Scams | Issue 10

Vol.78

Issue 10

SCAMS

11 May

Be inspired TAKE A CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOP AS PART OF YOUR DEGREE OR TO DEVELOP YOUR WRITING. CREW 253 POETRY WORKSHOP Leading poet Hinemoana Baker will guide you through the art of writing poetry.

CREW 256 MĀORI AND PASIFIKA CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOP— TE HIRINGA A TUHI

Hinemonana is poet, playwright and performer and is best known for her volumes of poetry mātuhi/needle and kōiwi kōiwi/bone bone.

Acclaimed writers Tina Makereti and Hinemoana Baker will help you discover new ways to approach writing from a Māori or Pasifika perspective.

Tina is an award-winning novelist and author of short stories, including Where the Rēkohu Bone Sings and Once Upon a Time in Aotearoa.

CREW 352 CREATIVE SCIENCE WRITING Whether you’re a Science student or creative writer, work with talented writers Ashleigh Young and Rebecca Priestley to develop your non-fiction writing with a science angle.

CREW 353 WRITING FOR THEATRE Learn the craft of writing for the stage with celebrated playwright Briar Grace-Smith.

Briar is an award-winning writer of plays, screenplays, short fiction and television scripts.

APPLY NOW FOR TRIMESTER TWO Applications close 21 June 2015 To find out more about the creative writing courses offered by the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University, go to victoria.ac.nz/modernletters Capital thinking. Globally minded.

Scams Contents News 04–11

Features 12–23

05 06

12

Is Karori over the hill?

Where the ladiez at

Regular Content

16

11 Puzzles 27 The Week in Feminism 28 Loosely Inspired (by The Bachelor) 29 We Drank This So You Wouldn’t Have To 30 Comics 32 The Moan Zone 34 Film 36 Games 37 Books 38 Music 40 Food 41 Visual Arts 42 Science 44 Letters 46 Maori Matters 47 VUWSA

Editor Sam McChesney

Senior Feature Writer Philip McSweeney

Design and Illustration Ella Bates-Hermans Lily Paris West

Feature Writers Charlotte Doyle Gus Mitchell

Senior News Editor Sophie Boot

Distributor Beckie Wilson

News Editor Nicola Braid

News Interns Emma Hurley Charlie Prout Tim Grgec Beckie Wilson Elea Yule

Chief Sub Editor Kimaya McIntosh Sub Editor Zoe Russell

News Photographer Jessica Hill

Section Editors Ruth Corkill (Science) Sharon Lam (Visual Arts) Jack Young (Gaming) Jayne Mulligan (Books) Alice Reid (Music) Fairooz Samy (Film)

20

The Skeptical Dumbledore

James Randi and his decades of debunking.

By Charlotte Doyle.

Did You Ever Go Clear?

The new film that further lifts the lid on Scientology. By Jayne Mulligan.

A Cynic Dissects Fairtrade

Moral high ground for a dollar? By Arthur Hole.

Contact Level 2, Student Union Building Victoria University P.O. Box 600, Wellington Phone: 04 463 6766

Editor: editor@salient.org.nz News Editor: news@salient.

Other Contributors org.nz Louise Rutledge, Brittany Website: salient.org.nz Mackie, Joe Cruden, Twitter: @salientmagazine George Block, Lydia and Facebook: facebook.com/ Mitch, Tom and Luke, salientmagazine The Bush, Elizabeth Kim, Kari Schmidt, Cameron Advertising Gray, Hamish Clark, Email: sales@vuwsa.org.nz Kate Dowdle, Harriet Phone: 04 463 6982 Riley, Bridget Pyć, Jamie Yeates, Rick Zwaan, Ellen Humphries.

Printed By Guardian Print, Ashburton

About Us Salient is published by, but is editorially independent from, the Victoria University of Wellington Students’ Association (VUWSA).

Salient is a member of the Aotearoa Student Press Association (ASPA) and the New Zealand Press Council.

Salient is funded in part by Victoria University of Wellington students through the Student Services Levy.

The views expressed in Salient do not necessarily reflect those of the Editor, VUWSA, or the University.

Complaints People with a complaint against the magazine should first complain in writing to the Editor and then, if not satisfied with the response, complain to the Press Council. See presscouncil.org.nz/complain.php for more information.

04

Kitten of the Week:

salient

BY THE NUMBERS $500,000 The cost of the Arabianthemed party thrown for David Beckham’s fortieth birthday

21 The number of guns that saluted the birth of the royal baby in Wellington last week

46 years The amount of time puppeteer Caroll Spinney has been controlling Sesame Street’s Big Bird

$72,000 The value of health and beauty products (inc. pregnancy tests, razors and rogaine) that a father and son duo stole in Oregon

Concerned Kitten The new internet sensation Concerned Kitten has replaced Grumpy Cat as our new favourite meme. The 8-week old English moggy, whose real name is Gary, was born with lil’ eyebrow patches on its forehead giving it the permanent expression of angst—the same one that Salient staff get looking down the barrel of another production week.

25 & 70 The age of two tortoises who set their owner’s house ablaze via a heated lamp

6000 The number of Barbie dolls currently housed in Singapore enthusiast Jian Yang’s collection www.salient.org.nz

issue 10

05

NEWS. KEE N EYE FOR NEWS? S END ANY T IPS , LEADS OR GOSSIP TO NE WS @S ALIENT.ORG.NZ

Is Karori over the hill?

Nicola Braid Speculation has intensified in recent weeks over the University’s worst kept secret—its desire to sell the Karori campus.

It was publicly gazetted on 1 April that the University was granted title to several lots of Crown land, including the land on which Karori’s Donald Street Campus is currently located. The land was acquired for “university purposes”.

Gaining title to the land allows the University to sell it.

According to the University, “the option [to acquire the land] became available and it made sense to complete the transfer as the land was already on Victoria’s balance sheet and under our management”—although Salient would like to point out that’s a large capital outlay to make simply because “it made sense.”

For years, speculation has been rife about the neglected and fairly inaccessible campus.

VUWSA President Rick Zwaan said that VUWSA is “aware that students at Karori feel quite disconnected from the uni and there is a concerning lack of student support services available compared to Kelburn.”

Wellington Central MP Grant Robertson told Salient that feedback he had received over the years attested to the fact

that Karori “could be a lonely place for students”.

According to one teaching student, “you always hear that the campus is closing”, and pointed out that Karori students already had to go to Kelburn to renew their IDs, purchase textbooks and fulfil most other administrative tasks.

While Robertson was unsure of the University’s intentions with Karori, he acknowledged that the campus occupied a valuable piece of land. He said it would be “curious” if, having not owned it previously, the University were now to sell the campus for “commercial interests”.

According to Zwaan, “it’s been mooted that the School of Education may be moved to Kelburn campus but there is a lack of clarity as to if and what and when this will happen.”

It remains to be seen whether there would be space to accommodate an increased number of students at Kelburn.

Academic Committee papers show Kelburn is already being considered to accommodate an Education and Foundational studies programme.

The University maintains that “no decisions have been made about the land”.

editor@salient.org.nz

06

News

Where the Ladiez at?

Charlie Prout The glass ceiling still exists at Victoria, with female academics outnumbered and out-earned by males at the highest levels.

Figures from 2013 obtained under the Official Information Act show that women made up just 33 of the 133 professors at Victoria.

As well as this, there were only 135 women in senior lecturer positions, compared to 164 men at the same level.

Women make up 44 per cent of the University’s total academic staff.

The overrepresentation of women in lower-level academic jobs such as assistant lecturers, tutors, and research assistants is contributing to a gender pay gap, with female academics on average earning 86 per cent of what male academics earned in 2014.

In 2014, the average annual salary per full time equivalent (FTE) male academic at the University was $100,620. For FTE female academics, it was $86,686.

A similar pay gap also exists among non-academic staff. The average annual pay for female non-academic employees was $65,079 in 2014; 85 per cent of the male average of $76,696.

The lack of women in leadership positions at the University is also visible at the highest levels of governance, with Victoria University’s Senior Leadership Team made up of three women and nine men.

A report on Equity and Diversity Learning and Teaching Student Experience of Victoria, published by the University last year, acknowledged that while “overall, more men hold higher paid positions at the University than women”, the differences “in the levels of remuneration being paid continue to close.”

www.salient.org.nz

Figures from the report show women are more likely than men to apply for higher-ranking positions such as professorships. However, men are accepted to top academic positions at a higher rate than women. Over the last five years, the success rate of women applying for professorships was 50 per cent, compared to 60 per cent for men.

The success rate of women seeking promotion to senior lecturer was 60 per cent, compared to 68.7 per cent for men.

In the report, the University acknowledged that there has been “only incremental progress in achieving equitable participation for women in senior academic roles though more women are applying for promotion”.

The University tried to address this issue by implementing a tailored workshop for women to assist with their preparation for the Academic Promotion Round in 2013.

The aim of this programme was to enable women to apply for these high academic positions.

Associate Professor and Vice-Provost (Academic Equity) Allison Kirkman said the University also participates in the New Zealand Women in Leadership programme and that “several members of the Senior Leadership Team” had completed this programme. Salient would like to reiterate that the Senior Leadership currently has three female members.

Gender is not the only issue of representation at Victoria.

In 2013, there were 54 Māori academic staff and 91 general staff, accounting for 6.5 per cent of staff overall. Only 71 staff (3.2 per cent) were Pasifika. However, these figures represented increases of 0.3 and 0.4 per cent respectively over 2012.

salient

News

issue 10

07

Professors

Academic Staff at Victoria University

WE WANT REPRESENTATION! we guess

133

Elea Yule The Victoria University Council is under renovation and if last Tuesday’s student consultation forum was anything to go by, the majority of students are either unaware or simply don’t care.

Men : 43.9

43.9%

56.1% Women : 56.1

33

Women

Recent changes to the Education Act mean that Victoria must reduce its University Council from 19 members to a maximum of 12 by 2016. While four of those members are appointed by the Minister of Education, the composition of the other eight positions is in the University’s hands.

Men meta-chart.com

Women

Women

Men

Maori and Pasifika Staff Members

Men

University Leadership Team

6.5% 3.2% 9

Pro-Chancellor Emeritus Professor Peter Walls indicated that Tuesday’s forum was an “opportunity for students to say what they think the University Council should look like”.

However, the invitation for students to come forward and voice their concerns was met with resolute disinterest, with Walls addressing a bustling but completely disengaged Hub. Walls was joined by consultant Graeme Nahkies, the university’s general counsel Simon Johnson, and a number of student politicians, all of whom looked extremely embarrassed to be there.

“Well that’s a good start,” Walls remarked.

A lone, bold woman, though initially phased by the mechanics of the microphone, voiced her hopes for a Council that not only had female and Māori representatives but also members with humanities backgrounds.

Nahkies acknowledged the undesirable prospect of the Council becoming increasingly “pale, male and stale” but stressed this was not the aim. “There has been an expression of desire that the Council be as diverse as possible.”

3

Pasifika

Maori

Academic Staff

Other

Women

Non-academic Staff

$100,620 $86,686

Men

$65,079 $76,696

The forum, intended to take as long as an hour, continued for only 15 minutes before Walls abandoned the microphones and sheepishly formed a private huddle with one concerned student and a gaggle of VUWSA and Salient hacks.

VUWSA President Rick Zwaan insisted it was “disappointing that so few students turned up” and attributed the low turnout to a lack of advertising on the University’s part. The association has previously criticised the forums for being slap-dash and tokenistic.

The remaining 98% of students in the Hub at the time had these things to say: “I feel like I don’t know enough about the matter to comment on it.”

“I feel like they should be student elected but I’m also not sure how much effort I want to put into it.”

“Maybe they should just have a showdown. Everything is settled with a joust.”

“With student councils, no one wants them until they want them; in which case they know where to find you.”

Women

Men

Women

Men

Despite the poor turn-out and lacklustre debate at the student forum, Walls remained positive that the 700 responses to the University’s student consultation email would provide some student input to the decision-making process. editor@salient.org.nz

08

salient

News

More Help Needed Beckie Wilson Trigger Warning: This content deals with sexual assault figures and may be triggering to some people.

Last week the VUWSA Women’s group marked the 2015 Annual Wellington Rape Crisis appeal with collections on campus.

Wellington Rape Crisis is a safe support system for men and women who have experienced assault and those who are either too afraid to report an incident or, as Rape Crisis spokesperson Eleanor Butterworth says, those needing “to talk about any sexual experience that has left [them] feeling like something isn’t right.”

VUWSA Women’s Group President Chrissy said that the group is “extremely passionate about supporting not-for-profit causes like Rape Crisis because we understand how valuable their services are for women”.

Brown said the group was even more motivated to support the cause after Rape Crisis support centres were closed in Christchurch last year due to a lack of government funding.

This year, the VUWSA Women’s group collected on campus again, hoping to raise more than than last year’s $1000.

Last year’s national appeal saw more than 200 volunteers and raised over $40,000, an increase of more than $16,000 on the previous year.

Between January and February this year there were 69 reported cases of assault in the Wellington region and national statistics show that 16–24 year olds are most at risk of being sexually assaulted.

Police estimate that only 9 per cent of sexual assault cases are actually reported. With statistics like these, it’s obvious that assault remains a significant issue within Wellington and New Zealand.

If you need help, advice or simply want to talk about these issues, both Wellington Rape Crisis and VUWSA Women’s Group can help.

You can donate to Wellington Rape Crisis at http://wellingtonrapecrisis. org.nz/donate/ To get involved with VUWSA Women’s Group you can contact them via email or Facebook.

www.salient.org.nz

Warning: Students May be Exposed to Some Fun This Year Emma Hurley Victoria’s Capping Revue could be revived in time for this year’s November graduation, if VUWSA Clubs and Activities Officer Rory McNamara has his way.

Named for its traditional “capping week” performances during graduation, the Capping Revue is a student performance comprised of comedy sketches, music and dance.

Founded in 1921, the show ran until the mid-1990s when it mysteriously vanished due to a lack of funding (perhaps because shows were held in the swanky Opera House).

The 1939 event, entitled “Cappicade”, boasted “Gorgeous Ballets, Sparkling, Witty Dialogue” and “Good Clean College Fun.” Otago University’s Capping Show has survived since 1894, and according to OUSA is the world’s longest continually-running capping show, due to overseas universities stopping their performances during WWI and WWII. OUSA describes their event, which sells out every year, as “guaranteed to make you make you LOL, wince with awkwardness, cringe with offense and make you tell everyone you know how awesome it was.”

McNamara is keen to re-introduce the show. “It is a really cool thing and also a great way to use the Memorial Theatre.”

He claims the show is also a way for students to leave university with funny memories and a great way to encourage studentproduced theatre.

McNamara said he has the support of Campus Services Associate Director Rainsforth Dix, and the University is happy to get behind the event.

If it goes ahead, the Capping Revue would be funded by VUWSA Clubs and ticket sales. McNamara expects costs would be minimal and “not a significant barrier” to hosting the event.

issue 10

News

09

VUWSA and Uni weigh in on Council’s plans

Tim Grgec VUWSA and the University have made submissions on the Wellington City Council’s recently drafted Long Term Plan for 2015 to 2025.

Wade-Brown also attested to the Council’s continuing work on rental house Warrant of Fitness, cycling and climate change initiatives and keeping bus fares low.

The Long Term Plan looks at the current and future needs of Wellingtonians and sets out how the Council plans to improve the city and what it will spend.

Public submissions on the long-term plan have now closed, and the Council will now consider the submissions and officially adopt the amended plan on 24 June.

VUWSA’s submission pointed out that students contribute at least $610 million to the city’s economy annually and expressed the association’s hope that the Council would continue to work on a Warrant of Fitness plan for rental housing.

Because the plan is super long, boring and riddled with repetitive cliches about “providing opportunities for everybody”, Salient has broken down the main parts that will affect us students.

While VUWSA maintained its stance against the plans to extend the Wellington Airport Runway, it remained in full support of the Council’s “fairer fares” proposal to usher in reduced tertiary student fares for public transport.

Unlike VUWSA, the University expressed their support for the Airport runway extension as well as the Council’s proposed Tech Hub and Screen industry enterprise zone.

Both University management and VUWSA agreed on the need for increased private sector accommodation for students in central Wellington. Additionally, both supported the Council’s moves to install better lighting in the city and its plans to improve cycleways.

The Council has dubbed the proposal “Wellington’s plan for sustainable growth”, with $200 million set aside for growth projects, such as a $65m indoor arena, a $30m film museum and $90m for the airport’s runway extension.

Wellington Mayor Celia Wade-Brown assured Salient that “tertiary students are really important for the capital” and the Council is focused on job creation so that those leaving university will be able to have “careers here in Wellington”.

Transport The plan allows for $45 million to go into a renewed cycleway network, which will hopefully increase the amount of people around Wellington riding “fixies”, as if there weren’t enough already. A further $10m has been set aside for public transport, with improvements to key bus routes and low-emission bus services. The Council also hopes to relieve the daily traffic nightmare around the Basin with “double-tunnelling” of the Mount Vic and Terrace tunnels.

Installation of LED street lighting Having actually listened to that guy on those “Here’s a Tip” Energy Spot ads, the Council is considering installing LED street lighting throughout the city. LED lighting has the potential to halve the $2.3 million a year the Council spends on lighting. LED lighting has already been successfully trialled along Courtenay Place, with no one noticing the difference. Hopefully this illuminating initiative will light the way towards safer city walkways.

editor@salient.org.nz

10

salient

News

Council cocking-up the Roads Again NicLOLa Braid Hospital pegged without a leg to stand on Mayor of Whizz Palace Georgetown mayor Dale Ross had a woopsey after accidentally leaving his microphone on during his bathroom break from a town meeting. The tinkling was heard by all the council members present in the conference room Ross had just excused himself from, and councillor Rachel Jonrowe couldn’t help but giggle due to the sounds leaking through the council chambers.

South Florida man John Timiriasieff is suing a local hospital for failing to properly dispose of his amputated leg. Normally body parts are incinerated in hospitals, but Timitiasieff ’s leg was found in the garbage with his name tag still attached. The man’s bewildered lawyer said, “I have heard of people having the wrong limb removed but hospitals aren’t supposed to throw them away.”

Anonymous “street artist” Wanksy has taken to spray-painting phalluses around potholes in his town. The Mancunian has been dubbed a hero by fellow residents for his brave and creative attempts to draw attention to problematic areas of road. While a Facebook page has been dedicated to this master of vigilante justice, Salient thinks the erection of such art works make this knob-head look like a real prick. In fact, we’d be willy hard-pressed to find another member of society that testes our patience quite as much.

Rum’n’Roids

Discovering Dongs

#Handstag

Former body builder Romaria Dos Santos Alves recently risked his life by injecting oil and alcohol into his arm muscles.

Dubbed a “beast” or “monster” in his home country of Brazil, the bodybuilder’s attempts to emulate the Hulk almost saw both his overly-engorged arms amputated.

“If you take it once there will always be a second time—it’s addictive… I could have died because I wanted bigger muscles.

It’s just not worth it,” Alves concluded.

A 300-year-old leather dildo has been found by archeologists in Gdansk, Poland. The eight-inch sex toy was found in the latrines of a swordsmanship and an excavator described it as “quite thick and rather large, made of leather and filled with bristles”.

The object’s wooden tip is said to be “preserved in excellent condition” and may join the world’s oldest condom in Austria’s Tirolean County Museum.

A group of Olin College entrepreneurs have invented the Hashtag glove. These handwarmers not only create voicedictated tweets but post your gems to Twitter if the wearer makes a hashtag symbol with their fingers. With the aim of helping snowboarders, skiers or even inuits, Hashtag gloves will only set buyers back a cool $50USD.

www.salient.org.nz

Puzzles

issue 10

3 1

2

9

5 6

4 3

8

7

6

5

7

9

3

1 8 7

4

3

2

5 1 1

3

5

2

7

1

7

8

9

2

2

7

4

2

1

5

8

8

4 3

6

4

5

7 1

Â

3

4

2

6

8

6

1 8

2

11

1 6 editor@salient.org.nz

The Sceptical Dumbledore

issue 10

Features

13

If it’s too good to be true then it isn’t.

Charlotte Doyle

James Randi is a sceptic and debunks psychics who are psycho. The bearded and wizened man has devoted his life to exposing the people who convince others that they can move pencils by commanding them to with extraordinary mental powers. The Canadian-American retired from professional scepticism earlier this year at the age of 87; in 2014, he was the subject of documentary Honest Liar, which currently has a 97 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Heralded as the king of common sense, in 1964 he set up a challenge offering $1000 to to anyone who can prove they have psychic powers. The offer now sits at US $1,000,000.

World-renowned as a former escape artist, magician and skeptic, Randi’s legacy is far reaching. His career as an illusionist was sparked by the pursuit of Harry Houdini’s world records. One of Randi’s Guinness World Records involved spending 55 minutes enclosed naked in a block of ice reading a book. The 104 minutes he spent in a metal coffin at the bottom of a swimming pool smashed Houdini’s record of 93 minutes. He unravelled himself from a straight jacket hanging over the Niagara Falls. His performance as a mad dentist and executioner for an Alice Cooper tour in the 1970s should be talked about more often. With an established reputation as an escapologist, fraudulent psychics would be lucky to escape him. Randi’s personal understanding of trickery set him up to be the most annoying man for psychics the world over.

Although he looks like Dumbledore, Randi prefers the label conjuror over magician. A magician, he explains, is embedded in the fallacies of magic. A conjuror by contrast has simply mastered the art of suggestion and distraction.

A psychic is someone who uses the same techniques as conjurors to convince people into thinking they have special powers. Randi harbours a deep personal antipathy to this fakery and has devoted his life to exposing it— again inspired by Houdini, who was similarly committed to saving people from being the dangers of being duped.

A conjurer’s purpose is entertainment. In Randi’s estimation, a psychic—anyone who claims to speak to the dead, astrologists, palm readers, spoon benders,

faith healers—is driven by the aim of exploiting the vulnerabilities of others. One such person was Sylvia Browne (now deceased). Randi didn’t think much of her claim to be a “medium”, saying “to my innocent mind, dead implies incapable of communicating.” Rather, Browne would ruin people financially and emotionally by dealing out rations of false hope.

By 2008 the medium was charging over $700 for 20-minute psychic “readings” over the phone. Her regular appearances on American mainstream talk shows afforded her a potent guise of legitimacy and by 2010 she was earning $3 million per year. A lot of the time her claims were relatively harmless. Apparently she had been to Heaven where, guess what, pets are allowed and there are are no insects unless you really like them and want them to be there. Others, however, were more tragic. She made many false predictions for desperate people about the locations of missing people. In 2004 Browne told a mother her kidnapped daughter was no longer alive. The mother died two years later. The daughter was recently found alive. Browne was also convicted for serious fraud in 1992. She is the only professional psychic to have accepted Randi’s million-dollar challenge (on the Larry King Live show in 2001) but has continuously refused to actually take the test.

In the 1970s a young Israeli named Uri Geller captured the attention of millions. Geller had a talent for melting spoons and wooing audiences with his soft, sultry accent; “I want it to bend, so it bends!” Many people, including scientists, were dumbfounded. Randi was not. Neither was then-host of the Tonight Show, Johnny Carson, who called on Randi to test Geller in 1973. The psychic and his assistants were denied access to Geller’s props before appearing on the show. After much sighing and intense staring an ad break is cued. The show then concludes with Carson telling the audience Uri didn’t feel “strong” that night. Randi then wrote a book about him theorising that his ability to bend spoons was secretly achieved by weakening the metal with brute force before his appearances, pointing out that magicians do the exact same with an established technique called ratcheting. editor@salient.org.nz

Features

14

Hydrick, dressed up in silky pyjamas and sporting a pencil moustache, explained his mental powers were hindered by the static electricity created by the lightbulbs in the room, which held the pages down.

There are countless other examples. Randi personally demonstrated how to conduct surgery without knives on the Tonight Show, pretending to pull strings of chicken guts out of a casually smiling man’s stomach, dryly commenting “oops that’s not meant to come out” before shoving it back in. Peter Popoff was a self-proclaimed faith healer who would slam his hand onto people’s foreheads screeching “hallelujah, may the lord praise you!”. Randi revealed he was being fed information by his wife through an earpiece who read him details off prayer cards. James Hydrick, the man who could move pages of a phonebook with his mind, was ruthlessly exposed when Randi scattered pieces of styrofoam around the book, claiming the page-turning was just subtle blowing.

Hydrick, dressed up in silky pyjamas and sporting a pencil moustache, explained his mental powers were hindered by the static electricity created by the lightbulbs in the room, which held the pages down.

Unsurprisingly, Randi has made himself unpopular in some social circles. After receiving the MacArthur Genius Award of US$270,000 in 1986, he spent most of the money defending himself against libel suits. Uri Geller has attempted to sue Randi on multiple occasions, including in 1991 when the sceptic compared Geller’s public performances to those on the back of cereal boxes.

Typically those exposed by Randi are plagued by what the skeptic calls “the resilience of the duped”. There is always a reason why the psychic powers failed to work in that particular moment. The subject had not asked the right questions. The aura around the spoon was unsettled. The static electricity from a lightbulb and some styrofoam was pushing down the pages of a telephone book. In some

www.salient.org.nz

circumstances it is simply pride; in others, an unshakeable self belief.

However, Randi’s unpopularity is also very high amongst the very people he is striving to protect, and often his debunking has little effect on persuading people to believe differently. There is always a glimmer of chance, even hope, that psychic powers do exist.

In an old Simpsons episode, Lisa is outraged at a new shopping mall being built on an archeological site and starts digging, in protest, to prove there are still remains waiting to be uncovered. When she discovers an unusual winged skeleton the population of Springfield manically conclude it must be the remains of an angel, which Homer then steals and sets up in his garage with twinkling lights, novelty coasters and an entry fee. The episode questions the merits of religion over science, following Lisa’s attempts to prove the skeleton couldn’t possibly be supernatural. In the kitchen Lisa asks Marge “you’re an intelligent person, why do you believe in this stupid angel?”. She’s told by her wise blue-haired mother that people want something they can believe in that’s bigger than themselves, and to escape from their own lives.

Spoiler alert: the angel vanishes then reappears on a hill proclaiming a doomsday scenario. Springfield dramatically gathers on the hill and the skeleton proclaims “Prepare for the end… the end of high prices!”. It was all a twisted advertisement planted by the shopping mall. The doctor, scientist, priest, the school principal and Moe rush off to spend their money on unnecessary kitchen items.

salient

issue 10

Features

Exposing supernatural situations often makes little difference to an audience’s mentality. Randi’s debunking is unpopular because people want to believe. “I know how people are deceived,” he says. “I know how they deceive themselves and most magicians allow people to deceive themselves.” According to Randi, the magician never works alone and always collaborates with a willing audience, whether they know it or not. In his words, “they want to be fooled”.

One of his most telling demonstrations involved horoscopes. A group of college students were gathered together in a room and given individual envelopes, which Randi explained contained a personality study that his staff had prepared for each person in the group. After reading through their personalised documents, Randi then asks the students to raise their hands if they felt the document accurately described them. Almost every hand went up. They were then told to hand their personalised study to the person behind them. Laughter started as it was revealed that every piece of paper said exactly the same thing, with broad statements such as “you discovered something about your sexual preferences this week”. Randi believes horoscopes embody attempts by people to regain control over their own lives. With some creativity, anyone can interpret anything to be applicable to them.

15

supporting these losers with my tax dollars… any weeping and wailing over the Poor Little Kids who would perish by immediately gobbling down pills and injecting poison, is summoning up crocodile tears.”

A good life, he says, is provided by science, not psychics or the supernatural. He does not drink, smoke or become involved with any form of narcotics because it clouds his “reasoning powers” and distracts from his goal of living in the “actual real world”. Easy to say in a position of privilege.

Science depends on resources, time and knowledge. The eternal and phenomenal typically doesn’t.

When asked why people need something to believe in, Randi’s response was “they need it because they’re weak.

And they fall for authority. They choose to believe it because it’s easy.”

Every year, hundreds of people from around the world, including believers and skeptics, attend the demonstrations of people attempting to convince Randi of their supernatural powers. The million dollars offered by Randi is yet to be claimed.

Randi’s targets have shifted over time. Uri Geller is now a bit more desperate, resorting to claims that bending iPhone 6’s are the fault of consumers, whose excitement and enthusiasm stirs up mental forces that cause the phone to twist. His awesome mental capabilities are no longer very awe-inspiring. Randi identifies many other ways that we “innocents” are still being duped. During a TED talk in 2007 Randi swallowed 32 homeopathic sleeping pills. “I just ingested six and a half days worth of sleeping pills… surely that’s a fatal dose. I’ve been doing this stunt all over the world for the last eight to 10 years, why don’t they affect me?” The packet claims the more diluted the medicine, the more powerful it is.

Above all, Randi is a devoted rationalist. Whether his true purpose is to rescue audiences from psychics or from their own stupidity is unclear. In his essay “Why I Deny Religion, How Silly and Fantastic It Is, and Why I’m a Dedicated and Vociferous Bright”, Randi describes the Bible as less believable than The Wizard of Oz. A “Bright” is someone “who bases their opinions upon logic, and upon rationality and upon evidence… if we don’t have evidence our decisions are then provisional… that’s the thing that makes them differ from the average person who takes anything that comes along and looks attractive.”

Speaking in favour of legalising drugs, Randi said “the principle of Survival of the Fittest would draconically prove itself for a couple of years, after which Natural Selection would weed out those for whom there is no hope except through our forbearance and I’m very, very, weary of editor@salient.org.nz

issue 10

Features

17

Did You Ever Go Clear?

Jayne Mulligan His head emerging from a black turtleneck, a finger held out at the camera in a Toastmasters power pose, Tom Cruise tells the camera, “I think it’s a privilege to call yourself a Scientologist, and it’s something you have to earn.”

Cruise re-adjusts dramatically in his chair, his maniacal laughter and erratic movements reminiscent of that couch-leaping Oprah interview. Cruise is a key part of our interest in Scientology, and the Church has wielded his celebrity in order to develop its own. But how could a celebrity be convinced by such an unconvincing fauxreligious sham? Cruise may not have been at Jonestown drinking the Kool-Aid, but it seems he has had a huge drink of Dianetics.

A similar delusion is currently being exposed by Campbell Live, as they air a series that looks into the Gloriavale Christian sect just outside of Greymouth. A strange faction of agrarian puritanical Christianity has been bred into those who live there, sporting Amish-esque costumes as though stuck in a time warp. The church is growing, largely due to what seems like a high fertility rate, with family sizes anywhere between 10 and 15 children. Gloriavale exhibits a lot more the “traditional” characteristics of a cult, and Campbell Live has seized on this at the right time. Everyone loves a good cult story.

Where Gloriavale has created a community of agrarian harmony, Scientology has created a disturbingly well-lit and choreographed celebrity church. Alex Gibney’s HBO documentary Going Clear: Scientology and The Prison of Belief is full of gripping scenes of moral corruption. Based on the book of same name by Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist Lawrence Wright, Going Clear compiles a complex story of tax evasion, celebrity endorsements, an alien overlord named Xenu, and physical and psychological manipulation.

Together, the book and the documentary provide the most comprehensive secular historic record that there has ever been about Scientology. The two work in tandem, the book providing incredible detail and solid facts, and the movie breathing life into the research.

As a piece of journalism the book is very even-handed, abstaining from judgement and displaying both the positives and negatives of Scientology. It investigates and explains the structure and development of the religion with thorough investigation, legitimising

it as a phenomena people are regularly drawn to. Wright lets the facts speak for themselves.

As director, Gibney is similarly removed. Neither author nor director dominates as a character in his exposé; Gibney is not Michael Moore-ing this shit. But in contrast to the book, the filmed interviews with ex-members or well known critics of the Church drive the work’s narrative. The result is far more condemning than its written counterpart: whereas the book is a balanced piece of journalism, the film is a positioned exposé of the inner truths of the prison Scientology creates.

Gibney selects a range of ex-members for his interviews, their time with the Church spanning from 15 to 30 years. The members recount the allure of the Church and the hope they found in joining, the attraction of the Church’s promise to erase neuroses and negativity.

It’s impossible to argue with this. This is the same basis for other religions, as well as psychotherapy; they all promise positive changes to your life.

One of the most captivating ex-members is a woman called Spanky.

Spanky rose up through the Sea Organization, Scientology’s naval paramilitary wing, and became an important figure in developing John Travolta’s career and relationship with the Church. Her tales of the control she was under are disturbing. A victim of the Church’s randomised punishment programmes, at one point she was sentenced to manual labour where the hours were 30 on, three off; sleep was a luxury. Her tasks included scrubbing bathrooms with a toothbrush.

While here, Spanky fell pregnant with her second child. The church discouraged pregnancy among the ranks of Sea Orgs as it distracted them from their greater goal (and their billion year contract).

Because Spanky was a member of the Sea Org, her child was placed in the “cadets”, raised with other Sea Org children away from their parents. Spanky painfully recalls a visit to her daughter. The baby was writhing in a urine soaked cot, eyes glued shut by mucus and fruit flies lingering around her.

Spanky’s escape is one of the climaxes of the movie—a friend visits under the pretence of taking the child to the doctor; as soon editor@salient.org.nz

Features

18

as Spanky buckles up her child the door is pulled shut and the car speeds off.

For Spanky, it was a literal prison break. The reality of her decisions had only become clear once her innocent child had been subjected to them.

Gibney portrays the church as a manifestation of the inner machinations of L Ron Hubbard’s mind. Hubbard’s allure is like the oily character in Fern Gully, voiced by Tim Curry; a heady mix of repulsion and sickly sweet smiles. A prolific pulp science fiction writer, in 1950 Hubbard penned the self-help manual Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. After the sales dried up, the book was padded out into a religious text.

Claiming that his fledgling, then-unrecognised religion should be exempt from tax, Hubbard took to the seas to avoid the IRS. After various attempts to infiltrate government departments to find leverage against the IRS, Hubbard’s wife and several others were imprisoned. Scientology finally achieved tax exemption in 1993.

To maintain this status, the Church must spend its money on the “greater good”, which in Scientology’s case means real estate. Gibney takes great time to establish Scientology as a business, with real estate revenue at its heart. The Church has some serious property in Hollywood, and some seriously questionable aesthetic choices.

Going Clear takes time to break down the structure of the religion.

Dianetics teaches that humans have two sides to their brains—the analytic side, which is calculating and accurate and perfect; and the reactive side, where the neuroses live. Humans also carry Engrams, which are negativity imprints, sort of like a memory. An Auditor is a practitioner who listens and to computes the subject, recording their information, and asking probing questions.

During an audit the subject is connected to an E-meter, which consists of two cans with an electrical current transmitted through them.

The current allegedly measures the mass of the subject’s thoughts.

The energy is then transferred through to the reader where a needle responds to the thoughts. The auditor asks the subject questions about specific problematic moments, including those in “past lives”.

By doing so the auditor expels the negative energies associated with the events, leaving the subject feeling lighter and euphoric.

In Going Clear, auditing is portrayed as a process of psychological abuse, designed to provoke guilt for crimes committed in “past www.salient.org.nz

salient

lives”. The process shares similarities to Freudian theories of psychotherapy, Catholic procedures of confession, and Cognitive Behavioural Training, where thinking about the bad thing makes the bad thing less bad. LRH’s “discovery” of this approach is a total hack job.

Hubbard designed Scientology around the “Bridge”, in which each new level comes with an ever-growing price tag.

The more auditing you undergo, the higher you get, until you reach level Clear. When you are Clear, your reactive mind has been cleansed and erased, and the subject is now, by Hubbard’s measures, “totally alert and totally capable”.

After Clear, new levels emerge. Thetans. And here, at Thetan Operating III you are allowed to access the dark heart of the Church.

This is the moment you read Hubbard’s best (read: worst) piece of short fiction. Kept in a briefcase is a handwritten note telling the story of Xenu, who ruled the “Galactic Confederacy” 75 million years ago. Back then, the galaxy was a lot like the 1950s, and Xenu was equipped with DC-8 aircraft and hydrogen bombs. When Xenu decided there were too many aliens, he froze them, brought them to Earth, and blew them up. The alien souls formed disembodied “Thetans” and, like creepy little bacteria, they entered newborn babies and became the source of human neuroses and negativity.

When Hubbard died, the Church fell to his right hand man, the sinister Tom Cruise twin David Miscavige. Going Clear tries hard to capture Miscavige’s plasticity, presenting his reign as the tyranny of a power hungry maniac. Gibney devotes a long portion of the documentary to the many allegations of abuse levelled against the Church. Under Miscavige, the Church’s policy in responding to these allegations is called “Fair Game”: no defence, all attack. The campaign against the IRD saw some landed in jail, but for other lesser-powered foes, their attacks have simply been slander and shaming, stalking, harassment, abuse, and intimidation, all of which they deny. The most intense revelations were the extreme lengths the Church goes to attack its apostates. Lawyers and private investigators assist its reach; Tony Ortega, a regular critic of Scientology, claims they had gone after his elderly mother.

The case of Marty Rathbun illustrates the lengths the Church will go to fight any allegations. After leaving the Church, Rathbun was a key source for a 2009 expose by the St. Petersburg Times, which began a landslide of public condemnations of Scientology. In the five years

Features

issue 10

19

T h e y b e g a n t o r i p at e a c h o t h e r ' s c l o t h e s a n d c l aw at t h e i r s k i n , v y i n g f o r t h e g l o r y o f s tay i n g i n t h i s h e l l h o l e . U lt i m at e ly , o u t o f t h e g o o d n e s s o f h i s h e a r t , M i s c av i g e l e t t h e m a l l s tay .

since, Marty, along with his new wife and son, has been harassed every day by the “Squirrel Busters”, a body set up to silence those who leave the Church. A Squirrel Busters film crew has camped permanently outside Rathbun’s home.

One of the darkest and most warped allegations against the church emerges toward the end of Going Clear. Under Miscavige’s orders in 2004, the Church developed a site that became known as The Hole.

The Hole was based at the home of Scientology—Hollywood—and consisted of a set of double-wide caravans joined together. It was essentially office space, turned into incredibly poor accommodation, with bars on the windows and doors, and a guard stationed at the single entrance. At any one time anywhere up to 100 of the top members of the Church were sent there against their will and forced to exist substandard living conditions for months.

Marty Rathburn and Mark Rinder, two ex-members who had held top positions in the Church, both recall ants roaming across the surfaces. The inhabitants were kept in a sleep deprived state, were subjected to tests of faith, and were psychologically abused through auditing. They were also tortured, including being sat in front of an air conditioner while cold water was poured over them, until they turned blue.

Church’s most disturbing elements. From video footage of the church’s massive congregational events, to the airshots of their expansive real-estate collection, each boasting super-sized fonts emblazoned on their buildings, the iconography at play throughout the movie is an incredibly uncomfortable mix of naval militance and 1970s-era grandeur; it’s evocative of a space-age Nazi regime.

The most visible aspect of the Church are the faces and maniacal smiles of leader Miscavige, and poster boys Cruise and Travolta.

Celebrity culture is an integral part of the fascination surrounding the Church. Innumerable photos show Miscavige and Cruise embraced in a hug or power handshake, each sporting equally demented grins and soulless eyes. Cruise was privileged enough to have Miscavige as his best man when he married Katie Holmes.

Scientology has perfected numerous techniques of control. The Church relies on its members’ disengagement from any criticism, and generates online slander campaigns to silence opposition.

The takeaway lesson is how frighteningly easy it is to get hooked, especially if you’re in a bad place. Always put in your research before choosing your cult, people.

Oh yeah, did I mention Miscavige’s wife hasn’t been seen in public since 2007, and the LAPD settled a missing persons case privately.

WHERE. IS. SHE.

Miscavige also orchestrated a perverted game of Musical Chairs played to “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Rinder and Rathburn both recall the moment Miscavige revealed that the winner was the only one who got to stay. Their minds had been so warped from the lack of sleep and torture, the game turned feral. People were fighting desperately to stay in The Hole; to remain a victim of the Church’s torture. They began to rip at each other’s clothes and claw at their skin, vying for the glory of staying in this hell-hole. Ultimately—out of the goodness of his heart—Miscavige let them all stay.

More difficult to convey through words on a page are the Church’s aesthetics. On screen they come to life, informing so many of the editor@salient.org.nz

A cynic dissects Fairtrade Arthur Hole

Features

issue 10

21

Right now, an entire celebration is underway, and it’s dedicated to your power. That’s right, yours. Did you know that with just one stroke of your wallet, you can help farmers build better futures for themselves, and improve working conditions around the world? As the Fairtrade fortnight website says, the world needs more like you. The movement salutes you, and so do I. I swear I’m not being sarcastic. No more than usual, anyway.

Every time I get back from the supermarket, I open my bag to a perplexing, yet also alltoo-familiar, sight. Why did I get Fairtrade coffee again? I ask myself. I don’t remember picking this packet up; how did it get here?

Maybe it’s my instinctive liberal reflex, my deep-seated lefty guilt. I’ve long harboured doubts about Fairtrade, but the thought of those long-suffering, noble Guatemalan farmers makes my hand move of its own accord. Up it reaches, past those morally inferior forms of caffeination, snaking the Fairtrade option while my eyes and my brain are distracted. I can’t help it—what can I say; I’m just too good a person.

Fair trade criticism #1: Fair trade criticism #1: Fairtrade farmers in the developing world don’t actually earn any more than non-Fairtrade farmers.

Is it fair? The evidence is unclear. To an extent, the criticism misses the point: Fairtrade has less to do with overall income and more to do with ensuring a consistent price for crops, teaching producers about the best farming methods, and meeting certain environmental and labour standards. Even so, Fairtrade products are heavily marketed on the higher earnings its producers supposedly earn, which we’ll get to later.

2.5/5

That Fairtrade is actually the subject of heated controversy worries me, pitting as it does two of my least favourite sides against one another. On one side are the smugsters who use progressiveness as a shield to mask their inherent awfulness. Maybe it’s the guy who uses “I’m a feminist” as a pickup line; maybe it’s the psychic or homeopath who uses mystical hippy bollocks to sell worthless crap to the gullible; maybe it’s the hairy Marxist who’s little more than a wilfully ignorant political thrillseeker.

Everyone knows these types, and the idea that the Fairtrade movement might be full of them terrifies me. Have I been funding them for years?

On the other side are, of course, the rightwing skeptics—the kind of chronically white, upper-middle class knobs who join thinktanks because they’re just not smart or thorough enough for academia. Everyone knows that “rightwing thinktank” is shorthand for “mouthpiece for big business with spurious attempt at intellectual integrity”. The idea that such types could be right about anything just pisses me off.

At its best, Fairtrade is the poster child for ethical consumerism and a shining example of private certification schemes—a pleasingly bipartisan form of market regulation that doesn’t involve the state. At its worst, it’s a corrupt, idiotic manifestation of First World supremacy. Time to decide.

-

Fair trade criticism #2: Fairtrade reinforces developing countries’ reliance on cash crops.

Is it fair? In theory, yes. Although paying more for products like coffee means more growers will enter the market, the amount going to individual growers will stay low because the revenue is now spread among a larger group. And now that there is more competition, it’s unlikely that prices will continue to increase. Individual coffee growers only get richer if coffee becomes scarcer, which means other growers leaving the market. Rather than paying the developing world to produce cash crops, we should be supporting them to diversify their economies.

4/5 The movement began in its current form in 1988, and currently consists of two organisations. Fairtrade International (FLO) is the brand’s governing body, setting Fairtrade standards and overseeing some 25 national and regional bodies. FLO-Cert is the inspection and certification body charged with upholding these standards.

Becoming a certified Fairtrade producer involves a number of eyebrow-raising propositions. First, there are the entrance requirements. The farm must be small (the requirements vary depending on the crop; coffee farms must be no more than editor@salient.org.nz

Features

22

Anywhere from five to 50 per cent of the extra cost goes to the growers.

12 acres). It must be family-owned, with no permanent hired workers. It must be part of a Fairtrade certified collective—no independent farms allowed. It must not use genetically modified crops, and must restrict the use of agro-chemicals.

Fair trade criticism #3: Fairtrade looks to preserve small-scale, traditional methods of farming. By doing so, it incentivises inefficient food production and stands in the way of modernisation.

Is it fair? Sort of. Modern, large-scale farming can be more efficient than traditional methods, but this doesn’t necessarily mean the producers and workers will get to keep the rewards; most of these savings are passed on the consumer.

Without proper regulation—often lacking within developing countries—modern farming methods can also be environmentally disastrous, ruining soil and creating water shortages.

2.5/5

Then there’s the certification fee. For a cocoa farm in the Ivory Coast, the certification fee (paid upfront) would be about US$1,500.

The initial audit also comes with a fee.

Remaining certified will cost over $1,100 a year.

www.salient.org.nz

FLO’s income goes toward development projects and advice and support for the farmers. At least, some of it does. Studies have found that of the extra cost passed on to consumers in Fairtrade products, anywhere from five to 50 per cent of this goes to the growers.

Fair trade criticism #4: The accreditation criteria for Fairtrade are arbitrary and racist.

Is it fair? To an extent. Many of the criteria are unrelated to “fairness” per se. For instance, it’s not clear how the size of the producer should inherently affect the transaction’s “fairness”.

If larger, independently owned producers pay their workers well and are environmentally sustainable, it’s hard to see why they are nonetheless morally “worse” than collectives.

These types of limitations also reflect typically patronising Western attitudes. The restrictions define what “their” industry should look like to meet “our” moral values, and do so by reading off a clichéd and unthreatening ideal of Third World cottage industries.

3.5/5 The value of the advice FLO gives farmers is also suspect, informed as it is by FLO’s notably anti-modernist view on farming. In

salient

Fair trade criticism #5: Fairtrade is often corrupt in practice.

Is it fair? Corruption is always hard to measure because by definition, it is carried out in secret.

Nonetheless, there is significant anecdotal evidence to suggest that some Fairtrade importers and accreditors have demanded kickbacks from producers. Fairtrade accreditation creates a relationship of dependency that is certainly open to abuse.

4/5

addition to the entrance requirements, FLO has no policy on mechanisation—crucial to agricultural development—and in some cases has actively discouraged it.

Fairtrade certification guarantees farmers a minimum price for their crops. But it only guarantees this price for crops that importers intend to sell under the Fairtrade banner. For instance, because the supply for Fairtrade coffee outstrips demand, growers can only sell about 20 per cent of their crops for the guaranteed price. (They don’t get a discount on their certification fee though—this is always calculated using the total crop.)

This also negatively impacts on quality.

If growers are guaranteed a Fairtrade minimum price for only a portion of their produce and must sell the rest on the open market, they will sell only their lowestquality produce at the minimum price to ensure they get the best possible price for the remainder. The upshot is that Fairtrade products tend to be of lower quality.

Global sales of Fairtrade products went from around US$250 million in 2000 to around $5.5 billion in 2011. Throughout much of the movement’s history, it has successfully turned impoverished farmers into wellinformed participants in the global market.

However, some commentators fear that the brand is close to outliving its purpose. With farmers able to undertake their own research and access real-time market information

Features

issue 10

from their phones, having a First World NGO on hand to bridge the information gap—historically Fairtrade’s biggest and best contribution to the lives of producers—is becoming increasingly redundant.

But alongside the declining relevance of the Fairtrade brand has grown an increasingly aggressive and insidious marketing campaign. As Philip Booth of the Institute of Economic Affairs notes, the movement “pounces on critics with its well-oiled publicity machine, always responding with anecdotes”. When farmers in the developing world number in the millions, and many may be randomly enriched by the caprices of the global market, the uplifting tales of success that form Fairtrade’s currency are actually ten a penny.

To criticise a marketing campaign for its fuzzy claims and lack of accuracy might seem hopelessly naive. But whereas the claims of most commercial marketers are taken with a pinch of salt, Fairtrade’s halo disarms all but the most cynical. The idea that Fairtrade even “markets” itself is anathema to many of its proponents, who prefer to see the promotion of Fairtrade as a moral argument rather than something as base as advertising. But either way, a solid moral argument needs rigour. It would be interesting to find out how many of the movement’s loyal supporters, ever eager to shout down and boycott retailers who fail to fall in line, would fare if actually quizzed on the details. As ever, the conscientious objectors tend to be the most informed.

Fair trade criticism #6: Fairtrade products are marketed unethically.

Is it fair? Almost certainly yes. Most consumers of Fairtrade are highly misinformed about the nature of Fairtrade and simply assume it means more money goes to the original producer. Fairtrade marketing is heavily focused on pushing this narrative despite the lack of evidence. Fairtrade also relies heavily on boycotts and public shaming to bully retailers into stocking its products.

4.5/5

(The exception is climate change, obviously.

Skeptics, STFU.) Fairtrade also targets schools and universities in a way that would be inconceivably Orwellian were it a regular commercial brand. In many of the UK’s 1500 Fairtrade Schools, Fairtrade is taught during Religious Education classes. The idea of teaching ethical consumerism is great; what’s alarming is the adoption of one brand—trademarked logo and all—to represent the entire movement. If IT were Apple Studies, or home economics were An

Fair trade criticism #7: Fairtrade is an unethical employer.

Is it fair? Ironic, but true. Fairtrade relies heavily on volunteer youth labour, and many of these volunteers end up doing unpaid work at for-profit Fairtrade retailers. Many are ignorant or misled about who their labour is benefiting, and believe they are doing charity work.

23

Fair trade criticism #8: Fairtrade is simply a business, one that leeches off profits for certain cash crops without contributing anything to either producers or consumers.

Is it fair? Not really. Fairtrade does provide some benefits to producers, even if these are significantly less than what is claimed. FLO is a non-profit organisation. However, FLOCert is a private limited company. There is also no publicly available information on what either body’s directors and CEOs earn. National bodies who are members of FLO, such as the Fair Trade Association of Australia and New Zealand, earn income from service fees charged to retailers. Most of this goes on marketing the Fairtrade brand.

2/5

3.5/5

Introduction to Fonterra, the uproar would be loud and predictable.

So will I be participating in Fairtrade fortnight? No, probably not. Will my alien hand syndrome persist when I reach the Fairtrade coffee aisle? Hard to say. I love the idea of ethical consumerism and strongly believe in researching your purchasing choices (but nor would I judge those who lack the time or resources to do so). In one sense, buying Fairtrade is a vote for ethical consumerism, an act of support that strengthens the movement as whole.

But it’s also, and more immediately, a vote for a particular brand—one that’s slowly, but perceptibly, moving away from ethical consumerism and becoming its opposite.

editor@salient.org.nz

PLACE YOUR HANDS ON YOUR STOMACH FINGERTIPS TOUCHING PALMS FACING INWARDS JUST BELOW YOUR BELLY BUTTON JUST ABOVE YOUR WAISTLINE

BREATHE IN BREATHE UNTIL YOUR FINGERTIPS PART

REPEAT

Louise Rutledge www.louiserutledge.tumblr.com

26

salient

LIENT A S

TV

coming soon

www.salient.org.nz

issue 10

27

The Week in Feminism Brittany Mackie

L

ast Tuesday would have been the 151st birthday of feminist and journalist Nellie Bly. Bly started her career at a Pittsburgh newspaper after writing a fierce letter to the editor regarding a sexist article that had been printed.

Real name Elizabeth Cochran, Bly led an incredibly inspiring life, which included posing as a mentally ill patient to expose the weird shit going on in the Blackwell Island mental asylum, and making her way around the world in 72 days—after reading Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days, she just had to see if she could top it. She was also an outspoken advocate for women’s rights and the rights of poor working class citizens.

She was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1998 for her women’s rights advocacy plus has a character in the Asylum season (two) of American Horror Story based on her—a definite sign that you’ve made it big. It’s always a good time to celebrate passionate women in history, especially someone as fierce as Nellie Bly.

T

he Nigerian Army has infiltrated a Boko Haram camp and freed over 677 women and children hostages last week. 214 of these women are pregnant due to being raped by Boko Haram during their time as hostages in the camp. Rape continues to be used as a method of fear and control in countries torn by war and militant uprisings.

The Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Babatunde Osotimehim said that they had prepared for the worst while planning the extraction of these women from the camp and have in place intensive therapy and psychosocial services to aid them. The goal of these services is to firstly restore the dignity of the girls and then begin a process to integrate them back into society. This integration will be a larger struggle for some—some of the younger children were actually born into the Boko Haram camps and haven’t experienced anything outside the prison-like conditions.

In 2014 the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram abducted 200 schoolgirls from their school. Although this was when Boko Haram’s kidnappings were brought into the media’s spotlight, the group has been around since 2002 and has kidnapped over 13,000 people in Nigeria. The name Boko Haram translates to “Western education is forbidden” and many of their abductions have targeted women and children learning and teaching English. Boko Haram sees the education of females as a threat to the system of oppression and control that they idealise.

F

ox News host and medical expert Dr Keith Ablow has stated he believes “men should be able to veto women’s abortions”. Yes you read right, he used the term “veto” while discussing the basic rights of women. This truly fucked up statement came during a piece in which he reviewed a recent radio interview with actress Sofia Vergara whose ex-fiance is currently trying to use her frozen embryos to become a single father. Ablow went on to state that Sofia has less than 2 per cent credibility in the matter and “Why would a woman’s right to decide what to do with a frozen embryo trump a man’s?” While I would never expect something remotely resembling equal or objective journalism to come out of the Fox network, this has to be the biggest “there’s no way someone actually said that” moment I’ve had.

editor@salient.org.nz

28

salient

Loosely Inspired (by The Bachelor)

Art for Art’s Sake George Block and Joe Cruden Here we go again. Listen: things aren’t great this week. In last week’s flood the Shit Den got hit pretty hard. The TV’s fried and is shooting off sparks ominously into the dark. Our only couch is completely waterlogged; The Rat floats around in a McDonald’s cup. We’ve put some wine biscuits in there with him and he’s been bobbing away contentedly.

As we said, things aren’t going too well.

We’ve always treated The Bachelor and our long-suffering editor, Sam, with trepidation and contempt (respectively) but this week we really hit our nadir.

We know we keep saying that—and we promise we’ll stop soon, truly—but this week we really mean it. That’s right, guys: we’ve fallen for Art. The depravity and desperation of our romantic lives meant this was always going to happen. George last met eyes with a potential mate in about 2007; Joe’s shelled out for Tinder Premium and has parachuted himself into Tasmania. We’ve had to stop going to the New World across the road because we keep freezing in front of Jamie at the express counter. We fall often and we fall hard.

And look, we honestly never thought it’d be Art we fell for; there were so many alternatives! Danielle (M, not B) caught our eye early on and Joe still blushes (a grotesque and disquieting sight) every time Puru is on screen.

But our hero showed some frailty this www.salient.org.nz

week and we were enamoured. When an anxious Art asked Poppy whether her mother would like him we were melting, and his hopeful little whimper when Poppy answered in the affirmative had us in little puddles on the floor.

A stupidly bounding Art also met up with Alysha in Invers. Now, you might be surprised to learn that both of us are sons of the South—Joe was born and raised in a commune at Waikouaiti and George’s formative years were spent dagging sheep down Mataura way. George read Ag-Sci at Telford and Joe’s “parents” (it takes a village to raise a child) didn’t believe in the education “system”.

But we digress. Our hero put in a consummate performance this week.

He managed to display the full range of human emotion: from melancholy all the way to pity. Art evoked a real sense of pathos through his endearing hesitancy with Alysha’s probably-disgustinglybigoted meathead brothers, who took an immediate dislike to our Paleo Prince.

The episode evoked some uncomfortable memories for both of us.

And goddamnit if he isn’t doing a lot better than we would, okay. Christ knows we’d go to pieces at one of those cocktail parties. It’d be just like George’s after-ball in 2008; we’d be sloping off to that little white trellised piece with three Heinekens and a pouch of Drum. We’d be sat there forlornly, stealing little glances at Shivani et al., and hoping one of them would come

on over and ask us if everything is okay.

It’d be horrible. And did you see Art making out this week? We imagine that if either of us ever get the opportunity to try kissing we’d be a nervous wreck: eyes darting every which way, clammy hands clutching at thin air.

Okay, dear readers, we hear you. We know what you’re saying, and the answer is no.

We might be “hacks” and “unhygienic” but we haven’t “come around” to the show’s “despicable politics”—we know that the whole premise is a paean to the worst excesses of Kiwi neo-liberalism.

And the gender politics are clearly no better. We felt real solidarity with Dani’s step-mother in her righteous indignation at this whole sordid nightmare. But show be damned, we’re in love with Art for Art’s sake and nothing more. Love might be blind, but it can still smell bullshit.

Forgive us an abrupt ending, readers. The water is edging ever closer and The Rat grows hungry. George is treading water and Joe’s gone under: a small patch of bubbles marks the spot where he swam moments ago. Once again the curtain falls on an urgent scene.

P.S. Save the date! By popular demand, the Bachelor meet-up will be held at The Bristol at 8:30 pm on the night of the final episode.

Come dressed as your favourite participant.

J&G

We Drank This So You Didn’t Have To Lydia and Mitch

2 for 1 Japanese Sake Cost: $6 Alcohol volume: 13.5% (1.5 standard drinks) Pairing: Weird chips, chicken sandwich with too much aioli, too much cider Verdict: “It’s like it went down the wrong hole but it didn’t.”

With perhaps the most visceral response any of our alcohols have ever received, we’re just not sure we drank Sake right. We bought a very small bottle but abandoned it after no more than a few sips so we could turn to dramatically coughing and slugging back restorative Scrumpy. Are you supposed to mix it with something?

Is it really just a test? Should we do more research than “this bottle looks funny”? The answer to all these questions is probably yes, but our verdict remains unchanged: we did not enjoy this.

Completely at odds with the sour bullshit inside, the Sake bottle was cute and circular and featured a cherry blossom. At $6 it was too expensive and New World remains terrible. Doing our due diligence, we did a quick google of Sake and discovered that its fermentation process is more similar to that of beer than wine. However, as was pointed out, “it doesn’t taste like beer though, it tastes like shit”. To be fair to Sake, it wasn’t necessarily the case that it had a bad flavour profile. Our objection was more rooted in the fact that it tasted both hot and cold at the same time and produced more retching than is strictly necessary.

Like the troupers we are, we continued to take wee sippies followed by big regrets. As the spluttering subsided, we took a moment to revel in someone else’s victory. Despite that someone being a bit of a dick, as supporters of a political party that hasn’t been very successful since (arguably) 2002 we have to take our wins wherever we can.

And this time around, it was in Northland. Granddaddy Winston won, National lost, Steven Joyce cried, we were sauced. We want to take pains to point out that we’re not really fans of Winny but good God did we enjoy seeing someone else lose for a change.

At the end of the day, we were disappointed. Sake was a drink as successful as Bill English is at achieving a budget surplus. We made a mistake and while we definitely can’t promise not to do it again, we do this for you.

Margherita

pizzas every friday from 3pm

The Hunter Lounge

The Hunter Lounge

30

www.salient.org.nz

Comics

salient

issue 10

We Needed to Fill a Page

31

Here are some of the headlines that the outstanding, independent UK press produced in the run-up to the general election last Thursday. Unlike you, we have no idea what happens in the election because we went to print before polling. Some might say this makes this whole page redundant. We wouldn’t, because it was either this, or lolcats. If you’re struggling to see a point here, take this opportunity to reflect on the innocence of days past and the fleeting nature of temporal phenomena. Or, perhaps, on why the long-predicted death of print media might not be such a bad thing after all. (Except when it comes to Salient, though; we’re not bowing out until we have an opportunity to use our secret picture of Rick Zwaan eating a pie.)

editor@salient.org.nz

32

salient

Did we just turn into a sports column?

By the time you read this a week will have passed and this will all be old news, but sometimes in life great things take time. Being poor students who don’t have any particular interest in boxing, we streamed “The Fight of the Century”—whoops, I mean “The Fight of our Generation”—through what was quite possibly the most horrible website I’ve ever visited. This is because we didn’t feel like squinting at a screen between the heads of bogans at Hotel Bristol and as for pay-perview, it would have been cheaper to fly to the Philippines, where the fight was being aired for free. As we watched what we thought was probably the fight (hard to tell when the video has a grand total of nine pixels) a handful of things were brought to my mind, so put on your gloves and let’s have a moan.

Let us start with the ridiculous hype that has engulfed everything from Facebook to my Sunday afternoon. Is calling it “The Fight of our Generation” supposed to interest me, or make me feel bad for not knowing who the one who isn’t Floyd Mayweather is? The way the media has been talking about the fight made me think that Jesus was pairing up against Zeus himself ( Jesus would have won

btw). It was amazing how suddenly everyone is into boxing. Now is that just because (like us) you wanted to see that stupendous idiot Mayweather get knocked out, or is it because all the celebrities like it now?

Scenes from Django Unchained were playing in my mind. Apparently America has “moved on enough” to vote in a black president, but we are all fine with the richest people on earth flying their Gulfstreams to LA to watch two black people beat each other up for money. You can probably tell we don’t like America very much.

When it was all over, and it seemed to go by rather quick for how much it all cost, HBO’s “expert” decided to pick on the foreigner.

The post-match questions he asked Pacquiao were condescending, unintelligible and ridiculous. The best one being “Did you feel his power?” First of all, that’s not a question about Pacquiao’s interpretation of the match, it’s a way to further glorify Mayweather— something I didn’t know was possible. But did he really ask someone who had just been punched in the face for 12 rounds “Did you feel his power?” Had Pacquiao been born in an English speaking country, he would never have been asked such an array of biased questions—

but it’s America and the humble opponent has just been beaten, so let’s all make fun of him a little longer.

I thought this kind of bastardised, endorsed, money fuelled performance of what used to be a truly masculine, respect-driven sport was limited to “the greatest nation on earth”.

However, after tonight’s predictably awful performance by the Phoenix and their mob of supporting hooligans, I was wrong. The Yellow Fever disgraced the illusion that New Zealand is a sporting nation. Any whisper of sportsmanship was overwhelmed by the arrogance and obnoxiousness of the home crowd toward the ref and the opposition. Yes, New Zealand was already the laughing stock of world football; but hey, we’re still “the only unbeaten team in the 2010 World Cup”.

Now go and hook a Phoenix supporter, Luke and Tom P.S. Sorry there is no tip of the week...

Something... Something... Vic House.

LAYBY YOUR FLIGHT FOR $99* SAVE 10% ON INSURANCE SAVE UP TO 20% ON TOURS ROUND THE WORLD FROM $1899 *T&Cs apply, valid on selected flights only

PLUS WE’RE GIVING AWAY $1000 SPENDING MONEY EACH WEEK!

COME AND SEE THE STA TRAVEL TEAM TODAY STA TRAVEL VICTORIA UNIVERSITY Easterfield Building, Kelburn Campus Victoria University, Wellington victoriauniversity@stores.statravel.co.nz 0508 STA TRAVEL

www.salient.org.nz

issue 10

Opinion

33

The man from Top Banana It was in a smoky, boozy hostel bar that I saw my beautiful well-built Nigerian man. He was sitting with his friends drinking red wine, sucking up way too much laughing gas. After making eyes at him for awhile he came over and asked to buy me a drink. I was sitting at the bar with a lovely 52-year-old Australian man who was trying to relive his wild South East Asian youth. As his wife and children were at the hotel it was completely innocent fun and once I told him he was absolutely cock-blocking me but thank you for all the drinks, he disappeared. Despite the fresh beer in hand from the successful Australian I went to pursue conversation anyway; his name, a solid Christian name that unfortunately ended in “z”, should have alerted me to the other warning signs—he was stunning and way too wealthy for 24, no professional footballer hangs out in a hostel bar called “Top Banana”, and no one in a hostel bar drinks red wine.

means racially profiling, but did I just “follow” last night’s lover on Facebook? Even caught up in the moment I was aware that he wasn’t playing for bloody Arsenal, and he promptly lost a follower.

The corruption in Cambodia is so bad that the army generals fund their own football teams just to bet against the other corrupt army generals. They bring in foreign players, mostly from Nigeria, to improve their teams and outplay the locals. These boys, probably about 15 of them, were on year-round salaries, which meant that for the entire off season they would play African gambling games all day and drink in the hostel bars of Phnom Penh at night. They also talked lovingly of the amount of money they had to send home: good boys helping their families out. There was a large part of me that couldn’t stand where the money was coming from; the Khmer people have so little, and these boys were living the high life off the country’s money—but at this time I was a self proclaimed woman of the world and wasn’t going to pass judgement on those who had made it good for themselves.

The days I spent with him were interrupted with quick trips to the Western Union and long Skype calls to friends in Nigeria, or business contacts in China. Luckily for him I have no grasp on Pidgin English, so I sat happily in the passenger seat and let the negotiations unfold as we drove through the busy streets of Phnom Penh. Finally, kind of sick of his shit, I turned around and hotly (but probably more ignorantly) asked him why a footballer needed to make so many damn business calls. He looked at me very honestly and told me he was a money launderer.

This boy was full of empty promises—saying he would take me to the movies and his football match, asking indignantly why I got up to leave the next morning instead of staying to hang out with him. He even went as far as telling me that his apartment was my apartment now and I was welcome to help myself to the leftover pizza in the fridge or drink straight from the carton of fake orange juice if I wanted. And even though he wouldn’t pull through with his daytime plans I’d see him every night through the smoke at the bar. His job was questionable, as was the badly done JESUS tattoo in gothic font.

Even worse was his ex-girlfriend’s name on his right pec.

It was right then and there that my stance as an accepting, sexually liberated woman of the world narrowed slightly, just enough to exclude the stereotypical Nigerian scammer. Who woulda thought.

The conquest of a professional footballer was worth a message or two home but when he told me to add him on Facebook the options were only to follow him or message him, probably because he was “famous”. Without thinking about it I gave him a cheeky follow.

My friend from home replied to my message—she wasn’t by any editor@salient.org.nz

34

Film

salient

Infinitely Polar Bear

Directed by Maya Forbes

Elizabeth Kim Based on director Maya Forbes’ own childhood, Infinitely Polar Bear (2014) is an honest and bittersweet depiction of Cam Stuart’s (Mark Ruffalo) struggle with manic depression and his on-going battle to maintain his family’s love. He is confronted with the challenge to raise his two daughters (played by the adorable Imogene Wolodarsky and Ashley Aufderheide) while his wife-notso-wife-maybe-wife (Zoe Saldana) goes off to Columbia to finish a business degree.

As an actor, Mark Ruffalo is often cast in sweet guy-next-door roles, sitting with Jennifer Garner on the swings while they converse about their childhood memories (13 Going On 30). While arguably Ruffalo as Cam Stuart is nothing more than a malleable extension of his usual roles, he is still presented as a beautiful juxtaposition of this “sweet guy” persona. This contrasted characterisation of Cam Stuart is consistently seen smoking and drinking throughout the film, while at times, finding himself grappling with his role as a father.

Forbes immediately depicts Cam as an unemployed, unstable and cynical mess in the film’s opening. Hiss mental illness is visually enhanced by the consistent use of long shots and mid-shots to contrast his unusual actions

to the mise-en-scene of average Boston city life or the natural and calm scenery of the country.

The visual aesthetic is striking, and the almost immediate use of red and blue to contrast Cam’s mental struggle is an admirable and subtle touch to the viewer’s eyes. The beautiful Maggie Stuart (Zoe Saldana) is frequently dressed to oppose Cam’s own attire and to contrast the distinction between their states of minds. Maggie is often dressed in red or dark pink to oppose Cam’s blue garb and low mood, or his neutrality as represented by his lime green something-of-a-costume.

Forbes’ use of the colours red and blue is also a sincere method of visualising the issue of manic depression or “whatever they call it these days” that is prevalent throughout the film.

The key themes of the film, such as family structure, mental illness and poverty, contribute to the sincerity and emotiveness of the film. Cam’s struggle with depression permeates his household, his two daughters filling the void that Cam leaves. Even at a very young age, Cam’s daughters assume the role of responsible figurehead within the eccentric set-up of a family living in the “shithole” they call home.

The portrayal of mental illness however is what makes the film most honest. Cam’s mental illness is often seen as a “hush hush” issue particularly at the beginning of the film and reflects the unaccepting society of the time, and sadly the attitudes that continue today. His daughter Amelia’s visit to the “halfway house” draws in a thoughtful discursive note from C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Amelia notes the similarity of the situation to Lucy’s visits with Mr Tumnus—something that is secretive and perilous within the novel. This element of secrecy illustrates the practical reality of dealing with a mental illness, as something to remain silent about, and is an inescapable truth.

The ending however adds a nice touch— Cam’s mental illness is no longer seen as a burden by his daughters, but something of a unique quality that makes the love between them more concrete. Here it becomes more coherent that Ruffalo’s performance is a keycontributing factor of the film’s success as a feel good memento. Cam Stuart becomes the C.S. of C.S. Lewis, and while his issue of having “polar bear” still exists, the stigma of mental illness is loosened for the viewer.

205 OHIRO RD, BROOKLYN, WELLINGTON

www.salient.org.nz

issue 10

Film

35

Leviathan

Directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev

Kari Schmidt Leviathan is a Russian film that revolves around a few central characters in the coastal township of Teriberka: quick-tempered Kolya, whose property has been acquired for a pittance by corrupt mayor Vadim; Kolya’s depressed wife Lilia; his long-time friend and lawyer Dimitri; and his delinquent son Roma. The film follows Kolya’s battle with Vadim, and is concerned with the farreaching effects of political corruption.

Firstly, Leviathan is a movie that definitely deserves to be seen in the cinema, with absolutely stunning cinematography of dreary Russian landscapes, religious iconography, Soviet architecture and those absolutely fascinating ugly/beautiful Russian faces which are such a welcome relief from the all-American, often repetitive casting of Hollywood. (Being a massive fan of the epic film Koyaanisqatsi I was also expecting a fantastic soundtrack by Philip Glass, but on this occasion I was disappointed— the composer’s work only features at the beginning and end of the film and is very similar to his previous work).

Leviathan’s exploration of wider social themes is also exceptional. For example, Vadim’s long-standing relationship with the church shows how people justify anything to themselves, as well as the inherent deceit in using the concept of “truth” as a tool of power in a religion as politics. Religion and God are

addressed in various ways throughout the film—should we believe in facts over religion or is belief solely in proof an empty way to live? And the age-old classic—“why do bad things happen to good people?” Similarly, law and its abuses is a potent thread running throughout the film, from Dimitri’s initially earnest and successful attempt at acquiring justice (albeit via blackmail), to Vadim consorting with police and other justice officials. The scenes that play out in the courtroom are particularly jarring— the registrar reads out verdicts rapidly and robotically. The judicial process is made to feel inhumane and meaningless.

In some ways this was a film I found somewhat difficult to like. It is so long. And so bleak. Similarly, I didn’t find the personal relationships that believable and I’m not sure how much I really cared about any of the characters. Perhaps this was contributed to by the language barrier but I felt the relationships largely lacked genuine feeling and spontaneity. I call this the empathy assumption—where a film assumes that you will be invested in all its characters by simply setting up a given situation and set of relationships. However, re-creating human connections necessitates a highly subtle crafting, which Leviathan lacked.

loneliness and disconnection, their inability to be understood. This was particularly poignant in Lilia’s case, but even the mayor cuts a lonely figure at certain points. And I truly empathised with the characters in these moments. I suppose this may be the crux of it—Leviathan is not a film concerned with the redeeming qualities of human nature and the meaningfulness of our connections with one another. While there can be affection, maybe, the film takes a bleak view of human beings as being inherently self-interested.

Thus, we cannot solely blame Vadim and his abuse of the law for everything unfolds—as Dimitri states, “Everything is everybody’s fault”. Similarly, the film redeemed itself by the end, becoming something larger and more significant than the sum of its parts. It was particularly successful in revealing to the viewer on a simple, everyday and very human level the utter devastation and destruction wrought by this kind of politics.

Leviathan is ambitious, epic even and well worth seeing—although ultimately shy of greatness.

In saying this, the film is very good at depicting figures in isolation—their editor@salient.org.nz

36

Games

Gaben Is Not Necessarily God How Valve nearly ruined everything with paid mods Cameron Gray

Valve Corporation has had an excellent reputation amongst gamers for a very long time. Their bibliography of titles includes some of the most ground-breaking and critically acclaimed games of the past 20 years, most notably HalfLife and its sequels. Steam, a major Valve project for over ten years, is the number one gaming platform for PC with frequent heavy discounts on great games, not to mention free multiplayer and social networking features. They have done so many great things for PC gaming over the years that the company’s co-founder, Gabe “Gaben” Newell, has been turned into a (tongue-in-cheek) deity to the gaming community. The people love Valve and want it to continue to thrive.

on the Internet long enough to know that this is a very bad idea.

And yet, in just a matter of days, and with one single action, they nearly ruined all of that.

To many members of the gaming community, Valve’s introduction of paid mods made them look like EA, a company obsessed with squeezing every penny out of its customers while giving them very little in return.

EA’s reputation earned it the title of Worst Company in America twice in a row.

Valve has long been friendly to modders: members of the gaming community who create third-party content that can enhance or change aspects of games. Many of Valve’s early staff were modders and many of their games began as mods for Half-Life. The Steam Workshop provides a platform for modders to offer their work to the public in a way that anyone can easily grasp. Traditionally, mods have been given away for free, with little compensation available to modders, but Valve attempted to change that by introducing paid mods, starting with Skyrim. They thought they were doing modders a great service by allowing them to profit from their hard work.

Well, they fucked it up. Big time.

The majority of modders are NOT looking to make money off their work. To them, it is a hobby, and sometimes even a public service if they create patches for horribly buggy games. Even if they did want to make money from modding (with someone taking this opportunity to charge $100 for a mod that enhances horse genitalia, not kidding), they still do it as a labour of love, not only for the game but for the community that has grown around their work.

They’d appreciate a donation, but forcing us to cough up cash for something that may heavily affect gameplay is not really the way to go. Valve essentially decided that they were going to put mods behind a paywall, and I’ve been www.salient.org.nz

Gaben somehow got the idea into his head that “money is how the community steers work”, a quote direct from an impromptu AMA on Reddit after all this blew up.

Gaben is wrong. It doesn’t happen often, but he’s wrong.

Besides, the revenue from paid mods was to be split 3:1— Valve and the original game’s developer (Bethesda, in the case of Skyrim) would get 75 per cent, while the modder would get the rest. That is incredibly dodgy. 25 per cent isn’t much, and the idea that a modder would be able to make a living is pretty much bullshit.

Thankfully, Valve have since backpedalled on the whole plan. The company was inundated with constant negative feedback about paid mods, including on the Steam forums.

A Change.org petition to convince Valve to reconsider got a whopping 133,013 signatures and was able to declare victory in just four days. That is the power of community.

Gamers spoke out unequivocally against a stupid idea and were able to kill it before any major damage could be done.

Does this mean, though, that Valve is the bad guy here?

Well, not really; if anything, it shows that they care about what gamers want and will listen. Most companies would just push ahead even if their idiocy was staring them right in the face. Gaben and Valve took the time to hear what we had to say, and took action. The paid mods are gone.

Thank fuck for that.

And while Valve are still listening, I’d like to tell them a few things: overhaul Steam Greenlight so shit can’t get through, moderate Early Access so games actually get finished, and finish Half-Life 3.

salient

issue 10

37

Books

Jayne Mulligan

This is an age in which insert sweeping generalisation has changed the way we live. It is also an age where sweeping generalisations and statements can seem really daunting and distilling. What I know for shit sure is that, for whatever reason, I regularly get anxious and feel overwhelmed, and I know I am not alone in that. When faced this weekend with a daunting deadline, I felt like I needed a treat. It was time to buy an adult colouring book, duh.

The fact that it’s an adult colouring book only matters in so far as that rather than pictures of Elsa from Frozen, the book features gorgeously creative scenes and patterns for you to colour, incredible design work akin to art.

Adult colouring books have had a massive surge in popularity over the last few months. Joanna Basford’s first adult colouring book, Secret Garden, was published in 2013 and has sold 1.5 million copies worldwide. Her follow up book Enchanted Forest was released in March, and has sold out worldwide, selling quarter of a million in the first few weeks of it being released.

Basford’s immense success is due in part to the help she had from several celebrities tweeting their completed images, and in part because of the upsurge in adult colouring books in general. While Basford’s pages have story elements, the basis is derived from the “mindfulness” fad. Used professionally in the psychology world since the 1970s, mindfulness is a practice applied to help people who are suffering from a variety of psychological conditions.

Wikipedia defines mindfulness as “the intentional, accepting and non-judgemental focus of one’s attention on the emotions, thoughts and sensations occurring in the present moment”, which can be trained by meditation practices derived from Buddhist anapanasati.

Mindfulness is basically a practice where you pause, and you create space, introspection and calm. It’s a popular topic in self-help books at the moment, with books being written to help readers find mindfulness in a matter of weeks. It is entirely plausible and probable that the development of our modern age and all it entails has fostered rampant anxiety. The mindfulness movement counteracts the very common feelings of being overwhelmed and anxious about the multitude of things to do, by encouraging people to pause, and take stock. Adult colouring books are a beautiful activity, as well as a remedy for the stress of busy lives. I was very excited about this prospect. But what I

had forgotten until I was about to start colouring while watching David Attenborough explain polar bear mating rituals, is that when I was a kid I hated colouring in.

I used to have really poor dexterity; I think I was one of those left and right mix-up kids, with those rubber grips to train my fingers where to sit. It took until leaving primary school before I was a bit comfortable writing. I have traumatic memories of being sent back to try again after showing my teacher my handwriting exercises. Needless to say my colouring experiences were incredibly similar.

However, I had already begun to develop perfectionist tendencies. For me as a kid, colouring was a hotbed of control issues and lacking motor skills. I remember my hands shaking in frustration and beating myself up for going outside the lines (biggest childhood faux-pas).

As I opened the page of my chosen book, the same feelings immediately flooded back to me. I had selected The Mindfulness Colouring Book by Emma Farrarons, which is jam-packed full of intricate patterns “prompting you to meditate on your artwork as you mindfully and creatively fill these pages with colour”. Being A5, it is portable, making it easy to colour wherever you go. The templates have an endearing imperfection to their execution, which eased my initial reaction. Basford highlights that this allows creativity to flow, without the daunting feeling of a blank sheet, that the lines and patterns provide a structure, which simply needs to be coloured. However, looking at a whole page of tiny dots and swirls and lines, waiting for me to create something beautiful, made me feel a little overwhelmed.

At first I felt overwhelmed, but I think that was an appropriate trigger to ignite before my colouring meditation. I realised that the only way to complete the page of patterns was to work colour by colour, and line by line. Without realising, the mindfulness had already begun.

By stopping productive tasks, and focusing on the motion of my faber-castell pencil, I was able to find stillness in my mind, which I hadn’t had all day. It paused my mind before it got caught in a flurry figuring out Saturday night plans, and allowed me to find a sense of calm.

editor@salient.org.nz

38

Music

C.H.I.E.F. Rei

Kate Dowdle Rei’s debut album is definitely one you need to listen to. There are songs for both day and night, with reggae vibes and electronica sounds bringing the whole album to another level. This is good kiwi music in every way—unique yet relatable lyrics, talented rapping and vocals, engaging production and a bit of variety on the album too. There’s a good mix of experiences and emotions communicated across, and all with a unique yet classic kiwi vibe. As a student living in little old Welly, it’s kind of refreshing to listen to a rapper who relates and one that uses Te Reo too; it’s a bit of a change from Kanye.

The stand out track for me is “M.O.E”. The lines “It’s Mana over everything, these fellaz sounding too American, this some NZ for your benefit” slip in near the end of the track and gives an example of the classy home grown pride that C.H.I.E.F. emanates. “Peace Pipes” is similar; the bridge is well-timed with a heartfelt hometown message. The electronica beats also carry the different pieces of the song nicely to bring it all together.

The album has different elements that tie in and make C.H.I.E.F. a statement of hip hop in its own right. “The Tribe” is one of the tracks that set this out. It has dubstep vibes, and a mixture of more delicate vocals and rapping with a straight-up kiwi accent. The bridge is just golden.

And if I ever graduate—this song is going to describe that exact moment.

www.salient.org.nz

The opening track “Step Step” is damn catchy and has the most random mixture of instruments on it, but it works.

I love the chorus and the pulsing beat in the verses. I’m not exactly an expert on “how to rap”, but the rapping on this one really showcases Rei’s talent with some fast and articulate verses. “Hobby” follows this and feels like a bit of an anthem, with nice vocals making “they keep on telling me to get that 9 to 5” my favourite line.

“Love Bite” and “Ice Cream” show another side and are sure to get girls swooning. The line “What if I quoted Drake for you?” sort of explains why on its own. “Love Bite” is a bit more restrained than the others, but even then it develops with awesome production and layering, and it really works. The final track “Culture” has its own laid back vibe with a real message about what music brings to the world. This works as a perfect final song.

The variety of songs, paces, and messages make C.H.I.E.F. an album that I would recommend, especially if you are a fan of New Zealand hip hop/rap. Along with features from Andy Fisher, Kid, and Xela, the album brings something fresh to New Zealand music that makes for a good listen— an easy four stars.

salient

issue 10

39

Music

Wilder Mind

Mumford & Sons Hamish Clark Mumford & Sons, after a brief hiatus, were all about a new beginning—as Marcus Mumford told Rolling Stone, “We felt that doing the same thing, or the same instrumentation again, just wasn’t for us.” It shows—Wilder Mind sounds distinctly suited to the rock genre the band tiptoe around, infused with grandeur and percussive explosiveness. From the opening electric chimes in “Tompkins Square Park” through the familiar slow, epic crescendo of first single “Believe”, the album is a departure from their folk-inspired past efforts. The difference with this reinvention and that of, say, U2’s Achtung Baby (the ultimate artistic U-turn) is an unmistakable feeling that Mumford & Sons’ new sound is inferior to their old.

There are some great songs on Wilder Mind: biting guitars let loose on “Ditmas” and “Only Love”; the thumping exposition (“Shake it Off ” anyone?!) and subsequent calm of “Wilder Mind”; “Snake Eyes” cathartic chorus. The musical change, however, is hit and miss, as best evidenced with “The Wolf ”, a hungover track from Babel or Sigh No More—the instrumental sections don’t sound bad, but lack the organic dynamism of classics like “I Will Wait”. Wilder Mind also follows the same boring progression as the past two albums, with a teasing exposition, two or three great tracks, and a general petering out towards the end. For an album heralding a new dawn, there is a distinct lack of substantial difference from the night previous. “Tompkins Square Park” may echo “Zoo Station” in name, but for

Mumford & Sons the revolution ends with turning the electricity on—Achtung Baby was U2 2.0, whereas Wilder Mind is just Mumford & Sons 1.3.

Great bands cannot help but sound like themselves—a fact not lost on Mumford & Sons. Wilder Mind is a fun listen, with its obligatory share of endearingly terrible lyrics (“I’ll turn into a monster for you / If you pay me enough”) that somehow float alongside some fantastic melodies.

If anything, it feels like more effort was put into hyping the artistic shift than the actual engineering—without prior expectation, it may have had more impact. If you’re looking for a genuine change in artistic direction, or proof of Mumford & Sons’ musical genius beneath their novelty folk roots, prepare to be disappointed. For fans, however, there’s still a lot to love on Wilder Mind.

editor@salient.org.nz

Visual Arts

40

salient

YOUR GUIDE TO THE RENAISSANCE SUPERSTARS RENAISSANCE, THE ERA BRINGING YOU:

THIS WEEK:

RAPHAEL

uglyrenaissancebabies.tumblr.com Italian. Painter. Architect.

Plagiarist?

1483 – 1520

Harriet Riley Key works you need to know by Raphael: The School of Athens in the Stanza della Segnatura (the Pope’s drawing room in the Vatican), Sistine Madonna and The Transfiguration.

Raphael is the final playing piece in the trinity of Renaissance superstars.

While a great artist in his own right, Raphael is best remembered for his remix of the two Renaissance greatest hits—Michelangelo and Leonardo in his prolific oeuvre. To say he did it alone is hardly fair as Raphael had one of the largest workshops of the era, but unfortunately no one remembers the understudies.

Born in Urbino, he was orphaned by age 11, but still managed to kick it with the best of them, wriggling into the Urbino court of nobles and learning how to paint and make polite conversation. This skill (along with his artistic integrity) held him in good stead with Pope Julius II who summoned him to Rome to work on the redecoration of the Vatican ( Julius also summoned Michelangelo who came a little more begrudgingly).

But before all this though Raphael found himself in Florence, the home of Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo was about thirty years older than Raphael and while there is no evidence that the two ever met, there can be no denying Raphael saw his work. After his brief time in Florence, Raphael’s work took on the stylistic qualities of

www.salient.org.nz

Leonardo faster than HRH Prince George’s blue dungarees sold out in Britain over the weekend. Raphael imitated the poses of Leonardo’s paintings and in particular began copying his technique of sfumato (smudgy blurred painting technique).

In Rome, Raphael found his contemporary Michelangelo was also working under Pope Julius II in the Vatican. The shared experience did not go down well—Michelangelo hated Raphael even more than he hated Leonardo, so Friday night drinks were out. Raphael was not deterred and began assimilating aspects of Michelangelo’s classicism into his work at this time—Raphael even famously included a portrait of Michelangelo in The School of Athens after he snuck a look at Michelangelo’s awesome work on the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

Workplace bullying aside, Raphael had a frivolous time in Rome, enjoying many love affairs, great popularity and wealth until his death at age 37. As the scandalous tale goes, Raphael’s death resulted from a night of romping with his favourite mistress, which sent him down into a fever (don’t worry, she was well provided for in his will). Raphael was given the honour of being buried in the Pantheon and, in time, of not being overshadowed by Michelangelo and Leonardo.

The Transfiguration 1516–1520

Sistine Madonna 1512

The School of Athens 1509

issue 10

Food

41

Slow cooker pulled pork sandwiches I love slow cookers. They’re like magicians, turning cheap, tough cuts of meat into the most tender, flavoursome meals while you’re at uni or work for the day. Come home, and BAM. Dinner’s done.

This recipe is great on your night to cook for the flat. It makes enough to feed the tribe and isn’t a whole heap of drama to do so. Plus, it tastes friggin’ amazing. You could use lamb or beef instead of pork if you’d rather, but don’t use chicken breast. It’ll dry out way too much.

To serve: Burger buns Slaw: cabbage, carrot, apple and spring onions, all really finely sliced or grated Barbeque sauce How to: 1.

What you need:

2.

3 tbsp vegetable oil 1 large onion, chopped 3 cloves garlic, chopped (the equivalent of a heaped teaspoon of the crushed stuff) 2 tsp chili powder 1 tsp ground cumin 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (or use ½ tsp paprika if you’ve got that instead) 1 1/2 cups chicken stock 1/3 cup tomato sauce 1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar 2 tbl brown sugar About 2kg pork shoulder 1 tbsp whole grain mustard Salt and pepper to season

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Chop your onion and garlic and place in the bottom of your slow cooker.

Rub the pork with the spices and sugar and place on top of the onion and garlic.

Cover and cook for 6–8 hours on high, or 8–10 hours on low (depending on how organised you are). It will be tender enough to be pulled apart with a fork when it’s cooked.

Take your pork out (once cooked obvs.) and grab two forks. Shred the pork by pulling it apart, a fork in each hand.

Strain the liquid left over in the slow cooker and put to the side.

Throw the pulled pork back into the slow cooker. If you’re using BBQ sauce, stir through enough to coat the pork lightly to moisten it. If you’re not, use a bit of the cooking liquid instead.

Optional (for if you’re feeling fancy and have time): whack the cooking liquid into a pot and simmer it down. Thicken with cornflour. Boom, you just made gravy.

Serve with slaw instead of salad for crunch value. Toast the burger buns a little, put it all together and then nom.

editor@salient.org.nz

42

salient

Set Your Legs to Autopilot Bridget Pyc

An “autopilot for humans”, which uses electrical muscle stimulation to alter a person’s path, has been developed by German scientist Max Pfeiffer. The device communicates via Bluetooth to electrodes connected to a person’s legs and electrically stimulates either the left or right sartorius.

The sartorius muscle runs from the top of the thigh to the inner knee. The stimulation causes this muscle, the longest in our body, to contract. This pulls the leg into a wider stride and directs the person to veer either left or right, depending on which side was stimulated.

The device has been likened to cruise control, because although it can do the driving for you, you also have the ability to take back control of your legs at any time. As a person walks mindlessly, the slight contraction of the left or right muscle can allow the person to be directed along any path. However, this electrical current is small enough, such that if one makes a conscious decision to stop, or change their direction, the electrical www.salient.org.nz

stimulation from the brain will overpower that from the device, and the brain will regain control.

The project has been tested on students (naturally), who walked mindlessly around a park, while Pfeiffer used an app on his phone to direct their motion. Although the app is currently only rigged to work with another person in the “driving seat”, the hopes are that it can be developed to work with GPS. Doing so could allow you to get home at 2am from that random party in Mt Vic when your eyes are too blurry to read Google Maps.

Pfeiffer’s project is extremely exciting, as unlike the myriad of new technologies which demand our attention, this one allows us to step away from iPhones and Google Maps, and to take in our surroundings as we navigate unfamiliar territory. His project does however pose the question, “what next?”

As neuroscientist Greg Gage recently

demonstrated, we now have the ability to control someone else’s body using only our brain and a relatively inexpensive DIY science kit. The neurons in our brain emit electrical discharge which travels around our body. Reading these electric currents can allow scientists to “listen” to the motor action potential in our brains. Gage demonstrated this spooky-science brain power by connecting electrode pads to two people’s arms, (let’s call them Sally and Sam). When Sally makes the decision to move her arm, the electric charge generated by the neurons in her brain, are carried to Sam’s arm, which causes an automatic response in his arm, outside of his control.

The potential for this is huge, and one hopes that a more sophisticated version can be developed in the future to help paralysed people get around. But for now we eagerly await the human cruise control app, which will allow us to keep our heads in our text books on the way to the test that snuck up far too quickly after midterm break.

issue 10

Science

Artificial Intelligence with Strings Attached

43

Gus Mitchell This piece contains some mild spoilers for Avengers: Age of Ultron.

A few Salients back (issue 2 for those keeping track), I looked at whether we could build a realistic Iron Man. This week, as the sequel to the much-beloved Avengers film explodes onto screens, I look to Tony Stark's other greatest creation.

Could a functioning AI like Ultron ever come to exist? Let's just say there are some strings attached.

HARDER, BETTER, FASTER, STRONG AI Philosopher John Searle makes the distinction between two kinds of artificial intelligence: strong AI and weak AI. Weak AI can only simulate human intelligence, primarily through pattern recognition. Searle famously came up with the Chinese Room thought experiment to illustrate this, which argues that simulating thought is not the same as experiencing it. A weak AI will not understand the nuance behind the symbols or the tacit associations that we as humans have towards certain words and symbols.

Strong AI is more like Ultron or JARVIS, the AI in the Iron Man suit. They have the capacity to take in information from the world and form their own thoughts and feelings. They can genuinely said to possess a personality or a mind of their own. But what does it mean to have a mind? And can we create an artificial one that works like the “real” thing?

WINDOWS OF PERCEPTION Searle suggests that the mind is to the brain what software is to the computer. Think of your brain as the squishy wrinkled computer on which your mind runs like a program (and then think that your brain is attempting to define itself and proceed to trip the fuck out).

The current roadblock to making an AI that can think like a human is that we don’t yet understand what it is to think like a human in terms of building distinctions between consciousness, intelligence and the brain itself. This is what neuroscientists, psychologists and philosophers have been trying to define for centuries. Building an AI that thinks like a human would require a complete understanding of the human brain, biologically and conceptually, and only then would we be able to replicate it in a mechanical format. You would literally have to complete neuroscience.

But with a jolt of comic book storytelling, we can make the Frankenstein idea of artificial intelligence come to life. Ultron has the exponential processing power to think faster and hold more running thoughts than a human, but he walks, talks, and thinks within human parameters—albeit a psychopathic human with the syrupy but seething voice of James Spader.

This is ostensibly to enable the audience to empathise with or at least understand Ultron’s character, but it does reveal an interesting debate currently surrounding artificial intelligence. We expect that if we created AI, then they would naturally think like us. Humanist critic and philosopher John Gray disparages this idea as an example of anthropocentric bias. “Everyone asks, will machines someday be able to think as humans do,” he writes in his book Straw Dogs. “Few ask whether machines will ever think like cats or gorillas, dolphins or bats.” On that note, what is to stop them ascending to an even grander and more incomprehensible intelligence? With no strings to hold him down, Ultron could become a literal deus ex machina; a god from the machine.

SAGE OF ULTRON John Gray goes to speculate that any artificial intelligence could “develop the errors and illusions that go with self-awareness”.

A strong AI understands the nuance of symbols and meanings inherent to human

experience, but potentially has every capacity to misinterpret them. Upon his activation, Ultron is bombarded with information from the moment he gains life, and he goes through more philosophies than a high schooler on Wikipedia. In one scene, he quotes Jesus of Nazareth while holding the super-metal vibranium, saying “And upon this rock shall I build my church”. Later, he destroys one of his bodies housing his intelligence midway through a Nietzsche quote, committing a literal ego-death while proclaiming that “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”

These are all flimsy justifications for his real motive: making humanity extinct.

Interestingly, Ultron doesn’t present this as a cold protocol. He genuinely believes his mission to eliminate all mankind is for the benefit of the world. This raises the question of whether artificial intelligences are capable of having beliefs like humans. Does an AI have a “soul” worthy of redemption in the Christian manner? If it were to choose its own faith, would it coldly follow its doctrine to the letter like a fundamentalist, or would it develop its own take on spirituality?

Presbyterian pastor Christopher J. Benek seems to think so. In his words, “AI can help spread the word of God. In fact, AI might help us understand God better.”

While you can see the movie to determine just how well Ultron fares in justifying his existence, how a real-life Age of Ultron would be received by humanity remains to be seen. editor@salient.org.nz

44

Notices

salient

Letters Letter of the Week: Hi Salient,

Careers and Employment 2015-16 Internships and 2016 Graduate Jobs See Recruitment Schedule for details: http://bit. ly/1zGNacY Currently recruiting: Assurity, FMG, Microsoft, Google, BNZ, Heinz Watties, Optiver, Pernord Richard NZ, Atlassian, IBM, AIESEC, Snapper Services… and many more.

Connect with employers via Recruitment events: http:// bit.ly/1DOS0WK Upcoming employer presentations: Japan Information and Cultural Centre (12 May), Intergen (13 May), Xero (14 May), MSD (25 May), Plant & Food Research (6 Aug) Check in with a Careers Consultant during our daily dropin sessions! http://bit.ly/1A1ORgv Get help with your CV, Cover Letter, Interview skills etc For more info, login to www.victoria.ac.nz/careerhub with your Student Computing login!

Amnesty At Vic Amnesty At Vic meets at 3pm on a Friday in SU217 over tea, coffee, and baking to discuss the protection and importance of human rights. See our Facebook page, Amnesty At Vic, for more information. Fulfil your quota of liberal activism for the week!

Victoria Abroad– Student Exchange Fair!

Deadline for Trimester 1, 2016 exchanges is JULY 16th!

Why not study overseas as part of your degree?!

Study in English, Earn Vic credit, Get Studylink & grants, explore the world!

Deadline: July 16th!

Come to a Financing your Exchange Workshop: May 21 & June 23 Website: http://victoria.ac.nz/exchange Visit us: Level 2, Easterfield Building Drop-in hours: Mon-Wed 1-3pm, Thurs & Fri 10-12pm

I pride myself on my quick-witted puns but they’re strangely the butt of the joke for all my friends and family members. If you published the following joke, it would write off my low sense of humorous self-worth for at least a week.

What music do wrestlers listen to?

Louis Armstrong.

Kind regards, Please laugh.

Letter of the week receives two coffee vouchers and a $10 book voucher from Vic Books

You mean Philip? He would definitely stay at home.

Dear Salient, I’m writing this letter in regards to the ANZAC Day edition of Salient. I am sure your esteemed and fantastically received magazine no doubt needs my opinion but I’m going to give it anyway because you snobby third and fourth years need your world shook up.

Shout out to Rick Zwaan, by the way, before I go on. Free V was appreciated.

Back to my original point. I don’t understand why left wing people hate this country. Sure, we have pretty terrible income equality (I do support policies to help the poor, despite whatever you may think), and some pretty shocking crime rates, but we have a fantastic multicultural society that is a testimony to our willingness to say hi to our neighbours, we are the 2nd least corrupt nation on earth, behind Denmark (fuck you Birgitte Nyborg you cheater), we have pretty stellar tertiary institutes, we were the 13th nation to legalize marriage equality, and we do our best to help out refugees.

I’d like to ask the irrelevant knobend who wrote the “Muh My Lai” article what he would do if we were at war with a foreign power? Would he sit at home, or would he take up arms?

Also if this gets published, and you put “Provocative statement continues to provoke” Sam, I will once again punish the entire Salient staff by leaving Rule Britannia on repeat for two hours.

PS: Still keen on writing for Salient. xoxo

www.salient.org.nz

issue 10

Thanks, we’ll get right on that Dear Webmail User, Your Web Mail quota has reached limit and you will not be able to send or receive new mail until you re-validate your mailbox. To re-validate your mailbox reply by sendig the below details: 1. Email Address: 2. Username: 3. Password: 4. Confirm Password: Regards, WebMail Technical Support 192.168.0.1

so am i sir that was i trying , sir, in this world there is no anybody giving me help. if you give me. i think your heard is so big. i think you love to god. need urgently 500 USD give me please . this is the for my life. i can’t explain every thing in english. but .if you are real. if you give me help because i really need money sir, what can i do for you to get money. sir, i give back your all money with in one year.please help me.. sir, in this world i was tired to asking to do my help.but there is not any body giving me replay. sir, i am a real person.

Probably doesn’t own shares in Capital Market Dear Salient, Having read Charlotte Doyle’s excellent piece about hating on fussy eaters in last week’s issue I thought I’d mention the brilliant set of Capital Market vouchers VUWSA put in the bags they gave to students who signed up this year. The mini pamphlet contained about a dozen discounts, most of which were for Asian fast food stalls set up in the market on Willis St. From Korean street food to sushi to roti wraps (the lamb one for $8 is amazing), the market is a great way to experience foods from a variety of different cultures for a fair price (generally pretty cheap, but $12 is the maximum you’d ever need to pay to be satisfied). Unfortunately the vouchers have all expired by now, but anyone with enough money left over at the end of the week should head along and check it out!

Yours sincerely,

45

Oh noes!

Hello, Your account has come to our attention that there are Involved in illegal transactions We ask that these Accounts, if confirmed, be removed your Account as soon as possible. Additionally, we would like to request access to the data at this account. As it has been used for account , we would like to take steps to ensure that any customers who were taken in by this account are protected as quickly as possible. If you not join the illegal transactions could grant us access to whatever your RIFT account data are stored at this location to check, we would be extremely grateful(Please login to provide your login info),and we will not remove your account Your prompt attention to this matter is greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Gustav Rydstedt Security Researcher Trion Worlds, Inc

Salient letters policy Salient welcomes, encourages, and thrives on public debate—be it serious or otherwise—through its letters page. Letters must be received before 4pm on Thursday for publication the following week. Letters must be no longer than 250 words. Pseudonyms are fine, but all letters must include your real name, address and telephone number—these will not be printed. Letters will not be corrected for spelling or grammar. The Editor reserves the right to edit, abridge, ordecline any letters without explanation.

Email: editor@salient.org.nz Post: Salient, c/- Victoria University of Wellington Hand-delivered: Salient office, Level 3, Student Union Building (behind the Hunter Lounge)

Unsatisfied with eggs on toast

editor@salient.org.nz

46

Maori Matters

Hei whakaarotanga mō koutou Jamie Yeates Koinei tētehi rārangi (nāku ētehi mea i whakakore) nā Peggy McIntosh i tuhi e pā ana ki te mana Pākehā (white privilege). Pānui mai, whakaaro mai. Kua miramiratia ngā kōrero whai hira ki au.

7. Whether I use cheque, credit card, or cash, I can count on my skin colour not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.

1. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area that I can afford and in which I would want to live.

8. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race.

2. I can be pretty sure that my neighbours in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.

9. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.

3. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.

10. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.

4. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.

11. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of colour who constitute the world’s majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.

5. When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am shown that people of my colour made it what it is.

6. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser’s shop and find someone who can cut my hair.

www.salient.org.nz

12. I can criticise our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behaviour without being seen as a cultural outsider.

salient

issue 10

47

VUWSA

Yarn With Zwaan Rick Zwaan

Congratulations to our graduates! You made it!

This week more than 2200 Victoria graduands will walk across the stage at Michael Fowler Centre, shake hands with the Chancellor and receive their degrees, diplomas, certificates or PhDs. If you’re amongst them, then congratulations—you’ve made it and like your parents we’re all immensely proud of you.

Most people reading this, like me, probably aren’t amongst those graduating. I still have a bunch of study to do before finishing my BA/BSc triple major nightmare juggernaut. I distinctly remember this time last year—I was sitting on the fifth floor of the library avoiding yet another essay and lab report.

As I was scrolling through my Facebook feed, I was conflicted between feeling incredibly proud, but also pretty overwhelmed.

It’s such a cool feeling seeing your friends beaming away with their families celebrating such a huge achievement. It made me realise how overwhelmed I was at the prospect of the remaining work I had to do for my own degree before it would be my turn to cross that stage.

It was hard, but rather than brooding on how many more essays I would have to do, I instead reminded myself that wearing that gown represents achievement. It also represents a huge amount of courage and resilience that it takes to get the inevitably difficult times inherent with uni study. So I tried to use that to motivate me to smash out the essay and lab report and got them in.

Week nine is crunch time, assignments are stacking up, the weather is turning to crap, colds are kicking in and exams loom around the corner. It’s a tough time. But remember, you’re not alone in it. And, as is proved by the gowns parading down Lambton Quay, others have been here before and made it through, and you will too.

Despite the tough times, Victoria is by and large, a pretty good place to study. The calibre of our academics, other supportive staff, and the places where our degrees takes our graduates is a testament to that.

So, graduands, on behalf of the 22,000 students currently here at Vic—congratulations. You’ve put so much of yourselves into getting this qualification, and we are genuinely so proud of what you’ve achieved in your time here. Despite what the job market or media may say, your degree is valuable and you’re an inspiration to those of us still in the library, labs and lecture theatres, pushing ourselves to get to where you are.

Finally, to those for whom graduation seems ages away. We’ll make it one day. Right now we just need to focus on getting that assignment done.

Education Officer Ellen Humphries

Hey there, I’m Ellen and last week I went to see Avengers: Age of Ultron and I can’t stop fan-girling over it. I loved every moment of it. The epic fight scenes, cheesy heroes always win plot lines, and of course Thor’s muscles. I loved it so much that I really wanted to use this chance to say my bit in Salient to talk about it. And so I will, as well as class reps.

As your Education Officer for 2015, one my main jobs is to keep in touch with the class reps. About 97% of classes at Vic have at least one class rep, and that’s pretty awesome. I sometimes like to think of class reps as our own mini Avengers. They may not accidentally destroy tall buildings and half of Wellington in the name of protecting us from an alien attack, but they do provide a link to your course coordinator to provide positive and constructive feedback. Most of you probably only know your class rep ‘cause they’re the one who created the class FB group you use to ask if anyone has your tutor’s email address. But class reps can do so much more than that. If your lecturer’s going through their slides too quickly or a piece of assessment has inconveniently changed due date, format or topic, your rep is the one to avenge your class (see what I did there), and set things straight with the course coordinator or lecturer. (DISCLAIMER: I actually just looked up what avenge means on Google—your class rep is not going to inflict any kind of harm on anyone.)

VUWSA even has our own Wonder Woman (yes, I know she’s actually DC and The Avengers are Marvel—don’t get your knickers in a twist). Kate is our awesome and FREE student advocate. If any issue that is affecting your academic life is getting you down, come to the VUWSA offices in the Student Union Building or flick her an email.

I’m really hoping that Salient draws me as a superhero for this. P.S. my preferred power would be teleportation. Imagine just thinking of where you wanna go and BOOM, you’re there. I would never walk Mount Street again!

Anyway, the point is, superheroes are cool and so are class reps. editor@salient.org.nz