Archive for December, 2009

Dangerously scaling buildings costs lives

Twenty Greenpeace members were arrested yesterday after staging a protest at Parliament Hill. At 7:30 a.m., 19 individuals–in hard hats and jumpsuits–scaled two buildings and unfurled banners from the rooftops.

“Harper, Ignatieff, climate inaction costs lives,” read the banners, in both English and French.

Emergency vehicles were called to the scene, and protesters were helped down one by one. They were then arrested, along with an organizer from the ground.

I could deconstruct the merits of such a demonstration, but (as Obama would say) why not look at the situation as a “teachable moment?” We all have something to say, right? Why not tell it the Greenpeace way? Here are the points I’ve extracted:

1. Make sure your method upstages your message. That’s right; loud, brash and unapologetic. That way, everyone will be talking about what you did, not what you said.
2. It’s always best to break the law. You can later use your being-led-to-police-cruiser photo as your new Facebook profile picture. I predict 10 new friend requests. At least.
3. Nothing says, “take me seriously” like matching uniforms.
4. Make sure you identify to whom your message is directed. Spell it out in 72¹² point font. Just to make sure they don’t miss it.
5. Take a holistic approach. For example, incorporate physical activity in delivering your point. That way, you subtly lament the physical decline of our nation, while broadcasting your primary message. Talk about killing two birds. <Insert inoffensive idiom>

On a more serious note, Greenpeace did effectively reveal the gross security inadequacies at Parliament Hill. Pretty good for a protest that was supposed to be about..  um.. ya, pretty good!

Government caps set limits on seats

Hoping to get into med school? Great marks, tons of unique extracurricular experience, volunteer work, and high MCAT scores aren’t necessarily enough.

I recently read an article in the Globe and Mail (I happen to know the writer) that gave an overview of the whole application process. For med school hopefuls like me, it didn’t paint a very optimistic picture for Canadians. According to the article, due to government caps on med school seats, only a fraction of the qualified applicants to Canadian med schools are actually getting in.

If you were unlucky enough to be born in Ontario, your chances of getting in are the lowest in the country. The article mentions that in 2009, there were almost 5,000 qualified applicants to the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University in Hamilton, with only 194 accepted. Given the fact that Ontario has more med school applicants than any other province, there’s a disproportionately low number of seats in the province’s med schools. In-province applicants to the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Medicine, class of 2013, had about a 33% success rate, with 295 applicants and 98 students enrolled. The success rate for Ontario applicants to the Northern Ontario School of Medicine? Only 4.3%, with 1,845 applicants and 64 seats in 2006/2007.

It’s not much better anywhere else in Ontario. Applicants to the School of Medicine at Queen’s University had an 8% in-province success rate in 2006/2007, and applicants to the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto had an 11.4% in-province success rate. As the article from the Globe and Mail points out, it’s the opposite of what you’d expect: Ontario has more med schools than any other province. But it has the lowest applicant success rate in the country, at 19%. Keep in mind, these are all excellent applicants, with high GPA’s and the qualifications each med school demands as a minimum to even apply.

It’s a little scary. For students working towards med school, the course of your future is riding on that application. But regardless of how hard you work to earn and maintain a high GPA, volunteer countless hours towards a worthy cause, and want to have a career one day in medicine, at this stage, so much is beyond your control.

Well, unless you move to Grenada. Or Manitoba.

-photo courtesy of salimfadhley

As they chanted “death to the dictator,” riot police fired tear gas

Security forces and militiamen clashed with thousands of protesters shouting “death to the dictator” outside Tehran University on Monday. National Students Day is met with baton beatings and tear gas, witnesses said.

The protests were the largest in months, as university students—a bedrock of support for the pro-reform movement—sought to energize the opposition with rallies at campuses across the country. The opposition has been reeling under a fierce crackdown since turmoil erupted over the disputed presidential election in June.

Thousands of riot police, Revolutionary Guard forces and pro-government Basij militiamen flooded the area around Tehran University since the morning, vowing to prevent any unrest from spilling out into the streets.

Banners and signs bearing slogans from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blanketed the tall campus fence, hiding whatever took place inside. Cell phone networks around the universities were shut down, and police and members of the elite Revolutionary Guard surrounded all the university entrances and were checking IDs of anyone entering to prevent opposition activists from joining the students, witnesses said.

The heavy clampdown raised fears of an escalation of violence during Monday’s clashes. “There’s anxiety that there will be violence and shooting. I shout slogans and demonstrate but try not to provoke any clash with the security,” one Tehran University student, Kouhyar Goudarzi, told The Associated Press in Beirut by telephone. “We are worried.”

Clashes erupted when thousands of protesters massed in the streets outside Tehran in support of the students. As they chanted “death to the dictator,” riot police fired tear gas and Basij militiamen charged the crowds, the witnesses said.

The plainclothes Basijis beat protesters on the head and shoulders as the crowd scattered, then regrouped on nearby street corners. Nearby, protesters and Basijis pelted each other with stones, the witnesses said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

Inside the university, thousands of students marched through the campus, many of them wearing surgical masks or scarves over their faces to protect against tear gas. Some wore green wristbands and waved green balloons, the colour of the opposition movement of Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Only 49 per cent of aboriginals complete high school in B.C., compared to 79 per cent for the rest of the population

The B.C. government is promoting a record high school completion rate of 49 per cent for aboriginal students in the Class of 2009, but a First Nations group says that’s nothing to be proud of.

Provincial statistics released Thursday show two per cent more aboriginal students finished high school last spring, compared with 47 per cent in the 2007/08 school year. The figures compared with an overall completion rate in the province of 79 per cent for the 2008/09 school year.

The statistics are well below the province’s target of a 55 per cent completion rate by 2011/12. That compares with an overall target of 82 per cent. “We are pleased with the results and the gains that aboriginal students have made,” Education Minister Moira Stilwell said in a news release.

Stilwell said the increase is due in part to so-called “aboriginal education enhancement agreements,” which integrate aboriginal culture into schools. That includes special First Nations courses. Stilwell also cited work among school boards to “empower” aboriginal students to graduate.

Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, said the province shouldn’t be happy with the results, especially given the huge gap between the overall student completion rate and aboriginals. “It really upsets me,” Philip said. “I am pleased that they are moving in the right direction but we are a long way from home.”

Of those aboriginal students who do graduate, he said some aren’t able to attend post-secondary school due to cuts to student-aid programs. Phillip said there are many obstacles for aboriginal students, all of which trace back to one issue: “crushing poverty.”

“At the community level it really makes it extremely difficult for our students to reach their full potential,” Philip said. “The vast majority of our people live far below the poverty line. Those conditions aren’t improving, they are getting worse.”

He cited a recent report showing British Columbia has had the highest child poverty rate in Canada for six years in a row and said aboriginal children make up a big portion of that group. “I don’t really believe the province has a lot to be proud of in terms of the aboriginal file,” Phillip said.

Completion rates are determined by tracking the number of students entering Grade 8 who graduate within six years. Over the last six years, the overall student completion rate was 79 per cent, except for 2006/07 when it was 80 per cent.

The completion rate for aboriginal students has swung back and forth between 47 and 48 per cent from the 2003/04 school year to 2007/08. In its service plan update released in September, the province noted the “achievement levels of aboriginal and non-aboriginal students continue to differ significantly.”

In June 2009, the province said there were 2,159 aboriginal students in the Vancouver school district, representing 3.6 per cent of the district’s total enrolment.

It also said it was investing an estimated $52.6 million a year—$1,014 per student—for aboriginal education in 2009/10, based on district-estimated enrolments. It said the money is used to support aboriginal language and culture, education and support service programs.

The Canadian Press

Your school project might earn you more than a good grade

Parker Mitchell was uninspired. An engineering student at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Mitchell had spent his last undergraduate co-op term improving door hinges for a 1998 Saturn automobile. That’s a fine task for an engineer, and yet he felt something was missing.

For his final-year project, he went looking for a more fulfilling topic—and he found it in some notes belonging to his professor’s late colleague, an engineer originally from India. The notes described the challenges of water and sanitation in India, and the statistics shocked Mitchell: one billion Indians live without access to clean water; 2.5 billion people worldwide live without adequate sanitation. So, for his project, he decided to create a household device that could provide enough clean water for a family of four and would cost less than $15. He had no idea at the time that it would eventually lead him and his classmate, George Roter, to veer from their expected career paths and found Engineers Without Borders—an organization that over the past decade has helped bring better agricultural technology to an estimated 10,000 farmers in developing countries around the world.

The fact is, plenty of real-world, practical ideas that go on to spawn successful careers often get their start in the ivory towers of academe. The classic school-project-turned-success story, narrated by business professors the world over, is FedEx—a company conceived in a Yale University economics paper. As the tale goes, FedEx founder Fred Smith received a failing grade for the project but, hoping to prove his prof wrong, went on to launch what is now one of the largest package delivery companies in the world. There’s as much fiction as fact in that story, of course—Smith has said he earned a “gentlemanly C”—but it neatly captures a dream shared by many university students: the brilliant concept (and therefore pupil) spurned by a professor but welcomed by the wide world as a success.

The FedEx route is rarely direct, of course. Mitchell, for instance, realized early on that a low-cost water filter would never solve India’s water problems. “I learned that technical solutions are only one small part of what is needed,” he says. Myriad factors in India meant that his filter would never be used for its intended purpose. But the experience changed his perspective on engineering as a profession. Could engineers put their skills to work by solving the problems facing poverty-stricken parts of the world? With that question in mind, Mitchell and Roter set off to learn about the organizational, cultural and social elements that would allow them to apply engineer-like problem-solving to the challenge of lessening world poverty. Now, Mitchell still sounds surprised that he ended up the co-CEO of a prominent NGO. “If someone had asked to put bets on people most likely in 10 years to be leading something, my name would have been in the bottom third of the list of everyone in my class,” he laughs.

Like Mitchell, Melissa Kluger had no idea where her education would take her when she started law school at the University of Toronto. After she completed an undergraduate arts degree at Queen’s University, Kluger enrolled in law in 1998 because she loved the university environment and “was looking for an excuse to stay in school.”

At U of T, she was surprised to discover that no publication existed for law students. So—as she had done at Queen’s, where she started a student creative writing magazine—she jumped at the chance to create a new student publication. “It was a time when there were a lot of opinions and emotion, and students needed a forum to talk,” she recalls. “Students were winning competitions, publishing papers, winning sports events—the kinds of things a community is built on. I felt compelled to fill this gap for our student community and our legal community.”

Could we all please just respect journalism ethics?

Maybe it’s because I just finished my final paper for Ethics of Journalism class (the BEST class I have ever taken, I might add, and an important one to boot) but I feel like lately, I’ve been seeing  an elevated number of sketchy ethical, journalism-related situations cropping up.

I was perusing my feed on my newly-acquired twitter when I spotted a story posted by CBC Ottawa.  Apparently the Kanata Kourier Standard in Ottawa (clearly a standards-setter for journalistic and grammatical excellence) has decided to stop publishing a weekly column by a local city councilor.  The column has been running for thirty years, and Councilor Mary Wilkinson is upset because, she told the CBC, “she uses the column to inform constituents and generate feedback about upcoming issues”.

OK, so maybe it was a little bit abrupt for the Kanata Kourier Standard – it hurts me every time to type in that second K – to pull the column without informing Councilor Wilkinson, but I’m more concerned about the fact that the column existed in the first place.  Journalists should, as Bob Steele, journalism ethics professor for the Poynter Institute says, “Act Independantly.” They should, “Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise your integrity or damage your credibility” he tells us.

Thanks Bob.  Now, as an important role of the media is to inform the public so they can make solid decisions and maintain a democratic society, I would suggest that such a close relationship with a politician is an association to avoid.  I see the merit in a guest column, perhaps, in the editorial section, preferably when the need arises for a response by the politician to a specific issue.  However, this relationship they’ve cultivated was a little too close for comfort.  I applaud the KKS for pulling the plug.

According to CBC, publishing weekly columns by local city councilors was practiced across the city in community papers, until the Ottawa Region Media Group decided to use the space to, you know, cover more local news. What an idea.

Councilor Wilkinson, still bitter, suggested the city could consider discontinuing advertising with the Kourier Standard.  Hey, editor: make amends with the rude councillor by replacing her advertisements with column inches on city hall.  Give the public something real to chew on – instead of letting politicians spoon feed their messages to constituents.

University no escape from high-school cliques

The process of self-discovery I long anticipated to occur in first year of university is in full-swing. The first taste of independence, incessant socializing, and unprecedented stress management required are accelerating the infinite process of self-discovery to an extent I apparently failed to appreciate. Not only is my idealism being challenged –  I’m being forced daily to explore and question the fundamental ways in which I look at the world and at myself.

The first sphere of influence my beliefs and convictions have run up against is that of College social life. In high school, it took me a long time – about 3 and half years to be precise – to stop trying to be someone I wasn’t in order to fit in with whom I perceived as “cool.” I eventually came to the intuitive understanding that it’s impossible to sustain a personality that isn’t naturally your own, so I embraced who I was, became friends with people I was genuinely interested in and who were genuinely interested in me. I ceased my fruitless and futile pursuit of popularity for it’s own sake.

Here at university, I’m finding the whole process is starting over again, albeit with a few more complicating factors thrown in. There is a clear parallel to my early high-school years in that I am drawn towards certain cliques that have been agreed by some unspoken understanding to be comprised of the most popular kids, while my most meaningful relationships already lie outside of those cliques.

Trinity is a small enough school that I see everyone I know every day, and so at meals I alternate between sitting with the “cool” kids, who I like chatting and partying with; and my much more philosophical, cerebral, “nerdy” friends where dinner is always accompanied by a discussion of the value of rationality over intuition, or whether killing babies is inherently bad (it’s not). While I don’t feel compelled to make a cut-and-dry decision as to what clique I belong in (I do, however, believe that depth is inevitably sacrificed in favor of breadth), the experiences with both groups inevitably shed light on my own personality.

On the one hand, the cool kids don’t seem to read into things very much; they are happy to remain in the realm of small-talk and get annoyed when I attempt to analyze or find meaning in what they say; a habit that I have neither managed to shake, nor particularly want to. Of course, this perception is probably flawed since I remain for the most part an outsider observing only the public behaviors of the group. Even it was an accurate perception, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with such superficial interactions, but I do think my habit of incessant over-analysis is here to stay. These guys, however, seem to have a hell of a lot of fun without seeking meaning or explanations. They seem to intuitively know what is good, what makes them happy.

On the other hand, the Philosopher Kings spend their days trying to understand what is “good” and trying to figure out if happiness is even worth pursuing as an end in itself over, say, knowledge. I actually quite enjoy thinking about these things, but this is where things get even more complicated. The one course I have really enjoyed and found genuinely challenging so far, Buddhism and Cognitive Science, seeks to explain how people find meaning. Most of the theories we have encountered suggest that this is done pre-supposing logic.

Whether you call it intuition or choose to invoke a fancy Greek word like religio, it seems that people ultimately find meaning and happiness without actually thinking about it. This makes sense when you actually try to define what is meaningful, what is good, using pure reason. It’s very hard. In the thousands of years of philosophical history, no one has managed to objectively define these concepts to the point where everyone agrees; what an individual finds meaningful or good (and which is therefore the basis for his behavior and beliefs) remains very much up to the individual to decide in some pre-logical, subjective way.

Still, the cynic in me continues to distrust that which cannot be explained logically, and so these questions remain unanswered in my mind. It’s a tug-of-war between logic and intuition, with no clear winner in sight. Juggling this existential angst while struggling through the incredibly annoying process of memorization and regurgitation known as mid-terms, I’m surprisingly glad to be going home in 2 weeks for some much-needed relaxation.

One student’s story about not getting into his dream program

Microscopes. Lab coats. Dead bodies. What’s not to love? Yes, I’m talking about the perfect pre-med program—in this case, health sciences at McMaster University.

In my last year of high school, when filling out university applications, health sciences at McMaster seemed like a perfect fit. I knew that after my undergraduate degree, I wanted to study medicine, and McMaster’s program has all the prerequisites built in. It gives students lab experience, and it’s focused on biology, my favourite subject area.

The more I read about the program, the more I wanted in. Health sciences at McMaster was my first-choice program. But I knew the odds. A minimum 90 per cent average is required for consideration, but in order to be competitive you need to be in the low 90s at the very least.

Med schools across Canada claim they’ll consider any undergraduate degree—meaning, it doesn’t matter if you have a degree in biology, anthropology, engineering or drama. It’s your GPA that really counts. Most med schools still have prerequisite courses, like organic chemistry, microbiology and physics. You can apply to med school with a music degree, but you still need to have all of those mandatory courses. The beauty of McMaster’s health sciences: after completing the program, you have all the necessary prerequisites to apply to any med school across Canada.

Oh, there’s also the fact that Mac students get to experiment with cadavers. Seriously.

A 90+ average isn’t the only thing you need to get in. There’s also the mandatory supplementary application—essays and personal questions, including a few, well, odd ones. One asks, “What’s one extracurricular activity that’s important to your sense of self and why?” There’s only one thing worse than a meandering, open-ended, self-exploration kind of question like that. And that’s question No. 2: “What is the one question that shouldn’t be asked and why?” (I knew instinctively not to write, “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Saviour?”)

Unlike with real estate, when it comes to choosing a university, location isn’t the most important criteria. Sure, it matters. But when I decided health sciences at McMaster was my first-choice program, it wasn’t because it had the most convenient location. After all, I live within 15 minutes of the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier. But health sciences at McMaster was still number one. It was meant to be.

Director of Climatic Research Unit accused of manipulating data to silence critics

The chief of a prestigious British research centre caught in a storm of controversy over claims that he and others suppressed data about climate change has stepped down pending an investigation, the University of East Anglia has announced.

The university said in a statement Tuesday that Phil Jones, whose emails were among the thousands of pieces of correspondence leaked to the Internet late last month, would relinquish his position as director of the Climatic Research Unit until the completion of an independent review.

The university’s Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research Trevor Davies said the investigation would cover data security, whether the university responded properly to Freedom of Information requests, “and any other relevant issues.” The statement said the specific terms of the review will be announced later in the week.

Jones has been accused by skeptics of man-made climate change of manipulating data to support his research. In particular, many have pointed to a leaked email in which Jones writes that he had used a “trick” to “hide the decline” in a chart detailing recent global temperatures. Jones has denied manipulating evidence and insisted his comment had been misunderstood, explaining that he’d used the word trick “as in a clever thing to do.”

Davies said there was nothing in the stolen material to suggest the peer-reviewed publications by the unit “are not of the highest-quality of scientific investigation and interpretation.”

But the correspondence from Jones and others—which appears to include discussions of how to keep critical work out of peer-reviewed journals and efforts to shield scientists’ data and methodology from outside scrutiny—have been seized upon by those who are fighting efforts to impose caps on emissions of carbon dioxide as evidence of a scientific conspiracy.

Sen. James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican and a vocal skeptic of global warming, called Tuesday for Senate hearings on the emails. In a letter to Sen. Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat who chairs the environment committee, Inhofe said the emails could have far-reaching policy implications for the United States. Both Congress and the Environmental Protection Agency are taking action to curb global warming based on a report that uses data produced by the Climatic Research Unit.

Fed’s latest choice for CIHR governing council in conflict of interest

Guess the feds were a little loopy when they made this call.

The vice-president and medical director of Pfizer Canada has been appointed to the governing council of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

It was announced Oct. 5 that Dr. Bernard Prigent was appointed to the publicly funded CIHR, which sponsors medical research across the country. The rest of the governing council is primarily made of medical practitioners, scientists and health administrators.

“He’s the VP of the largest drug company in the world, and he says he’ll keep that separate,” NDP health critic Judy Wasylycia-Leis told CBC. “How effective will that be?”

Well, you or I can’t really answer that. The decision is up for review in the House of Commons. But in the meantime, seeing as we’re already playing, “Screwing up Government Integrity,” why not throw a few more social scenarios into the mix?

Take, for example:

• The Molson family running various nationwide AA chapters
• Robert Friedland, founder and chairman of Ivanhoe Mines Ltd., joining Canada’s consultation board on the Kyoto Protocol
• Jean Lafleur assisting Ontario Auditor General Jim McCarter in his investigation of the eHealth spending scandal
• Rick Smith, CEO of Taser International, serving as RCMP watchdog

Which one would you prefer? Something to think about while trying to ignore that nagging federal disdain.