The Cascade Vol. 20 No. 27

Vol. 20 Issue. 27

www.ufvcascade.ca

OCTOBER 24-30, 2012

Weird but true since 1993

AfterMath in jeopardy after hitting deficit cap p. 3

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WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2012

INSIDE THIS WEEK’S ISSUE Opinion

News

Arts & Life

Sports & Health

Have a bright idea?

Look who’s (not) talking

Technology in art

A test of allegiance

UFV is searching for ways to save power, energy and the planet. If you have a bright idea, check out the details of the contest as Nadine Moedt explores a multitude of ways students, faculty and staff can get involved.

Toss your toddler in front of your 50 inch flat screen and let Amy Van Veen, a 20-something, childless university student, tell you how to raise your kids.

UFV Visual Arts instructor Christopher Friesen’s art is a one-of-a-kind work – what Friesen calls a “dialogue between past and present.” **Digital Artifacts** is being displayed in Vancouver’s Elissa Cristall Gallery. Nadine Moedt sits down with Friesen and talks art, the creative process and what it takes to be an artist.

The Wolves were in town last weekend to take on our own Abby Heat. Who were you cheering for? Mike Cadarette and Karen Aney analyze the two teams respectively as diehard fans in a hockey-starved world.

pg. 4

pg. 6

pg. 19

pg. 15

EDITORIAL

Why UFV should have a 24-hour library

Image: Roasedale Annie/Flickr

UFV’s Abbotsford library.

Our first essays and exams are

NICK UBELS

THE CASCADE pushing the best of us a little too

Caffeine dependency, sleep deprivation, the merry sound of overwhelmed freshmen and burnt out seniors weeping softly into their PBR: it’s getting to be that time of the semester when a nervous breakdown is only one reading response away.

close to our breaking points. The feeble light at the end of the tunnel is the recovery week most of us will require after surviving our midterms. But before you know it, research papers and final projects will jump into sight like an armada of Cylon base stars.

Most of us are more busy than we should be, working part-time

(or full-time) jobs and trying to maintain some semblance of a social life through 15-minute Tim Hortons runs. By this point, most of us have transcended the 16-hour day. For a night owl like me, I end up fitting in a lot of my homework after 10 p.m., which is only one of the reasons I find the operating hours of UFV’s Abbotsford library to be sorely lacking.

The library is currently open from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. most weekdays, closing at 6 p.m. Friday through Sunday. These restrictive hours only add to the stress of university life during the second half of the semester.

Most—if not all—students have commitments outside of class, especially at a commuter university like UFV. If you’re going to classes and working part-time during the week, this brief window of opportunity to hit the stacks, meet with presentation groups or use UFV’s computer and internet resources is simply inadequate.

While any extension of library operating hours would be a welcome improvement, what we truly need is a library that’s open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Students should be able to work around their own schedules without having to navigate the insufficient availability of library resources.

Twenty-four hour libraries are catching on in higher education, particularly the United Kingdom where nearly 25 per cent of all universities offer around the clock library access according to a 2010

Times Higher Education survey of post-secondary institutions. It’s a progressive policy suited to the changing student demographic of part-time and mature students who need to work around increasingly tight schedules.

And I seriously doubt any student would complain about being able to put in a couple hours of research whenever they felt like it.

So what are the obstacles to keeping the library open overnight? It’s unlikely UFV’s student body would flock en masse to the library at 3 a.m. on a Wednesday, so staffing would be minimal.

UFV could even kill multiple birds with one stone by hiring work-study students from the library and information technology program to work graveyard shifts.

Keeping the library open for 24 hours a day, 365 days a year may seem like a big commitment at first. So start small. Open the library for 24 hours during exam period. If it goes well and students make use of the service, give it a shot during the remainder of the semester.

If UFV wants to fashion itself as a real university, one with a thriving campus culture, where knowledge and learning don’t stop at 6 p.m. on a Saturday, it needs to seriously consider offering students anytime access to one of its most valuable resources.

Volume 20 · Issue 27 Room C1027 33844 King Road Abbotsford, BC V2S 7M8 604.854.4529 Editor-in-chief nick@ufvcascade.ca Nick Ubels Managing editor amy@ufvcascade.ca Amy Van Veen Business manager joe@ufvcascade.ca Joe Johnson Online editor michael@ufvcascade.ca Michael Scoular Production manager stewart@ufvcascade.ca Stewart Seymour Art director anthony@ufvcascade.ca Anthony Biondi Copy editor joel@ufvcascade.ca Joel Smart News editor news@ufvcascade.ca Dessa Bayrock Opinion editor opinion@ufvcascade.ca Sean Evans Arts & life editor arts@ufvcascade.ca Sasha Moedt Sports editor sports@ufvcascade.ca Paul Esau Staff writers Karen Aney, Taylor Johnson, Nadine Moedt, Jess Wind

Contributors Kyle Balzer, Mike Cadarette, Ryan Peterson, Tim Ubels

Printed By International Web exPress

UPCOMING EVENTS Oct 24

Oct 26 & 27

Oct 30

Oct 30

Café Philosophique discusses the function of a university

CIVL Radio hosts Cheers night

Deadline to sign up for dodgeball

Broadway brings song and dance to Abbotsford

For both philosophy students and those interested in delving into the deeper questions of life, Café Philosophique offers a space to do so.

From 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. in room B121 on the Abbotsford campus, the Career Centre will be hosting an open forum to discuss the role or roles of the university.

Every Friday and Saturday night, CIVL Radio hosts a evening of awesome with DJ Johnny K at the helm, spinning the beats and rocking the tuneage.

Head to Cheers Bar and Grill in Abbotsford for something more to do than just channel surf on a weekend night.

The 6th Annual UFV Dodgeball Tournament is back November 3 and the deadline to sign-up is coming up fast. Everyone and anyone are welcome to join whether on their own or in teams for up to six. The cost is $5 for one or $30 for a group. Tell your friends and grab a ball.

The Abbotsford Entertainment and Sports Centre will be showcasing the spectacular wonder of A Chorus Line at 7:30 p.m. Tickets can be purchased online (www.abbotsfordcentre.ca), by phone (1-888-977-2372) or in person at the box office.

The Cascade is UFV’s autonomous student newspaper. It provides a forum for UFV students to have their journalism published. It also acts as an alternative press for the Fraser Valley. The Cascade is funded with UFV student funds. The Cascade is published every Wednesday with a circulation of 1500 and is distributed at UFV campuses and throughout Abbotsford, Chilliwack, and Mission. The Cascade is a member of the Canadian University Press, a national cooperative of 75 university and college newspapers from Victoria to St. John’s. The Cascade follows the CUP ethical policy concerning material of a prejudicial or oppressive nature.

Submissions are preferred in electronic format through e-mail. Please send submissions in “.txt” or “.doc” format only.

Articles and letters to the editor must be typed.

The Cascade reserves the right to edit submissions for clarity and length. The Cascade will not print any articles that contain racist, sexist, homophobic or libellous content. The writer’s name and student number must be submitted with each submission. Letters to the editor must be under 250 words if intended for print. Only one letter to the editor per writer in any given edition.

Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect that of UFV, Cascade staff and collective, or associated members.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2012

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NEWS

SUS budgets and the possibility of an AfterMath closure

Image: http://guelphpolitico.blogspot.ca/

AfterMath could be shut down, if things don’t change fast.

DESSA BAYROCK THE CASCADE

If you’ve been to AfterMath in the past few days, you’ve heard the news; there is a possibility that AfterMath will be closing as early as next month.

If this were the case, it would stay shut at least until April of next year, when SUS’s next fiscal year begins.

This fiscal year, which runs from April 1, 2012, to March 31, 2013, the budget for AfterMath was set at $80,000 by the SUS board. This amount is intended to cover the cost of food, wages, contracts and any extra costs incurred through promotions or events.

As of October 23, AfterMath had spent roughly $67,000 of that budget. It will cost approximately $20,000 to pay out severance and contracts associated with shutting the pub’s doors, meaning that even if AfterMath closed im-

mediately, it would still be overbudget.

It’s no secret that AfterMath has never turned a profit, but this is not atypical. The majority of campus pubs across Canada operate at a loss.

“I think most of the student body has been made quite aware . . . that this is not business, it’s a service,” explains AfterMath manager, Brad Ross. “This is their space. This is a student space to be used . . . Just as easily, we could say, ‘It’s $200. You want to use the space, it’s $200.’”

Ross says charging a hosting fee would generate additional revenue for AfterMath, but explains that this would be “a shell game.” Clubs and associations would turn around and ask for that funding from SUS, so the funding would still be coming from the same place.

In a report obtained by The Cascade this week and presented to the SUS board this past August , Potter (then VP east) and Samuel

Broadfoot (VP finance) recommended that AfterMath lower employee costs, lower food costs and raise food prices. Looking at the expenses reported in AfterMath’s budgets, it doesn’t appear that any of these measures were pursued.

Ross explains that part of the problem came from an unexpected price increase in many popular food items.

“After the menus were already out and the prices were set, thanks to a worldwide shortage of corn and other vegetable products, our products took a huge price increase going into September and October,” Ross notes.

This is an expense that was not passed on to students, although Ross says that would probably change if AfterMath stays open.

Ross also notes that AfterMath has a partnership in the works with Phoenix, which would see the two bars putting together a weekly pub night for UFV students. It would allow AfterMath

to adhere to their licence, but also supply a place for student to go after the campus pub closes. This would serve as an additional revenue stream, but the first “pub crawl” is due for the last day of October – which may be too late.

“We’re going to start looking at as many type avenues as we can to start bringing in added revenue,” Ross says, “and then we’ll be creative to see if there are other avenues that we can do on [top of] that.”

For now, the reality of the situation can be distilled down into a single, simple fact: there is no money to keep AfterMath going.

“In order to keep AfterMath open for the rest of the year, Samuel Broadfoot calculated that we’ll need an additional $40,000. Best case scenario,” states interim SUS president, Shane Potter. “What that means is that we would need that money within the next two weeks in order to keep AfterMath going.”

Potter says every option has been explored and there is no easy answer. SUS simply doesn’t have $40,000 lying around, and producing that money would mean cuts elsewhere or going into debt.

“Ideas that have been brought forward are to reduce funds and budgets and take it from other sources. Unfortunately, as a society, that is very difficult to do,” Potter explains. “When we’re talking about $40,000, we would have to drain a lot of funds, including events, clubs and associations, emergency student grants.”

There is a petition making the rounds at UFV to keep AfterMath open; clubs, associations, and unaffiliated students alike are eager to put pen to paper to keep the pub open.

But at the end of the day, Potter says a pile of signatures—al-

though inspiring—will help no one.

“I think it’s good that the students are getting behind something,” Potter says. “There could be 5000 signatures on my desk in the next two days. But I’m sorry – unless those 5000 can tell me how, or tell me what they’re willing to give up, or tell me what they’re willing to cut, I don’t know what to do.”

“And we can’t make that decision for our members,” Potter continues. “That would be something our members would have to make.”

There are long-term solutions that could be pursued, but the clock is ticking. AfterMath needs funding in the next few weeks, or those weeks will be their last of the school year.

“For long-term solutions, we could start a member-driven referendum, at $6 a student, per semester,” Potter suggests, “but because of the referendum rules, where you have to wait 30 days for a referendum, the soonest we can do that referendum is in the summertime.”

Meanwhile, SUS has made all of AfterMath’s budgets available online so anyone can take a look at the numbers. Potter hopes that perhaps someone will see something the board has missed and supply a solution to the yearly AfterMath crisis.

“They can see how much I make. They can see how much we spend. They can see every line in my budget up to date. And then they can put those 5000 signatures on my table and they can tell me what they want me to do,” Potter says, wearily. “But I’m willing to save AfterMath if one person can come forward and give me a solution to save it. I don’t need 5000. I just need one.”

Post-secondary strike action could spread to UFV KAREN ANEY THE CASCADE

Five universities across British Columbia are currently experiencing job action. This has resulted in picket lines, as well as periodic closures of various services such as book stores and transportation.

University of British Columbia (UBC), Simon Fraser University (SFU), University of Victoria (UVic), Thompson Rivers University (TRU), and University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) are the institutions currently striking. The picket lines are a result of a job action notice levied on each campus earlier in the semester – September 4 at UVic, and October 4 at the remaining schools.

UFV has not submitted any such notice as of publication time, but the possibility of job action at our institution exists.

The issue at hand is that the Collective Agreement for all university staff across the province expired in 2010. Because of this, workers universities have spent two years without discussions surrounding issues such as wage

The UBC clock tower stands amid strike action. and working conditions.

The lack of a new agreement is compounded by a recent initiative by the provincial government, called the “Post-Secondary Sector Administrative Service Delivery Transformation Project.” This is a project put forth by the Ministry of Advanced Education, with the intent to examine spending in post-secondary institutions. As the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) describes it on their website, “The project

Image: Beken/Flickr

will protect the quality of academic programs by challenging the post-secondary sector to reduce administrative costs and any other expenditures that are not related to direct academic program delivery.”

This could affect many jobs across the province, including at UFV. UFV’s president Mark Evered is on the Executive Committee of this project.

The Faculty & Staff Association (FSA) at UFV is currently preparing for an Extraordi-

nary General Meeting (EGM) at which they will discuss issues surrounding the new collective agreement bargaining which will be commencing this fall.

In the FSA newsletter Words & Vision, FSA president and UFV professor Virginia Cooke explains that the EGM is needed due to insufficient attendance at previous smaller meetings but suggests that apathy may not be the problem.

“We call faculty or staff forums and wonder why so few people show up, but . . . probably there’s a conflicting meeting,” she writes.

In the same newsletter, Vickie Grieve, the chief negotiator for the FSA, suggests that the CUPE job action at striking institutions could result in similar action at other campuses.

“As we assess the situation in light of recent contract settlements in the province, it may be that the term ‘pattern bargaining’ can be applied,” she notes.

Citing recent settlements that spread in the Canadian Auto Workers Union (CAW) from Ford to GM then to Chrysler, she compares them to the CUPE climate at BC universities.

“I will not be surprised if similar patterns emerge in the public-sector in BC,” she states.

At striking institutions, picket lines are causing many services to drop – food service workers, landscapers and parking employees included. Some students are hesitant to cross these lines as well: Rebecca Bertonne, a communications student at SFU, says she would not be crossing the lines.

“I’m frustrated because I pay so much for my education,” Bertonne says. “[The striking] could get so much worse, though.

Hopefully they resolve their issues soon.”

Her sentiment was echoed at the Woodwards campus downtown, where a fine arts class on October 18 held their session in a courtyard rather than cross lines.

When asked if she would allow the job action to keep her from writing any tests, Bertonne was undecided.

“I guess it depends on if it will make me lose marks. I can’t afford to retake a class because of striking. It’s just too expensive.”

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WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2012

NEWS

Writing for the prize JESS WIND

THE CASCADE

For 22 years the UFV Writing Centre has been acknowledging exceptional student writing, but this is the first year that the ceremony has been held in the foyer right outside the centre.

Desks and couches were replaced with audience seating outside the Writing Centre in G building on October 18 for the annual writing competition awards ceremony.

Shurli Makmillen, competition judge and Writing Centre employee, said the switch of venue worked well for their purposes.

“I like it. It catches attention.

People can see the Writing Centre is a happening place,” she explained, as winners and their families trickled in to find seats.

The location fit roughly 40 chairs, and only a few remained unclaimed by the time ceremony coordinator Gloria Borrows took the podium. She thanked the winners, their families and their professors for attending before turning the floor over to UFV’s vice-president students Jody Gordon, who began by acknowledging the diversity in submissions for the competition.

“Submissions come from math, philosophy, history, theatre, geography, the list keeps growing,” she said with a laugh. “Social work, computer science, nursing, anthropology . . . UFV wishes to celebrate student success in communication in both their courses and beyond.”

UFV looking for bright ideas NADINE MOEDT

This year’s winners came from across departments and ranged from pre-university composition to graduate studies.

The lucky students were given the opportunity to comment on the process and goal of their pieces before being presented with their awards. If a student was unable to attend, the professors spoke on their behalf. This was the case for Kim Milnes who spoke for a group of successful Business 100 students.

“I see a lot of [these assignments] and I would give this report to a business professional,” Milnes said of the winning submission, which explored an investment analysis of Groupon.

Laurie Schultz, who won an award for her Master’s thesis in social work, talked about how the paper was almost never written.

“I told my family when I was in middle school that I would never get my Master’s, for fear of writing a thesis,” she explained. “It is nice knowing that the thing that would have held me back from my post-grad is being honoured in this way.” This was the first year that an award was given to a graduate thesis.

Cornelia Poortvliet-ter Haar spoke emotionally about her journey to winning the award for her paper, which discussed bridging the gap between science and art.

“I spent much time in learning assistance classes trying to tell my brain that the English language reads left to right,” she said, standing at the podium, and addressing her professor, Nadeane

Trowse. “I discovered the beauty and versatility in the language in [Trowse’s] class. Thank you for [English 209]. I really got a lot out of it.”

Haar, like all of the speakers, spoke of the passion that went into the essays, and was seen in the final result.

History department head and long-time judge Alisa Webb described what she hopes to see in the submissions.

“I look for students investing themselves into the work. They’re already great pieces, but I look for that something extra.”

Webb has judged the competition on and off for the last 10 years and has watched as writing trends change.

“It is interesting to see the differences across the disciplines. A theatre paper is written much differently than a criminology paper or a history paper,” she explained.

Submissions to the annual writing competition are accepted throughout the year; anything written for a course assignment in the academic year is eligible for submission. The categories are decided once all entries have been collected, based on the different fields of study represented.

Students are encouraged by professors to submit work that they are proud of. Previous years’ winning entries are kept in the Writing Centre in G building between the Tim Hortons and the library, and staff encourage students to come by and take a look at the exceptional work coming out of UFV.

“Get creative and start thinking!”

Have an idea on how to save energy on campus? UFV’s bright idea contest wants it. The bright idea contest is now accepting suggestions and the most promising five entries will be explored further by UFV’s energy manager and facilities team.

The ideas selected will be up for numerous prizes, including vouchers for restaurants, soccer tickets, greenUFV swag and more. Suggestions deemed suitable will be implemented at UFV, with credit given to the person who submitted the idea.

The contest was initiated in October by UFV’s energy manager, Sam Thomas. It was helped along by UFV staff and the faculty green team which is a group focused on helping UFV lessen its environmental impacts; currently the group is focused on reducing energy consumption on campus.

The green team is also supported

by BC Hydro’s Workplace Conservation Awareness program, a program designed to engage campus goers—students, staff and faculty—in reducing consumption on campus.

Thomas says the importance of reducing our energy waste is often sidelined.

“The importance of conserving energy is often overlooked. Let’s face it, energy is cheap in BC, so it can be difficult to see the value in using less,” Thomas explains.

Image: United Nations

Image: Globe and Mail

Image: Reuters

THE CASCADE

“But for electricity the reality is that if we don’t use less, then BC is going to have to generate or import more to meet increasing demand.”

Thomas explains that this necessary excess energy will have to come from somewhere.

“Generating more means additional dams, more gas-fired power stations, or more imported electricity from places like Alberta that burn coal in their generation plants,” Thomas continues.

“By conserving energy and using less we reduce the need for additional generation, which helps the environment [and] keeps the cost of electricity low for all of us.”

The contest was initiated to give students, staff and faculty an opportunity to have their say on what can be done to reduce energy waste on campus, but Thomas hopes the contest will also encourage a conservational attitude on campus.

“By starting to think about what can be done by others, or with technical improvements, we’re hoping people also start thinking about things that they can be doing also,” Thomas notes, “such as turning out lights and shutting down PCs at the end of the day. Even the smallest actions make a difference.”

The contest closes November 30.

You can visit UFV’s website to sign up or to find more information about UFV’s faculty green team. For more on UFV’s bright idea contest, or to submit an idea, visit www.ufv.ca/energy/idea.

NEWS BRIEFS

Image: Erin Hudson/CUP

Image: Kai Jacobson/The Ubyssey

Quebec at the forefront of the nanotechnology revolution

Executions increasingly viewed as torture: U.N. investigator

Book publisher Douglas & McIntyre files for bankruptcy

James Bond blends old and new charms as 007 turns 50

Hackers release information taken from four UBC servers

MONTREAL (CUP) – Scientists and governments are betting that at the heart of the next industrial revolution is an incredibly small unit of matter, the nanoparticle, and Quebec is showing provinces how to harness this molecular revolution.

The study of nanoparticles falls under the broad category of nanotechnology, an interdisciplinary field that is embedded in every industry, according to the Arthur Carty, executive director of the University of Waterloo’s Institute for Nanotechnology.

“Just think of the internet and its impact. Nanotechnology is going to have a similar impact but you can’t identify it as a specific sector. It’s embedded in everything; it’s an enabling technology,” said Carty.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Countries around the world are increasingly viewing capital punishment as a form of torture because it inflicts severe mental and physical pain on those sentenced to death, a U.N. torture investigator said on Tuesday.

Traditionally, countries have considered the legality of capital punishment with respect to the right to life guaranteed under international law, U.N. special rapporteur on torture Juan Mendez told the U.N. General Assembly’s human rights committee.

“My analysis of regional and national jurisprudence identifies a momentum towards redefining the legality of capital punishment,” Mendez said.

VANCOUVER (Globe and Mail) – D&M Publishers has announced that it is restructuring and has filed for creditor protection under the provisions of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act. The Vancouver-based publisher, which publishes under three separate imprints including Douglas & McIntyre, Greystone Books and New Society Publishers, says it will be working with financial advisory services company the Bowra Group to locate an investor or purchaser for its assets.

“It is D&M’s intention to carry on its operations during this restructuring process,” read a news release sent out by the company late Monday.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Makers of the new James Bond movie “Skyfall” have striven to combine the old-school values that made 007 such a success over the last 50 years with enough modern mores to keep the silver screen’s favorite super spy relevant in a post-Cold War world.

The 23rd official Bond film, which has its royal world premiere in London on Tuesday, brings together Daniel Craig on his third outing on Her Majesty’s secret service with British director Sam Mendes making his franchise debut.

VANCOUVER (CUP) – For the first time, UBC may not be happy to be on the same list as Harvard and Cambridge.

Four of UBC’s servers were hacked on October 1 as part of an attack by the hacker group Team Ghost Shell, which released 120,000 files from 100 universities across the world. One other Canadian university, McMaster, was also a target.

Randy Schmidt, associate director of UBC Public Affairs, said the four UBC servers that were hacked had lower security measures, making them more vulnerable than other servers on campus.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2012

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NEWS

Unlikely as a double rainbow: UCM and Pride co-host forum PAUL ESAU

THE CASCADE Here’s a joke: What happens when you put a bunch of Christians and LGBTQ members in the same room and close the door?

Last Thursday, University Christian Ministries (UCM) organizer Derrick Uittenbosch and UFV Pride coordinator Teila Smart searched for the punchline as they stood together at the front of a classroom filled with members of both their clubs.

They found that, far from being a joke, the unique and risky event became profound.

The two leaders brought together their clubs to begin communication between two groups, which are known for a long and public history of antagonism. The event was focused around the showing of a documentary titled For the Bible Tells Me So, a perspective on the stigmatization of the gay community by certain religious groups.

Still, the most anticipated portion of the evening was the ensuing discussion, where audience members were given the chance to air their views on the film and other issues within a controlled environment.

“The number one rule will be respect in the room,” Smart said before the event. “Anybody who attacks or personally victimizes another individual or group, they’ll be asked to respectfully leave . . . [still,] there is a certain amount of thick skin that’s going to be needed.”

Officially the film and discussion were to run from 6 p.m. until 9 p.m., but the 40-plus audience members continued the discussion until almost 10, and even then were reluctant to leave. For Uittenbosch and Smart (who had loosely defined their vision of success as “getting through the

Image: Paul Esau

Organizers from UCM and Pride joined forces in a collaborative and compassionate event. evening without any chairs being thrown”), it was a resounding victory.

“Part of the goal here,” Uittenbosch said, before the event, “[is] to demonstrate both between the two clubs and to the larger community that we don’t have to agree with each other in order to get along.”

Both organizers stressed the need for maturity and empathy in the discussion, and were glad to successfully avoid a traditional “debate.”

“In my personal opinion, I’ve been to a lot of debates on this campus and others and I’ve become quite disheartened by the debate format,” Uittenbosch said.

“Nobody shows up to a debate anymore to consider the issues logically; they show up with an agenda.”

The discussion revolved

around injustices perpetuated against the gay community by religious groups, but also the need for LGBTQ individuals to avoid stereotyping all religious groups by the actions of these few.

One UCM participant commented that contrary to popular belief, the two worlds seldom acknowledge each other.

“Often I find that if you’re a Christian, you live in a bit of a bubble and you don’t see the other side. And the older I’ve been getting the more I’ve been meeting people from the LGBTQ,” the participant said. “The thing is, no one ever talks about it! I’ve specifically paid attention in my church, and only twice have I ever heard homosexuality ever mentioned in my church.”

“It’s easier to be gay with my religious friends than it is to be religious with my gay friends,

and I think there’s a lot of history behind it, but also there’s a lot of assumptions,” one Pride participant noted. “Being religious to the LGBTQ I’m often met with fear and discomfort and ‘but they hate you!’ To which I respond ‘but you don’t even know them!’”

One highlight of the night was a contribution from a community audience member, who bridges both worlds.

“I was a Pentecostal minister for 18 years, so chairs flying was normal in our meetings,” he said.

“I always found it quite interesting, after coming out and talking to my former minister friends, that their greatest fear was this, ‘that [the LGBTQ community members] have an agenda and that you will take over.’ And I always loved telling them ‘being gay as long as I have and meeting the gay community, they’re not

that organized!’”

He later addressed the common Christian phrase “love the sinner, hate the sin.”

“I have a cousin who’s a very strong Pentecostal minister who always makes sure he tells me he loves me but not my sin,” he explained. “I always tell him ‘well, my sin is me!’”

At several points the discussion began to move into controversial territory, but members of both clubs seemed anxious to avoid the confrontation that often characterizes discussions on this topic. One Pride member even expressed interest in joining UCM at a future time.

After the event Uittenbosch was asked if his club would accept members who were also members of Pride.

“Absolutely,” he said. “Jesus spent all of his time with people he didn’t agree with, and he’s the example for us.”

Both clubs are hoping to schedule more cooperative events in the future and are positive about the event’s impact on their members and the larger community. Smart said she’d been approached by many UFV faculty and staff who told her such a discussion was “long overdue.” President Mark Evered, who was in the room for the entirety of the four hours, spoke glowingly of the “leadership” and “intellectual maturity” of those assembled.

So what do you get when you put a bunch of Christians and LGBTQ members in a room together?

At UFV, at least, you get understanding, you get empathy and you get the beginning of something beautiful.

Names have been withheld for the purpose of discretion.

UFV gives more blood than Trinity Western University Images taken by Ariel Brown of the BCSA

DESSA BAYROCK THE CASCADE

Cookies and juice boxes awaited donors.

It might look complicated, but giving blood is a simple process.

Recovering after donating.

Giving the gift of life.

UFV’s Biology and Chemistry Students’ Association (BCSA) hosted a very successful blood drive in Abbotsford campus last week.

Volunteers and nurses from Canadian Blood Services (CBS) were on site to guide students, faculty, and staff through the process of giving blood.

UFV pledged 70 units of blood, in an effort to match Trinity Western University’s drive totals. With the results all tallied, the total blood donated by the UFV community was 80 units of blood.

“As for students,” says BCSA VP academic Danielle Hamel, “[CBS staff] were estimating about 80 per cent of donations were from first-time donors, which is absolutely astounding!”

With the success of this event, BCSA hopes to keep this partnership with CBS rolling on an annual basis, and UFV students can expect to see a blood drive on campus next year in the fall semester as well.

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WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2012

OPINION

You may say I’m a dreamer: why the good ol’ days are so appealing MELANIE SHIELDS THE MUSE

ST. JOHNS (CUP) – Surrounded by the sounds of rattling Crossley car mufflers, the mystery of speakeasies, the enchantment of downtown and the delight of exotic coffee, I escape to what I’ve created as the ultimate golden age in my mind – the 1920s.

I imagine Louis Armstrong playing over the radio in every shop, Annette Hanshaw, Ella Fitzgerald, and Josephine Baker performing at every lounge; high-waisted pants hugging every man’s body, and a general atmosphere of dapper, grace, and excitement. The truth is we all have a golden age. But history is deceptive.

Napoleon Bonaparte once said, “history is but a set of lies agreed upon.” When we inevitably find something we dislike in our modern lives—for me it’s having to settle with “grinding” versus the Charleston—we escape through the illusion of the past. We focus on the glamour of yesteryear and leave out the hardships, quarrels, and uncertainties that lie beneath. What’s more, most of us

Image: creative commons

A vintage Campbell’s ad.

How to train your baby

Image: crrc.org.my

Parents can go too far in their desire to educate their children.

AMY VAN VEEN THE CASCADE

I am not a parent.

I feel the need to preface this article with that small fact. Nothing bothers me more than non-parents attempting to give parenting advice because if they haven’t had to deal with hours of a screaming, teething child or known what it feels like to wipe a snotty nose with their bare hands and wipe them absent-mindedly on their jeans, they can’t really offer any suitable advice.

I am, however, an aunt.

Cue the eye-rolling of parents everywhere.

While I may have the luxury of handing nieces and nephews back to their parents when the poopy times get tough, I have been able to see, more objectively, the different ways of parenting and the different benefits (or non-benefits) of certain parenting techniques – namely, those who attempt to make their kids geniuses.

One thing I have noticed is the way groups of parents can turn into groups of braggers.

“My Billy can walk, and he’s only 10 months old.”

“Really? My Suzie can say full sentences – subject, verb and object.”

“Oh, is that right? Well, my Kevin is able to recite the alphabet – we got him on that before crawling.”

“Well, my Winston Edward the

fourth is able to recite the prime ministers of Canada, name all the elements on the periodic table and do his times-tables.”

Parenting groups can become a one-upping game. No longer is it about who has the latest iPhone app, it is now whose baby can do the most.

The problem with Winston Edward the fourth, though, is that his parents are spouting off what is most likely just a semblance of knowledge rather than anything concrete. If children are taught with flash cards, graphs, tables and charts, they may well be able to repeat everything they’re taught, but that doesn’t mean they’re learning.

Children are not adults. They can’t learn through visual presentations and, for any university student struggling through the current memorizeand-repeat learning style in some disciplines, neither can adults.

A recent study done by the University of Washington and the Seattle Children’s Hospital Research Institute, as reported in the LA Times, has found that educational children’s videos such as Baby Einstein may be doing more harm than good. Shocking that planting a child in front of a twodimensional screen isn’t churning out actual baby Einsteins.

Recent studies are now pointing towards the indispensable one-onone time kids have with their parents, as discussed by pediatrician Anatoly

Belilovsky in Forbes. Children cannot learn from a screen the same way adults think they can – they need tactile learning. They need to play with someone. They need to practice speaking with someone. It needs to be a practical learning environment for them to even begin to see any educational benefits.

The ridiculousness of the educational toy and video industry is clearly evident when children are seen having way more fun with the cardboard box the toy came in rather than the toy, or the joy they get from opening and closing the DVD case than actually watching the DVD. The biggest learning method I have witnessed, though, has been the parrot-like repetition of everything they see their parents do.

The mom swishes her coffee cup around to pick up the grounds at the bottom is followed by the daughter swishes her water around and spills it everywhere. The dad who talks about the inner-workings of his truck is going to have an echo as his son then turns to a friend and explains everything about the new tires on his GMC or the diesel it takes to drive.

Kids observe to a fault. If you swear, they swear. If you hit the cat, they’re going to hit the cat. But if you sit down and do a puzzle, they will sit down and do a puzzle with you. A kid can’t do a puzzle with an Elmo.

If a parent wants their child to get the blue ribbon for making their friends jealous, they can feel free to stress their kids out with flashcards, times-tables and educational videos, but the one who sits down and actually plays a game with their child will probably be the prouder parent when their child grows up with values, social skills and the ability to find balance between work and play.

And even though the American Academy of Pediatrics want parents everywhere to throw out their televisions, sometimes a mom just needs five minutes to drink her coffee and Winnie-the-Pooh isn’t hurting anyone—as long as Winnie-the-Pooh isn’t the only role model in that child’s life.

weren’t even alive during our preferred eras, so we really don’t know what it would have been like to live then – it’s all an illusion.

Every reality has its issues, but it is our job as inhabitants of this age to make the most out of every second of our existence. No matter how you slice it, every moment takes us one step closer to death. So instead of whining about how the music industry just isn’t what it was in the 1960s—because you’re 13 and just learned who the Beatles are—take the time to venture past the radio waves and find someone who is passionate about music and is actually alive today. Instead of fretting about how poorly everybody dresses nowadays, go put on your high tops and legwarmers and let everyone else live their own lives. Rather than complaining about how we are destroying the earth with our fancy cars and air conditioning, recycle that Starbucks cup in your hand and walk to work tomorrow.

Progress does not always mean success. There are many things from decades past that would be useful to our now perhaps over-advanced soci-

ety, such as widespread farming and bicycling. But there are still things that we can and should improve upon, such as school systems and city planning, which have remained essentially stagnant since the industrial revolution. Why do we choose to focus our innovations on specific advancements such as various categories of computer technologies? Is it simply easier to build and create new ideas rather than improving old ones?

Perhaps this picking and choosing of modernization is what leads us to crave times past. When we’re impatiently waiting for our phone signals to come back from outer space, we look around us at the beautiful heritage buildings and think “what if . . .”

There is absolutely nothing wrong with dreaming and idolizing the decades before us. By all means, fill your home with Shakespeare posters, Beatles records, shag rugs and vintage Campbell’s soup cans.

But always remember that there is a beautiful, real world just outside your stained glass door.

The Cascade is now hiring an opinion editor Terms of contract: January 2013 to December 2013 Pay: $100 per issue honorarium Job Summary: The Opinion editor of The Cascade is responsible for assigning, collecting, editing and laying out the content of the Opinion section of The Cascade. The Opinion editor shall ensure that issues relevant to students are presented in his/her section, and allow for a diversity of opinions to be expressed on a range of topics.

Duties and Responsibilities: 1) Ensure that matters of interest to UFV students are covered in the opinion section.

2) Assign, collect, edit, and lay out articles for the opinion section of The Cascade.

3) Request and select appropriate images for the opinion section in consultation with any graphics and/or photo editors, the production manager, and the editor-in-chief.

4) Lay out the Opinion section of each issue, ensuring that it adheres to The Cascade style guide 5) Hold at least one writing workshops per semester for the purpose of training.

6) Update the Opinion Training Manual as necessary, to ensure that contacts, issues, &c. are shared with successors.

7) Write a minimum of one article for the opinion section per week.

8) Along with the editor-in-chief and managing editor, solicit volunteers to generate story and feature ideas to be covered in depth in the Features section.

9) Must work five hours per publishing week in The Cascade’s office.

10) Perform other duties as required by the editor-in-chief.

11) Attend all writers’, editorial board and lay out meetings.

Qualifications: 1) Must be a member in good standing of the Cascade Journalism Society.

2) Must be registered in at least one credit course during the fall/winter semesters.

3) Must be available to work varying hours.

4) Must be available to be present in the office for at least five hours per week.

5) Must be able to deal effectively with the Society and university staff, students and the general public.

6) Must demonstrate strong command of the English language by passing an editing test, which will be administered during the interview process.

7) Basic literacy is required 8) Must have knowledge of all relevant laws and journalistic standards concerning libel.

Send cover letter, resume, and sample article to nick@ufvcascade.ca

by Friday, October 26

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2012

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OPINION

The problem of tolerance: Are we strong enough to disagree (and keep talking)?

SEAN EVANS THE CASCADE

The concept of tolerance is an extremely offensive one. In order for one person to tolerate another, the one must believe the other to be wrong. Inherent in my tolerance of you, there is something in you that I find to be intolerable. Tolerance cannot exist without a significant, meaningful disagreement.

Now, the temptation here is to say, “Yes! We must ignore that which divides us—quite frankly, it is insignificant or a private matter—and simply love each other.”

While that sounds great, here is the problem. Truth matters. You believe that. You have no ground on which to disagree with it. If the statement is incorrect, how would you describe it? As false? A concise way I’ve heard it put; any system of thought that denies truth, denies itself.

And if truth matters, so do ideas and beliefs, so do ideologies and so does what we believe about tolerance. My question is this: are we willing to tolerate tolerance? Are we willing to accept that we all hold exclusive beliefs? Christian-

Image: Paul Esau/ The Cascade

UFV president Mark Evered speaks at joint UCM/Pride event. ity is exclusive; if it is true, all other concepts of reality are incomplete or incorrect. Atheism is exclusive; if it is true, all other concepts of reality are incomplete or incorrect.

Islam, Judaism, Buddhism and the recently created Vietnamese religion Cao Dai, are all exclusive.

Let’s take it a step further; the belief that no one faith or belief system has the right to claim exclusive truth is itself an exclusive belief, in that it excludes all those who would say “here is truth.” In this worldview, the only permissible exclusive truth is the one that says there is no exclusive truth. Good sir, your foot has just been shot

through with your very own pistol!

Now, let me explain what I mean when I refer to this offensive idea of tolerance. French Canadian biblical scholar DA Carson argues in his book “The Gagging of God,” that there are two ways that we can view tolerance. The modernist way says this: “I believe you are wrong, ignorant and a bigot (and here is why...), but I will defend to the death your right to be wrong.”

The modernist is tolerant of the individual, and vigorously elitist regarding truth. A shift has occurred, however, in what we assume tolerance to be. As our culture’s view of epistemology has changed, so too

Amanda Todd’s suicide goes beyond simple “bullying” JESS WIND

THE CASCADE

Like a bad car accident, we can’t help but observe the discourse surrounding the suicide of Amanda Todd. On October 10, the Coquitlam teenager took her life after sharing her story on YouTube. Condolences poured onto the memorial page that was launched on Facebook shortly after news broke about her death.

For every kind word, there was a post citing misdirected sympathies to counter it. It was nearly impossible to navigate the online and offline media communities without being inundated with the latest update in the Amanda Todd case and the conversation quickly moved away from the details of her death.

A week after the teen’s death, the almost too-convenient-to-be-true “We Day” was held in Vancouver. The event had an anti-bullying theme that has taken over as the perceived key issue surrounding Todd’s death. If it were that simple.

According to her YouTube video, she was cyber bullied into flashing her breasts on webcam, then blackmailed with the photo in an attempt to convince her to go further. Soon the picture was posted online for all to see.

After switching schools to escape the reputation that had been given to her, she was once again the victim of bullying. She was beaten by the girlfriend of a boy who cheated with Todd and bullied to the point of attempted suicide. The emotional damage that resulted from these events coupled with repeated bullying and social isolation pushed Todd to suicide.

However the sociological implications surrounding Todd’s story go far beyond bullying in schools. The Vancouver Observer’s Krissy Darch

posted, two days after Todd’s death, an inquiry as to why no one was discussing the misogyny in Todd’s death.

Somewhere along the construction of gender norms in our society it has become okay for men to solicit these photos from girls online. Todd mentioned in her video that she flashed the camera after she was made to feel beautiful. She was in a place, in grade seven, where affirmation from faceless individuals on the web regarding her self-image was what she needed to feel beautiful. This is not uncommon, and it suggests something about the construction of gender that is at play in this issue. So long as we keep the focus on bullying, the conversation stays safely within the school system.

An article published in The Toronto Sun, a day after Todd’s death, did an excellent job of pointing out the bullying problem in BC youths by quoting UBC professor Jennifer Shapka; “Hopefully this will be a wake-up call that in BC, bullying is a real problem.”

The proposed solution—to harness the youth voice in schools and end bullying—falls apart, however, when the real issues are considered.

UFV Sociology professor Dr. Martha Dow suggested that in the hyper-sexualized society that we live in, without taking the time to understand the ramifications of our actions, we will keep seeing situations like Amanda Todd’s. Not all victims of these compounded issues are pushed to the brink of their willingness to survive, but it took another teen suicide to set fire to the conversation.

Awareness is not the whole answer, Dow explained. “[Awareness conversations] are not bad conversations, but they become inadequate if that’s where we stay.” Dow implored a need to discuss the strict gender scripts that we operate under in society.

What is happening in a society where a spurned girlfriend seems to victimize her boyfriend for cheating, and instead attacks the girl – in this case, Todd. What is happening when Todd, instead of pressing charges against her assailants, silences the issue and moves away in an attempt to escape? That reflects more upon our society than many are willing to admit.

Elizabeth Plank, in an article for the Huffington Post, spoke to the uniqueness of Todd’s story; “Amanda Todd’s story is not one that could have been told 30 years ago.” From a weakness of identity in young girls, to the threat of the cyber bully, the issues are just that much more complicated.

And so because of that, our approach should not be the same tired bullying assembly in high schools, which most bullies are texting through anyways.

“It’s time we begin to recognize and condemn the cultural tolerance for the ways in which women and girls are systematically bullied in our society,” Plank concluded.

It would be easy to settle for anti-bullying campaigns and feel as though we are at least making some difference. But it is clear that Todd’s suicide is about much more than bullying in schools, and focusing efforts there will only succeed in bandaiding the issue. It is not simply an issue that goes away once the bullies graduate high school. Before an adequate solution can be implemented, the issue needs to be accurately identified. It doesn’t make much sense to advocate for abolishment of bullying or controls on social media, when the gender scripts that we repeatedly conform to are putting young girls on a path to depression, defamation and suicide.

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has our view of what it means to be a tolerant person.

To be tolerant today means to refuse to ever say that someone is wrong. In the post-modern version of tolerance, you are tolerant not of individuals, but of all views – except that view which disagrees with your concept of tolerance. In this case, the individual who disagrees with your view of tolerance is intolerant, and not to be tolerated. Feel free to disagree with me on what I believe to be the new tolerance, but please, realize the implications of your disagreement.

Take a deep breath.

Now, aside from the rampant inconsistencies in what I’ve described as post-modern tolerance, where does this leave us? The question is, are we going to tolerate tolerance? Is it permissible to be intellectually honest and admit that we all hold exclusive beliefs? Are we strong enough to tolerate individuals and be elitist regarding beliefs?

Are we strong enough to engage in rigorous debate, disagree until we are blue in the face, and then go for a pint?

Last week, Pride and UCM held an event that raised many questions about what tolerance ought

to look like in our society. Many in the room seemed to think that this kind of tolerance—the one which accepts individuals while rejecting their beliefs—was unacceptable. The problem in that, however, is that by deciding that it is not permissible to hold to traditional Christian beliefs regarding sexuality, one is necessarily deciding for the other what is true – sounds pretty exclusive.

In this case, the tolerance prescribed for Christians requires that they reject their own beliefs regarding sexuality in favor of accepting anothers.

Perhaps, instead of requiring that we leave our beliefs at the doorstep, we would all be better served if we brought them in. Only then can we meaningfully engage with each other as individuals who acknowledge the consequences of our beliefs, and the value of each other. To be in real community, we must engage both individuals and beliefs. One view of tolerance allows for this, while the other will engage the individual only once they’ve sufficiently altered their beliefs.

Take your pick.

Social media causes the fall of community JESS WIND

THE CASCADE

There is always that awkward moment when trying to find a way to converse with the non-Facebooker.

The truth is, most of us spend more time navigating our various social media sites than actually engaging in human-to-human contact. Real communities—the place where people can come together under common interests or goals—are threatened by the pseudo-substitutions found online.

A considerable amount of fragmentation comes with online communities. My Facebook profile suggests I am incredibly adept at managing a social life, Twitter alludes to my wit and insightfulness, Pinterest makes me look ultra crafty and I am an expert photographer thanks to Instagram. If only all of these were true to the extent that my individual profiles imply.

Instead we step into different roles for different sites, easily playing the chameleon for any situation. The result is a confused sense of self and a disjointed sense of belonging. In the human world we take our whole selves, not select pieces, into any community that we choose to belong.

Long before the timeline debacle, Facebook launched what they called community pages, designed to bring people together and a potential response to fragmentation. As stated on their blog in 2010, profiles no longer contained freeform script in the description section; instead, anything a person liked would be linked to a page containing a Wikipedia definition of that thing. For instance, if I felt it was necessary to point out my affection for cash on my profile, it would show up with a clickable image of a wad of cash. Eleven million other people like cash too – who would have thought.

The idea behind the Facebook community pages was to allow users to create a map of all the connections that matter to them, and put them in

contact with other users with similar interests. In the real world, this would look like me wearing a sandwich board listing off my interests as I navigated through life. The reality is that I am connected with 11 million strangers instead of being connected to a community business at which I can spend my beloved cash.

Hirschi, a sociological theorist, suggests that attachment and involvement were two of the social bonds necessary to maintain a non-deviant lifestyle. Attachments are relationship based and involvement looks to the time spent within activities that come of these attachments. An online community, while allowing the space to express yourself safely through a computer screen, ignores the human part of this theory.

The use of social media has vastly diminished our sense of what it means to be a part of a community.

No longer do we get passionate about issues pertaining to our communities on any level—municipal, regional, provincial, national—or relate in anyway to these places. We do, however, watch the clock during class, waiting for the coveted 10 minute break just so we can check the latest tweets instead of socializing with the living, breathing beings sitting next to us. Instead of operating inside the classroom or even the university community, we tweet and tag and troll among things we are only barely connected to.

Online communities have not replaced real communities and don’t function in the same capacity. Profiles represent a fragmented version of users and force them to broadcast all of themselves at once. Social media has infiltrated our lives and is preventing the human connection that is so necessary for a functional society. That said, I still look at a person like they are speaking some sort of indiscernible language when they tell me that they don’t use Facebook.

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WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2012

OPINION

AmPol: Wait, there are more than two horses in this race?

NICK UBELS and SEAN EVANS THE CASCADE

Debates, gaffes, zingers, oh my!

Sean and Nick traverse the rocky flood plain of American politics, discussing and debating the Presidential campaign, now in it’s final leg. New and improved AmPol: it’s so easy, even your cat can use it!

Sean: Hey Nick, while that was a pretty intense debate last week, we didn’t really learn anything new – except that Mitt Romney may have binders full of women and Bill Clinton may be chasing him down as I type. So, perhaps we could take our gaze off of the car wreck that is Obama versus Romney for a moment and take a look at some of the third parties.

Nick: That sounds like a swell idea, Sean. I really enjoyed last week’s debate, but it’s already been beaten to death across other media.

Despite what CNN and Fox News would have us believe, there are more than two people running for POTUS in this year’s election. In fact, I’ve been able to track down a list of over 130 candidates vying for the highest office in the land. This year’s third party and independent candidates have varying ballot statuses across state lines and most don’t stand a chance on November 6, but it’s incredible to see the gamut of ideologies and single issue advocacy tickets represented, from the Prohibition Party to the Socialist Party. On many issues, Romney and Obama are two sides of the same coin when it comes to philosophy of government. What’s fascinating about these campaigns is that candidates are able to express a much wider range of policy positions than permitted by the major party powers that be.

Sean: With over 130 candidates, let’s focus on some of the more high-profile third party potential Presidents. The first that comes to mind is the Green Party, naturally.

Their Presidential candidate, Jill Stein, was arrested outside of the Presidential debate for disorderly conduct as she protested that she was refused a spot at the debate.

Nick, what do Stein and the Green Party stand for?

Nick: As a matter of fact, this isn’t the first time Jill Stein’s faced off against Mitt Romney. She was a third party candidate for Governor of Massachusetts in 2002, pulling about 3.5 per cent of the popular vote when Romney won the office as the Republican candidate. Stein’s Green Party is perhaps the most likely to pull support away from the main candidates. She’s already been endorsed by Noam Chomsky and Chris Hedges.

Her platform has been dubbed “The Green New Deal,” modelled after FDR’s depression recovery plan. The government would pool more public funds into green sector and renewable energy jobs to help kick start the economy, reduce unemployment and create a sustainable, energy independent future along the way. Her other policies include a single-payer healthcare system like we have in Canada, introducing free college tuition, nationalizing utilities, ending private sector bailouts, revising

Image: Stewart Seymour and Anthony Biondi/The Cascade

The top independent candidates for POTUS (plus Sean and Nick) vie for the attention of the mainstream media, dwarfed by Presidential frontrunners Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. the tax code to close loopholes and match rates to income, reducing foreign military deployment and domestic budget, and abolishing the electoral college in favour of a winner-take-all, popular vote system. Quite the tall order, but there are some admirable goals embedded in the Green Party vision.

How about the Constitution Party’s Virgil Goode? How do his policies stack up?

Sean: It may come as a surprise, but Virgil Goode and the Constitution Party are a conservative party that sit further on the right than the Republicans. Goode’s platform is based upon the founding documents of the US; the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Goode and the Constitution Party believe in small government and want to return to what they believe the founding fathers intended for the nation. They are unashamedly Christian, and believe that the United States was founded by Christians and should remain so – although Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, et al. may have had something to say about that.

On their website, the Constitution Party states that: “The Constitution Party gratefully acknowledges the blessing of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as Creator, Preserver and Ruler of the Universe and of these United States. We hereby appeal to Him for mercy, aid, comfort, guidance and the protection of His Providence as we work to restore and preserve these United States . . . This great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been and are afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.”

To put it simply, think of them as a super conservative version of the Republican party. They are against all aspects of what they believe to be big government – Social Security, Obamacare, Medicare, welfare,

etc.

Nick: Sounds like the Constitution Party would clinch the endorsement of Sam the Eagle, that most patriotic of all Muppets.

Sean: What about the Libertarian Party and Gary Johnson, Nick?

Nick: Gary Johnson served as Republican governor of New Mexico for two terms before accepting the nomination of the Libertarian Party for President this year. GJ was also one of the Republican candidates during last year’s primary race, but dropped out after being barred from most of the debates by the Republican Party because of his liberal social positions. That said, he is a staunch economic conservative, with an itchy veto trigger finger. Anything seen as a negative cost-benefit ratio was cut under his gubernatorial office.

The Libertarian Party advocates minimal government presence overall. This puts them at odds with both Democrats and Republicans for very different reasons.

On social issues, Gary Johnson and co. emphasize the right of the individual to make their own choices and carry their own values, meaning they support gay marriage and immediate marijuana legalization.

But this also means that they support concealed weapons under their interpretation of the second amendment.

Privacy is a big concern for Johnson, who says he would repeal the controversial Patriot Act and take steps to ensure net neutrality.

The Libertarian Party supports reduced government programs, from domestic safety net, social security and health care programs to military spending, which Johnson pledges to cut by 43 per cent if he is elected.

Three down, one to go. Sean, what can you tell me about Rocky Anderson and the newly-formed Justice Party he’s running for?

Sean: It’s the eye of the tiger, its the thrill of the fight...da da dum,

da dum da dum...eye of the tiger!

Oh wait, different Rocky.

Nick: And not the flying squirrel from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show either.

Sean: Rocky Anderson and the Justice Party (insert lame joke about the Justice League) are hard to pin as either liberal or conservative, but if I had to, I would say that they lean towards a more liberal ideology. The Justice Party platform includes an immediate end to both wars, an end to “the systemic corruption that has caused massive failures in public policy,” and public health care coverage for all American citizens. Much like President Obama, Rocky Anderson believes that the Federal budget will only be balanced through fair taxation (ie. the wealthy need to pay a higher rate). All that said, Anderson also has a bit of a conservative streak in him; he has compared himself to Ron Paul in his dedication to the Constitution and is committed to ending the nation’s commitment to sustaining a massive military industrial complex.

While he has some interesting ideas, Rocky Anderson and the Justice Party are fairly new and will likely draw few votes, along with the other third party candidates.

Nick: You’re probably right, Sean. The best showing by a third party candidate in a recent presidential election was Ross Perot, who took nearly 19 per cent of the popular vote in 1992 in the Clinton vs. Bush, Sr. contest. It’s unlikely with this year’s tight race that we’ll see a strong surge of support for any of these other candidates, but it’s important not to rule them out.

Most polls only ask whether you support Romney or Obama. The third option on the Gallup poll is “Don’t Know/Undecided/Refused” which doesn’t really gauge how many votes these candidates will attract come election day.

However this election turns out, there have been renewed calls from many sources, including former

Republican primary candidate Jon Huntsman, for the need of a strong third party presence in American politics. What do you think, Sean?

Does the future of American politics belong to a third party?

Sean: I can’t imagine that the two party system we currently find ourselves observing from afar has too much life left in it. From my point of view, people are increasingly becoming frustrated with the current state of politics; while the two sides argue and argue, big issues are ignored. This polarization provides the perfect setting for a new party to come in and shake things up. While this would likely result in a split vote for either the Democrats or Republicans in the first election, it would prove valuable in the long run. Perhaps one day in the next decade or two we will see a Presidential debate with three or four candidates jabbing at each other.

Nick: It’s funny you should mention that, Sean. Larry King moderated an online debate between these very four candidates yesterday. Third parties are starting to gain some traction in Presidential politics, but money talks and the two major parties have a lot of it. It’s in their best interest to keep the field small, making it incredibly difficult for any one of these additional parties to break into the mainstream.

With less than two weeks to go before election day, Sean and Nick get down to brass tacks. Stay tuned to this space for a special report from their upcoming trip to Washington state to get up close and personal with American voters in advance of November 6.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2012

www.ufvcascade.ca

9

ARTS & LIFE

CROSSWORD 1

3

4

5

6

One-hit wonders 2

NICK UBELS THE CASCADE

ACROSS

4. “My Sharona” (3, 5 letters) 6. “Rockin’ Robin” (5, 3 letters) 7. “Who Let the Dogs Out?” (4, 3 letters) 8. “U Can’t Touch This” (2, 6 letters) 9. “Mambo No. 5” (3, 4 letters) 11. “Eye of the Tiger” (8 letters) 12. “Video Killed the Radio Star” (3, 7 letters)

7

DOWN 8

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10

11

1. “Kung Fu Fighting” (4, 7 letters) 2. “867-5309/Jenny”(5, space, 6 letters) 3. “Dont Worry Be Happy” (5, 8 letters) 4. “Sugar, Sugar” (3, 7 letters) 5. “99 Luftballons” (4 letters) 10. “The Final Countdown” (6 letters)

LAST WEEK’S Answer Key Across 1. Clearbrook 2. Sevenoaks 3. Automall 6. Five Corners 9. Mill Lake 11.Tradex 12.Gurdwara 13.Agrec Center

Down 1. Castle Fun Park 4. O’Niell’s 5. AESC 7. The Reach 8. Matsqui 10.Airfair

12 EclipseCrossword.com

The Weekly Horoscope Star Signs from Swamp Bob Aquarius: Jan 20 - Feb 18 Jupiter states that you should calm yourself before flying into a fit of rage over similarities of the Polish and Indonesian flags.

I mean, everyone knows Canada stole their flag from Peru but simply stuck a maple leaf in the centre to avoid copyright infringement.

Pisces: Feb 19 - March 20

Gemini: May 21 - June 21

Dionysus, after being revived from a week long schnapps and ginger beer bender, hazily peers into your future and suggests that burgundy will bring your great fortune this week. Whether he is referring to the wine or colour, we shall never know, as he has just passed out again in a pile of his own sick and McDonald’s fast food wrappers.

Libra: Sept 23 - Oct 22 Saturn thinks that your lucky number this week is 23, your lucky colour should be purple and your lucky animal will be the rare South American Kinkachu.

Cancer: June 22 - July 22

Scorpio: Oct 23 - Nov 21

Mars and Venus idly ruminate over a game of backgammon as to why you will be filled with the sudden urge to visit the great cheese museums of Wisconsin.

Neptune foresees you being wrongfully accused of spying for the U.S.S.R and beaten with a bag of kiwis for your crimes. He blames the whole premonition on a bad egg sandwich.

Aries: March 21 - April 19

Leo: July 23 - Aug 22

Sagittarius: Nov 22 - Dec 21

Neptune was overheard at a party talking to Pluto who heard it from Io that she was gossiping with Venus and Calypso about what Mercury was telling to Jupiter about the amazing life altering event that will happen to you on next Thursday. It may involve a meringue pie and Charlize Theron.

Or a badger and Linda Hunt. Sorry, everyone was a little drunk by the end.

Mercury sees your path cross with that of a wise and smelly holy man (he could not stress enough the smell) who will resemble Alec Baldwin. Mercury recommends pelting him with peanuts until he leaves you alone and stops trying to tell you the mysteries of the universe.

Jupiter cautions against the overconsumption of porridge this week. If you do not partake in porridge or other such mushy breakfast-type items he cautions against overzealous Justin Bieber fans instead.

Taurus: April 20 - May 20

Virgo: Aug 23 - Sept 22

Mars suggests that, while at work, you should expand your expertise of paper hat making and construct in-miniature the Greek Parthenon out of Post-it notes.

Calypso foresees you becoming inundated with the fall blues and recommends a strict regimen of fresh fruit and exercise. Io says you should just have some cake and stop worrying about it.

Neptune states that if the stresses of the world get you down, you can always run off to join a monastery, like the yodelling monks of Nepal or the beer-brewing monks of Belgium or the Secret Double Black Lotus Ninja Monks of the French Confectionary based out of Illinois.

Capricorn: Dec 22 - Jan 19 Mars and Uranus both agree that you should probably avoid trying to break the world limbo record without a serious dedication to yoga, hip surgery or—failing that—being reincarnated as a snake.

Visit us at www.monktucky.com!

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WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2012

FEATURE

Defend Our Coast : SASHA MOEDT

THE CASCADE/PHOTOS

The Defend Our Coast protest unites its members against the proposed Enbridge pipeline and expansion of the Kinder Morgan pipeline and against the tankers that would have to be introduced to the coastline if these large energy companies are successful in their bid for expansion.

They are calling out the Harper government’s

Protesters take part in the act of civil disobedience.

“I hope the pipeline doesn’t go through, because I don’t think this look suits me,” a man dressed up as death told us. He waved a sign that that said “No Enbridge,” and then disappeared, weaving through the crowds. The green lawn of the Parliament building in Victoria, BC was hidden beneath the thousands of demonstrators protesting the proposed Northern Gateway and Trans Mountain pipelines.

There’s nothing like thousands of voices screaming in unison the same message, to make you feel powerful.

You could heard chanting from blocks away on the grey October morning.

Clusters of police officers stood on the outskirts of the crowd, in bright yellow vests.

“Young people!” a woman in an electric scooter said to us as we passed, “thank-you for being here, you are our future!”

Up on the steps of the Parliament building, a stage had been set up, and speakers were addressing the crowd.

Politicians, First Nations leaders, activists, and representatives from various labour unions stepped up to the microphone. The crowd responded deaf-

anti-environment campaign, demanding that First Nations rights be respected and attempting to steer British Columbia in the direction of a more sustainable future. Their message to Christy Clark and the Harper Government is simple and clear: “Our coast is not for sale.”

NADINE MOEDT

THE CASCADE

A picketer holds an inspired sign that highlights environmental concerns.

eningly to speeches by Elizabeth May, Green Party MP, Chief Ruben George of the Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, and Maud Barlow of the Council of Canadians. You’d scream, and be unable to hear your own voice.

UFV resident elder Eddie Gardener attended. He was happy with the speakers and the leading role of the First Nations people.

“First Nations people were recognized for taking leadership in the movement to stop Kinder Morgan and Enbridge. The three messages that were given were: No pipelines, no tankers and no tarsands.”

Despite the rain and the feeling of winter finally breathing down our necks, people remained out on the lawn.

“The speakers were very inspirational and the songs and drumming and singing kept everyone in a vibrant mood,” Gardener said. “It consolidat[ed] their collective commitment to stop oil developments that threaten to bring great harm to the land, the seas and the air.”

All types of people—students, children, dreadlocked youth, middle-aged professionals in their heels and suits, aging hippies—were pressing against

each other to hear the speakers.

The Raging Grannies were there.

Greenpeace, Forest Action Network, Friends of Clayoqout Sound and No Tankers BC were there.

Groups from the Interior, from Alberta, the Northwest Territories all intermingled toting signs filled with succinct messages; the signs were angry, didactic and in many cases humorous.

“How many times do the hippies have to be right before you listen to them?” a sign read bobbing through the crowd.

“Hey Captain Harper, there are islands in Douglas Channel!” another one said testily.

An image of an orca giving Harper the finger paced about the masses; a giant salmon puppet took centre stage on steps of the Parliament building.

It was cold. We wandered to the edge of the crowd looking for a coffee place nearby. A group of at least 50 people trooped along the sidewalk towards us.

“Saltspring has arrived!” an older man informed us. The crowd was delighted with itself, with each other – for being there, for making the effort, for caring.

It was a good feeling, to know everyone appreciated you.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2012

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FEATURE

Protesting in Victoria Civil Disobedience The civil disobedience started at 1 p.m., with drums and chanting as a backdrop. A line of over 200 protesters advanced on the Parliament lawn, each carrying a spiked post that held a long black banner. The banner is 235 meters long, the length of the super tankers that would be introduced to the coast if the pipeline proposal proceeds. It is illegal to erect any structure on the lawn of the Parliament building.

This was the intended act of civil disobedience. The protesters would hammer the posts into the ground, sit in front of the banner, and peacefully accept any police intervention or consequences.

The day before, protesters who wished to engage in civil disobedience were offered a day-long workshop by the organisers of Defend Our Coast.

There protesters were taught what peaceful civil disobedience entailed – and what the consequences were. The training, held at the University of Victoria, covered non-violent direct action, with sessions on how to ground a protest, on the principals of anti-oppression, decolonization and environmental justice. Specific scenario preparation in de-escalation, media training and the le-

gal consequences/aspects of participating in civil disobedience were covered.

Participants were also given a thorough run-down on the nitty-gritty stuff: what an arrest would be like, what they could be fined (up to $3000), how much bail might be. Advice on what to bring—pen, paper, cameras, recorders, warm clothing, water, one piece of ID, a legal hotline number—was also given out. There were a lot of people walking around with phone numbers on their arms in case of arrest.

This day of training, according to organiser Eric Doherty, was a key part of the Defend Our Coast’s goals. “Now we’ve got a whole bunch of people—250 people—that have gone thought direct action training, and they’re going be going back to their communities and organising their own actions.”

The banner was slowly erected, as the marshals directed press and protesters who did not wish to risk arrest away.

But there was no intervention from the Victoria Police force. The banner was held across the road in front of the Parliament building; the law enforcement blocked the roads but did not remove protesters from their spots.

Groups of police officers watched

from the windows of the legislature building; more stood amongst the protesters, unperturbed by the excited throng. According to several officers, the organizers had contacted the local police, and informed them on the exact action that would take place.

One officer, Rob, admitted that they did not plan on intervening with the illegal activities of the protesters. He was pleased with how peaceful the rally was going.

“I think it is a great crowd, everyone is peaceful, everyone is calm, they’re getting their point across without getting too crazy, it’s great.”

Defend Our Coast organiser Eric Doherty explained that the point of the protest wasn’t at all to get arrested – it was to draw attention to the issue, and to train people in direct action. “The goal was to raise the issue of what’s threatening our coast, and threatening our climate, and we’ve done that . . . it’s about getting a whole bunch of people trained in direct action, and a whole bunch of people to show that they are willing to take direct action, and are willing to risk arrest.”

The Protestors Rain began smattering down on participants of the rally just a little while before the formation of the banner. It came down steadily from then on. The stoic protesters bore the cold wind and rain, their spirits high.

Anna of Victoria sat in front of her graffitied tanker-banner (“tankers are for wankers”) late into the afternoon.

She came prepared to be arrested.

“I’m here because I care about my environment and the people who live in it, because I love them and I’m going to stand up for them no matter what it takes.”

Dwight was a bit farther down, sitting cross-legged in a heavy-duty raincoat. “Tar sands are a disaster in the beginning, middle and the end,” he explained.

“So in Alberta the environmental mess that’s happening with the huge settling ponds and the torn up forest is a disaster. In the middle, the transportation of oil across our province, crossing rivers, into tankers, across the ocean, there’s a chance, there’s a chance for creating a

big mess, and it can’t be cleaned up.”

The words on the black banner nearby him read, “Help China Turn to Green Energy: Say No to the Pipeline.” Dwight continued: “in the end, when it gets to China, and it is refined, then it gets burnt. And then we have more Carbon going into our atmosphere and that’s the last thing we need … we could cross a tipping point, and then climate change will be unstoppable.”

Looking very unruffled despite the rivulets of rain running down his jacket, Dwight said the solution is to go clean and green. “The solution is green energy and shifting our economy into clean energy and there are lots of options for that already.”

As the day ended, more people continued to write messages on the tankerbanner, white words on black.

The last messages were left on the lawn of the Parliament building for all to see: “Where’s Our Future?”; “Protect the Coast.” “Shame.”

This protester’s statement is loud and clear.

Already a second province-wide protest is approaching. On Wednesday, October 24, dissenters of the pipelines intend on standing united in front of their local MLA offices across BC in order to display their unity against the proposed pipelines, UFV resident elder Eddie Garner

explained.“People will lock arms to symbolize the massive wall of opposition that is growing across BC.” Already, 4700 people (as estimated

by Defend our Coast) rallied in Victoria. What will come of one of the largest acts of civil disobedience in Canada remains to be seen.

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WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2012

ARTS & LIFE

Cascade Arcade JOEL SMART

THE CASCADE

A young boy named Monroe begins an adventure after a swan escapes from a painting “into a surreal, unfinished kingdom.”

This is the creative genesis of the childlike, innovative new title from Giant Sparrow.

The level begins as an empty canvas, white and impossible to tell wall from ground. But, equipped with a “gun” that shoots giant blobs of black paint, the world begins to take shape as you lob heaps of splatting paint gobs in every direction.

It’s a joy to watch, to create, to explore. The Unfinished Swan doesn’t stop with this unique feature; they build on it throughout the game, implementing numerous twists and puzzles.

It really feels like an interactive storybook brought to life.

There is an inherent art-like quality to every moment of the game; it toys with the contrast

The Unfinished Swan splashes its way onto the PlayStation Network

between minikid friendly malist design – though it (a single coisn’t a game lour introduced “just for kids” to highlight either. a balloon, for D e v e l example) and oped by inthe outrageous dependent spectacle that game design comes with studio Gihaving a paint ant Spargun to freely row—emblast the world ploying only with. The lev12 people at els are cleverly its largest designed with point—the visual cues game began Image:play3-live.com and the story as a student is compelling The Unfinished Swan uses globs of black paint to illustrate its world. project in the and unlike anyInteractive thing else around. It also just It should be noted that the game Media Program offered at the really packs in the cute factor. doesn’t actually explicitly give University of Southern CaliforFor example, when launching a Monroe a gun – the game plays nia. The initial plan was for the black blob into a swamp, a fish from the first person (through game to be played with a virsurprises the player by leaping the eyes of Monroe) and paint tual reality helmet on, allowing from the water and swallowing simply shoots from the screen players to twist and turn in real it in one fluid motion. This game (auto-adjusting distance accord- life to look around. In the end, definitely knows how to play to ing to what objects are near). It’s the game settled for PlayStation its strengths. a solution that keeps the game Move motion controls (although

Book Review

Haute Stuff

The Time of my Life by Cecelia Ahern

When fashionistas shoot, spike and score KAREN ANEY

AMY VAN VEEN

THE CASCADE

In what is likely an entirely optimistic spirit, I’ve decided to take this time to talk about proper attire for watching sports. But hey, even if the NHL isn’t up and running at the moment, there are still plenty of opportunities to watch athletes doing their thing – Abbotsford Heat games are an awesome time if you’re looking for a local example.

So girls, here’s a list of general tips. First, don’t dress impractically. This is a chance for you to be comfortable! As a general rule, anything you’d wear to a club is not something to wear while watching sports – either in person or on a big screen. No sparkles, no plunging necklines. It’s all about context.

Next, think about the sport you’re watching. A hockey game is not the time to rock a mini skirt.

Conversely, if you’re watching our Cascades kicking it down the soccer field, that’s not the time for sandals – they’ll just get bogged down in the mud. A UFC event is not the time to wear lots of long necklaces, because those guys are scary and their fans might get too many ideas whilst watching their idols.

Stay away from anything overtly feminine and delicate. Now is not the time for lace, pearls and florals – like the club wear, this will make you seem out of place. It will make you look like you think watching sports is akin to a tea party. Don’t get me wrong, I love few things better than a steaming mug of tea and my big screen television on Sportsnet, but there’s a time and a place to be delicate – watching sports is not that time.

So that’s a pretty long list of don’ts. Here’s a list of dos. Do think about colours. Whether it’s basketball, boxing or bull fighting, there are certain colours you should stay the heck away from.

Try googling the names of the

they aren’t required).

The game has evolved a lot since its inception, and in its final form includes four chapters.

Despite this, the game is still on the short side, with a full play through taking only about three or four hours. This is a serious complaint, especially because the game retails for $14.99. Yet, in the same breath, I appreciate the move to shorter, quality-packed games. You can tell that each part of each level was thought about, tested and re-evaluated. A larger game would probably have suffered from some dry, uninspired sections. Like the critically acclaimed Journey, The Unfinished Swan sacrificed length to ensure each part of the game was there for a reason. It’s also a more manageable size during midterms.

The Unfinished Swan was released on October 23, 2012, and is available now for the PlayStation Network.

THE CASCADE

Image:Jeamy/flickr.com

Riding boots are a great cold weather, sport-watching shoe.

teams you’ll be watching, that will help you figure out which colours you should be wearing. You don’t necessarily have to wear the home team’s colours, but stay away from the opponent’s palette if you don’t want to be ridiculed. If you don’t have any clothing in the necessary colours, try looking towards your accessories. Nails, belts, scarves – all of these are great ways to incorporate team spirit.

Layers are a great idea. If you’re watching the event in person, it could be cold inside the arena, and even if you’re watching a sport

where it doesn’t get cold, you’re likely to be fairly sedentary for the duration of the game. Look to items like wrap cardigans and circle scarves – items with an excess of fabric that still look feminine.

These can double as blankets to tuck around your legs.

Finally, keep a more subtle femininity in mind. Wear boots, but wear leather riding boots with feminine detailing. Wear team colours, but wear them in tailored fits. There’s no reason to forgo any attempt at sartorial excellence.

The story is pretty simple in Cecelia Ahern’s latest pink-clad novel The Time of my Life. Girl’s life is a mess, girl gets incessant invitations to meet someone. Girl meets guy.

Guy changes girl’s life because guy is girl’s life. Wait, what?

The girl is protagonist Lucy Silchester, an average girl in modern day Dublin whose average life matches the kind of post-modern angst seen in most depictions of urban living. She works in a job she mostly hates and only got because she lied on her C.V. She pines after her ex-boyfriend who is a TV star traveling the world. She lives in a tiny, messy studio apartment with a cat and she tends to fib her way into a good time with friends even though she often ditches them early.

This is her life. Except her life is also a real person from something called the Life Agency.

Her Life, who for whatever reason is a man, reacts physically to whatever decisions she’s making in her life. When she makes poor decisions like neglecting her own emotional well-being or putting herself in situations where the only outcome is regret, her Life reacts with mountain-sized chin pimples, bad B.O. and clammy palms.

What could, with other authors, be the basis of a science-fictionesque world where people live in the same world as the human versions of their own lives is, to Cecelia Ahern, the perfect chick-lit starting point. Ahern previously wrote the novel-turned-movie P.S. I Love You, so she’s an author wellversed in the unspoken rules of pink-covered novels.

The whole boy-meets-girl thing doesn’t really work and the idea that when girl-meets-boy her life magically all falls into place also doesn’t work. Readers enjoy escaping into the ups and downs of a fictional character’s life, certainly, but they don’t want it to be so

monotonous they give up reading within the first chapter and toss it aside onto a growing pile of paperbacks.

As much as I appreciate Ahern’s attempt to switch up the formula, I feel that the way she pats herself on the back for doing so within the novel’s dialogue itself, undermines some of her success. At one point, Lucy tells Life that her story should end with her own satisfaction and not with the satisfaction she gets from a man. That’s great, but if that sentiment is written down so explicitly, it seems less true.

Even though Ahern broke what I consider to be a cardinal rule in chick-lit—don’t tell the audience why you changed the romantic narrative formula—she was able to remain interesting enough for me to finish the novel in a matter of days and come out the other end of it vaguely entertained.

Certainly her main character would be an unbearable human pity party in real life and the way she meets a handsome guy through a wrong number turned carpet cleaning appointment is laughable at best, but I’m a sucker for a cute story.

Plus there’s something to the idea that those moments when people say, “Ach, life!” would be about an actual human being whose job it is to monitor the good and bad of your daily decisions with the possibility of an intervention. It had a very George Bailey vibe to it that I found intriguing enough to push me through the many suspensions of disbelief.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2012

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ARTS & LIFE

Dine & Dash Brambles Bistro 29985 Downes Road,Abbotsford, BC 604-856-9339 Hours: Monday to Saturday, 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Price: under $18

AMY VAN VEEN

THE CASCADE

Mini Album Reviews

SoundBites

There’s something about the use of the word “bistro” that’s supposed to conjure up images of sidewalk seating and pinkies raised while sipping cappuccinos with a distinctly European vibe and, for the most part, this is not a true representation of places that call themselves bistros. While Brambles Bistro in Abbotsford has no sidewalk seating, since its location is down the gravel road of Tanglebank Gardens off a sidewalkless Abbotsford back-road, it does have cappuccinos and that European vibe.

For most restaurants, a coffee ordered is a mildly offensive mug of drip that has to be improved with a couple of sugar packets and more than a dollop of cream, but at Brambles Bistro, the drip is replaced with crema-topped Americano goodness and the goodness only goes up from there.

Image:tanglebank.com

An outdoor view of Brambles Bistro.

waitress and my toasted ciabatta sandwich arrived with the umami flavours still packed inside. In addition to the mushroom and onion, the sandwich also included tomatoes, spinach, feta and a garlic aioli. Like I said, mushrooms are usually at the bottom of my list of ordered foods, but this sandwich was constructed with such attention to complementary flavours that even the mushrooms danced around on my taste buds with glee.

Every sandwich or wrap comes with a house salad or the option to upgrade to Caesar or soup of the day and the lack of French fries as a side option was a healthy—and welcome—surprise.

Some of the other sandwiches I hope to return to include classics such as their Reuben and croquet monsieur, and with such accommodating weekly hours, such a calming country-chic décor and such friendly staff, that hope will no doubt be realized. Friendly staff may be an overused way of describing the service I received, but they really were nice. The server was excited about the menu and when I got my triple chocolate brownie to go, it was warmed up and topped with fresh grapes and strawberries – a touch that did not go unnoticed.

Opened this summer, Brambles Bistro offers diners a chance to sit among the flowers as it’s situated in a recently constructed building within the surrounding nursery.

After driving into the gravel lot, you get the chance to walk past potting benches lined with flowers, shrubs and garden décor and into the part shop, part bistro building.

To the left is Brambles Bistro, a sitdown or take-out eatery where coffee is fresh and the food is sublime. To the right is the store where locally made products, soaps and chocolates sit amidst Christmas decorations, cupcake dishes and cute little gifts.

When I say the food is sublime, I find difficulty in convinc-

ing you the degree of goodness it offers. Their menu includes all day brunch options such as $5 waffles and lunches from salads to tandoori chicken wraps, but my eye was caught by the grilled Mediterranean vegetable panini.

For whatever reason, that day my usual aversion to mushrooms and onions didn’t voice itself to the

Graham Wright Apple Breath

Titus Andronicus Local Business

The New Values The New Values

G-Dragon One of a Kind

This short and sweet EP opens and closes with the noise of a cell phone notification. A circular motion is present throughout the album; the second track establishes a cycle of the seasons and curls in on itself with a simple, melodic refrain. Interestingly enough, the album as a whole is reminiscent of Wright’s full-length album of last year, Shirts vs Skins. Some of the progressions are so similar that I would almost call it a b-side – after listening to the EP for an hour, I found myself whistling the tracks from the full album. At first this is a little disappointing, but at the root of things it’s just nice to hear Wright’s wistful lyrics and mellow upbeat tunes in a fresh way. Think of it as an extension rather than an exploration; there’s not a whole lot of new territory covered, but this album has the same chill Canadian vibes that make Wright’s work so intrinsically honest and decent. We hear sentiments about separated love and the details of everyday life that Wright somehow puts a special gleam on, and for a free sideproject EP, this album delivers everything it promises.

While Local Business lacks the cinematic ambition of Titus Andronicus’ sophomore effort—a messy mash-up of Civil War history, New Jersey folklore, drug dependency and one hell of a break up called The Monitor—it is a much more consistent effort from Patrick Stickles’ careening, cantankerous punk outfit. Relieved of such a restrictive thematic framework, Local Business is looser but more focused on a track-by-track basis. Abrasive as ever, Stickles and company shout verbose, uncomfortably personal lyrics and fistpumping refrains over a drunk and disorderly roadhouse band anchored

by Eric Harm’s propulsive drumming, finally given the thunderous production it’s always deserved. Centrepiece “My Eating Disorder” showcases the band at its full powers, opening with a guitar riff borrowed from the Stones’ “Rocks Off ” before diving on into a vicious minor-key punk refrain and concluding the eight-minute track with a prog-rock breakdown complete with harmonic guitar solo. Titus Andronicus seem to have most trouble with mid-length songs, like the stately and forgettable first single “In A Big City” but can be consistently relied on for intricately composed epics and short bursts of punk rock glory, like the minute-long “Food Fight!” which lurches forward with the same joyride abandon as The New York Dolls.

Taking cues from the British, as well as the L.A. punk scene of the 1970s, the three-piece Vancouver punk band The New Values kick up a hellacious racket on their new self-titled record that strays from the more conventional garage rock and dives into fast punk and unabashed rock & roll. The New Values, made up of some the current members of the Modernettes lineup, don’t use constant buildups that lead to climaxes in their songs; rather they use breakneck rhythms that descend their songs into chaos. The art-punk trio has produced a record with some intuitive songwriting, yet their record is more about attitude than content, as the tunes aren’t as much sung as they are snarled. The music crackles with bratty energy, and singer Adam Sabla growls about humorous online breakups and little known Toronto filmmakers with a grueling intensity and release of frustration reminiscent of acts like The Germs. Although they utilize punk’s traditional manic frenzy and unbridled enthusiasm, The New Values also add elements of new wave, and underground sounds to the mix, creating noisy spasms of straightforward, but effective, rock noise.

Many North American critics of Kpop paint it as nothing but an assemblage of Western influences (the worst, most over-produced ones, of course).

According to this view, G-Dragon, lead rapper of male group Big Bang, steals the sounds of rap and hip hop without any understanding of the milieu that led to its creation. Responding with over-confidence and knowing it, G-Dragon on One of a Kind sends out provocations and seeks to separate from those categorizations.

As with his main group, G-Dragon moves between partying alone (spite) and asking “why” questions about love objects (sentiment). On “That XX” he sings “Love is blind/baby you’re so blind,” but he’s the one left in the dark, with only insults to counter with.

G-Dragon’s carefully maintained exterior—insensitive and inexperienced but not—is both part of his appeal and something he wants to rip apart.

“Tonight,” a song where G-Dragon tries to avoid the consequences of his actions toward others, finds his conflicted immaturity (he knows the other side of the argument) mingling with the celebratory chorus, leading to the rising refrain “We’re rocking our lives away,” and the knowing, playful interjection “[it’s the] same shit!”

DESSA BAYROCK

NICK UBELS

TIM UBELS

MICHAEL SCOULAR

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ARTS & LIFE

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2012

FILM REVIEW ARGO

MICHAEL SCOULAR

THE CASCADE

1 2 3 4 5 6

CHARTS

Fist City It’s 1983 Grow Up C.R. Avery Act One Greys Down Under Kid Koala 12 Bit Blues

Shuffle ADAM ROPER

CIVL DJ/HAPPY-GO-LUCKY Adam Roper used to be the missing link, until he was found to be living under Aaron Levy’s desk. He emerges from his woodsy solitude every Tuesday from 3pm-4pm to share new music discoveries on Birds Of Canada.

Here are some artists he discovered while hitchhiking through Alberta:

METZ METZ

Scenic Route To Alaska – “Home Is Not A Place”

Baby Eagle & The Proud Mothers Bone Soldiers

The drive to Alaska from Edmonton starts with the rich and stretching prairie sky, leaving its varied impressions. Likewise is the music from this aptly titled Edmonton based Canadiana outfit- songs for the emerging stages of a northbound sojourn.

7

The React Sounds That I’ve Heard b/w Only Living For You

8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Needles//Pins 12:34 Lowlands Huron D-Sisive Asian Elvis

The xx Coexist Grizzly Bear Shields Madchild Dope Stick

The Intelligence Everybody’s Got it Easy But Me

15 16 17 18 19 20

Tiger High Myth is This Capitol 6 Pretty Lost The Courtneys K.C. Reeves Nu Sensae Sundowning Sex Church Somnambulist

The Hellbound Hepcats No.2

Snowborn – “Sleep Tight” The only dead giveaway is lead singer Nathan Danser’s earnestly youthful sounding lead vocals, otherwise one might be easily be fooled into believing that Red Deer’s Snowborn have been writing and performing for years. They are, as they say, talented and mature well beyond their age.

The Utilities – “Your Complex” This Lethbridge band kick starts their debut LP with an irresistibly well written rock opener, alluding to the plain-crossing songwriters of old. The song itself veers around in the bridge, but man is that first verse ever great!

Transit – “The Grizz” The acclaimed spokesman and nominated poet laureate for the Calgary music scene’s loving tribute to the once great Vancouver Grizzlies, featuring Vancouver’s equally acclaimed Kyprios.

Whenever a movie is talked about as being “political,” this usually indicates its content is in some way related to governmental politics, and this makes it more important, mature and worth taking seriously than other, supposedly apolitical movies. This rather useless title, at least in the way it is most commonly used, addresses the appearance of certain traits, but not the way they are treated, which is where the division between what is thought provoking and simply risible lies. Argo—a movie that depicts events surrounding the Iran hostage crisis that began in 1979—has international relationships and political decisions as part of its built-in narrative. But to director Ben Affleck, engaging with political ideas or approaching its subject matter in an open, considered way seems less important than falling back to a time when things went right as either lesson for today or cheap heroism. Both prove problematic.

Argo—despite its attempts through third-rate Oliver Stone film stock-switching and creditoverlay slideshow matches between movie and life—is defined not by its political truth or historical recreation (it fudges both) but the presence of Ben Affleck as actor (playing CIA operative Tony Mendez) and director. While Iran is where the movie is based, Affleck sees fit to spend an almost equal amount of time in America, either at CIA headquarters or in tonallyjarring Hollywood backlots, where the film crew cover of the hostages’ planned escape is conceived and developed. The assertiveness of the movie industry as instrumental in historically-upheld action is obvious, and equally thudding in its deployment. In one scene, two media events are equalized in importance by being placed together within a scene – one in Iran, the other in colorful press-filled spectacular Los Angeles set.

From the opening scenes, where walls are climbed and hostages taken, Affleck gravitates toward showing events crosscut rather than as unbroken moments in time. This divided approach builds a wider range of tension mounting and time running out, but as Affleck continues to return to this mode of looking through multiple, often unrelated perspectives (for example, a gate interrogation interrupting a highly visible journey out) Argo grows into its finished form: messy, elongated history turned into the broadly schematic.

This is less the story of the hostages and what they go through, or in a greater sense what these two countries are going through, and more the hero’s minor crises and thorough journey to stardom.

This is reflected in the narrative, which moves from plot point to plot point so quickly there’s no time to stop and think about the world outside. Just keep up with the plan and everything will take care of itself. This sheltered, closed structure doesn’t have room for anything that might make the reason for the hostage-taking, an outpouring of protest, palpable either as recognizable threat or conflicting reason.

At one point footage of Jimmy Carter (responding to the crisis) plays; he is heard saying “The actions of Iran have shocked the civilized world.” Argo is a movie made and released in this year, making the actions as attributable to Iran anything but shocking, a reinforcement of cultural attitudes, one where the distinction of civilized/not still holds sway in some circles. The plot demands a villain, and this situation provides one in the easiest of places – not a single Iranian, even those that are seen in fear in the opening (though we stay with the Americans), about to be endangered by their own people, is granted a distinct, listenable

Gnome Chomsky says:

‘Come to our next assignment meeting!’

Want to get involved? The Cascade holds weekly contributor meetings on Mondays at 10 a.m. in A421. You can meet our editors, take an assignment, or just find out a little bit more about what we do.

If you can’t make it, why not swing by our office in C1027? We’re open 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. (and often later) every weekday. Or you can always email editor-in-chief Nick Ubels at nick@ufvcascade.ca.

Image: Anthony Biondi

voice. They’re just noisy obstacles.

There is no acknowledgement of the proximity to reality or the future after the fallout for Iran in the orchestral credits, but that’s the power of Hollywood, meticulously restoring its shining, treasured moments, while letting less easily explained, less profitable ones dwindle in memory, eventually decayed and forgotten in some archive.

But is the ignorance of the deeper ramifications of their actions, the attention instead paid to the simplification of a “thrilling” extrication mission, exactly what Affleck is trying to show? Things do drop into more sober territory as the male hostages try to awaken Mendez to their reality (the women, on the other hand, mostly just sob – even next to Michelle Monaghan and Amy Ryan in Gone Baby Gone or Rebecca Hall in The Town, it’s another step back as Affleck retreats into the past), but Alexandre Desplat’s arm-gripping score and as character, Affleck’s stasis, point otherwise. As director, Affleck is content to hold up swathes of lives and international conflict and ideals of justice with whatever comes after ignored in favour of a rollcredits fist pump.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2012

www.ufvcascade.ca

15

ARTS & LIFE

Art at UFV: Christopher Friesen’s Digital Artifacts NADINE MOEDT

THE CASCADE

Visual Arts instructor Christopher Friesen’s work is currently being showcased at the Elissa Cristall Gallery in Vancouver. The showing, entitled Digital Artifacts, represents a “dialogue between past and present,” connecting the pixilations we see in technology today with various artifacts of the past. In this interview with The Cascade Friesen comments on his work, talks about inspiration, discusses his creative process and gives a word of advice to aspiring artists.

Can you describe the work that’s featured in the gallery?

Yeah, absolutely. The work that’s there is commenting on the technology as well as the artifacts, so trying to produce work of a contemporary nature. It’s work that is relevant to how we view the world today, but . . . [we can] compare it to historical moments of production. For instance, the piece called “Monumento,” is kind of a title that is of an artifact but also potentially a souvenir. So taking that image when I was in the British Museum, and there researching another exhibition, just through that process I discovered that there was kind interesting things going on about just being in that space, about people interacting with the artifacts. For instance, the British Museum houses the Rosetta Stone.

I was absolutely amazed at how people were treating it – just like a celebrity. They were surrounding it, taking pictures of it, pushing other people out of the way to take pictures of it . . . walking through, looking at the sculptures, giving their own running commentary

of the sculptures . . . They’re not interested in the didactic information about what the actual object is, they’re imposing their own narrative on it. So that’s where the crux of the exhibition comes about; just trying to find how are we looking at technology but also looking at what’s going on in today’s world that we just sort of discard, in the sense of where the digital artifact comes from. Because the artifacts in the British Museum are just sort of broken, they’re pulled out of the earth, out of garbage dumps essentially, and we get to take them, re-inscribe them with value, talk about them in a significant way supposedly, yet there is a running dialogue about how they relate to the contemporary world.

other things going on, you know, people looking at, for instance, this image I have of a portrait of a roman bust, but I’m calling it “Morrison,” because when people walk past, they’re like “wow that looks like Jim Morrison,” it’s 2000 years earlier. I find that interesting . . . People trying to make sense given their own frame of reference. You know, something that exists in the past and in the present, so it becomes pop culture as much as it is referencing a western mode of artistic production . . . referencing these little moments of technology.

You’ve probably seen online where you watch a video and there’s a compressioner and then it freezes and has these little pixilations, then it kind of continues. Those little pixilations are called digital What influences your art? artifacts. Digital artifacts by Image:Art used with permission definition are not intended, Where do you find inspira“Monumento” by Christopher Friesen. tion? they’re an accident, they’re Technology. I think artists have act with images today. I look at considered garbage, no one really to deal with what it means to be technology as one of those filters wants these, but it has everything contemporary. How are you going through which we see the world. to do with how our technology is to say something new with your in this idea of progress. For me onCan you describe your creative line too I look at student pictures material that’s relevant for an audience? So looking at technology process for us? that are pixilated and have these I think it comes out of just ob- little artifacts. and looking at how specifically digital technology affects the way serving. I’m a painter. Things kind It’s a matter of noticing them that we see things, which is why of need to fall into that language. and then finding out what exactly these pictures are broken down But it kind of starts to resolve it- they are and how they can be used and pixilated. It makes reference self when you’re out in the world. to talk about what it means to be to technology but also because I was there shooting images for a in the visual arts field today. It’s they’re paint, [we] are able to com- previous show, but having this mo- interesting because I call it looking ment on it because it’s not digital ment where, “I can’t use this idea for a moth – it has everything to imagery working with digital im- now, it’s not fully formed,” but I’m do with what James Alkin talked agery, it’s digital imagery working just really intrigued by the phe- about in his book The Object Stares with someone interpreting that . nomenon, how people engage in a Back, which is, once you learn how . . The influence is how we inter- space, where it’s supposedly about to see something, you see it. And learning, but there’s just so many

he talks about a moth on a tree, and how that moth could be there all day, with people walking past it. But the second you look for that little outline around the wing, you start seeing them everywhere. And that’s what the digital artifact has become to me, it’s my moth. I can see it everywhere.

Do you have any advice for aspiring artists?

Literally, it comes to work ethic.

You need to be in the studio, you need to be doing it; otherwise, you deny the possibility of anything happening. If you think about becoming an artist, it’s a process of becoming, but it’s also a process of just doing it, and working and working and finding out what you find interesting about the material.

Because no one can tell you what’s interesting about it. You’re going to have that moment where this becomes absolutely, crucially important in your life and your way to kind of communicate with the world, or for you to understand the world. So really, the only advice is to get out and see work, get out there and create work. And slowly you’ll come to a realization of what it means for you.

Friesen is “taking a step back” on any current projects; he and his wife just had a baby, so he’s a bit preoccupied. Friesen’s show runs until October 27. To see his work online, visit www.CristallGallery.com

Clubs and Associations: SAUS SASHA MOEDT THE CASCADE

Sophie Thomas is the president of the Sociology Anthropology Undergraduate Society (SAUS).

So, tell me is it pronounced SAUS [as in, spaghetti sauce] or SAUS [rhyming with house]?

It’s actually SAUS [as in spaghetti sauce].

I actually like that better.

Yeah, I think the SAUS [rhyming with house] thing started with Chris from the Student Union Society (SUS). He said that that is what he was going to call us.

So, it’s the Sociology Anthropology Undergraduate Society.

Are you guys pretty well established, as an association?

We actually started March of 2012. So we’re very recent. We have some key players in SAUS, primarily the SAUS board members, who are absolutely integral to moving forward in the way we have. We’ve had a huge amount of support from the instructors from the department and so that has really helped us.

And you guys are combined from two different disciplines?

Yeah . . . We’re sort of embedded in this umbrella of SCMS (Social, Cultural and Media Studies) which some students find they don’t like it, they find we’re largely overlooked in the school, and many students don’t even know we have a Sociology-Anthropology dis-

cipline. Whereas other students, they’re really happy that we have all of that because we’re having cross discipline work, so interdisciplinary work.

So how did SAUS come to be – how do students get involved with SAUS? What had happened was Darren Blakeborough, I believe it was, had approached students with the idea that MACS (Media and Communication studies) should have a student association, so that actually got off the ground a little earlier than we did. But that’s what sparked the idea . . . and we sort of went, “well wait a second, that’s actually an excellent idea [for Sociology and Anthropology students as well] . . . and if we can put together enough motivated students, we should start that too.” And one of our goals, through creating the association, was providing the students the opportunity to run their own events, or to access academic conferences or key speakers, things like that, to open up those kinds of opportunities.

Do students running their own events have to get involved on the board, or could they approach you guys?

The board is pretty much there essentially to interface with instructors or students, SUS, that kind of stuff. So they just keep kind of like the paperwork together, and then we have all sorts of other students just to come out of interest. So we have an event that’s coming up where one of the

students wanted to have a Skype session with a woman in Toronto to talk about careers available to Sociology students, and that’s such a fantastic idea. So as the board members we were able to book the necessary rooms or in other cases apply for the necessary funding, so that’s kind of what the board functions to do; apply structure to the events and make sure they happen.

And what would a student have to do to get on the board, just say they wanted to be vice-president or something – or do you guys have a VP position?

We actually do – well kind of.

What we’ve done is structured it so that we have two president positions, and the idea behind that is there is an anthropology president, which is the position that I hold, and then we have a Sociology president . . . We are actually looking to fill our Sociology president position, it’s been vacant since the student that held it graduated. For people that are interested, they need to have completed 60 credits, have declared their major in Sociology and start routinely coming to our meetings and get an idea of who we are and what our goals are. After December, our secretary position will also be vacant due to Caity Therrien graduating.

Okay, so future events – what have you guys have planned for this year?

We just finished out first major event – the Get SAUSed with SAUS pub night which was a real

Image: Sasha Moedt

SAUS board members pose at AfterMath during their event.

success, and have a couple things coming up . . . we’re joining SOLAR and running a Garibaldi hike in Squamish on November 10.

We’re also doing a Q&A Skype session with a woman out of Toronto . . . and that’ll be focusing on careers in Sociology. We also have a movie night, which we are still working out the details for. We want to do something fun – less serious than our last movie night. My vote is Billy Connolly’s trip across Canada in AfterMath but we’ll see how that turns out.

We are also running a mini conference on March 6, [2013]. And that’ll be for all social science students. It’ll be a poster conference, and then we’ll have a mini lecture series so students will have a chance to practice doing a 10 to 15 minute talk on their research as well, and for that we a panel of judges made up of instructors from various disciplines. The primary function of it is to provide students with the opportunity to—in a comfortable environment—practice presenting their research post-

ers and presenting and answering questions from the instructors.

Cool. Is there anything else you’d want students to know?

Well we actually have weekly meetings. It would be really nice to see more students come out to that so we can start getting a better idea about what all of the students would like in terms of events, what we could put on to engage students a bit more. I think it’s important for students to get involved in their students’ associations, just for the opportunities that it provides you in terms of going to conferences or opening up research opportunities with different instructors, you know even just chatting about a paper that you’re kind of stuck on.

So it really does benefit students to come out and take advantage of the students’ associations.

SAUS board meetings are on Thursdays at 4 p.m. in AfterMath.

The next meeting is on November 1.

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

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www.ufvcascade.ca

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2012

SPORTS & HEALTH

Don’t blame the bugs

by Dessa Bayrock

Competitive eating isn’t a new addition to the sports world; in a record set earlier this year, a contestant chowed down 68 hotdogs in 10 minutes. That’s a lot of bun and dog to scarf down in such a small time, and contestants train for months if not years to get to that skill level. How can a regular citizen gain bragging rights like that?

Apparently by eating bugs.

In a contest run by a Florida pet shop earlier this month, a man named Edward Archbold scarfed down dozens of worms, superworms and finally cockroaches to win the grand prize of a python. According to a Facebook post, the prize wasn’t what mattered, but the “glory” that would come with being a bug-eating champion.

The story ends tragically; Archbold won the contest, but began vomiting before he could be awarded his prize and died soon after. An autopsy report is expected in the next few weeks, but for the moment experts have very little idea why, exactly, he died.

Dr. Debbie Wheeler is UFV’s resident bug expert and teaches upper-level entomology as part of the biology department.

“General consensus is eating insects is not going to kill you unless you have an allergic reaction to them,” Wheeler explains, noting some people are allergic to insects the same way others are allergic to shellfish or peanuts.

The initial response to death-by-bugs may be to assume that the insects were contaminated with some kind of germ or disease, but Wheeler says the cockroaches Archbold ate were probably pretty clean.

“That’s certainly one of the issues if you’re going to eat insects in the wild, is that they can bio-accumulate herbicides, or they may have insecticides on them,” Wheeler says, “but I don’t think that’s the case here . . . [the pet shop] would have no need to spray them for anything.”

Although an incident like this gets a lot of press, Wheeler says insects are generally safe to eat and are currently a popular food source in 80 per cent of the world. In sub-Sahara Africa, for instance, the resources simply aren’t available to raise cattle or goats; people tend to eat what’s available, regardless of the creepy-crawly factor.

“There are lots of insects out there that are quite acceptable as food sources, and in fact are very good food sources: high in protein, low in fat, lots of minerals,” Wheeler explains. “And a lot of these things—like mealworms, crickets—people say once you cook them up, they do have a crunchy and very nutty taste.”

You can find an insect meal as close as Vancouver; Vij’s Rangoli offers roasted, spiced and ground cricket paranta (a kind of flatbread) with chutney for a mere $11.

Similarly, a Fraser Valley chocolate specialty shop called Into Chocolate offers chocolatecovered insects and crickets at locations in Fort Langley and Cloverdale.

Image: Debbie Wheeler

(Left) A giant water bug.

(Below) Giant water bug larvae.

The other option, of course, is to look in your own backyard; Wheeler says almost any insect found in the wild is safe to eat if you’re lost and need food – as long as survivalists stay away from anything orange, black, or yellow.

“Obviously you want to avoid something that’s going to sting you, so anything black and yellow you probably want to avoid,” she explains. “I would tend to suggest to go for larval forms, so things like caterpillars, just because they’re much softer . . . anything with a crunchy exterior is probably going to lead to some kind of indigestion, because you’re not going to be able to digest the really hard parts.”

Even those who find themselves on the side of non-adventurous food should come to grips with the fact that they’ve ingested many insects over the course of their life, and will ingest many more.

“The funny thing is, we are all eating insects all the time whether we know it or whether we like it or not,” Wheeler explains with a grin. “If people were commonly allergic to insects like they are peanuts, we’d have a lot of problems with our food.”

“Nearly all of our food that’s gone through any kind of processing plant has insects in it,” she continues. “You won’t notice, you won’t see them, you won’t taste them – but they’re going to be in there.”

Personally, Wheeler says she tries to avoid eating insects, despite following her work to places like Ecuador where giant water bug larvae are considered a delicacy.

“I don’t eat whole organisms because I think it’s a bit disgusting to eat all of the digestive tract,” she says. “But obviously people have done it for centuries, and for the most part it’s not a problem.”

Archbold’s death remains a tragedy – but as people all over the world munch down on larvae, beetles and crickets, it’s probably not entirely the fault of the bugs. Insect, whether you like it or not, is a steady part of your diet and is probably going to stay that way.

Allowable insect and insect by-product content in food, according to the 2011 FDA Defect Levels Handbook Pizza sauce: 30 fly eggs per 100g Chocolate: 60 or more insect parts per 100g Dates (and other dried fruit): five or more insects in 100g Peanut butter: 30 or more insect fragments per 100g Shelled peanuts: 20 or more whole insects per 100lb Ground pepper: 425 insect fragments per 50g Raisins: 10 or more whole insects and 30 or more fly eggs per 8 oz.

Macaroni and other pasta: 225 insect parts in six or more samples Wheat flour: 75 or more insect fragments per 50g Hops (which eventually becomes beer): 2500 aphids per 10g Canned or frozen peaches: per 12 cans, at least one larva or larva fragment exceeding 5mm in length

Image: Debbie Wheeler

www.ufvcascade.ca

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2012

17

SPORTS & HEALTH

“Golf boys” of UFV place eighth in National Championship

UFV Scoreboard

KYLE BALZER

Last week’s scores

THE CASCADE

After winning the PACWEST Championship at home over Thanksgiving weekend, UFV’s varsity golf team was off to play at the 2012 Ping CCAA National Championship in Oshawa, Ontario. Playing at the historic Oshawa Golf and Country Club, home of the Durham College Lords (OCAA), it was a test like none other for both the rookies and the veterans of the Cascades.

The week began at the opening ceremonies where veteran Aaron Pauls was named a 2012 All-Canadian athlete. He finished his first round tied for 34th, shooting a 78 (+6), eight shots behind first round leader Kevin Piper of Humber College (OCAA). Another impressive performance came from Mitch Lock, shooting UFV’s best round of the tournament with a 74 (+2) that included a three-under par back nine. He would finish four shots back of the lead! As the first round came to an end, the Cascades were in ninth place with a team total of 310 (+22), 14 shots behind the leading Humber College Hawks.

With the cold and wet weather becoming a factor into the players’ game, our boys were ready to do the best they could on day two. Veteran Darren Whitehouse matched UFV’s best round of a 74 (+2), including a one-under

Men’s Soccer

Oct. 19. UFV vs. TWU L 0-1

Women’s Soccer

Oct. 19 UFV vs. TWU L 1-2 Oct. 20 UFV vs. UBC L 2-5

Men’s Basketball

Aaron Pauls watching the results of his swing. par front nine, that allowed him to move up 15 spots on the leaderboard into a tie for 22nd. After the second round, UFV was able to move up to eighth place with a combined two day total of 617 (+41), 35 shots back of the Humber College Hawks.

Hoping for a miracle on the final day, the Cascades were looking to make a charge and once again Darren Whitehouse shot the best round of the day for UFV, this time shooting a 75 (+3). He would finish in a three-way tie for 19th, with an overall score of 228 (+12), making him the top UFV golfer in the National Championship.

The individual winner was Colton Kalkanis, a rookie from the Georgian College Grizzlies (OCAA), shooting a three-day total of 217 (+1). Other notable finishes from

Image: David Kent

the Cascades included Mitch Lock finishing tied for 22nd with a final score of 229 (+13) and rookie Connor O’Dell finishing tied for 38th with an overall score of 234 (+18).

The Cascades ended their season with an eighth place finish in the National Championship, out of the 15 competing colleges, shooting a total of 926 (+62). They were only 25 shots away from the bronze medal, won by the hosts Durham College Lords scoring 901 (+37). The Humber College Hawks would claim victory in Oshawa with a winning three-day total of 879 (+15), 47 shots ahead of UFV and 18 shots ahead of second place finishers Camosun College Chargers (PACWEST).

Oct. 19 UFV vs. Montana State L 63-71

Oct. 20 UFV vs. York W 98-82

Women’s Basketball

Oct. 20 UFV vs. Capilano W 69-29

Women’s Volleyball

Oct 19 UFV vs. Camosun W 3-1 Oct 20 UFV vs. Camosun W 3-0

Upcoming home matches Men’s Basketball

Oct. 26 Lakehead 6:00 pm Oct. 27 McMaster 7:00 pm

Men’s Soccer

Oct. 26 Winnipeg 7:15 pm Oct. 27 MRU 7:15 pm

2012 Men’s Basketball Weekend Featuring McMaster, Lakehead and UNBC at the Envision Athletic Centre October 25 October 26 October 27

6:00 p.m.

8:00 p.m.

6:00 p.m.

8:00 p.m.

7:00 p.m.

Lakehead v UNBC TBD v UFV Lakehead v UFV McMaster v UNBC McMaster v UFV

WI Don’t miss Friday’s Tailgate Party priz N e 4-6PM nigh s all t lon at Envision Athletic Centre (Lot 10) g Free BBQ (Hamburgers, Hot Dogs and Corn on the Cob

For details on how to win a 2013 Honda Fit go to:

www.ufvcascades.ca UFV Cascades Athletics

For more information, call 604-557-4041 scan the QR code or visit www.ufvcascades.ca

@ufvcascades

18

www.ufvcascade.ca

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2012

SPORTS & HEALTH

Catching up with the coaches: UFV basketball Women’s Coach:

Al Tuchscherer Former Jersey Number: 20 Favorite NBA Team:

Boston Celtics

Men’s Coach:

Adam Friesen Former Jersey Number: 24 Favourite NBA team:

San Antonio Spurs Alma Mater: TWU Middle Name: John Cats or Dogs: Dogs Worst Injury:

Never been injured (He’s never missed a practice or game in his life!)

Best Restaurant:

Red Lobster Years Coaching:

Six (five as assistant coach, first as head coach)

Middle Name: Geoffrey

Cats or Dogs: Birds Vehicle:

Toyota Tacoma Worst injury:

Cracked orbital bone Favourite Restaurant:

Garrison Bistro Years Coaching:

16 (11 as head coach, five as assistant coach) PAUL ESAU

THE CASCADE

Before the fledgling basketball season really gets under way, The Cascade wanted to ask some questions of men’s coach Adam Friesen and women’s coach Al Tuchscherer. We also decided some friendly competition couldn’t hurt, so we decided to compare the answers. Here are some things you didn’t know about your resident UFV coaches: If you could have coached yourself during your playing days, what would you have said to yourself?

AT: Well I think one of the biggest regrets I have is that I didn’t play after high school. I had opportunity, I was recruited to play and I didn’t play just for silly reasons. So I don’t think there would be anything on the court, I would probably like myself as a player. I think I worked pretty hard. I was a first one there, last one to leave type of player. But I think I would push myself to play after high school for sure.

AF: I would have been harder on my defensive practice habits, and I probably would have got myself to be more understanding of my teammates.

If you could coach a different sport, what would it be and why?

AT: Baseball, I would think. I really enjoy baseball. It’s a sport that I haven’t really played before except recreationally as a kid . . . but I really enjoy watching playoff MLB baseball and the strategy that goes into it, how every play is a big play and matters.

AF: Football. For sure football, because I think that the strategy of it is awesome. In particular [I would be] a quarterback coach.

What’s was the best coaching decision of your career?

AT: My best coaching decision was probably to start our club program, our Junior Cascades program. I don’t think there’s any question about that. It’s leveled the playing field with a lot of elite, blue-blood schools . . . it’s enabled us to compete at the highest level.

AF: The best decision was surrounding myself with great people. Surrounding myself with character players, but more importantly to begin with, getting myself a

Women’s coach Al Tuchscherer

Men’s coach Adam Friesen

good support group of people who are very knowledgeable in the game . . . those people would just be [assistant coach] Kyle Graves, my dad [Yale Secondary coach Al Friesen], those would be two of the main ones.

coach at this level. But we won four provincial championships in a row, and won 76 games in a row, so it all worked our pretty good [laughs]. But that first year was kind of petrifying.

What’s the worst coaching decision of your career?

AF: The gutsiest coaching decision was putting in the amount of time I put in with [current fifth-year forward] Kyle Grewal in his early years. That was the gutsiest.

I saw the talent, I believed in him, but he wasn’t always the most reliable, he was just a young kid at that time. You didn’t know how it was going to pan out, but you knew he had the personality, the leadership potential and the talent to become the player he’s become.

AT: There’s always games you look back on and you kind of don’t know if [you] should have done this or done that. For me I think it was when we were still in the CCAA and we were playing in a national championship game. I think if I had that game back I would have approached it a lot different than I did, and I think my approach, I went one way with it, we were down 12 at halftime and I went with the in-your-face type halftime speech when I probably needed to go the other way and let [the team] know everything was okay. It just put us in more of a hole. So I often look back at that game and think that it was not my grandest coaching moment.

AF: Maybe [as a coach] calling for an alley-oop play for someone who isn’t feel up for the dunking task . . . my worst decision [as a player] was in the provincial final in high school in Manitoba playing senior. I had the ball with five seconds left and I had the chance to take the lead in the game and I passed it off and the ball got deflected and we ran out of time . . . I remember exactly the defence. I remember being in grade 10 but playing senior in front of a packed gym, and I remember being too nervous to take the shot.

What’s the gutsiest decision you’ve ever made as a coach?

AT: I think it might have just been taking this job, that might have been the biggest risk for me . . . I had other things going on in my life, I’d just had a daughter and I was teaching, just finishing up my PDP at SFU . . . I think there was a lot of doubt over whether this would be a good situation for me and whether I’d be skilled enough to

What has been the hardest single part of coaching basketball?

AT: Probably recruiting when we first moved to the CIS. That was pretty difficult.

Some of the elite programs in the country were in our backyard. When we got here SFU, UBC and UVic had won like the last nine national championships so they pretty much had the market cornered. If there was a player of any stature and they wanted her they didn’t have to recruit her they would just say “come play for us.” And I, you know, would have to get down on my knees and beg and plead “hey, come play for us.”

And [still] nine times out of 10 we weren’t getting those players. So that was a challenging time.

AF: The most challenging thing about coaching is getting guys to believe that they can constantly work harder and work more. Getting guys into the gym, building a culture where players enjoy the gym and get better when they’re in there working as hard as they can, that’s the most challenging part because it’s never ending. Guys can always work harder, they can always use their time better, they can always work smarter.

What’s the best romantic date you ever planned and carried out?

AT: I’m probably the wrong person to be answering this question to be sure. I’m obviously married and have two kids and frankly – I’m not even sure how that happened! (laughs) . . . I wasn’t exactly a ladies’ man through college. [My wife] always talks about the first date when I made her this big gourmet meal and how that’s the only time I’ve ever cooked for her. So she thought she was getting into something she really wasn’t!

AF: Wow. I don’t know. We’ll leave it at that . . . don’t want it coming back to haunt me in practice.

What’s the best meal you’ve ever cooked?

AT: I made this lasagna dish [on that first date] that my wife still raves on about. I think it’s one of those stories that over time just gets better and better. This must have been the most amazing lasagna that’s ever been made, right? I’ve never made anything close to resembling that since (laughs).

AF: My favourite food is spaghetti, so I’d say [my best meal was] spaghetti with some really good meat sauce . . . it just tasted really, really good!

What advice would you have for the other guy across the hall? [The two coaches have offices across from one another.]

AT: He’s a young coach and he’s just got to work hard. There’s a lot of doubt that comes into it, especially since it’s kind of an unforgiving league. You mess up and lose a game, that’s how it goes. We’ve all sort of been there, so you really start to question yourself and question what you’re doing.

But you just got to have your philosophy, you got to know what you do, and you got to work hard and stick to that. And if you do that [it’s] more than likely [that] things work out.

AF: I don’t think he needs my advice, but [I’d say he needs to] just keep working hard [and] keep a smile on his face. He’s doing a great job.

www.ufvcascade.ca

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2012

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SPORTS & HEALTH

Heat warm up before the game

Image: Abbotsford Heat

Wolves Report Excellent start to the season has the Heat second in the Western Conference MIKE CADARETTE CONTRIBUTOR

The 2012-13 season is looking bright so far for the Abbotsford Heat who are now 3-0-0-1 after this weekend versus the Canucks’ affiliate Chicago Wolves.

Special teams and goaltending have been the stories for the Abbotsford Heat just two weeks into the AHL season. The Heat lead the AHL in both the power play and penalty kill categories.

Boasting 38 per cent efficiency on the power play (six for 16) and having not allowed a power play goal against on 13 attempts, Heat head coach Troy Ward attributes his team’s success to his assistant coaches Luke Strand and Cail Maclean, who handle the power play and penalty kill, respectively. “It’s a development league for coaches too,” explained Ward, “Both of those guys wanted a chance to better themselves [this] year.

“We’ve gotten off to a good start. I think the biggest thing is we’ve had some continuity. It’s very hot and cold though at the American league and right now we’ve done very well and that’s allowed us to get points.”

On October 19 and 20 versus the Wolves, the Heat were able to score three times on seven power play chances. They also stopped the Wolves’ eight power play attempts.

This early success could not be had, however, without the phenomenal play of the Heat goaltenders. Danny Taylor, who started the first three games of the season, flaunts a 93.3 save percentage and a 1.62 goals against average rating.

Taylor was spectacular in his start on Friday night versus the Wolves, but looked rather shaky in the shootout loss, letting in three goals from Jordan Schroeder, Darren Haydar and Zack Kassian.

Troy Ward elected to start Barry Brust the following night in a 4-1 rematch win against the Wolves. Brust, along with his Terry Sawchuk-like throwback brown pads, stopped 25 shots to secure the win.

“Barry was outstanding,” said Carter Bancks, who picked up the game-tying goal on Saturday, “He battles hard, he works hard every day in practice, he’s out there

for hours . . . He was really solid back there [and] made a lot of really good saves for us.”

While the goaltending anchored the Heat down on one end of the ice, the offence has not been scarce at the other end. The Heat have scored 16 goals so far this season, which is good for fourth place in the AHL goals-for category.

Leading the Heat with seven points in four games is veteran Ben Walter. Walter, who celebrated his 500th AHL game last weekend versus the Peoria Rivermen, centres a line with two other players who are no offensive slouches either: Swiss sniper Sven Baertschi and last season’s rookie leading point getter Dustin Sylvester.

Baertschi is tied for second in points among AHL rookies with six. He is up there with other big-name rookies, and likely NHL players when the lockout concludes, like Minnesota Wild top prospect Mikael Granlund and Edmonton Oiler free agent pickup Justin Schultz.

The number one line has been the catalyst for most of the Heat’s offence, a formula that simply boils down to chemistry between the three players. “It’s sometimes hard to describe,” explained Baertschi, “We all play a similar game . . . We like to pass, but we [also] like to bring the puck to the net and play offensive hockey.”

Secondary scoring has been key as well, namely Roman Horak, who is now on a four game goal scoring streak after getting two goals against Eddie Lack and the Chicago Wolves.

“Here’s a kid who wants to play in Calgary,” said Ward, “He doesn’t want to say that the 61 games he played last year [in the NHL] was something just to wave away.”

If the first four games is any indicator of the type of season the Heat will have, they will be a resilient bunch with weapons on both the offensive and defensive ends.

The Heat take a road trip east next weekend where they are set to take on the Colorado Avalanche affiliate Lake Erie Monsters (twice) and the Montreal Canadiens affiliate Hamilton Bulldogs after that. The three games will take place back-to-back-to-back from October 26 to 28.

Chicago Wolves: Return to battle wolfenkind KAREN ANEY THE CASCADE

Saturday night garnered the Heat their third win of the season, and resulted in the first loss for the Chicago Wolves. It was also the first time the Wolves have trailed in the admittedly short span of the season they’ve played thus far.

The game started explosively – as AHL games should, with so much young blood.

The Wolves gained a quick possession and came down the ice for a great scoring chance. Heat goalie Barry Brust was able to block it, though – his first test in net this season.

It took until the third for the Wolves to come unraveled, which has been a common thread for them. Three of their four wins have not been in regulation.

There was plenty of good things from the Wolves, though. Zack Kassian, every Cody Hodgson fan’s most hated man, continued his trend of being a team MVP. Or, in less sports-savvy terms, he continued to party like a rock star. He scored the Wolves’ only goal of the night, bringing his tally up to three for the season. More than that, though, he was a driving force in every play for which he was on the ice. Coach Scott Arniel summed it up at the end of the game: “He’s noticeable every shift, he’s noticeable every period, and that’s what he needs to be . . . He can skate too, he’s a big guy who moves well, he’s got some good hockey sense, he knows where the holes are.” Now re-read that last bit, and tell me you didn’t giggle.

He’s turning into a phenomenal player, and this extra chunk of time in the AHL could serve him better than anyone else in the franchise. Last lockout, Burrows, Bieksa and Kesler played in the AHL though they were all NHL ready. They’re currently at the core of a solid NHL team. If this lockout turns Kassian into that calibre of player, then it won’t have been all bad.

Kassian himself spoke to that, saying that he’s more sure of himself: “I think I have more confidence. I’ve been playing in more situations and I’ve been playing more minutes, starting to get more confident with the puck . . . Your confidence builds every game. For me, I just want to do it consistently. I don’t want to have one good game

and two bad games, I want to have four or five good ones.”

Speaking of other supposed NHL-calibre players, injury-plagued Steve Pinizzotto has yet to hit his stride. The biggest presence he made on-ice was in a fight versus Chris Breen, the Heat’s six-foot-seven answer to the Incredible Hulk. It didn’t go well for Pinizzotto, and I spent the duration covering my mouth with my hands, terrified that he would have his spine crushed to dust and his NHL hopes would vanish for good. He was so clearly out of his league. In his words, “I tried to finish my check and he wasn’t a fan of it. We ended up dropping the gloves, and that’s part of the game. Exciting, too.” If it’s part of the game, Pinizzotto should likely engage in some serious bar brawling. He needs the practice.

Eddie Lack, despite the 4-1 loss, looked great. He made some phenomenal saves, and seemed completely calm during the numerous times his team left him all alone.

He refrained from saying as much during the scrum, focusing instead on his flaws: “I gave them a goal in the second too, but it’s just part of learning and I hope I’ll get better at that.” No Messier syndrome there, which is good to hear.

The final player that needs to be mentioned is Alex Mallet. He was the franchise’s second-round draft pick, and he showed it. He was tenacious on the ice, engaging the Heat’s Carter Bancks (who will forever be Adam Bancks in my mind, a la the Mighty Ducks franchise) in fisticuffs.

Mallet soundly pounded him, like the mallet he would be called if he weren’t . . . well . . . French, and stuff. Coach Arniel had only good things to say about him. “He has a real sort of tough edge to him, we saw it in exhibition where he got in a couple of fights and ran some people over. He’s a competitive kid. He’s learning the pro game, what it takes to play . . . He’s an eager, fun kid to be around.”

All in all, it was a great game to watch, and showed a lot of hope for the organization if the lockout ever ends. It ended with a loss for the Wolves, but as Eddie Lack said in his adorable accent post-game (think early Sedins, but less ginger), “keep battle.”

Words to live by.

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WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2012

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