If you’re new to U of T, then you’ve probably been hearing over and over again that you should join clubs or student groups. Still, finding something to join can be daunting. U of T has so many groups, and it’s hard enough just to wade through the list of clubs or the screaming crowd at the clubs fair, let alone find one you’re going to enjoy enough to come back week after week, as exams and essays start to pile up. To make things a little easier, we will be running a series profiling a couple different student groups every month. I’ll be kicking things off with two dance clubs: the Modern Jive Dance Club, and the UT Swing Club.

The UT Swing Club is one of the first clubs I joined at U of T. I had tried dancing before – mostly through ballroom classes – and absolutely hated it. I couldn’t look elegant, I hated that I had to bring a partner, and having a teacher constantly telling you that you’re not holding a strong frame is just not fun.

Swing was nothing like that. For one thing, there was no pressure to look good or be a brilliant dancer. Their facebook group says “no experience, coordination, or partner necessary,” and they mean it. Each week starts with a beginner Lindy Hop lesson; this is the stereotypical swing dance:

(Don’t worry, it’s not as hard as it looks). (more…)

In one episode of The West Wing, speechwriter Sam Seaborn finds himself trying to secure funding for a quantum physics experiment that has no practical applications, whatsoever. Trying to justify himself, as usual, before an unfriendly senator, Sam shouts out that the experiment matters because discovery has no roadmap, because we cannot know when something will come along that will change the world.

That’s the really frustrating thing about the humanities, even more than quantum physics – that so much of what happens in the humanities has small effects, maybe inspiring an article here, a dinner-time discussion there. If even. But every now and then, something earth-shattering comes along, some profound thought that changes the way we view ourselves, what we study, how we live, and what we do. Like the writings of Rousseau, Locke, Neitzsche, T.S. Eliot, that changed the way entire generations, entire centuries viewed themselves, or that changed, like Locke, the layout of the entire world. Celtic studies, Middle Eastern studies, and Eastern European studies are so contentious because people are still using them to define themselves. When Edward Gibbon wrote his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, his work said as much about Victorian England as about late antiquity.

And then there are those works in the humanities that will never shake the earth, but that make that which shakes the earth happen. Every discovery builds on previous thoughts. Robert Butts and Lawrence Cremin’s A History of Education in American Culture is not a groundbreaking work – it is only available in one copy in the entire U of T library system – but it informed the opinion of the court in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education supreme court case, which ended school segregation in the United States. (more…)

Taking the plunge into learning a new language can be terrifying, and the experience even more so. You’ve heard all the promos on how many doors it opens, but when you’re wading through yet another translation that just makes absolutely no sense, it can be really tempting to just conclude that languages are just not your thing. Maybe you’re just not cut out for it, right?

Not so! I’m on my third non-native language right now, and believe me, I’ve been through all of the painful “bloody hell how does anyone remember this” moments, the “why the f*** do you need subjunctive” moments, the “why does every *&$^% word start with q” moments, and everything in between. The thing is, it really does get better. I promise. If you’re brave enough to keep going with languages, or not sure if you are, here are some tips to help you on your way: (more…)

It sounds like the perfect advertising campaign: tell people you’ve built the new generation of [insert product name here], and make them wait for an invite to use it. In theory, it’s the perfect way to build up hype. This must be what was going through Google’s marketing people’s heads when they chose this as the strategy for marketing Google Wave.

So what’s Wave? Well, that’s part of the problem.

Wave is Google’s new product. From my experiences with it, I would say it’s part email, part messenger, and huge chunk wiki. As their horribly-named video host, Dr. Wave, explains, instead of sending copies of the same message around (like we do with email), there is only one copy of the message, which anyone can access, modify, and comment on. Like wiki in email form. It’s a brilliant concept. (more…)

There has been a lot of fearmongering going around about the evils of social media, especially Facebook and Twitter. I recently had a conversation with a friend where she brought up pretty much all of the usual objections, and we came up with some interesting conclusions as to why social media is… not evil.

Objection #1: Social media cheapens social interaction.

No, no it doesn’t. I’ve heard this one a lot, and it always makes my blood boil. Just because I tweet back and forth with someone I haven’t seen since high school does NOT mean that I put him on the same level as my best friend. Just because I like having people write on my wall does NOT mean that I am deluded into thinking that cyber-companionship is a substitute for the real deal.

Social interaction is just that, social. Letter-writing in 19th-century England did not help make upper-class society any less fake, and its absense today will not make ours any more fake. Social media helps us reconnect with people we haven’t seen in a long time, or find out more about people we know only casually, but there is no limit to how many people we can know or be in contact with at a given time; finding out more about one person does not magically cheapen our relationship with another.

Objection #2: Social media cheapens the value of communication.

Anyone who says this clearly hasn’t read Jane Austen. Writing a ten page letter does not make everything you write meaningful. This way, at least the nonesense people write is limited to 140 characters. Plus, it means that we don’t have to wait until we have 10-pages worth of information to share with our friends. We can give them real-time updates about the things we think are important, and they can respond, in real time. Social media also means that we can connect information in unheard-of ways. Instead of telling you that my friend’s sister’s husband’s daughter’s teacher thought Aroma was a good coffee shop, I can just link you to Lori’s review.

And, just like with relationships, updating Twitter won’t stop you from writing that Nobel-prize winning novel. (more…)

[Written in collaboration with BlogUT blogger Jasmine]

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you have probably noticed the ads for the Shaw Festival’s 2009 centerpiece, Garson Kanin’s “Born Yesterday”. It’s pretty hard not to, considering they’ve been plastered over every available surface for a few months now. We found out why this was necessary when the curtain rose on the play’s amazingly  elaborate set, complete with staircase and crystal chandelier. This set was by far the most – maybe the only – impressive thing about this production. The rest was, to put it lightly, awful.

That the message could have been more subtle would be a polite way to put it. The “message,” as it were, was more like a sledgehammer to the face. TRUTH! JUSTICE! FREEDOM! OF THE PEOPLE BY THE PEOPLE FOR THE PEOPLE! …All well and good, but honestly (and we shall be honest; it is, after all, a virtue greatly espoused by the play), it would also have been nice for the script not to assume that its audience  was stupid enough to warrant the oft-placed spiels about democratic values and the power of the people (oh, and by the way, equating the audience with the “ditz” of the play in its several kindergarten explanations of the origins of democracy is just rude).  The characters were stereotyped and completely one-dimensional, and what little humour there was was forced and, more often than not, came across as a cheap, last-minute afterthought.  Overall, it felt more like being forced to sit through a sermon detailing the playwright’s personal political manifesto, than the highly-touted play that was, according to the buzz, a “brilliant comedy”. (more…)

My second installment of Wandering Toronto will focus on Queen West. This is definitely one of Toronto’s trendiest streets, and can provide hours of entertainment whether you like… well… entertainment, shopping, food, or pretty much anything else. It may be better known than The Distillery, but it certainly has its share of hidden treasures.

If there is one word to describe such a diverse street, it would be quirky: Goth Loli dresses, designer prints, and novely goods rule. Then again, ‘diverse’ works quite well too. Jazz bars share this street with Much Music, lavishly decorated restaurants with little student cafes, Lemor, H&M and Mendocino with small-name designers and the aforementioned goth and punk clothing stores. Tying all of this together are a few motifs that you wouldn’t find anywhere else, like cupcakes or little clip-on hats, feathers, and veils. (more…)