explains, every week they choose a theme and then bring you all kinds of different stories on that theme.

They have their own archive of favourites, but I’d like to add a few of my own recent pet-casts.

• Mind Games: Who’s playing. Who’s being played? Does such a line exist in the first place?
• The Devil on my Shoulder: Sometimes something overtakes you… some mischievous or even sinister force that you simply cannot explain.
• Frenemies: A contemporary word that finally captures that time old expression in three syllables. “With friends like you, who needs enemies?”
• Rest Stop: Sometimes fascinating stories come from the most mundane places. Pull over and have a listen.

RadioLab

A podcasts that delves into the depth of human curiousity, dabbling in science, philosophy and the human experience.

• The New Normal: A peaceful society of baboons. A small-town mayor with breast implants. Floppy eared friendly foxes. You don’t see that everyday. But maybe, just maybe, you’ll start to.
• Parasites: The much maligned feeders that make ant’s butts go red and turn cockroaches into zombies. They are disgustingly fascinating.
• Stochasticity: It’s a cooler word for random, but it’s also the difference between an ultimate design or a haphazard series of events.
• Sperm: Imagine what the first person to ever see sperm under a magnifying glass must have thought. Save our sticky souls.

UBC students disengaged from rezoning row

The Ubyssey has given front page coverage to the rezoning issue

Allie Slemon, a fifth year English student at the University of British Columbia, was surprised to find a strongly worded email from President Stephen Toope in her inbox.

Toope warned of Metro Vancouver’s proposal to regulate academic lands on the Vancouver campus. He said this would be “devastating” to academic freedom and could put a “choke hold” on the university’s future.

Currently, Greater Vancouver’s governing body, known as Metro Vancouver, has the power to regulate family housing property on campus while UBC maintains control over its academic lands.

In November, the city proposed to extend its power to include academic and non-residential buildings through a contentious new zoning bylaw.

The university administration sees this as an invasive threat, while the city maintains it is an overdue update.

Rezoning would change decision-making at the university’s highest levels. But students interviewed said they feel disconnected from the debate surrounding Metro Vancouver’s technical and lengthy proposal, especially if they aren’t already engaged in campus politics.

Toope’s passionate email was not the ideal primer for Slemon.

“In universities we’re taught to read and think critically and to receive this email from the president was kind of an affront to that,” she said. She would have preferred to receive unbiased information that would let her form her own opinion.

Changing face of UBC

Metro Vancouver argues that UBC cannot continue as the sole and unelected supervisor of the use of its academic lands.

“Let me put it in clear terms: we’re not prepared to continue with the status quo,” said Derek Corrigan, the mayor of Burnaby, on behalf of Metro Vancouver.

He argued that the way UBC is run leaves the city in a situation where they are “responsible for things [they’re] not actually in control of.”

“When you chose to have 6000 people living in the neighbourhood, UBC changed, and you have to accept the reality of that,” said Corrigan, addressing UBC administrators at a recent meeting.

The city’s rezoning proposals closely follow the October release of the final draft of the UBC Vancouver Campus plan, which will effectively guide development and decision-making on UBC’s academic lands for the next decade and beyond.

The Ubyssey, the official student paper, has been covering the re-zoning issue since Metro Vancouver first announced its intentions.

It published four big articles in the paper, including a full-colour front page story complete with an eye-catching robot.

Still, news editor Samantha Jung admits the paper has had next to no response, especially from students who do not have official ties to organized groups.

The timing of the rezoning row is awkward. As well as cramming for exams, most students are preoccupied with the plight of a different president at UBC.

Continue reading here…

Call off the Pap Rally?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/linecon0/ / CC BY SA 2.0

After years of needlessly conducting countless Pap tests and subsequent follow-up exams on low-risk women, North American health organizations are finally moving to replace antiquated cervical cancer screening policies.

Wait a minute…what? Antiquated? You mean women don’t have to make annual appointments for those awkward and uncomfortable tests? Can we get a cheer going?

Don’t gimme a P! (P)
Don’t gimme an A! (A)
Don’t gimme a P! (P)

(Well, not as often anyway.)

According to an article in today’s Globe and Mail– “Cancer experts call for reduction in Pap tests” –Carly Weeks puts forth the notion that we may be booking more paps than we actually need.

North American women are often advised to get their first screening at the age of 18, and to do a test every year after that. But apparently, more screenings don’t necessarily result in lower disease rates.

Even though Weeks highlighted some guidelines for screening, her article made it apparent that there are still some inconsistencies that may confuse women. Check ‘um out:

Tibetan monks build a sand mandala at the MOA

Technophiles miss out on the message of a transient, ancient art

Originally published in The Ubyssey & theubyssey.ca on Nov. 19, 2009 || Culture

Tsengdok Rinpoche braves the cold ocean to complete Tibetan ritual

For seven days, Tibetan monks hunched over a circular outline at the Museum of Anthropology at UBC. Using cone-like metal tools called chak-pur, they crafted an elaborate design using millions of grains of coloured sand.

On Sunday Tsengdok Rinpoche, from Vancouver’s Tsengdok Monastery, stood over the finished product: an intricate work of art known as a sand mandala.

Using a brush, he began to sweep it into a blur.

But the destruction of the design is part of the traditional Tibetan ritual.

“The meaning of the mandala is to remind people that nothing in life is permanent,” said Rinpoche through a translator. “Don’t get too attached, even to the most beautiful things.”

From November 8 to 15, five visiting monks from the Gaden Jangtse Monastery in India created and displayed the mandala in the Great Hall of the museum. Two Vancouver-based monks, including Rinpoche, hosted the quintet as part of their 2009 Sacred Art Tour.

Guidance from the Garbage Girl: Destination Hopenhagen

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I first saw Lindsey Hoshaw (aka the “garbage girl”) on a big screen in a dimly-lit dining room. Before an audience of scientists and journalists, Erika Check Hayden played Hoshaw’s video as an example of the kind of entrepreneurial spirit that new journalists are going to need in order to survive the shock-waves currently going through the industry–and then somehow tell the stories that need to be told.

Despite the rough audio and the simplicity of the video, I found myself drawn to the sincerity in Hoshaw’s eyes. She looked like she really wanted to spend her summer sorting through floating debris and somehow convince the average person to think about their role in producing it.

So, she cast her pitch into the vast expanses of the internet–and people bought it.
Literally.

A Fab Night at Science World

They may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. There are, it seems, at least 100 of us in Vancouver!

Bee-day hat ($3) robot/rocket ship shirt ($10) birthday at science world (priceless)

Let’s rewind: it all started yesterday when I heard about Science World After Dark: an adult’s only event with a cash bar.

Then I saw this Flickr album and my childlike delirium reached unhealthy levels.

My first thought: “holy-****-my-birthday’s-coming-up-and-this-would-be-perfect!” My inner child and my inner wino prematurely gave each other a hearty high-five…

And then I discovered that there were no upcoming SWADs on the calendar, much less one on my birthday, and I picked up the phone.

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The Birthday Plans Project

Long story short: Science World has never done this before, but they said they’d be willing to open up a SWAD event for my birthday if I could get 100 people to commit.

I spent the next 10 minutes rapping my fingers on my desk and making that sour pout that kids make when they find out Santa is a sham.

Trouble was, I’m new to Vancouver (only here since September!) and I didn’t think I could pull off a 100-person party like it ain’t no thang.

That’s when this public Facebook event was born. The basics:

• Friday Nov. 20^th 2009 from approximately 7-10pm
• Admission for $15 (down from their regular $18 for adults)
• Access to all things Science World without the screaming line-ups of children
• And the adults-only bit: a $5 beer bar

They gave me until midnight on Monday (today) to show Science World I could pull this thing off.

Step aside, Alpha Male

Image by Flickr user Bob.Fornal

I want to try and draw some parallels, but before this is possible we need a common text.
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This fascinating podcast is about a community of baboons that Robert Sapolsky, biologist and neurologist, studied in eastern Africa. (It’s not long, and well worth a listen.)
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Here’s a very basic summary:

• The podcast opens with the increased percentage of people who don’t believe human beings will ever stop waging war because “it’s in our nature.” Just one of those sad but inevitable things we can’t change.
• We then meet Sapolsky’s study subjects, a community of “textbook” baboons. The group is highly-aggressive, hierarchical and dominated by alpha males.
• A tourist lodge opens up nearby and a different group of baboons stops foraging and starts feasting on cakes, hamburgers, etc, everyday.
• Sapolsky’s group discovers the dumping ground and wants in on the free-for-all. The tougher males fight their way into the food dump every day, for years.
• Then some of the baboons start getting really sick. Turns out they’d eaten contaminated meat and contracted tuberculosis. The disease  kills off most of the aggressive alpha males.
• Sapolsky is devastated but starts to observe changes in the clan. The beta males start doing things the alphas never did, like grooming the females and even other males. He figures the study group has been scientifically compromised by a freak event and moves on to a different clan.
• Six years later, Sapolsky visits his old group. To his shock, the less violent culture remains! This despite the fact that the community is full of new males that grew up under the “old world order.”
• Surprisingly, the new males adapted to the relatively peaceful culture of the group instead of trying to become the new alphas.
• Lots of theories are thrown around, but the idea of hard-wired and inevitable aggression is called into question, especially because this baboon behaviour has now lasted 20 years.
• Something thought to be unchangeable shifted, and very quickly!
• The speakers wonder if this could teach us something about the human potential for change

Now, my own anecdote comes in.

Students chase sustainability: Commerce committee pushes for a greener curriculum at UBC

Trevor Wheatley, external director, steps up the podium to moderate the industry panel

BY FABIOLA CARLETTI
CONTRIBUTOR

This article was originally published in The Ubyssey

When Jennifer Matchett says things need to change, she means business.

Matchett is the co-director of the Commerce Undergraduate Society’s committee on sustainability. She is one of several students at the Sauder School of Business who want their curriculum to include more dialogue about environmental sustainability.

“We feel that the major players in any environmental movement are corporations,” said Matchett. “If they don’t change, nothing’s really going to change.”

Business students gathered on November 6 at the Liu Institute for Global Issues for the second annual Chasing Sustainability Conference. Along with guest speakers, they discussed strategies for going beyond “green-washing” and striving toward ecologically responsible businesses practices.

Brian Grant, an attendee and fourth-year accounting student, said he started thinking about ethical business practices after watching a hard-hitting documentary called The Corporation, which compares corporations to psychopaths.

“Nowadays, people are reacting to the fact that businesses have a bad rap,” said Grant.

Despite the crisp collars, neat ties and professional footwear, the event did not look like a usual conference.

Stern opens Pandora’s lunchbox, food fight ensues

Enjoying my veggie side at UBC Farm

At dinnertime, the cook at my college residence always gives me the same puzzled squint. As his hand hovers between two different serving utensils, he strains to categorize me, then asks one of two questions:

“Veg?”

“Meat?”

I remind him of the inconvenient truth: “I don’t eat red meat, but if we have fish or fowl tonight, I’m up for it.”

He never looks pleased.

People like categories, and why not? It’s easier to organize things mentally. But because I straddle both sides of the dinner menu, I confound, annoy, and/or anger both strict vegetarians and unapologetic meat-lovers.

If you must call me something, I guess you can say I’m a semi-vegetarian or flexitarian. (To be honest, I think both terms sound half-arsed, but it’s conversational short-hand.) In this Globe and Mail interview, Jonathan Safran Foer introduced me to the terms “ethical omnivore” and “selective omnivore.”

Whatever the label, it does seems like an open invitation to an ongoing dinner debate. And many people don’t find shades of gray very appetizing.

Still, all the uncertainty reflects the lag in the evolution of language when it comes to reflecting changing and nuanced realities. Many busy but concerned people want to make better choices for themselves and for the planet, but there is a whole lot of confusing and contradictory information out there.

As I enjoyed my view from the fence this week, an interesting development caught my attention.

Lord Nicholas Stern, an acknowledged authority on both climate change and economics, came right out said: “Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better.”

And with that, Pandora’s lunch box flew right open.

All you have to do is google “Lord Stern + vegetarian debate” and you’ll see how riled up people can get about this issue (especially if you read the comments below articles).

Now, as someone who peeves off both parties, let me just put some interesting points out there. If you’ll excuse one more bad pun (they just pour out of me when it comes to cuisine!) here’s some…