February 2024

www.themeliorist.ca

TheMelioristTheMelioristTheMeliorist

Five Planets You Can See With the Naked Eye

Lives Lived Apart: Alienation in a Capitalist Economy

Unconventional Funding Pathways Through University

Is the USA in Possession of Multiple UFOs? Maybe!

Hey Lethbridge, Tell Me A Local Rumour

The Resurgence of Country Music

Secret Places: Where Do You Unplug?

Meliorist Magazine

Editor-in-Chief (& Designer)

Kianna Turner

Business Manager

Blaine Badiuk

Social Media Coordinator

Funto Fasunwon

Writers

Alejandro Neufeld

Andres Salazar

Benjamin Wiebe

Nathaniel Malong

Shawn Funk

Will Thomsen

Freelancers

Liz Harrison

Meghan Rennie

Rukshi Sundararaj

About

The Meliorist (ME-LEE-OR-IST) is the University of Lethbridge’s independent, student-runpublication.Inprintsince1967,the publication showcases the creativity and academic accomplishments of ULeth students through their analyses of current events, arts and culture, and the policies and practices of both the University and its Students’ Union. The publication is guided by the philosophy of Meliorism, which holds that humans can make the world a better place through intentional action.

TheMeliorist’sofficeislocatedinSU172.

Instagram:@melioristmagazine

Facebook:@themeliorist

Twitter:@The_Meliorist

Letter from the Editor

In this month's feature article, "Is the USA in Possession of Multiple UFOs? Maybe: A Summary of Summer 2023s UFO Developments," Andres Salazar delves into the captivating and controversialrealmofUnidentifiedFlyingObjects(UFOs)and the possibility of non-human intelligence. The piece explores a series of high-profile claims, military testimonies, and governmental actions that have reignited public and political interestinwhatliesbeyondourskies.

Aswepresentthisintriguingexplorationoflastsummer'sUFO developments, it's essential to approach the information with anopenmindandhealthyskepticism.Theimplicationsofthese disclosures, if proven true, could redefine humanity's understanding of its place in the cosmos. Whether you're a steadfast believer or a curious skeptic, Salazar's article offers a compelling narrative of the ongoing quest for answers in the mysteriousandoftenmisunderstoodfieldofUFOstudies.

We hope you find this feature both enlightening and thoughtprovoking as we continue to grapple with the age-old question: Arewealoneintheuniverse?

KiannaTurner EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Written by Meghan Rennie

OPTICAL OPTICAL OPTICAL

Meghan Rennie (she/her) is a student at the University of Lethbridge in a BMgt/BFA General Management/New Media

I see eyes where there are no eyes: in the pits of fruits, in the centres of flowers, in the hinges and knobs of appliances. In abstract patterns and pictures of nature. In corners and in secrets.

I see eyes inside of myself, eyes watching what my eyes watch. Me, watching myself, committing a sin and then confessing, absolving it in one efficient motion, expunging my experience as it comes to me. I’m assessing myself and learning, learning nothing, understanding nothing, my eyes unfocusing and sliding off the page, tumbling like a body, dead before it hits the ground. I try to catch my reflection misbehaving in the mirror. I’m guilty, haunted by my own ghost.

I see eyes on white walls, eyes experiencing snow blindness. Eyes in the deep pocket of myself where there is no light to see. Eyes turned to face eyes, staring suspiciously, seeking unceasingly, producing nothing more than a discourse between mirrors. Eons of tied-game staring contests. An eternity of distorted CCTV footage, its static gestating into satanic codes and Rorschach tests.

I am under infrared surveillance. I am under helicopter parenthood. I feel like an only child, like my own Big Brother, like the family favourite. I feel like a beacon that my ancestors made a pilgrimage towards, and I don’t know how to justify their journey.

I see eyes that are trained on me. They’re trying to make me out from a distance, and they are failing, so how can I help that they don’t like what they see?

I see eyes that view in microscopic HD, too close to capture the full picture, their vision so condensed and ineffable. I am being judged by the contents of my pores. I am being judged by my husbandry of dust mites.

I see eyes, and I see myself being seen. There’s no seceding from this sight, no exit found to get me free.

Hey Hey Hey Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Tell Me a Tell Me a Tell Me a Local Rumour! Local Rumour! Local Rumour!

Written by

Andres Salazar

This article consists of short interviews, This article consists of short interviews, highlighting what Lethbridgians consider highlighting what Lethbridgians consider to be some well-known local rumours. to be some well-known local rumours.

Lethbridge is quite famous for a variety of reasons. The community once known as Coalbanks is home to some classic pieces of Alberta history, such as the well-known high-level bridge, the Denny’s where Marilyn Manson got punched in the face, and the one girl who got arrested in a Stormtrooper outfit. A fascinating, but also boring town, Lethbridge feels like both a big city with lots of things to do, but also a tiny community that makes people want to move to Calgary instead.

Although it is a quiet place, Lethbridge is no stranger to steamy controversies and urban legends. Whether you’re a new student arriving in Lethbridge for the first time, or a grizzled veteran of the windy city, there is always something new to learn or hear about. So, as part of The Meliorist’s efforts to help readers learn more about our fascinating, yet “boring” city, we asked locals to tell us about some local rumours that are floating around. In this article, our local interviewees use pseudonyms and some information pertaining to local businesses has been removed to ensure everyone’s privacy is protected. We would also like to stress that these are rumours, and do not reflect any official statements. So, here is what people had to say about some of Lethbridge’s local rumours:

“I remember hearing at the time some rumors that the old Cheesecake Cafe we had in town was burnt down as part of like an insurance payout scheme. I think that idea even made it into some online news websites.”

- Kayla

“There’s a fitness place here in Lethbridge that I am fairly certain is not paying taxes. They’ve been around for a long time, and I’ve heard it from pretty reliable people and even though it’s maybe not the biggest place or anything, it's just weird to me that some places can get away with doing stuff like that.”

-Michael

“Oh, I remember a couple of classic ones. The first one I remember is that there’s a rumour that the Red Dog Diner was lit on fire on purpose. I don’t remember the reason, but I remember hearing that the management had something to do with it. Man, I used to love that place. I used to go on my bike or my longboard there often. The other classic one is that the Galt Museum is supposedly haunted because of a guy who died in an elevator or something. That one I can guarantee you’ve heard, especially if you grew up in Lethbridge.”

-James

“The only one I can really think of is that there’s supposedly a ghost in the Penny Coffee House, if you believe stuff like that.”

- Sarah

CONCLUSION

Lethbridge may come off as uninteresting at times. However, as quiet as it can be, it’s also the home to various interesting pieces of history and places. Like many other cities, Lethbridge also has a hidden layer of rumours under everything you see at first glance. While this is only a sample of Lethbridge-related gossip, they also represent the idea that our little community always has something new to hear about.

Written by Andres Salazar

5 WAYS TO RUIN YOUR FIRST YEAR IN UNIVERSITY

Formanypeople,Septemberisthetimewhen weallreturntoclass.Forreturningstudents,it simply means having to wake up again early for those 9 a.m. classes and continuing the path toward that precious postsecondary degree. However, for a large section of students, September also marks the beginning of their educational journey. While coming back to university seems second naturetothosestudentsintheirsecond,third, or even seventh year, new students might struggle to get the hang of the university groove. All the studying and partying is so hard to juggle at the same time. We’ve all come across countless articles talking about how you can build success early in your university career. Those cheesy blog posts tend to focus on how to build an easygoing school-life balance by setting time limits and advising you to carefully watch your diet. Thoseguides,however,tendtoforgetonebig detail: students are not perfect robots. Students, like all humans, can and do make mistakes. While many may enjoy the typical success-gearing article, we also need to look at the other side: the things that can bring about disaster. So, for those who need to know, here’s how to ruin your first year at the UniversityofLethbridge!

(1) SKIP CLASS!

First-yearstudentstendtorelishthenewfound sense of freedom when they go to university. New students find it so refreshing not to be hassled by school staff when roaming around and feel limitless when professors don’t recognize them in the streets. An incredible way to make sure you enjoy your first year to its fullest extent, just don’t go to those boring lectures. Especially for first-year students taking1000-levelcoursesinhugeauditoriums like PE250, skipping class is easy to do. With classes that have over 300 students, professors likely won’t even notice your absence. Take the lecture time to grab a nice lunch, hang out with friends, or work out. Some classes may dock points for your absence or lack of participation, but it’s probably only about 5%-10% of your final grade,pointsyoucaneasilymakeupforlater.

(2) Freshman 15? Come on, bring those numbers up!

Talkingtoseniorstudentsabouttheirfirst-year experiencewillusuallybringuptheideaofthe famous “Freshman 15”. A seeming canon eventineveryuniversitystudent’seducational journey, the freshman 15 refers to gaining roughly 15 pounds, mostly from eating all the food from the cafeteria. Instead of meal prepping and keeping track of your macros, putthatwallettouseintheSUcafeteria.Why packabalanced,healthylunchwhenyoucan get a large beef donburi from Hiroba? Your arteries will probably be clogged from all the salt, but a good Hiroba meal after an exam justfeelssoright.Thesmartthingtodowould betokeepthecafeteriafoodtoaminimumto ensure a healthy lifestyle. But hey, you only liveonce,right?

(3) PARTY ALL THE TIME!

Whenpeoplethinkaboutwhatthefirstyearof post-secondary looks like, the images of gettingtoknownewfriendsonanewcampus cometomind.Atimeofhopeandexcitement, post-secondarypresentsanewbeginningand thestartofanacademicjourney.Whatcomes to mind equally as often is the copious amounts of alcohol consumed and all the different nightclubs that you visit. Partying is synonymous with the first year of university, and with there only being one first year, it’s a good idea to enjoy the party lifestyle as much aspossible.Gooutandmeetnewfriends,go to every happy hour available in town, and give those livers a run for their money. Whether or not you’ve got a midterm soon or anessaydueattheendoftheweek,youcan always find an opportunity to party. If anything, you’ll probably remember the latenight beer pong better than the 1000-level coursesyoubarelypaidattentionto.

(4) C’s GET DEGREES

High school taught us that grades are very important. The letter and percentage you get at the end of secondary school dictates what colleges or universities you can attend, and thelevelofyourcoursesalsodetermineswhat programsyoucanorcan’tdo.Thingschange, however, once you hit post-secondary. After graduating, most employers won’t care about whetheryougotaBoraB+inSpanish1000.

So, use that to your advantage. Instead of putting in long hours reading through your textbook, go watch a movie. Rather than participating in group study sessions, go grab some food at the Zoo. Keep your grades within the C to B- range; chances are, you’ll have that beloved bachelor’s degree in no time. Will you miss out on a bunch of scholarships, constantly be on the verge of academic probation, and risk not getting into competitivefieldsliketheeducationprogram?

Probably. But that’s okay because instead of crying over your essays and midterm studies, you will have more time to catch up on your favouriteNetflixshow.

(5) HOMEWORK? YOU’LL GET TO IT LATER

Every course you take will have some sort of work that will have to be done at home. This canincludesomethingassimpleasreadinga particular textbook chapter to stuff like lab reports and prepping for a big presentation. Common practice says that a slow, steady burn through your homework is the best to ensurehighresultsandahealthymindset.But there are always things more important to get tofirst.Whydoyourhomeworknowwhenyou could always do it later and enjoy the time hanging out, relaxing, or exercising?Leave your homework to the last possible opportunityandgrindthroughitjustbeforethe due date. If your homework is a physical assignment, complete it the morning of, and for your online homework, challenge yourself and try submitting it as close to the digital clock’s cutoff as possible. Sure, a couple of hours speedrunning your homework will be excruciatingly stressful, and you may hand in something that is later deemed incomplete, but the power nap you’ll take in the library after your first all-nighter will feel like a luxuriousstayina5-starhotel.

CONCLUSION

Being a first-year student in university brings about a load of exciting beginnings and adventures. You get the chance to meet new people,explorenewacademictopics,andjoin new social clubs. However, those in their undergrad often stress too much about the pressures of the academic world. Being a student also includes the importance of enjoyingyourtimeinschooland,maybeeven moreimportantly,learningfromyourmistakes. Follow this guide and you’ll be sure to make your first year an absolute nightmare. Although, it is sometimes more entertaining remembering how bad your experience was and how you were able to become a better student after ruining your first year in university.

The Education Department: What to Look Out for and What to Do

Written by Andres Salazar

People come to the University of Lethbridge foravarietyofreasons.Someenrollbecause it'salreadyclosetohome,andotherscometo be part of the UofL’s many athletic teams. However, many come to the windy city specifically to start their adventure in the university’srenownededucationprogram. Getting through the education department seems simple and complicated at the same time. While it’s only three internships and a handful of courses, some of it will seem easy to go through, while other sections of the program will leave you ripping hairs off your head. However, with a little bit of guidance, getting through the program can seem like a walk in the park. So, from my experience, here is a short and simple guide on what to lookoutforintheeducationdepartment.

ED 2500

The first step of the education department journey, ED 2500, is a snapshot of what the rest of the program would look like. You will create your first lesson plans and write many reflections and journal entries. Passing the course is usually very easy; staying on track with your weekly homework being the most important part. However, the critical part is getting a recommendation to the department from your professor. Though, a solid, honest effort in your assignments is just what you need to get that recommendation and enter theeducationdepartment.

Professional Semester II

Unfortunately, this is where things become more difficult. PSII is widely viewed as an endurance test. The course portion of PSII is wayharder,andyourobservationsinPSIIare much stricter than they were in PSI. While learning how to make unit plans in this practicum is incredibly useful, a much more valuable lesson is realizing that most of the time,whateveryouplanwillfallapart--pretty muchrightaway.Theuniversitydoesn’tsayit, but it’s well-known that PSII is where the ed department weeds out those who are not deemed fit for teaching. While the six-week internship might be a nightmare, if you can keep your lesson plans on time and your sanityincheckforthatmonthandahalf,you’ll finish the most challenging part of the entire program.

Professional Semester III

After you pass the hardest semester in the program, PSIII feels like a vacation. Although you’llbeintheclassroomforthewholeterm,it never feels as deadly as those first two practicums, a sign of your growth as a teacher.

Education Electives

These courses are a blast to go through. As part of the program requirements, you must take, depending on your program, about five education courses at the university. These courses will cover topics such as teaching in Indigenous communities, using technology in the classroom, or even improving your creativity as an educator. For the most part, the professors for these courses are very generous graders. As long as you put in a decent amount of effort and hand in work on time,anA-orAisalikelyoutcome.

Conclusion

Going through the education department is incrediblyinterestingandrewarding.Although it might not be easy, every completed semester feels like an achievement. Funnily enough, being a student in the education department will also teach valuable lessons outsidetheclassroom,includinglearninghow to write professional emails and build better workplace relationships. Though it can be

Play The Long-Game: Play The Long-Game:

My Unconventional Funding Pathways Through University

My post-secondary pathway has been unconventional.Ibeganintheworldofworkas an 18-year-old tradesperson, not an academic, and I am currently enrolled simultaneously in a Master of Education degree and a Graphic Design and Interactive Media Diploma. Although my journey has been non-traditional, there are even more roads not taken; had I known some of these existed, I may have been even more empowered to travel differently. I sharemyjourneyinthehopesthatyouwillfeel empowered to craft and map your own best-fit educationalroad,onoroffthebeatentrack.

I started in trades. I was always, ALWAYS, doinghairgrowingup,movingfromdangerous, experimental sibling haircuts to polished grad updos for friends, and my practical parents suggestedhairschool.Iattendedstraightoutof high school, funded by babysitting savings and myparent’sgenerosity.Hairschoolwasabout$ 7,000, and I lived cheaply, budgeting carefully to make it through the month on about $250 a month for rent and $150 a week for everything else.

After school, I followed my family’s move to Yellowknifeandbeganhairdressing,shifting

Exploreaneducationaljourneyfromtradesto aMasterofEducationandaGraphicDesign Diploma,highlightingtheimportanceof personalfinanceandstrategicplanningin academicandcareerchoices. Thisinspiringnarrativeencouragesreadersto crafttheirowneducationalpaths,emphasizing empowermentthroughinformeddecisionsand thevalueofnon-traditionalroutes.

Written by Liz Harrison

from an hourly wage to full commission within sixmonths.Itwastheearly2000s,andIbought a ton of Guess purses with my earnings - fun, but unfortunately, not a lucrative investment. I took cabs almost daily instead of buying a vehicle because I couldn’t get a loan without a three-year history of commission-based pay stubs. I should have been taking the bus and savingthosehairdressingtips!

I was frivolous with money, as so many of us are in our early twenties. At 23, I bought a car for $ 20,000 a month before making my first move to southern Alberta and heading into my first undergraduate years. I did two years of education, then a year of business, before deciding I was getting into student loan debt without really knowing what I wanted to be when I ‘grew up’ (in some ways, I’m still deciding). I returned to family and hair in the northforafewyears,tookasmallchunkoutof my student debt, and then, two years later, returned to post-secondary to finish my Education and Arts Bachelor's degrees at the UniversityofLethbridge.

What if I had started working towards my trade in high school?

Had there been access in my small-town high school to my trade as exists in many Albertan highschoolstoday,Icouldhavegraduatedfully certified with my first year of hairdressing education, the equivalent of a year-long postsecondary program, and go straight to work in a salon under a Journeyman stylist (Government of Alberta, 2024). My alma mater's hair school program has doubled to about $15,000 (Est-elle Academy of Hair Design,2024).Studentsacrosstheprovince,and in the high school in which I currently teach, can enroll in Cosmetology 10, 20, 30, and 40 and leave school ready to go to work (Government of Alberta, 2024; Edmonton Public Schools, 2024; Calgary Board of Education,2024).

What if I had been saving instead of spending in those early earning years?

On my first day of orientation at Medicine Hat College,averywiseDeanaskedmeandtherest of the freshman audience to calculate what we were spending per hour class block. He challengedustotallyupnotjustourtuitionand books, but our living costs and the wages we weren’t making because we were spending time in school. I’d left behind a full clientele, decent paycheque,andgeneroustips.IcalculatedthatI was spending $500/hr per class. This realization gotmeupfor8:00AMclassesandannoyedme ifaprofessormissedalecture(graduatestudent me knows life happens and that I will need graceattimes,too).

Until I saw those numbers laid out, I hadn’t recognized just how much I had failed to save over the years I’d been working full-time. I had some savings, but I didn’t understand then that theseearlyyearscouldlaunchmeintoanewlife debt-free or secure my financial future through savingsorinvestment.

What if I had learned to live as cheaply as I had in hairdressing school?

I could have graduated debt-free from the University.Instead,Iusedstudentloansto

make car payments, doubling the interest I’d pay on the vehicle. I used student loans for my living expenses. It never occurred to me that I could take fewer classes per semester and work more hours to break even and avoid the debt altogether. I worked only enough to cover my entertainment. I had a ball, but after ten years of student debt repayment, I can tell you those highlightsareancienthistory.

What if I had realized I could take fewer classes over a longer period of time?

It never occurred to me that I could take fewer classes per semester and work more hours to break even and avoid the debt altogether. I carriedafive-classloadandfeelI’dshortedone with too little time to dedicate. Not everyone wants to live small or within their means. Not everyonemindstakingondebt–atleastonthe incoming side of the experience. Not everyone wantstodriveabeater,ortakefewerclasses,or move somewhere new to make their plans fit. But what if I had given myself the gift of a financialfoundationinsteadofapit?

What trade-offs did I make to fund my learning?

IappliedforandreceivedtheNorthernStudent Teacher Bursary (Government of Alberta, 2024), which was valued then at $16,000 with three years owed in return, an hour north of Edmonton or further. Accepting this funding wouldsetmycareerandlifetrajectoryforyears, ahugeresponsibility,butIfeltthepulltofinish my studies and begin creating and living this newlife.

I stacked six summer semester courses at the U to finish course requirements so I could avoid havingtoreturnsouthforonemoresemesterof classes (one I received my lowest mark ever in, costingmemycordsofdistinction),thenhitthe roadinmyChevy,towingatinyU-Haulbehind mewithonlyfurnitureIcouldliftmyselfsinceI didn’tknowanyoneinthecityyet.Ireceivedan extra $ 2,000 for a total of $ 18,000 from the NASTB to complete my final practicum in my chosen northern location, and three years turnedintoten.

What if you could trade a few years of unusual or far-flung living for funding?

A fun fact about becoming a resident of the Northwest Territories (Government of the Northwest Territories, 2024) is that after two years, you become eligible to access their Student Financial Assistance program (Government of the Northwest Territories, 2024).My4-yearresidencygrantedmeaccessto a$60,000loan.

What if you could secure or negotiate funding for ongoing education as part of your total compensation package?

I knew I wanted to return to academia again someday, and I made a choice to guarantee I could make that happen for myself: I invested time and energy researching the teacher contracts in the province, seeking divisions that prioritized continuing education. In our last negotiation, teachers in my district secured a maximum of $ 10,000 a year in academic or otherwise approved continuing education. This is not common across the province, and althoughitwaslessprevioustothissigning,at$ 5,000 a year when I began, it was never insignificant.

What if you stopped following someone else’s financial and cultural script and wrote your own?

There is so much pressure to present a certain standard, to follow a certain timeline, and to adhere to a certain progression or order of experiences and events. But – if nobody’s told you yet - you don’t have to be in debt to build yourself a better life through education. Your lifeisworthlearningtoplaythelonggame.Set yourself up for success, and find opportunities toinvestinyourselfandyourlife.

I’minthelastcourseofmyM.Ed.andhavesix courses to go in my Graphic Design Diploma. Oneprogramhasbeentheinhalationofexperts and research, then another an exhalation of creative magnitude and programming. Almost allofitwasgenerouslyinvestedinmebymy

employer, useful to me in my day-to-day teaching,andsupportiveofmyloveforwriting, presenting,productdevelopment,coaching,and allotherteaching-adjacentside-hustles.

I’vegottenbetteratfollowingmyownpath:I’m takingmydesigncoursesONEatatimeinstead of three to accommodate my full-time teaching and M.Ed. studies. I have become and must remain a time-management wizard, with meticulous scheduling and “chopping the wood,” as Dr. Robert LeBlanc of the ULeth Faculty of Education would say. My parent’s off-grid cabin in the North is heated mainly by woodstove, and the chopping is easy enough if done daily, but it’s painful to catch up if it’s let go for a few days. I am bank-rolling these programs up-front, reimbursed yearly. At the same time, because of another unconventional choice to live small and purchase a $103 000 townhouse condo instead of a $300,000 home, I’ve been able to fund a new vehicle and both programs while saving up an emergency fund, refilling my RRSPs following my first-time home buyer withdrawal, and repaying my student loans from the undergrad. Both my vehicleandstudentloanswillbegonewithinthe year, and I plan to be financially free shortly after, with even my mortgage gone in a few more years if I’m intentional. How many other millennialscansaythat?

What will you do for yourself? What map will you create?

You have the power and ability to do things in ways that best fit YOU. Don’t join the student debt crisis by doing what you think you are “supposed” to be doing or trying to fit yourself into someone else’s tracks. You don’t have to dolifethewayanyoneelseisdoingit.Makethe choicesthatfityourpathway,andifyoufindno roadsaheadofyou,buildyourown.

References

CalgaryBoardofEducation.(2024).Cosmetology.Career andTechnologyCentre:Credentialed,Dual-Credit,&PrePlacement Programs. [retrieved 2 February 2024]. https://school.cbe.ab.ca/school/CTC/teachinglearning/classesdepartments/cts/cosmetology/Pages/Default.aspx

EdmontonPublicSchools.2024.Academics:CTS,locally developed and complementary courses: Costmetology. QueenElizabethSchool[retrieved2February2024]. https://queenelizabeth.epsb.ca/academics/ctslocallydeveloped andcomplementarycourses/cosmetology/

Est-elle Academy of Hair Design. (2024). Course information.Est-elleAcademyofHairDesign:TheSchool The Salon The Barbershop [retrieved 2 February 2024]. https://www.est-elle.ab.ca/index.php? area_id=1001&page_id=1002

Government of Alberta (2024). Northern student teacher bursary:Returnofservicebursarythatencouragesteachers to live and work in rural and remote northern Alberta locations. Alberta.ca https://www.alberta.ca/northernstudent-teacher-bursary

Government of Alberta (2007-2024). Apprenticeship and industry training. Alberta Apprenticeship and Industry Training [retrieved 2 February 2024].

https://tradesecrets.alberta.ca/get-started/

Government of Alberta (1995-2024). Programs of study: Cosmetology (COS) (2010) [retrieved 2 February 2024]. LearnAlberta.ca

https://www.learnalberta.ca/ProgramOfStudy.aspx? lang=en&ProgramId=475863#

GovernmentoftheNorthwestTerritories(2024).Livingin theNWT.Education,Culture,andEmployment[retrieved2 February 2024].

https://www.ece.gov.nt.ca/en/services/prospective-teacherinformation/living-nwt

Government of the Northwest Territories (2024). Student financialassistance.Education,Culture,andEmployment [retrieved2February2024].

https://www.ece.gov.nt.ca/en/services/student-financialassistance

AUTHORBIO:

Lizisadedicatedteacher,student,andlifelonglearner. Shespendsherfreetimeteachingteachers,travelling,and creatinginallkindsofmediums.

Photography by Rukshi Sundararaj

Written by Shawn Funk

SCIENCE OR PSEUDOSCIENCE?

A QUICK EXPLANATION OF SOME DIFFICULTIES THAT PHILOSOPHERS OF SCIENCE FACE WHEN THEY TRY TO DETERMINE WHAT KINDS OF KNOWLEDGE SHOULD BEAR THE TITLE OF SCIENCE.

One of the central issues in the philosophy of science is to identify a criterion of demarcation that distinguishes science from pseudoscience. How are we to know when the systems we use to understand the world are scientific? Identifying any good reason why something is scientific while another thing is not has proved difficult. Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, and Larry Laudan are influential philosophers of science who wrestled with this problem during the20thcentury.

Sir Karl Popper proposed that the probability that any theory is true is zero. If we concede thatthereareaninfinitenumberofpossibilities in a general universal theory, the probability is zero because any number over infinity is zero (Curdetal.,p.70,1998).Theimplicationhereis that no number of confirmations to a theory will prove the said theory. Popper thought that if a theory cannot be proved, perhaps it could be refuted. Popper states that “[c]onfirmations should only count if they are the result of risky predictions” (Popper, p. 7, 1957/1998). If a prediction fails, the theory in question is refuted. Popper called this the criterion of falsifiability, becoming, for Popper, the hallmarkofscience.Hestatesthatthe“criterion of falsifiability is a solution to this problem [of demarcation], for it says that statements or systemsofstatements,inordertoberankedas

scientific, must be capable of conflicting with possible, or conceivable observations” (Popper, p.9,1957/1998).Atheoryis,therefore,tentative and can always be refuted through future observations.

Karl Popper cites Einstein’s theory of gravitation as an example of a risky prediction. Einstein’s equations led to the conclusion that gravity bends light. This proposition was later verified by Arthur Eddington’s observations in 1919 by measuring the distance between two stars in the sky at night and during a solar eclipse during the day (Popper, 1957/1998). If the measurements showed equal distance between the same two stars at night and during the day, Einstein’s gravitational theory would have been refuted according to Popper’s program. Einstein’s ‘risky prediction’ was confirmed, and the observations showed a significant change in the distance between the two stars, indicating that gravity has a bending effect on light and because his theory of gravitation had predictive power, Popper’s criterion for science was met (Popper, 1957/1998).

The upshot of falsification is that it makes no bones about what is and what isn’t science, the line of demarcation is clear, yet Imre Lakatos andThomasKuhnarguethatPopper’scriterion

goes too far, suggesting that scientists are often unwillingtodiscardatheorybecauseitfailedto predict a novel event (Kuhn, 1970/1998).

Lakatos and Kuhn indicate that theories often undergo many transformations to account for failures before they are wholly discarded, especially if there is no ready substitute for the current theory. In other words, scientists work with what they have and are unwilling to let a small hiccup derail their project. Only when problems compound and there is a ready substitute can a theory be refuted (Kuhn, 1970/1998)(Lakatos,1977/1998).

Thomas Kuhn is careful not to clearly define a demarcation criterion suggesting that “[i]f a demarcation criterion exists (we must not, I think, seek a sharp and decisive one), it may lie just in that part of science which Sir Karl ignores”(Kuhn,p.14,1970/1998).So,whatdid Popper ignore? Kuhn distinguished between periods of extraordinary research and normal science(Kuhn,p.13,1970/1998).Hearguesthat Popper’s focus on extraordinary research, that is, periods of conflicting paradigms that incite scientificrevolutions(Copernicanheliocentrism, Newtonian mechanics, and Einstein’s theory of gravitation) happen very rarely, and to focus exclusively on these moments would obscure how science is normally practiced (Kuhn, 1970/1998).

Kuhn characterizes “normal science” as using accepted theory to solve research puzzles; normal science, Kuhn says, is the “puzzlesolvingenterprise”thatmakesupmostscientific research (Kuhn, p. 15, 1970/1998). These puzzles, Kuhn says, are like the problems you findatthebackofatextbook(Curdetal.,p.67, 1998). For Kuhn, science occurs only after an accepted paradigm of thought has been implemented, and practitioners of that theoretical paradigm begin to solve puzzles within the confines of that theory. Kuhn states that “no puzzle-solving enterprise can exist unless its practitioners share criteria which, for that group and for that time, determine when a particularpuzzlehasbeensolved”(Kuhn,p.15, 1970/1998). Normal science requires that every playerknowstherulesofthegameandplays

according to the rules, which makes sense, yet Kuhn is clever here; he says, “for that group and for that time.” What of other groups and other times? This poses a problem for Kuhn becauseheseemstosuggestarelativistposition, which leaves science hanging in the aether. Kuhn softly indicates that the demarcation criterion might be found in the rational puzzlesolving tradition of “normal science,” yet he fails to ground the notion of “normal science.” Kuhn suggests that the distinction between science and pseudoscience hinges on what a specific group thinks at a specific time, which impliesthattoday’spseudoscienceisyesterday’s science. This conclusion has led many philosophers to characterize his work as relativist(Curdetal.,p.220,1998).WhileKuhn and Popper both make seemingly valid statements about a peculiar character that science has that other knowledge does not, they fail equally to offer any logically conclusive criteriaofdemarcation.

The demarcation debate took an interesting turn in 1983 when Larry Laudan published an essay called The Demise of the Demarcation Problem,wherehesuggeststhatphilosophyhas unequivocally failed to offer up a valid solution to the demarcation problem. Laudan emphatically states, “I will not pretend to be able to prove that there is no conceivable philosophical reconstruction of our intuitive distinction between the scientific and the nonscientific. I do believe, though, that we are warranted in saying that none of the criteria which have been offered thus far promises to explicate the distinction” (Laudan, p. 124, 1983). Laudan suggests that all attempts to solve the problem have done more to disprove the idea that there is a definitive line to distinguish between science and pseudoscience. Strikingly, he asserts that the problem itself is no problem at all, but a “pseudo-problem” (Laudan,p.124,1983).

The demarcation problem still has no agreedupon solution, yet there is one characteristic that all science shares: progress. Pseudoscientistsputupamirrortothescientific method,startingwithaconclusionandthen

working backward to find confirming evidence while negating anything that stands to refute their theory. No progress is made because the pseudoscientists' conclusions are preconceived. Confirmingevidence,thepseudoscientistwilltell you,is“allaroundus.”

If this sounds more like religion than science, you are not mistaken. Scientists use the inductive method to make inferences based on empirical observations; they conduct experiments that test their hypothesis, and in doing so, discover universal laws that lead to scientific progress. Scientists remain skeptical of their findings because the inductive method is not conclusive; thus, they know that their theories are tentative. Perhaps there is no clean way to pin down what it really means to be scientific because the inductive method is itself uncertain. Yes, we want to be certain; we want totakeforgrantedthetruthofwhatwebelieve, but our inability to define a clear demarcation between science and pseudoscience implies an unsettlingthought;thatis,uncertainty.

References

Curd, M., & Cover, J. A. (1998). Philosophy of science: The central issues.W.W.Norton.

Kuhn, Thomas S. “Logic of discovery or psychology of research?” Philosophy of science: The central issues. Ed. Martin Curd & J. A. Cover, First edition, W.W. Norton, 1998, p.1119.

Lakatos, Imre. “Science and pseudoscience.” Philosophy of science: The central issues. Ed. MartinCurd&J.A.Cover,Firstedition,W.W. Norton,1998,p.20-26.

Popper, Karl. “Science: Conjectures and refutations.” Philosophy of science: The central issues. Ed. Martin Curd & J. A. Cover, First edition,W.W.Norton,1998,p.3-10.

Laudan,L.(1983,January1). Larry Laudan, the demise of the demarcation problem. PhilArchive. https://philarchive.org/rec/LAUTDO-4. RetrievedonSeptember9,2023.

Written by Andres Salazar

Is the USA in Is the USA in Is the USA in Possession of Possession of Possession of Multiple UFOs? Multiple

UFOs? Multiple UFOs?

Maybe: Summary of Summer Maybe: Summary of Summer Maybe: Summary of Summer

2023s UFO Developments

2023s UFO Developments 2023s UFO Developments

UFOs and aliens have captivated curious minds for decades. At least at one point in our lives, almost every person out there has pondered the idea of whether or notwearealoneintheuniverse.Debateshaveragedon about whether we’re the only planet with an intelligent species. Thought experiments have explored whether aliens would look closer to the ones from the Alien (1979) franchise or if they would appear closer to the classic little skinny green guys with big black eyes. The point is –aliens and UFOs are fascinating. Though, as captivating as the topic is, there has always been a severe lack of substantial evidence and documentation actually proving them to be real. While countless supposed sightings and videos allegedly show real contact instances, nothing has been bulletproof in its validityandreliability.

High-Profile Claims and Military Testimonies

Every couple of years, some big news story will come outfromsomeonewhowitnessedsomethinglikeaUFO encounter, had contact with an alien, or had a role in some mysterious underground extraterrestrial research program. These stories are interesting but don’t often lead to anything substantial and are forgotten just as quickly as they appear. However, this past June, American news outlet NewsNation broke the story of a highly decorated former American intelligence official named David Grusch, who claimed to have reliable knowledge of a hidden U.S. government program that researchedandreverse-engineeredcrashedorretrieved UFOs. An Australian investigative journalist, Ross Coulthart, conducted an interview with Grusch that lastedoverfortyminutes.

TheintelligenceofficerexplainedthattheU.S. government has been aware of nonhuman intelligencefordecadesandhasundertakena large-scale disinformation campaign to keep the research programs and findings secret fromthegeneralpublic(Coulthart,2023).

Grusch’s claims have been explosive, with him explaining that not only is the U.S. government aware of the existence of a nonhumanintelligence,butitalsohasseveral ships from other advanced civilizations. Another claim surfaced that certain research and retrieval efforts have also discovered some of the dead pilots from the otherworldly crafts.Gruschcontinuedtosupporthisclaims by stating that during his time as a military intelligenceofficer,heinterviewedandworked with other military officials who have been involved with programs dedicated to reverse engineering of foreign technologies. Gruch’s allegations, however, become even more alarming. He continued to explain that certain military personnel have been injured and possibly killed during operations investigating UFOs. Furthermore, he claims that the researchprogramsareunlawfullyhiddenfrom theUnitedStatesCongress(Coulthart,2023).

Over the years, people speaking out on news networks explaining their experiences with UFO-related operations have not been a rare occurrence. Famously, the Roswell Incident supposedly saw the U.S. government cover up a crashed UFO. Allegedly, news publicationsatthetimechangedthestoryofa crashedUFOtowhatwaslaterexplainedasa weather balloon (Cruz, 2023). The most famouscaseisthatofBobLazar,whoclaims tohavebeenaresearcherduringthe1980sin aUFOreverseengineeringprogramattheS4 Complex, a subsection of Area 51 (Meek, 2021). Lazar, as well as various other UFOrelated personalities, have made well-known appearancesonmainstreammediaprograms, includingtheJoeRoganExperience.

More recently, UFO witnesses have presentedthemselves.

Some of whom hold verifiable roles in the U.S. military. The most famous among these are David Fravor and Ryan Graves. David Fravor is a retired naval pilot and Commander of the highly reputable air fighter squadron VFA-41, commonly known as “the Black Aces” (U.S. HouseofRepresentatives,2023).RyanGraves is a former F-18 pilot with over a decade of experience. Both have had close, recorded encounters with UFOs during military operations (Graves, 2023). They have since gone public with the testimony of their sightings. Graves has taken his involvement even further by starting an advocacy and educational non-profit based on UFO reporting called Americans for a Safe Aerospace (ASA, 2023). Their credentials, combined with radar footagecapturingtheirencounters,havegrown tobeconsideredsomeofthemostfamousand credibleevidenceofarealUFOsighting.

Whileallofthem,includingDavidGrusch,have gone on the record explaining their experiences,whatmakestheircasessounique is the credentials behind them. Grusch, Graves, and Fravor’s credentials have all been verified and confirmed by independent journalists, with their importance in the military and intelligence communities being airtight (Coulthart, 2023). Not only do they have compelling evidence and testimony, but their credentials give their statements much more weight.Thesethreetogetherhavechangedthe narrative around UFOs. While the topic is generally seen as crawling with wacky conspiracy theorists, Fravor, Grusch, and Graves have helped turn the UFO topic into a matter of aerospace safety and genuine scientificinquiry.

A Shift in Perception: UFOs in the Political Arena

All of this together has created a new and interestingerainUFOinvestigations.Following the testimony of David Grusch, it seems that the United States government has taken a key interestinpubliclyinvestigatingthematter.

Government representatives have taken a personal interest, particularly after Grusch’s claims of UFO and nonhuman intelligence information being illegally withheld from Congress. In a surprising action on July 26, 2023,theU.S.Congressheldapublichearing where Grusch, Fravor, and Graves publicly statedtheirUFOexperiencesandknowledge. It was a historic event, as congressional representatives were on record, talking about their interest in publicly disclosing information on UFOs and seemingly acknowledging the existence of the phenomena (NSBFA Subcommittee,2023).

Rather than observe the topic of UFOs through the lens of bizarre, crazy conspiracy theories, the American Congress analyzed the topic as a matter of national security and intelligence.Whilemostoftheinformationthat Fravor, Grusch, and Graves mentioned was publiclyavailable,acoupleofnewbombshells were unveiled at the hearing. Among these claims were details of a particular event where aerospace contractors spotted a giant, red, cube-shaped UFO that jammed all radio signals and interfered with most of the area’s technology (NSBFA Subcommittee, 2023). While testimonies of sightings and military interactions with UFOs were plentiful during thehearing,onethemerangthroughthemall: the military personnel who interacted with the craftsfirmlybelievedthattheseobjectsdefied the laws of physics and if they turned hostile, the U.S. military would be rendered defenceless. There was also significant input from the congressional representatives themselves, adding their casual and professional experiences with UFO matters. Alarmingly, however, a large part of the congressional testimony related to how Congress was blocked from viewing UFOrelated government documents. Specifically, the Tennessee and Florida state representatives, Tim Burchett and Anna Paulina Luna, expressed their frustration towardstheeffortstokeeptheU.S.Congress away from this issue (NSBFA Subcommittee, 2023).

Whatcouldbeevenmoreshockingtoothersis how much collaboration happened between groups of people who are often regarded as enemies. Democrats and Republicans agreed throughout the hearing about what congressional investigations need to happen next; this represents a stark difference to the political divide on other topics. Democrat congressional representative Alexandria Occasio-Cortez was even seen and pictured having a civil conversation about the topic with Republican representative Matt Gaetz. The bipartisansupportandinteresthavecomeasa surprise to many, who have become accustomedtoseeingnothingbutfightingfrom theU.S.Congress.Thismadethehearingasa wholefeellikeacompletesuccessintheworld of UFO investigations. Not only did the witnesses deliver their testimony under oath, but they were also taken seriously by all the congresspeople. The hearings ended with representatives Anna Paulina Luna and Tim Burchett, who helped lead the session, vowing to continue to unearth UFO research hidden fromthepublicandplanfurtherhearingsinthe nearfuture(NSBFASubcommittee,2023).

A Path Towards Transparency and Future Speculations

Following the historic congressional hearing, steps have been taken to further the efforts towards a full public disclosure on the UFO topic. Representative Tim Burchett has gone ontoconductmultipleinterviewsonavarietyof media outlets, expressing his ongoing frustration with the lack of transparency. He has repeatedly emphasized the many times different agencies have potentially hid UFOrelated information, including NASA’s new UFO-relatedstatements(Markham,2023).This has sparked a new layer of conversation. The U.S. Congress and journalists are now wondering what information could be so sensitive that it is being blocked off from some of the country’s most important elected officials.

This question has grown to be an essential point of investigation for future hearings and UFO journalism.

The amount of testimony, witnesses, and political actions on the topic of UFOs that have come out in the past few months has been staggeringly plentiful. Whereas other years have seen perhaps a couple of short bursts of UFO intrigue, we have seen a continued wave of interest, government action, and support.

However, a separate question remains: why now?

The sudden uptick in UFO-related activity has also sparkedpeople’ssenseofspeculation.Somebelieve all of this means that the government and UFO investigators have an urgent reason to get all the information publicly available. Others see the entire topicasnothingbutadistractionfrommoreimportant matters, such as inflation and the increasing political divide.

Regardless of whether UFOs are real, there is something undeniably fascinating about how UFOs are now suddenly being seriously investigated. It remainsunknownifwetrulyarealoneinthisuniverse orifanothercivilizationexists.However,thepastfew months,withalltheallegationsandclaims,haveonly made people become more interested again in thinking about the possibility of little green men visitingusfromveryfaraway.

References

Americans for a Safe Aerospace. (2023). Our Mission. Americans for a Safe Aerospace. https://www.safeaerospace.org/#mission

Coulthart, R. (Journalist). (2023, June 11). We are not alone: The UFO whistleblower speaks [Video]. NewsNation. https://www.newsnationnow.com/space/ufo/we-are-not-alone-the-ufowhistleblower-speaks/

Cruz, M. (2023, July 27). Roswell UFOs, aliens and a potential cover-up?. KOAT Action News 7. https://www.koat.com/article/roswell-new-mexico-ufoalien-crash-cover-up/44662998#

Graves, R. (2023, July). Ryan Graves HOC Testimony. United States House Committee on Oversight and Accountability. https://oversight.house.gov/wpcontent/uploads/2023/07/Ryan-HOC-Testimony.pdf

Markham, D. (2023, September 22). Rep. Burchett wary about NASA’s claim it isn’t hiding UAP data. NewsNation. https://www.newsnationnow.com/space/ufo/rep-burchett-nasas-claim-isnthiding-uap-data/

Meek, G. (2021, June 1). UFOs, the Pentagon, and the enigma of Bob Lazar. Nevada Current. https://www.nevadacurrent.com/2021/06/01/ufosthe-pentagon-and-the-enigma-of-bob-lazar/ National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs Subcommittee. (2023, July 26). Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency [Video]. United States House Committee on Oversight and Accountability. https://oversight.house.gov/hearing/unidentified-anomalous-phenomenaimplications-on-national-security-public-safety-and-governmenttransparency/

U.S. House of Representatives Committee Repository. (2023, July 26). Commander David Fravor. U.S. House of Representatives Document Repository. https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO06/20230726/116282/HHRG-118GO06-Bio-FravorD-20230726.pdf

LIVES LIVED APART: ALIENATION IN A CAPITALIST ECONOMY

Written by Shawn Funk

Introduction to Capitalism and Marx's Critique

Capitalism is an economic system that is characterized by the private ownership of the means of production and unfettered competition in the marketplace (Marx, 1844/2007). It has led to a high level of innovation and growth while increasing the standard of living for the general population, yet for all its grandeur, capitalism has a cost. That is, the alienation of the human from themselves, their work, their products, and theirfellowcitizens.

At the heart of Marx’s theory of history is the idea that our consciousness is derived by our material conditions. This is called dialectical materialism. In other words, Marx attributes historical change to the material conditions that determine our mode of production and produceourmeansoflife(Marx,1932/2007).

Dialectical materialism implies a sort of feedback loop; we act on the material environment, and the material environment acts back, giving rise, Marx theorizes, to culture. He indicates that “the production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at firstdirectlyinterwovenwiththematerial

activity and the material intercourse of men” (Marx, p. 409, 1932/2007). Thus, our culture, its ideas, conceptions, rituals, and how it perceivesitselfareallinextricablylinkedtothe way it produces (mode of production) and what it produces. Historical change, Marx suggests,islinkedtochangesinourmodesof production and the class struggles (revolutions) that accompany these changes (Wolff&Leopold,2020).

Humanity's Departure from Nature

Marx states that humans begin to “distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organization” (Marx, p.409, 1932/2007). Our production,therefore,wasourticketoutofthe natural world and into a La-Z Boy. This departure from nature implies a separation of nature from itself, a splitting from unity into two distinct entities, the newly formed human subjectandthenaturalworld.

Theabilitytocultivatenature,toreshapeit,to essentially conquer it seems, to Marx, the definingfeatureofhumanity,givingrisetothe fundamentalideasthatformthebasisof

culture.Inasense,Marxissayingweare what we build. It is our production that brings meaning to our lives, but what happenswhenthefruitsofourproduction no longer belong to the labourer, when labour itself is no longer owned by the labourer? If meaning is fundamentally linked to our production, then severing thislink,accordingtoMarx,wouldleadto alienationandthelossofmeaning.

TheConceptofAlienationin Capitalism

Where the means of production are owned by private interests, as in a capitalist economy, the labour that the labourer produces becomes the property of another, alienating the labourer from their work, their product, others and their self. Marx calls this the alienation of labour (Marx, 1844/2007). He suggests that while you are at work, you are set apart from your chosen lifestyle. In a sense,youarenotyourself.Youmustact, dress, and talk in a standard form prescribed by the employer. You are not free to do as you please; it is not a democracy. The company owns you during the hours of employment. You havegivenyourtime,yourlabour,andin somecases,evenyourdignity.Thefruits of your production do not belong to you. You will receive a fraction of the profit in theformofawage.Thereislittlepointin working harder. You become disconnected from yourself during your labour, thinking of the things you would rather do. The little time you have for leisure is spent maintaining your existence. You eat, you sleep, you toilet, then you sleepwalk off to work as your nervoussystemsjerk.Themoreyou

labour, the less of yourself you are, yet thehumaninsidewailsforfreedom(Marx, 1844/2007). You have become a cog in the machine. Here lies the crux of the conceptofalienation.

TechnologyandAlienation

Marx was very concerned with the alienating effect that private ownership had on the worker, yet today, our technology has a similar effect. Technological advances in the 20th and 21stcenturieshavereducedtheneedfor humancontacttoobtainthenecessitiesof life, going against our innate tendency to socialize.Indeed,ourtechnologiesplaya role in the alienation of the modern human being by imposing an underlying order onto its users. Take, for example, somethingassimpleastheT.V.dinner(I won’tusetheobviousone:thecellphone). TheimplicationsoftheT.V.dinnerareas follows. Firstly, it is meant to be eaten in frontoftheT.V.Youcan’ttalkbacktothe television.Second,it'sfast;throwitinthe mic, it's easy, and it comes with its own container! No help is needed to cook or clean up. Third, the supermarket down the street sells them 3 for $5, and the clerk rarely even makes eye contact. Lastly, it’s a single serving! Nobody is coming over for dinner. The process of cooking and eating has been emptied of all its humanity! Eating has become impersonal! The machine feeds us now! MaybeI’mbeingalittledramatic.Mypoint here is that new technologies are filling the roles that other human beings once hadinourpersonallives,makinghumans less necessary in the production of our personal lives, meaning that you will encounterfewerpeopleduringtheday,

leaving opportunities for social contact wanting.

Marx'sVisionandItsLegacy

If, as Marx indicated, we are alienated and live meaningless lives as a result, andourconditionisinevitable,whatcould be the practical application of this knowledge? It’s simple: Marx wanted to sowdiscontentinthemassesandfoment a rebellion against dominant class interests. Wresting the means of production back from private interests was Marx’s solution to the alienation of the worker. This is precisely the reason why Marx was booted from nearly every city in Europe and lived in abject poverty (Richter, 2007). Nobody likes a troublemaker.BakedintoMarx’stheoryis the prophetic vision of a coming revolution. Marx thinks it happens every time! No, it doesn’t. The revolution is an inevitabilityforMarx,anditiswhatmakes Marxismdangerousfortherulingclass.If you are a disgruntled worker, Marxism was empowering in the sense that it promised change through revolutionary means, giving way to a socialist society where the means of production were owned by the workers. In practice, this amounted to little more than a change in managementforthepoorworker.

The 20th century saw communist revolutions sweep across Asia and Europe, aligning themselves with the Soviet Union. These communist nations were collectively known as the Eastern Bloc(Kulik,n.d.).Theyadoptedtheoneparty communist system of the Soviet Union, which is based on the writings of KarlMarxandVladimirLenin.

Unfortunately for the workers, the overthrowofthecapitalistsdidnotleadto self-realization, freedom, or happiness. Theresultwasmiseryonascalenotseen before. Food shortages, repression, censorship,forcedlabour,andtorture,the regimesoftheEasternBloc,ruledbytheir soviet overlords, do not paint a flowery portrait of communism and offer no persuasion to the effectiveness of communism as a political system (Kulik, n.d.).Inotherwords,Marx’srevolutionary modefailedtobringaboutthechangesin the human condition that he had hoped for.

Interestingly, solutions for combatting alienation and empowering workers have been proposed that work within the system of capitalism, albeit less revolutionary. Worker cooperatives turn traditional corporate business models upside down. Rather than serving shareholdersasinacorporateenterprise, workercooperativesprovide“servicetoits employees and its community” (CWCF, 2023). Every employee has only a single vote in organizational matters, dispersing powerthroughouttheworkersratherthan management (CWCF, 2023). Sounds great,whyisn’teveryonedoingthis?One ofthebiggestproblemscooperativesface is raising capital (Lindenfeld & Wynn, 2012).Whilecorporationscansellshares, a cooperative must rely on loans, which canbedifficulttoobtain,andthecapitalof itsworker-ownerswhoarenotrichCEOs. Putsimply,thecorporationismuchbetter atamassinglargeamountsofcapitalina short period of time. This fact is not surprising because while the cooperative valuestheworker,thecorporationvalues profit.

Conclusion

Someofususepsychologicalmindtricks to cope with the misery of our alienation; oneexampleisthework-lifebalance.The conceptdenotestherelationshipbetween ourchosenlifestyleandtheworkthatwe do. Maintaining a balance is key to a healthy, happy life, or so they say. Curiously, it takes the idea of alienation for granted. Let’s assume that there is very little overlap between your job as a (insertdrudgeryhere)andthethingsyou aspire to do in life. Too much of one will negate the other. The concept of a work/life balance has a glaring implication: work is in opposition to life. Alienation is a given. The question becomes, how much of your life are you willing to sacrifice for work? The concept is an ideological product of capitalism in defence of dominant class interests as much as it is a submission to the inevitability of the alienation of the labourerinacapitalistsociety.

There may be no solution to alienation, but to turn this thought on its head, alienationmightnotevenbeaproblem.It is possible that Marx has gotten a few thingswrong.Onecouldeasilyarguethat alienation is a universal and essential conditionofhumanityasweare,asMarx argues, beings who distinguish ourselves from nature by producing our means of subsistence. Therefore, humans are distinctlythosebeingsthatliveapartfrom nature.Inthiscase,thereisnothingtobe done; alienation becomes just another fact of our humanity, and we move on. You could also attack Marx’s suggestion that

humanityisdistinctfromthenaturalworld. One could argue that the distinction between what is natural and what is artificial is arbitrary and that humanity is stillverymuchapartofthenaturalworld, implying that we were never really

worker-co-op/ Kulik,R.M.(n.d.). Eastern Bloc.EncyclopediaBritannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Eastern-bloc

Lindenfeld, Frank. & Wynn, Pamela. Why some worker co-ops succeed while others fail. Grassroots Economic Organizing. (2012.). https://geo.coop/story/why-someworker-co-ops-succeed-while-others-fail Wolff,J.,&Leopold,D.(2020,December21). Karl Marx Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/#TheoHist Marx, Karl. “Consciousness Derived from Material ConditionsfromTheGermanIdeology” The critical tradition, Ed. David H. Richter. Boston: Bedford/St.Martin’s,2007.406-409.Print

Marx, Karl. “The Alienation of Labor from Economic and PhilosophicManuscriptsof1844” The critical tradition,Ed. DavidH.Richter.Boston:Bedford/St.Martin’s,2007.400405.Print

Richter, David. The Critical Tradition, Ed. David H. Richter.Boston:Bedford/St.Martin’s, 2007.397.Print

Photography by Rukshi Sundararaj

So, Why Lethbridge?

“So, Why Lethbridge” is a metaphorical prompt to engage readers in reflecting on their current situations and what led them to this current point in time. Using the author’s own personal experiences that led him to make the decision to transfer to the University of Lethbridge, the purpose of the article is to encourage readers to weave their own narratives and make a metaphorical tapestry of their own lives to give meaning and beauty to their present situation.

Written by Nathaniel Malong

Around November of last year, a friend from Hong Kong and I discussed our plans. Since we were taking up similar majors, we reviewed the classes we might take and the road after university. She was going to the Imperial College of London (ICL) for her philosophy, politics, and economics (PPE) major. She asked if I would accompany her to the United Kingdom and attend university there. I declined, stating that I had committed myself tostudyattheUniversityofLethbridge,andI jokinglyaddedthatIwouldhatetheweatherin the UK. She chuckled, then asked me a questionthatwouldhauntmeforthenextfew months.

"So, why Lethbridge?"

It is a simple question we have all probably beenaskedbefore.Icouldn'ttellyouhowoften Ihaveheardthisquestionfromfriends,family, and exes. Before I landed in Canada, I gave general explanations that I thought were genuine.

However, as I pondered the question more after having lived in the city for a few months and adopting a lifestyle so different from before, I knew there was something more profound about it. I wondered why I chose a place and university so antithetical to my life back home. Why did I choose to be far away from everyone and everything I know? That's when I decided to sit down and try to piece togetherthestoryofmypasttounderstandmy present. I want to use my first-hand experiences to help us all understand why we live the way we do. As we go into the next semester, we should reflect on how our past experiences affect us to assure ourselves that weareworkingforourdesiredfuture.Someof us feel lost in a world so complex and a future so elusive. The first step to being confident abouttheroadaheadisunderstandingthepath that got you where you are in the first place. For me, it all started in the "Pearl of the Orient,"Manila.

Imagetakenbyauthor.Thiswasduringthepeakbusyperiodofmeduringuniversity. Itsymbolizesthissortofrenewedlifeinanotherplace.

(“Pearl of the Orient” is a nickname for the city based on whattheSpanishcalleditwhenthecitywasfounded. The name was also referenced in the Philippine national anthem.)

Growing up in one of the densest cities in the world was complicated. Fortunately, I grew up surrounded by a loving family and friends who supported me. I worked hard to qualify for one of the country's top universities. I partied with my friends most Saturday nights in my freetime sometimesintwocities70milesapart.Ithought I had life figured out, and it was for a time. However, I lost myself more and more. I had entangled myself in arguments and rivalries betweenfriendsandpeers.Itfeltlikearepeating cycle of conflicting attitudes between people I knewordidn'tknow.Itwasexhausting,andasI studied while dealing with so much conflict, I eventually lost the balance. I lost friends, some mymistakeandsomenot.Ialsolostconfidence, reflected in my academics and the projects I managedsimultaneously.

I felt like a massive failure. I thought I was undeserving of receiving help from my family, especially my mother, who worked so hard to givemethelifeIhad.Atthispoint,Ihadfailed inalmosteverything,andforatime,IthoughtI had no hope of success. I remember one time I was in my room, so stressed and filled with despair because I thought there was nowhere else to go. That's when my mother came in and gavemeatalkIwouldremember.ShetoldmeI could consider going abroad like I asked before and start anew. I wondered if it wouldn't be much more complicated and improbable than my original plan. But she encouraged me by sayingthatthisspiralintofailurewasasignthat thefutureIhadplannedoutwasnotformeand that taking a chance elsewhere could show me what I was meant to do. However, she added, I would have to work harder than I ever did to provetoeveryoneandmyselfthatIhavewhatit takestoshiftmyentirelife.

So I did; I worked and studied harder than I ever did. I started more projects and entered competitionsinthePhilippinesandworldwide.I took every opportunity I got and reached new heights. However, I knew that I still had not changed. I still had that fear and that lack of confidence. No amount of work and success could take that away, and I knew something neededtochange.

IneededtoprovethatI,bymyself,couldsurvive and thrive in this world. With that in mind, I started choosing the universities I would attend. IhadoptionsinAsiaandNorthAmerica,butI specifically wanted to live in Canada because of my family, and honestly, I prefer the snow. So, howdidIchooseLethbridge?IwentonGoogle Maps and saw this city near the US border. Initially intrigued, I looked around Lethbridge usingGoogleStreetViewandvisitedthecoulees and the university. I thought the coulees looked incredible, so I applied immediately. Initially, I chose Lethbridge because it was away from everyone and everything that defined me as a person.Itcouldbeanopportunitytoprovethat IamworthyofbeingthepersonIdreamedof.I knew I was just a sheltered kid living in the biggest city in the country, and I wanted to change that. I wanted to be someone I was proud of, someone I could look in the mirror and, despite all the failures and disappointments,beproudofthepersonIam.I yearnedforanopportunitytochange,soItook it by packing my bags and taking the plane and bustoLethbridge.

Living here for a few months has given me the time and space to think and reflect. I started focusing on my health, mentally and physically. I regained confidence and slowly moulded myself into the person I wanted to be rather than what I had to become. My outlook on life became more positive, and my fear slowly disappeared.

I didn't do all this by hiding my emotions away with work, people, or vice. I just took the time tounderstandmypastandwhatneededchange. Some of us can feel lost in life and be stuck in damaging cycles of self-doubt and failure. Sometimes, we fear our future simply because we don't know our potential. Fear is like a cage built from your experiences; freedom requires reflection and total change. It may seem like I justranawayfromthecausesofmyanxiety,but Iknewdeepdownthatthosefearsdidnotcome fromexternalfactorsbutratherfrommydoubts andinsecurities.

I needed to know what I was capable of, and I couldonlyfindthatthroughchangingtheareas withinmylifethatrestrictedmefromdoingso.

Lethbridge offered me a different outlook on life that only a place so different from where I was raised can give. However, I only saw the need for change when I stepped back, reflected on my life in the Philippines, and compared it toanidealizedfuturemoresuitedtowhoIam. Whilenoteveryonecanembarkonajourneyof radical change and pursue extraordinary opportunities, we can still gain insight into ourselves by reflecting on our past and assessing our current circumstances. If you feel yourlifeisnotoptimaltohowyouidealizeitto be, contemplate what led you down this road, andasyoupieceyourexperiencestogether,find your capabilities and use them to bring necessary change. Utilize your experiences as a roadmapforhowyouwanttoliveyourpresent andplanyourfuture.

IftheNathanfromlastyearweretolookatme now, he wouldn’t believe it. Lethbridge lets me enjoy the moments of peace and calm just staringatthelocalparkpondasthesunsetson the horizon, knowing that these moments were forthebetterratherthantheworse.Icameand stayed at Lethbridge to be who I am, to reach personal fulfillment, to learn from the failures that haunted me, and to give myself time to enjoy the beauty of just being alive. This currentmomentmaybethefirststepinmynew path in life, and I'm glad to have chosen Lethbridgeforthat.Ididn’trealizeatfirstwhat the importance and purpose of the question “WhyLethbridge”was.

ButasIaskedmyselfitagain,Inowknowit’sa springboard to help us reflect on the present andwhetheritwillleadustoourdesiredfuture. So,asyoufinishreading,askyourselfthesame question that birthed this article. Why Lethbridge? Or if you're somewhere else, "Why ______?".Giveclaritytoyourpast,meaningto yourpresent,andforesightintoyourfuture.

Written by Benjamin Wiebe

SECRET PLACES: WHERE DO YOU UNPLUG?

Sometimes, we need to run away to our secret places; in nature to meditate, rest, and let our anxieties fade away.

When was the last time you went outside and listened? I don’t mean going outside and listeningtoyourSpotifyDaylist.Whenwasthe last time you actually actively listened to the outdoors? The sound of the wind moving the leaves, the sound of cars zooming along Mayor Magrath, the sound of the crunch of morning frost beneath your feet, to the pitterpatterofrainoncrackedpavement.

Natureisaplaceofambience,andIamalltoo aware of how little I pay attention to it. If I am walking outdoors, it is often to get from one place to another in a strict time frame. If, for whatever reason, I am walking outdoors with no goal in mind, it is often with my Sony WH1000-XM4 blasting Taylor Swift’s newest release straight into my brain. And, on the off chancemyheadphonesdieormyphoneisleft behind, my mind is often too busy to listen to nature.Imean,thereisalwaysanothertimeto “listen” to nature. It will be here tomorrow. But Dr. Fitzpatrick’s calculus assignment is temporary. It has a deadline, and I have to do it now. I may not be at my desk, but the unfinishedproblemlivesinmymind;sodomy weekend plans: attending social gatherings, makingdinners(ororderingout),etc.

There is simply too much to do, too many important things constantly occurring to make time for such a silly, unimportant thing as nature.

Ihavebeenthinkingaboutthisforthreeyears. I love the outdoors, but it never was that important. I said I would do it tomorrow. And then tomorrow would end, and I would have spentanotherdayworrying,stuckinmymind, trying to organize life so that I would not fall behind.Andinthemidst,Ifailtofindspaceto rest yet again. I did this for. THREE. WHOLE. YEARS.

Then, this summer, while working with powered machinery that required hearing protection, I had a revelation. Working isn’t a space to escape the noises in your head. When you put in earplugs, the world around you dims entirely. The only sounds left are for you to form, those non-verbal thoughts that populate the emptiness. It wasn’t unusual… until the machines were off and the earplugs came out that sound would rush back in. The leaves twisting in the wind. The screeching of tires on pavement. The sound of footsteps running across the park. The sound of chalk scrapingagainstconcretedriveways.

It was an ethereal moment of rest interrupted by work. But for one second, my anxious and over-planning brain became silenced by the noisearoundme.

Imadeitmygoaltofindsecretplaces.Places where there was no other need to pull my attention away from the real world. Hidden placesthatonlyIknew,placeswhereIexisted on my own apart from the busy human world, but in tune with the Earth’s world. Those places were captured in photographs to share with you a glimpse of what rest means to me. And if any of this resonated with you, maybe you need to find your own secret place.— a placewhereyouturnoffthemusic;whereyou use earplugs to quiet everything else, and let your own thoughts swirl for a moment or two. And just as those intrusive thoughts begin to getalittletooloud,youpulloutthoseearplugs andremindyourselfoftheinfinitelysmallplace weinhabitintime.

Photography by Rukshi Sundararaj

Photography by Rukshi Sundararaj

The Resurgence of Country Music

Written by Alejandro Neufeld

Zach Bryan, Luke Combs, Sturgill Simpson, MorganWallen,ColterWall.Thesenamesare becoming synonymous with country music in 2023 and have been gaining popularity steadily throughout the 2020s. The aforementioned artists are just a few of the names taking country music by storm. Throughout this year, many of the biggest hits intermsofstreamingnumbersandsaleshave been country songs. Songs like “I Remember Everything” by Zach Bryan and Kacey Musgravesand“RichMenFromRichmond”by the upstart Oliver Anthony have been and are stillaredominatingthecharts.

This comes after many thought that the genre was dead throughout the 2010s. But country musicisbackwithavengeanceandshowsno signs of slowing down its momentum. What are the reasons for this, though? Does it have to do with shifting cultural attitudes or a new generation graduating into adulthood and influencingtrends?Thisseemstobethecase, butinsimplerterms,theworldisjustchanging.

I remember reading a proverb once that said that change is the only thing you can be certainofinlife.Changeiswhatdrivespeople andnature,sowhyshoulditnotdrivemusicas well?

The return of country music was solidified this year on two separate occasions, according to Billboard’sKyleDenis.Denisdeclaresthatthis year's first sign came in March when Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” became the first solo male country song to top Billboard’s Hot 100 charts since 1981. The second sign was in July when Luke Combs’s cover of Tracy Chapman’s“FastCar”peakedatnumber2on theHot100,justbehindWallen’s“LastNight”. This was another milestone. It was the first time in 42 years that the two most popular songs in the United States were performed by countryartists.Itishardtobelievebecause,in Southern Alberta, it seems like every other radiostationisacountrystation.Butmoreand more,peoplearewarminguptocountrymusic allacrossNorthAmerica.Deniselaborateson

this by mentioning how country’s new generation of superstars like Combs and Wallen have mastered blending the traditional country sound with modern thematic and marketing strategies to create music that sounds twangy but has a modern message. If country music was relatable and catchy to peopleinthe1980s,ithaskeptthatsamecore relatabilityintothe2020s,andcomingoutofa pandemic, all of us just want to find some simple and relatable form of entertainment. In terms of music, the most relatable genre in 2023iscountry.Iknowthatformyself,thereis nothing like hearing a guitar with raw vocals painting a picture of a broken world and trying torationalizeitthebestwaytheartistcan.The strange calmness and clarity that wash over me when I hear a good country song is something that will keep me interested in the genremywholelife.

Major corporations like Amazon, Apple, Disney, Spotify, and all the studios in Hollywood are trying desperately to appeal to Gen Z because we are now graduating from highschoolanduniversitywithenoughmoney (eventhoughitseemswearealwaysbroke)in our pockets to warrant attention from these corporations. As many of us in Gen Z are entering adulthood, we should be more aware of the power to influence trends that we possess. This becomes evident when one examines the rise of streaming music instead of buying physical albums and CDs. Variety Magazine’s Thania Garcia explores this more in her article “Country Music’s Historic StreamingSpikeisBeingFueledbyGenZ”.In it,shecitesMorganWallen’smeteoricsuccess with his album “One Thing at a Time”. According to Garcia, Wallen had the 5th biggest streaming week of all time when he released this album. It also sold 501,000 physical copies in its first week, the biggest album drop of the year so far. All of this could be chalked up to marketing and business savvy by Wallen’s team, and while that is important, Wallen’s audience is, by and large, thebiggestreasonforhissuccess.Ifyouhave gonetoanyofthenightclubsinLethbridge

(grantedthereareonlyaroundtwo),itisnota stretch to assume that you have heard some Morgan Wallen at one point or another. It is also not a stretch to assume that you enjoyed the music, and those around you probably enjoyed it as well. But streaming is king, and GenZisdictatingwhatandwhoispopularon streaming sites right now. We should take advantage of this and make sure to endorse artists that we enjoy and marvel at the power ofouropinions.

While country music’s streaming numbers are a feel-good story, the dominance of the genre over this year became solidified in stone with Zach Bryan. His self-titled album took the charts by storm when it was released on August 25th. Rolling Stone’s Ethan Millman breaksdownBryan’ssuccessbythenumbers, and the figures are quite astonishing. Millman statesthatinitsfirstweek,Bryan’salbumwas streamed 141 million times, catapulting Bryan to the top of the charts. This cemented 2023 astheyearofcountrymusic,andthegenreis still trending upward, so country fans should look forward to the future. Bryan’s popularity among Gen Z individuals can be attributed to his authenticity and devotion to his fans. The starpreviouslyboycottedthesiteTicketmaster due to their astronomically high ticket prices, and he felt alienated from his fanbase. This move endeared him to fans and showed corporate bigwigs what Gen Z values. Above all,ourgenerationtreasuresauthenticityasthe digital age of social media makes it difficult to distinguish fact from fiction. Artists like Bryan, Wallen, and Combs are endearing to us because they are real and relatable, and their musicseemstocomefromtheheart.Heartfelt storytelling has always been a staple of countrymusic.Thestorycanbehappyorsad; regardless,GenZhasdictatedthatmusicwith meaning is what we want to listen to, hence theresurgenceofcountrymusic.

Igrewupinafarmingcommunityinsouthwest Kansas, so country music was always playing inthebackgroundofmychildhood.Itledtome pickingupaguitaranddevelopingapassion

Written by Benjamin Wiebe

ROCK BAND MADE ME A BETTER MUSICIAN

Rock Band is one of many plastic instrument rhythm games. In the late 2000s, you couldn’t enter a Gamestop, Best Buy, Future Shop, or Walmart without seeing those cheap peripherals waiting to be sold. Over the course of five years, the giants of the genre, Guitar Hero and Rock Band, would release 25 separate games for the XBOX 360, Playstation 2 & 3, and the Nintendo Wii. Each game would be released alongside new plastic instruments, with new setlists for players to conquer. And for as fast as the genre came into existence, it would disappear even faster.

Rock Band Rivals is an expansion for the 4th main title in the series, Rock Band 4, and was released on PlayStation 4 and XBOX One in 2016. The expansion could use older instruments, so long as you had the guitar/drum dongles for either Rock Band or Guitar Hero equipment. As well, it continued to receive support from Harmonix, with DLC song packs available weekly. And in 2022, I took the plunge intoagameIlovedasakid.

IrememberLegoRockBandbeingthefirstgame

I got for the Nintendo Wii as a Christmas gift for my entire family from my grandparents. We had one guitar, one drum set, and one microphone, andforafamilyoffive,itwasn’tthefullsetupwe needed. On a trip to the States later that year, I would buy Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock to get an additional guitar. Later my family would purchaseRockBand3 andthekeyboard,sotheentirefamilycouldplay. In those early years, I was a bassist at heart. I couldn’t move my fingers fast enough to do the crazy scales of Crazy Train, and my hands were too small to press multiple buttons to make chords accurately. By comparison, the bass line became my pride and joy. The bass groove providedvisualfeedbacktellingmejusthowcool Iwas,andthesubwooferinourbasementmeant Icouldheartheimpact“I”hadonthemusic.

Over the years, I would eventually move on from the Wii to the Playstation 4, and newer, cooler gameslikeDestiny,Uncharted4,and

Spiderman would become my pastime of choice. By 2017, the Rock Band setup in the basement had become decor, slowly gaining dust in the corner of the basement. After I movedout,RockBandhadbecomelittlemore thanamemoryofatimelongpast,gamesthat existed in my childhood and disappeared into time. When I returned home for the summer, I wouldoccasionallydustoffthedrumkitandtry myhandatthehardersongs,likeFreeBirdby LynrdSkynrdorNoOneKnowsbyQueensof theStoneAge.Thesegameswererelics,andI thought there was no way I could play them away from my parent’s home…Until I found outaboutRockBandRivals.

Getting into Rock Band in 2023 is a challenge not for the faint of heart. Unlike its glory days, the gaming peripherals needed to play the game are hard to find and often far more expensive than before. Also, outside of Rock Band 4, all of these games were made for consoles two generations removed from the present-andthoughdigitalmarketplacesexist for the XBOX 360 & PS3, Rock Band and Guitar Hero were never listed on the digital stores. To play Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, one would have to hunt down an old console, a used copy of the game, the console-specific instrument, and any dongles needed for the instrument to be used. You would also need to hope there were no technical failures with every step of this process - whether it be scratched discs, hard driveproblems,orinstrumentswithcorroded electronics.Whilesomeoftheserequirements could be dodged by purchasing Rock Band 4 or Guitar Hero Live, the titles released for the PlayStation 4 and XBOX One and found on the digital marketplace, more hurdles await. Firstly,GuitarHeroLivechangedthecontroller entirelytohavesixbuttonsinsteadoffive,and itscontrolleristhefirsttobeincompatiblewith anyothergameineitherseries.Ifyouwantto play the more traditional Rock Band 4, your experiencewillvarydependingontheplatform you use. The revamped instruments released forRockBand4areevenhardertofinddueto a short production line and can’t be used for previousreleasesontheolderconsoles.

And if you had instruments for the XBOX 360, you would need a specific adapter to connect them to your XBOX One. With all of these hurdles, one would have to be insane to actuallytrytoplayRockBandin2023.

I am that maniac.

FromJuly2022toSeptembertwentieth,2023, Ihaveloggedover350hoursinRockBand4. I learned how to solder the wiring so that I could repair my broken guitar controller, and I ordered a new strumbar to replace the slowly breaking strumbar in my Blue Stratocaster Rock Band 3 Guitar. When I started, my goal was to 100% Free Bird on hard, a challenge I hadbegunathomeontheWiiversionofRock Band 3. After 50 hours of playing, I achieved this challenge…so I started the next level. I attempted the song for hours at a time, trying togetgoodenoughtoplaytheexpertdifficulty and make it through the song without failing. I slowly got better at the patterns in the song. Sectionsthatwouldhavedecimatedmeayear ago became my favourite sections to play. My fingers got faster at moving, and it became muscle memory. I had finally gotten good (enough) at Rock Band, and although I still haven’thadaperfectrunofthesong,Iknowif Ipracticejustalittlemore,Icanbeatmy91% accuracyhighscore.

The 350 hours I logged in Rock Band 4 weren’t all set to Free Bird though. The abundance of DLC, and completely new setlists, begged for me to try every song. On top of that, each week a new challenge week would begin, putting emphasis on trying out hand picked songs that went along with the gamestheme.Togetthehighestrankinthese challenge weeks would require playing new songs I’d never heard before. Some of these would become personal favourites, like Lazaretto by Jack White, I Miss the Misery by Halestorm, and Dead Black (Heart of Ice) by SoulRemnants.

My roommates often joked that the time I put into Rock Band could better be spent learning anactualguitar,insteadofitsgoofyimitation

of a guitar. But I persisted, assuming that getting an actual electric guitar would cost me thousandsofdollarsthatIdidn’thave.EvenifI could get a good electric guitar for $700, I knewthatIwouldhavetopurchasethepedals andampstogetanyuseoutofit,andthatcost was far too high for a budget student like myself.Imayhavespent$300onRockBand, but that was a fraction of what an actual instrumentwouldcost.OrsoIthought.

In February of 2023, I would get a fully functional guitar setup for a sum total of $420 Canadian dollars. It consisted of an Epiphone Special II, a ¼ inch to USB cable, free software that simulates pedals and amps, and Ubisoft’s video game, Rocksmith. Rocksmith, like Rock Band, is a video game that aims to simulate the experience of playing your favouritemusic.UnlikeRockBand,however,it utilizes an actual guitar instead of a plastic imitation of one. You plug in your guitar to the game,anditactsasyouramplifierandpedals. Ihavespentseveralhoursonthemainscreen, messing around with riffs, because at its core, Rocksmith is a tool for learning guitar. It also has a setlist of songs, as well as “true tones” that accompany each song so that your playing can sound identical to the recording you know and love. Every song has a tab that rangesindifficultyfrom0-100,sothatyoucan learn each song piece by piece and not be overwhelmed. Adding to this is the ability to repeatasectionandslowitdown,sothatyou cancommitindividualsegmentstomemory.

Various techniques are taught to the player, like bends, hammer ons, pull offs, slides and chords. Throughout the last 100 hours of learning guitar, I have been able to see first hand just how reductive Rock Bands impersonation of guitar and bass is. 5 buttons can’t compare to the 126 individual notes that guitarists have access too; bends aren’t hammer-ons, and scales are more complex than a trombone slide. I don’t play Rock Band anywherenearasmuch,becauseIknowthatI could be instead using a “real” guitar to actually learn a song. And yet, I would be remisstodismisstheplasticinstrumentgames

as a waste of time. These games certainly aren’t anywhere as sophisticated or complicatedasactuallylearninganinstrument, sure. But they laid the bedrock for my fascinationwithmusicandguitarstoblossom.

Igrewupplayingthepiano.Musichasalways been a part of my life, whether it was learning the recorder, playing in a jazz band, or taking lessons from my own Mom. The radio was always on in my house, and after I bought an iPod touch, I would have access to hundreds of songs on the iTunes store that I could purchasewithmyhardearnedmoneyfrommy jobdeliveringthenewspaperonmyblock.And as much as I was surrounded with music, it was always the same kind of music. Pop songs from the 2000’s like the Black Eyed Peas.Classicalmusicforpiano,orsongsfrom movie soundtracks I adored. In my Jr. High Band we would learn the Pirates of the Caribbean:TheCurseoftheBlackPearlsuite. TheImperialMarchandtheForcethemewere some of my first recital pieces on the piano. I was enraptured with the same kind of music, andneverfeltforcedtotrysomethingnew.

IalreadymentionedthatRockBandforcedme to step out of that mindset, and it happened between every Rock Band game. Despite these games being called “Rock Band”, rock wasn’t the only genre that these games exposed me to. Country, Pop, Electronica, Grunge, Metal, Prog Rock, and Classic Rock are just some of the genres these games touch on. There is no one “sound” to all this music; everything is a little different and mastery requires understanding the tones, styles and rhythms of each genre. Metal goes fromanantagonistic,ear-piercinggenrenotfor you to a style demanding every fibre of your being (especially if you want to try your hands as a drummer). Country transforms into a suddenly challenging genre with difficulty spikeshalfwaythroughthesong.Masteryover the song catalogue requires exposure to new music, and it “opens your mind” to what is possible. Without Rock Band, I would have neverstumbledintotheperfectdiscographyof Paramore.WithoutRockBand,Iwouldnever

have understood the appeal of Nirvana. WithoutRockBand,Iwouldn’thavelistenedto Rumours… and probably never would have boughtanelectricguitar.

ThesecondmajorimpactofRockBandstems from its gameplay: it is a rhythm game. You press buttons in time with a rhythm. And in music, you play notes according to a rhythm set before you by someone else. Every movement is dictated by someone else, and the most fun in any rhythm game is when you meet the expectation laid before you. When you see the notes coming down, and execute it perfectly. When you slide your hand up and down the fretboard so that you can hit the notesyouneedto,becauseifyoudon’tmove, youdon’tstandachance.Thisallmaybedue to my nature as a perfectionist, but nothing is assatisfyingashavingaflawlessperformance of any song. The elation that comes from nailing every last riff, the rest that comes after thepressuresubsides,isecstatic.GuitarHero and Rock Band may not be able to perfectly simulate making music, but they do simulate the emotional highs of playing something without mistakes. And in order to learn how to do that, you have to get better with rhythmwithseeing&hearingthepatternsinthesong and adjusting your own movements to match it.Thatisattheheartofallmusic-whetherits written or improvised - and Rock Band has improvedmyartistrythroughthat.

But above all else, what Rock Band really taughtmewasthatfailureisokay. Iremember practicing piano for an hour a day as I was working towards my Grade 5 Royal Conservatory of Music. I would try my hardest time and time and time again to hit all the notes in the perfect succession of each song, witheachattemptneedingperfectplaysothat I could work to memorize the song. Mistakes meant restarts, because nothing was good enough except perfection. And I did it. I made thismethodoflearningwork.IgotmyGrade5, thenmyGrade6,andlastlymyGrade7Royal Conservatory of Music. And then I dropped piano lessons and never wanted to play it again.Ineverattemptedtogothroughthe

process for a grade 8. It was tedious, unfulfilling, and I couldn’t bring myself to practice. No part of my being wanted to touch the piano, because I knew I wouldn’t be good enough unless I practiced every day for hours and hours and hours, and even then, I would hate my inability to play as well as the professionalswhorecordedthepieces.

Rock Band has a bonus for playing perfectly. And I continue to strive for those perfect, full combo playthroughs. But it doesn’t require perfection. Actually, perfection is often a deterrent to playing the game. The game moves in speed with the song, so if you make amistake,youdon’tgettorestartfromthelast phrase of the music. You have to mentally recoverandprepareforwhat'snext.Youcould choose to pause the game and restart repeatedly, but it's time consuming, and breaks the flow of the song far more than any individual mistake ever could. And slowly, I began to reset less. By the time I bought Rocksmith, a game that also moves in time with the studio recordings of the songs, I no longer thought about resetting when I made a mistake. Occasionally I would start up the riff repeatertopracticesectionsIknewIcoulddo, but I needed practice for. But often, I knew I had to accept the mistake and push through. And then I could play it again, and use what I learned to get better at the entire song, and notjustonesection.Failurebecameafriendto me as a musician, and I wouldn’t have that withoutRockBand.

Did Rock Band make me a better musician?

From a technical perspective, no, it couldn’t have. It didn’t have me learn scales or navigate a guitar neck or bend strings or experiment with different tones and pedals. But from the macro perspective - from that heart of music - I think Rock Band had a fundamentalimpactonmymusicianship.AndI thinkitcouldhavethateffectonyoutoo.

Photography by Rukshi Sundararaj

Written by Shawn Funk

Observing theSolar System: FivePlanets YouCanSee Withthe NakedEye

Ever see an unusually bright “star” in the sky and wonder why you might not have noticed it before? Well, you didn’t notice it because it wasn’t there before. Wait. So, stars just appear out of nowhere? No, those aren’t stars. They are the planets in our solar system. The word “planet” is a Greek word which translates to “wandering star,” in reference to the way planets slowly move across the stellar space-scape, sometimes appearing to move in a retrograde (backward) motion (Bennet et. al., 2014). Of the eight planets, five are easily seen with the naked eye: Mercury, Venus, Mars,Jupiter,andSaturn.

HOWTOFIND APLANET

Planetsareamongthebrightestobjectsinthe night sky. You could easily spot one with a quick scan of the sky. However, an astute enthusiast will refer to the ecliptic line to find objects in our solar system. The ecliptic is the line that our Sun appears to take when it ‘crosses’ the sky; it is also the line where you willfindthetwelveconstellationsofthezodiac patterning the stellar backspace. Nearly every objectthatorbitstheSuncanbefoundwithina few degrees above or below the ecliptic line (Dickinson, 2006). Depending on the orbital position of a given planet, it might not be visible at night. Mercury and Venus are only visible at dusk or dawn, while Mars, Jupiter, andSaturncanbeviewedthroughoutthenight at specific times of the year. Each planet has distinct visual characteristics that I will note below,makingidentificationveryeasy.

Lastly, if you know the constellations of the zodiac,youcanfindinformationonlinethatwill indicate which zodiacal constellation a given planet can be found in. This last approach is very helpful when trying to find the fainter planets, such as Neptune and Uranus, that can’tbeseenwiththenakedeye.

IDENTIFYING THEPLANETS

[1]MERCURY

Of the five, Mercury is the most elusive. BecauseMercuryissoclosetotheSun,glare renders the planet invisible for most of the year. Thus, it is a rewarding observation for any backyard astronomer. Twice a year for about two weeks, Mercury can be seen either rising from the east along the ecliptic just before sunrise or at dusk, plunging toward the horizon after the Sun. Find Mercury in the evening sky close to the horizon after the Sun sets during the last weeks of March 2024 (Dickinson, 2006). If you miss that date, you can spot Mercury again in the predawn sky rising before the Sun in the first weeks of September 2024 (Dickinson, 2006). If you are using binoculars or a small telescope, try to identify Mercury’s phase. Like the Moon, Mercury and Venus go through phases that canbeidentifiedwithhighermagnifications.

[2]VENUS

[3]MARS

[4]JUPITER

Jupiter shines with a creamy brilliance and is the brightest planet next to Venus. Through a cheap pair of old binoculars, the four largest moons of Jupiter, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, are observable, appearing as a miniaturesolarsystemwithinthesolarsystem. Discovered by Galilieo, these moons are referred to as Galilean Moons (Dickinson, 2006). Despite its distance from Earth, details oftheplanet’ssurface,stormbandsandmoon shadows, and the great red spot can be studied with a small telescope. Find Jupiter in the zodiac constellation Aries until March 2024, then wait until June where it will reappear in the zodiac constellation Taurus untiltheendof2024(Dickinson,2006).

References

[5]SATURN

While Saturn can be easily seen with the naked eye because of its brilliance, the real show occurs when you put it to some magnification, revealing its spectacular rings. Its colour is like Jupiter, yet much fainter, blending in with some of the brightest stars in the sky. Interestingly, Saturn will appear to lose its rings later this year as it does every fifteen years when Saturn’s rings align edgeon towards Earth, revealing a thin line across the center of the gas giant (Dickinson and Dyer, 2013). Find Saturn in the zodiac constellation Aquarius as it begins its march across the night sky starting in May 2024 (Dickinson,2006).

Bennett,Jeffrey,etal. The Cosmic Perspective.7thed.,Pearson,2014. Dickinson,Terence,andAlanDyer. The Backyard Astronomer’s Guide.FireflyBooks,2013. Dickinson,Terence. Nightwatch: A Practical Guide to Viewing the Universe.4thed.,Firefly Books,2006.

Powell,MartinJ. Mars Oppositions from 2012 to 2027,2020. www.nakedeyeplanets.com/mars-oppositions.htm.Accessed9Feb.2024.