It’s that time of year again, when critics put on their horns and defenders get their panties in a bunch.

While it may only be the beginning of February, the storm is already brewing. The Varsity has already published a few articles about the UTSU, and even has a weekly column dedicated to the upcoming election just for the sole purpose of keeping us updated. Sadly, if last year’s election turnout is any indication, few people care what really happens. Why? Well, we all say U of T has no school spirit. I really hope that this year we can prove that wrong and perhaps get some dialogue going about something that actually concerns all the undergrads on campus. I’m not just saying this to sound corny and important– UTSU elections actually matter!

Before I get down to it, I want to be very clear that right now I have no particular side I’m writing for. Everything I am saying here is meant to be presented in the most critical and objective way possible. If it appears otherwise, please accept my apologies.

Today, I’m writing about the potential opposition slate, Stop The Salaries. Campaigning hasn’t started yet, but even keeping that in mind, I say “potential” because, as of right now, I really don’t see them gaining much momentum. Why? Well…

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Source: Letters from Iran (Unfortunately the video I watched that fueled this post seems to have been removed from the Al Jazeera website)

In Iran, the planned and controlled oppression of the young voice is drowning the brightest minds of a country daily.

Iran’s sons and daughters know no freedom.  But freedom knows them.

The fabric of restraint tied around the throats of a nation is slowly ripping and that indomitable force known as the human spirit, is like a dull knife becoming sharper over time; cutting and cutting through the binds of modern slavery to a new era of Arab freedom.

Our lives involve a much less violent form of oppression and control. Gone are the days of unveiled open slavery inflicted on us by others.  We now suffer collectively as western nations from forms of self-inflicted restraint.  Wars are now waged internally; man against himself.

We have become our own greatest enemies.

In the 20th century, the ocean of freedom washed over our western nations and swept away plights of racism, sexism and other basic human rights.  Upon the water’s receding, we entered a new era of freedom of expression, liberation and innovation.  Freedom reigned, whilst in the background the once powerful human spirit, which brought on our evolution to free selves, began quietening and regressing ,as we deservedly began enjoying the fruits of our toils, the spoils of our innovation.

Consequently, less thought oriented we have become.  The poison of laze runs through many of us and a new self-imposed slavery binds us to our halls of freedom where we once triumphantly marched.  Self-progression is halting, but thankfully we are noticing.

Hear today the voices again crying out:

“Repression, we are living lives of repression……”

“Our governments hold us back……”

“We don’t receive what we deserve……”

“Our dreams never realized; our struggles never cease…….”

Do you feel this very fabric tightening around your own throat?  Does difficulty plague your everyday living?

Is your answer, Yes?  If it is, I challenge you to rip the fabric.

You were born into a free world.  You were given the opportunity of a level playing field.  What will you do with these gifts and advantages?  It is time that we return to our grass roots nature, as the power to change; to obtain; to excel, exists within us all.  Pursue what you deserve!  Why are you playing small?  Why are you settling?  Make today the final day tht you live driven by acceptance.  Instead, drive your life forward with your influence.

The same powerful human spirit that broke chains and rewrote history in the 20th century exists inside of all of us.  Believe in yourself and your rights to success and to the true life you were born to live. Like the youth of Iran, step forward in defiance of all forms of oppression; internal and external.  Do not allow self-pity to slow your progress.

You were born into freedom and with more power than you know.

Rip the fabric holding YOUR OWN development back.

Surge forward and prosper.

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?

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!

“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.

Everyone’s been posting with a ‘HAPPY NEW YEAR!’ message of some sort, so I figured I’d be a sheep and follow:

Happy New Year, possible-stranger-whom-I-may-or-may-not-know!

I couldn’t figure out how to make that that font bigger, so I just made it stand out in every other possible way. Now, I would continue to wish you the most wonderful and candy-filled New Year possible but, really, other than wishing you much wonder and candy, I wouldn’t have much else to say. I suppose I also ought to wish you good luck fulfilling those New Year’s Resolutions that everyone else has been blogging about! Not that they’ll last too long.

No, no, I’m not discouraging you! Well, I admit that that was a pretty discouraging sentence… but I’m not out to get you. Rather, I think that if your resolution is something you really want to do, then you’ll have no problem doing it. An issue I have with New Year’s Resolutions is that I feel like we’re expected to make them. And being expected to make a goal is completely different from wanting to make a goal.

Say I want to get a 4.0 GPA this semester – that’s a pretty average resolution, right? Maybe not… let’s change that to a 3.8 GPA. In any case, why do I want a 3.8? Well, obviously because I’d like to do well in school. But that must mean that I had wanted a 3.8 last semester too, right? What was keeping me from getting it last semester? If nothing, then why didn’t I get it last semester?

Just to be clear, that was just an example. I would never share my GPA on the publicness of the web, where fellow Life Sci competitors lurk, snooping for peer grades.

Back on topic! I feel that if you really want something, then it doesn’t have to be a holy and legal binding New Year’s Resolution for it to happen. This whole idea of the New Year’s Resolution, I think, puts pressure on us and makes us forget the reasons we made the resolution in the first place. So, in my humble opinion, it’s not the goal that matters, but how much you genuinely want the result(s).

I have this whole idea that, if you want something, you can get it… unless it’s something crazy like dividing by zero (you don’t want to end up in an alternate universe, now do you?). A hypnotherapist once told me that the key to achieving a goal is to constantly remind yourself of how much you want the result. Do I take advice from hypnotherapists? Of course I do! They have the awesome powers of hypnosis AND education in psychology!

So remember: IMPOSSIBLE= I’M POSSIBLE

P.S. While I’m on the topic of wordplays, spell ‘stressed’ backwards. Then, get some next time you’re under stress.

Christmas has come and gone, Hanukkah will soon be over, and most gifts have been exchanged with (hopefully) minimal awkwardness. For those of you who put some thought into your presents and maybe followed my advice, gifting should have been a fun and rewarding experience. I have no sympathy for those who did not. As this segment wraps up, now is the time to reflect on the holiday gift-giving season and learn even more for next year.

Reflections

My brother got a turtle wall calendar and an anthology of H. P Lovecraft, my mother got a high-quality retro-style kitchen timer, my best friend got an irreverent guide to –isms, and my cousin got a flip calendar of 365 words to make her sound smarter. Of the gifts I gave this season these were the highlights, or at the very least the presents that were best-received. I was very aware when I gave them, having spent the past little while writing and thinking about the act of gift-giving. I paid close attention to my recipients’ reactions and what their first thoughts on their gifts were. As predicted, the newspaper wrapping did little to impress but a lot to conceal and titillate, the cards were meager but heartfelt, and the knowledge that these gifts represented a shared pleasure among me and my friends. Is my soul liberated? I don’t know. Did I feel just as warm and fuzzy as my recipients when sharing the moments with my friends and family? Absolutely.

Miscellanea (AKA Qs I Wish Were FA)

Q: Are there any gifts I should never buy?

A: Candles seem to be very popular as presents even though they’re a poor choice 99.99% of the time; they come off looking very last-minute and poorly thought-out. Scented candles may also be implying something about your recipient’s home. Seriously.

Q: I am exchanging gifts with someone for the first time this year, and I don’t know the value of what they’re going to get me. What do I do?

A: Remember that your recipient is in the same boat you are, and come up with your closest ballpark guess. Then, once you’ve opened the gift they’ve gotten you, make sure to gush about it and compliment as much as possible: if it’s more expensive than the one you’ve bought you’ll be letting the giver know you truly appreciate the extra dollar they’ve put in; if it’s less expensive than the one you’ve bought they’ll feel better knowing that you don’t feel their gift is inadequate.

Q: I notice a disturbing omission of home-made gifts in your posts. What’s up with that, you consumerist monster?

A: I haven’t bothered to write about home-made presents because there is very little I can say about them. What you make is a reflection of you and what you want to express, and I can’t really evaluate if what you’re expressing is right or not. When in doubt, a store-bought gift is the way to go, but if you’re certain of your ability to make a gift that meets rules 1 and 2 from Part 2, go for it.

Q: What are your thoughts on gift receipts?

A: Always include a gift receipt for clothing and electronics, in case they need to be returned because they don’t fit or are defective. In other cases, gift receipts make it seem as though you want or expect your recipient to exchange your gift and that you doubt the quality of the gift you’ve bought. Part of the joy of getting a present is the knowledge that is was chosen for you, but a gift receipt makes it seem as though you are choosing for yourself.

Q: What are your thoughts on gift cards?

A: Gift cards are excellent presents for people you don’t know very well. Starbucks, Tim Hortons, Cineplex, and Indigo! are almost guaranteed hits because of their popularity and/or large selections. Do not give a gift card to someone you know well for the same reason you shouldn’t give them an arbitrary present with a gift receipt: it’s lazy and impersonal.

Q: Do I get gifts for my professors or TAs?

A: Uh, no. It may seem like a nice gesture, and I hazard one in every 5 professors and TAs would genuinely appreciate it, but the rest would likely interpret a holiday present as an attempt at apple-polishing. If you feel you have a truly special relationship with your TA or professor you could give it a shot, but it’s risky. People for whom you should buy (small) presents: peer mentors, FLC leaders, advisors, academic dons, and other staff in your residence you see frequently. Good small gift ideas include small boxes of chocolate or candy from Shoppers and low-value gift cards to coffee shops.

I hope you’ve all enjoyed this series on student holiday gift-giving as much as I have enjoyed writing it. Have a merry rest of the holidays, a happy (and safe) New Year, and enjoy the rest of your winter break. You’ve earned it.