Thanks to UTTV, UofT now has their own video following the trend of “Sh*t _____ says” viral videos. Check it out below:

Now, I know it’s a little odd to be discussing other universities on a U of T blog, but the recent controversy at the University of Western Ontario has evoked some concerns and questions for me about the U of T image. For those of you who have yet to hear of the changes happening to our notorious rivals, here is an update. This week, University of Western Ontario students were informed by their president, Amit Chakma, that UWO is no more.  Instead, the university has officially changed its name to ‘Western University’. Additionally, the university has released their new ‘visual identity’, changing their symbol from the well-known purple building to a newly designed (darker purple) crest.  The school representatives claim that the name change and the new visual identity was decided upon based on student, faculty, and alumni interviews about the Western image.  It’s assumed that the changes are meant to revive the Western image and create a more marketable institution internationally.

The change has been controversial among the student body at the former UWO. Questions about the necessity of the change, the effectiveness, and financial waste have been points of concern for Western students.  It’s estimated that the new transformation has cost over  $200,000 – money better spent elsewhere, perhaps?

It is a rare occasion when an established literary playwright, such as Tony Kushner, lends his talents to a musical. The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of Angels in America fame teamed up with composer Jeanine Tesori to write Caroline, or Change in 2004: a hauntingly beautiful Broadway musical about a black maid, Caroline, working for a white Jewish family in “the only basement in Louisiana”. The show enjoyed little commercial success in its first run but has since received productions in London, New York’s Off-Broadway scene and now, finally, Toronto.

Read on »

I don’t usually like writing serious stuff, but this needs some serious attention.

You’re on the Internet right now, so you’ve probably already heard of SOPA and PIPA. That is, the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act. And you probably know that many major Internet companies/groups have been opposing this bill. Wiki blacked out for a day to draw awareness, along with Reddit and other information-sharing sites. Google, Facebook, and Mozilla are opposed too, just to name a few.

In short: This bill, if passed by the US congress, will give big companies an advantage in suing non-US companies for copyright infringement. It will most notably not allow sites to have links to pirated material or to other sites that break copyright laws. In a way, it will censor a lot of the Internet. Considering that the Internet has become THE place to share files and information and, considering today’s global community, well… not the greatest idea from the US congress.

Basically, any site that links to pirated information is a target for this new bill, regardless of whether or not the site was responsible for the pirating in the first place. This is censoring the Internet of almost anything that is copyrighted. And it almost sounds legit until you consider that many people use the Internet as a way to share files that they legitimately own. YouTube videos can be taken down… hell, YouTube itself can be taken down. Going to share a link on Facebook? It better not link to a site that links to a pirating site. Even Google will have to watch out for what it shows in its results. Does this not go completely against the idea of the Internet?

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always thought that the Internet would be humankind’s way to connect with other people. It’s a global community – a place for us to share our ideas, interests, and, yes our music, videos, and other copyrighted things. I mean, I’ve shared the Harry Potters movies in real life, so why am I not allowed to do so on the Internet? If they ban sharing of copyrighted materials on sites, then are they going to stop us from EMAILING files to each other too? What’s next? No more USBs because, clearly, we can copy and paste files and share with those as well!

As a student, I feel like this could have major effects on our lives. I mentioned the Wiki blackout – what if it got permanently banned for linking to copyrighted information? Sure, we can’t cite Wiki, but that’s always the first place I look when I start doing research because it’s a wonderful background information resource. And YouTube – there are a lot of good, educational videos that I would really like to stay there.

It’s unfortunate that, as Canadians, we can’t exactly call up a congress member and protest the bill… well, we could, but I doubt it would sway them much. But you should know that SOPA will have the ability to shut down Canadian-run sites, even if no Canadian laws were broken. Piracy certainly is a major issue, but there’s always the issue of when a law would do justice and when it would go completely against what’s fair.

The worst part is, SOPA seems unnecessary. The bill’s actually on hold now due to the Internet blackout a few days ago but, regardless of that, Megaupload’s founder was still arrested and Megaupload remains down. This is exactly the form of legal action that SOPA seeks to bring… but the US authorities managed to do this based on current copyright laws. The action was drastic, of course. Megaupload has been a big help to many of us, and few avid internet users are happy to see it go, but the point is that piracy has been thwarted without the need to censor 90% of the Internet.

But, really, growing up in the Information Age, I think we’ve all learned to appreciate the wonders of the Internet in all its file-sharing glory. And, in all honestly, I don’t think that SOPA, even if passed, would be able to stop the millions of people who use the Internet from finding a way to continue to share. It’s called the World Wide Web for a reason, and severing the threads that link things together will tear the whole thing apart.

Sites threatened by SOPA: http://www.thisblogrules.com/2012/01/top-13-endangered-websites-if-sopa-passes.html

How it could affect Canadians: http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/What+SOPA+means+Canada/6019152/story.html

Google’s Anti-SOPA Petition information: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2012/01/google-anti-sopa-petition.html

Jan. 23, 2012: UPDATE! IT’S BEEN STOPPED!

I wish I had something more to say now, but I think I got my ranting done with. Opinions and thoughts in Comments, please!

WHO: United Nations Development Program at UofT

WHAT: Their first general meeting

WHEN: Thursday, January 26, 2012 from 3-5pm

WHERE: Hart House South Dining Hall

For more information go to: http://www.facebook.com/events/212639118825261/

“Ring Around the Rosie” is not about the Black or Bubonic plague. Don’t believe me? Check it out.

Take a moment to think it over. Then, take a moment to realize just how much of your life you’ve probably spent believing this. You’ve just been Snoped.

Snopes.com is an American website run by Barbara and David Mikkelson dedicated to debunking urban legends and separating truth from public fiction. It’s one of many but undoubtedly the best, in no small part due to the thorough research done on all of the thousands of urban legends in its database. If it’s on Snopes, chances are it’s true.

Much of university life, especially towards the beginning, is rethinking and relearning what we thought we already knew. Our brains are stretched, our ideas tested, our political orientations switched around again and again. We are forced to reevaluate concepts and supposed facts we’ve taken to be self-evident our whole lives and inevitably conclude that they are false, that we were wrong. It’s scary and thrilling. Then again, that describes just about the whole UofT experience.

When, in September, I triumphantly produced a double-sided printout of the Snopes article on pop tab collecting for my family to gape at, I knew I was stirring up trouble. We’d been collecting pop tabs for years, making sure to pick them off the tops of cans before dutifully recycling the rest. We had a whole jar full of them waiting to be shipped off to that organization where they’re made into wheelchairs, or something. I’ll save you the time of reading the article and tell you that pop tabs have no special wheelchair property whatsoever. They’re just plain, old aluminum.

This moment briefly brought my family to a standstill. Years of what we thought was altruism down the drain. We recycled our collection and went on with our lives. We knew the truth and it made us miserable. The thing about debunking is that however important it may be, it’s not often desired. We don’t want to know that that cookie recipe we’ve been distributing is not sticking it to the man, or that the origin for an idiom we’ve been explaining to our friends for years has actually been false. It’s not so much a matter of enjoying self-delusion as it is aversion to uncomfortable truths; we wouldn’t prefer to be right but we don’t like that we’re not.

By the time you are an adult, you’ll probably have reached your own conclusions about the world and will have decided what you believe to be true. It will be difficult then to learn something contrary to what you already believe and, unlike when in university, you will probably react negatively to someone trying to tell you that what you believe is wrong. Now is the perfect time to explore the world of skepticism and debunking, when you’re open to new ideas and willing to accept that pop tabs probably aren’t going to get anyone a new kidney. The best place is to start is Snopes.com.