Let us be clear. The idea that fossil fuels are not directly correlated to a multitude of negative environmental impacts is false and any attempt to purport this as science should be met with scepticism. The idea that a world with fossil fuels is realistic is one that we cannot afford to entertain. Fossil fuels are a limited resource, and whether or not we envision or plan for a world without them, that day will come.

However, it is important not to lose sight of who the real culprit is here. It is not fossil fuels, which are simply inanimate hydrocarbons but, rather, us. Fossil fuels are not inherently evil or damaging. It is how we, humans, extract, use, and dispose of them that is dangerous. More than anything, we need to realize that “saving the environment” really means saving ourselves. Humans are just like any other species and can only survive under a relatively narrow range of conditions.
Since it would be nearly impossible to live in such a way that would not require energy, the need for alternative energy sources becomes even more pressing. Alternative energy is used as an umbrella term that refers to any source of energy that does not have the current negative consequences of fossil fuels. There are many different types of alternative energy and while each has their flaws, they are important options that we must continue to develop.

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For the past several years, I have not given this any thought, believing, as many do, that the sun exposure I get is enough to fulfill my daily requirements. But seeds of doubt were planted within me when I left the doctor’s office with a note that had “2000 IU (International Unit) vitamin D” scrawled across it. It turns out that, according to many researchers and health practitioners, most of the population is actually vitamin D deficient. Behind this simple vitamin lays a contentious and convoluted debate that has split many scientists, doctors, and lay people into several warring factions.

The spurt of interest in vitamin D in recent years has shown vitamin D’s promise as a way to prevent or fight cardiovascular disease, prostate cancer, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and a host of other maladies. Many physicians and other health practitioners have begun to recommend vitamin D supplements to ill and healthy people alike. In light of this, the governments of Canada and the U.S. have asked the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to assess current data and update the Dietary Reference Intakes, a nutrition guide. These values are used to – among other things – determine the percentages of vitamins and nutrients that appear on the back of a bag of chips or on a box of oatmeal. After amassing over 1000 studies concerning the effects of vitamin D and calcium on health, the ad-hoc panel will be able to resolve the problem.

Many numbers are thrown around in the massive 1132 page report. The brief states that a blood level of 20 nanograms per millilitre is the “level that is needed for good bone health for practically all individuals.” In order to achieve these levels, the IOM recommended a daily vitamin D intake of 600 IU, or 800 IU for the elderly.

Since the amount of sun exposure varies greatly from person to person and individuals are discouraged from excessive sun exposure due to the risk of skin cancer, the IOM created these guidelines assuming minimal sun exposure. However, this is often not the case, and the IOM found that sun exposure is, in fact, a substantial source of vitamin D for most North Americans.

The most important take-away message from all of these numbers is that, according to the IOM, most people are not vitamin D deficient. According to the IOM, in lieu of a standardized system for determining sufficiency or deficiency, many labs could have used inflated values, thus exaggerating the number of people who are actually vitamin D deficient. Finally, to top it all off, the IOM stated that excessive levels of vitamin D are not only superfluous, they are actually harmful to bone health.

Since the report, the IOM’s methodology has come under heavy fire from all quarters. They looked at each study and ranked thembased on reliability. Any studies that involved too small a trial group were excluded as this increases the chances of random errors, which could exaggerate misleading findings. They also excluded any studies that did not pertain directly to bone health, as the results were varied, inconclusive, and could not prove causation. Studies that were randomized and placebo-controlled trials received the highest rating.

While their reasoning is sound, there are several problems with their methods. Firstly, by focusing on only large, randomized, placebo studies, the IOM reduced their sample size from over 1000 studies to roughly 70. Second, the policy of eliminating any and all smaller experiments was opposed by many of the original researchers who felt that although the studies were small, they were valid. Finally, the IOM ignored all ecological and case-controlled studies. Ecological studies use populations as a unit of analysis while case-controlled studies compare subjects that are similar, with the exception of the condition in question. Studies like these cannot always prove causation, and, in the case of ecological studies, are often subject to an ecological fallacy: it assumes that individuals of a population have the same attributes as the population itself. However, history teaches us that the importance of these “lower grade” studies cannot be ignored; it was a case-controlled study that first suggested the link between smoking tobacco and lung cancer.

In addition to criticisms against their general methods, the IOM received criticism regarding specific calculations and studies. There are disputes over the way they calculated their ideal levels, their inclusion of a non-double-blinded study, and the use of a study involving 500000 IU of vitamin D – an outrageously high number. All of these undermine the validity of not only the IOM’s findings, but the integrity of the panel and organization at large.

Many people who disagree with the IOM are turning to the Endocrine Society, which submitted a guideline just a few months after the IOM. They state that people should aim for vitamin D blood levels of 30-60 ng/mL, levels the IOM would deem harmful.
The IOM and other organizations and experts continue to remain cautious of overly high recommendations of vitamin D. While the study involving 500000 IU of vitamin D was excessively high, it did show that the chances of falling increased even at blood levels of 40 ng/mL, which can be achieved with less than 4000 IU – the IOM’s recommended upper limit. While the Endocrine Society also recommends an upper limit of 4000 IU for daily maintenance, it suggests up to 10000 IU to correct deficiency.

The history of science gives many examples of the dangers of acting based on initial observations. In the late 50’s, thalidomide was sold as a cure for morning sickness in a number of countries around the world. It was not known at the time that thalidomide causes extreme birth defects and often even death. In the United States, Frances Oldham Kelsey of the Food and Drug Administration denied Richardson-Merell’s application, demanding further studies to be done. Even though thalidomide was already being sold in over 20 countries, including Canada, Germany, and Australia Kelsey still refused to allow thalidomide to be sold in the U.S. Six years later when the drug was finally taken off the markets Kelsey received the President’s Award and was widely regarded as a hero.

Although these kinds of incidents are rare, they can leave lasting scars.  After all, a treatment performing exactly what it promised in clinical trials is hardly newsworthy. But a treatment going surprisingly and terribly awry captivates the attention of many, especially those who make the guidelines and give permission.  When Kelsey managed to save countless lives, what lasts in the minds of policy makers is the thought that a rigidly dogmatic attitude can avert disaster.

But how can one tell how much of the IOM’s claims are playing it safe and how much of it is too definitive? Are the IOM’s calls for further studies really fueled by a better-safe-than-sorry mentality, or is it a cop-out? Is there enough evidence, even without large placebo-controlled trials that require decades, to give advice to the general public? With each day that passes, new information emerges and current Dietary Reference Intakes become more and more obsolete. The studies the IOM demands could take anywhere from three years to three decades, making it extremely difficult to arrive at a decisive result. Either way, almost all parties agree that the discussion is not over. In the meantime, I am going to try to walk a fine line – that is, the line between sunlight and shade. At least that way half of my body will be right in the end.

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Of the 1.39 billion cubic kilometres of water on Earth, only 2.5 per cent of it is drinkable. Of this drinkable water, 68.9 per cent is trapped in glaciers and 30.8 per cent is in groundwater aquifers.
For years, humans and other animals have drawn their drinking water from the scant 0.3 per cent that remains in lakes and rivers. However, recent human activities have destroyed these resources through overuse and pollution. The pollution of surface water has forced us to bore into the Earth and extract ground water stored in aquifers. Fifty years ago the technology to extract ground water on a large scale did not exist. Now, however, drawing water from these subterranean reservoirs has resulted in their depletion on a massive scale.
Not only does this decrease crucial reserves of ground water – it also causes an influx of salty ocean water where there was once potable ground water. In addition, much of the water we take from aquifers is often dumped into the ocean, further decreasing the amount of potable water we have as well as contributing to rising ocean levels.
Many of these aquifers have taken thousands of years to develop, and do not replenish themselves on an ongoing basis. Even aquifers that can be replenished do so at a very slow rate. For example, the Ogallala Aquifer – which extends from Texas to South Dakota – contains mainly “fossil water” and is being depleted rapidly at a rate ten times greater than the rate at which it is replenished. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has reported that the water table in the region has dropped by over 30 metres since extraction began, and some farmers have seen their private wells dry up. The depletion of the Ogallala has a direct impacts on all eight states which rest on top of the aquifer and depend on it for their water supply. That region is also one of the largest producers of corn, soybeans, wheat, and livestock; the depletion of the Ogallala means new infrastructure for other sources of water must be built in order to avert an economic crisis.
Climate change also threatens to exacerbate the water crisis. Global warming augments patterns of precipitation and evaporation, in addition to destroying glaciers – the largest source of drinking water. All in all, the answer is yes; we are running out of water.

The scarcity of water raises important questions about how we should treat this valuable resource. If we take a moment to think about how something as inconsequential as diamonds are coveted and treated, then our almost unbridled consumption of water, which is essential to life, looks ridiculous.
We need not look far for a reminder of what can happen if we neglect to put proper water laws in place. Two years ago, a pulp and paper company called AbitibiBowater shut down its operations in Newfoundland, leaving factories and jobs behind. After the province began tapping into the river that AbitibiBowater had used at its former site, the company sued the Canadian government for $500 million in direct compensation and damages under the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The claim alleged that the governments of Newfoundland and Labrador had expropriated the company’s hydro-electric, timber, and water rights. Premier Danny Williams tried to fight this claim, arguing that the company had been allowed to use the water, but did not own it. However, on August 24, 2010 the Harper government made an announcement that it would pay AbitibiBowater $130 million to withdraw its lawsuit, unwilling to even force the case to go to a NAFTA panel.
“Is water a commodity to be put on the open market for sale like running shoes and Coca-Cola? Or is it a commons that belongs to everyone as part of our collective human heritage? Does it belong to the Earth and to other species? Does it belong to the future?” asks Maude Barlow. Barlow is National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians, chair of the board of Food and Water Watch, executive member of the International Forum on Globalization, and Councillor with World Future Council. She devotes much of her time to fighting the commodification of water.
Currently, water rights vary around the world and even within countries. Some places go even further and treat surface and ground water differently. Many places with common law heritage, like Canada and parts of the eastern United States, follow a system of riparian rights wherein water is allocated to those who own the land around it. In these places anyone who buys the land can have unlimited access to the water, draining it and other places in its vicinity.
Other places, like Finland, disconnect water from the land, allowing direct ownership of water. In Australia, water was separated from land in order to privatize and sell it. Some farmers have wound up treating water as a cash crop and began selling water rather than growing food.
Barlow advocates disconnecting water from land to preclude the possibility that a single entity can buy a piece of land and drain all the water in, under, and around it. She adds that this separated water must be treated as a common public trust to further ensure that it cannot be monopolized. Already, places like Quebec and Vermont have been moving toward this public trust model in their treatment of water, Barlow says.
It is easy to see how the privatization and commodification of water has already taken the place of a unified global treatment of water as a human right. In much of the world, water is already treated like a commodity. Some forms of water commodification are obvious – such as bottled water – while others are more subtle. According to Barlow, “One of these forms is the privatization of the utility itself. If you want drinking water or waste water treatment it’s run by a for-profit company, and those who can’t pay don’t get the service.”
Other forms of water privatization, she says, can be even less obvious but equally nefarious. “It takes the form of water trading where you convert a license to water to a private trading right or a property right that you can buy and sell. That’s very common in California and Texas. Alberta is moving toward it, and B.C. is beginning to talk about it. It also takes the form of large land grabs, where big hedge funds or wealthy countries who are worried about running out of water, and therefore production capacity. So they buy up huge plots of land and water in third world countries and just hold onto them, grow food for their people on them, or sell the water out from under them.”

However, many people are in support of water commodification, especially in a “water-rich” country such as ours. Given the United States’ growing need for water, there has been talk about bulk water exportation from Canada to the United States on both sides of the border. As Brian Milner, a senior economics writer at the Globe and Mail, has said in an interview, “Frankly the fact is if we say absolutely no to all exports it’s a pretty strange position to take in a world where water is treated like a commodity. The fact is there are shortages and there are surpluses that Canada does have. Despite what Maude would have us believe, we do have surpluses in water. We have enough water to sell at a reasonable level. We can’t sell tonnes and tonnes of the stuff, we have to keep enough to protect the watershed, but it is marketable.” He went on to say, “There’s sort of a myth that if we sell our water it’s all going to go to golf courses in Arizona. In fact, most of the water that is brought into the south-western or Midwest U.S. is used for agriculture that grows food, which we import. … So essentially if we did export water to the U.S. we’d be the beneficiary.”
Milner raises an important point. Too often we are quick to blame others for wasting water when we are no better. Though it is easy to accuse the United States of using too much water, we condone this usage with every food import we buy from them. It is equally easy to blame Alberta for destroying the environment in its production of oil and natural gas, all the while forgetting that that oil is used in cars across all over Canada.
A 2006 Statistics Canada report shows that Quebec homes and business use 35 per cent more water than the Canadian average and almost twice as much as the Albertan average. Also, while only 16.5 per cent of resident clients and 36.6 per cent of business clients are metered in Quebec, almost 90 per cent of business and residential clients are metered in Alberta. Additionally, residential water usage exceeds the combined commercial, institutional, industrial, and system loss water usage.

Much of this is a result of the myth many of us believe in, that Canada is a “water rich” country, with 20 per cent of the world’s water. However, Barlow states that “The only way that we would have twenty per cent of the world’s water is if we drained every lake and every river in Canada and then we would be a big desert.” She goes on to explain that Canada can only be said to contain about 2.5 per cent of the world’s available fresh water.
Despite this scarcity of water and our exorbitant use of it at home, bulk exportation of water to the U.S. remains a likely possibility. Water is already listed as a commodity under NAFTA. The fact that water exportation would currently be an unprofitable venture should not be a source of comfort, but rather another cause for concern. All it means is that the cost of water does not reflect its true economic value, which will invariably lead to further abuse and degradation of our water.
In many cases where there are large governmental subsidies – as in agriculture – water is completely free. Even when water is not free, it remains senselessly cheap. In Ontario the price for industrial water is $3.71 for 1 million litres. If a bottled water company buys this and sells a 500-millilitre bottle for at least $1… well you can do the math. If the price of water is increased to reflect its true value, then there will be many more people who cannot afford the basic human right of water. None of these say anything of the fact that water is necessary for all forms of life on Earth, not just humans.
It is becoming increasingly clear that our current treatment of water as a commodity must be reformed. If the current state of affairs is left as is, water will continue to be appropriated and abused in ways that will not benefit anyone, even the abusers. If the world continues to remain divided in its treatment of water rights, those who want to own water and use it beyond the limits of our planet will always be able to find willing hosts in different parts of the world.
So now the question is: where do we go from here? How do we move forward in a sustainable, just, and equitable way? Barlow gives us her three main suggestions of how we should establish water plans.
“First, protect water where it belongs. We have to leave it as much as humanly possible where nature put it, […] where it’s needed for the healthy functioning of a hydrologic cycle. […]We have to protect, respect, and rebuild water sheds. […] We’ve got to learn to live inside nature in a different way than we have been,” she says.
“Secondly, we need to declare water as a well-managed common, not a free-for-all common, and a public trust. It must be considered common property of the people who live there. It must be their local responsibility that is protected by law and higher levels of government so you can’t decide in your community to destroy the water for money.” Barlow realizes the necessity of water for commercial use and profit but states that we must set our priorities straight. Communities must come together and decide how water will be used for agriculture and by companies. She stresses the importance of ensuring that private interest groups are not allowed to own water; they should only be allowed to access it.
Finally, she says, “We need to declare it to be a human right, so that no one is denied water or sanitation because of a lack of ability to pay while others appropriate it for profit. And in my mind if we can have those three fundamental concepts in place, then we start to build water plans and water law.” She goes on to state, “We have the water; we don’t have the will yet. We still have that myth of abundance in our minds, that we can just take, take, take, take. But when that changes – and it will change – we will approach this water issue differently.”

While the AbitibiBowater case demonstrates clear cause for concern, we also do not need to look far for hope. The United Nations has recently recognized water and sanitation as a human right. Already there are many communities adopting local ordinances, laws, or constitutional changes that treat water as a fundamental human right and even protect nature. These communities are demanding more local control and reclaiming their water.
Still, many challenges remain. Where do those people who do not live in a local community with water go? How do we ensure a kind of unity amongst all these different water communities? How can we adopt local water policies in a world where the effects of globalization are so pervasive and continually expanding? “There is no easy answer to the situation of our world with a growing population and growing consumer demand as the population gets more urban,” Barlow says. “I won’t pretend have an easy answer because I don’t think there is one. But whatever answer there is, it is going to be based on coming back to more local sustainable living. We’ve got to stop the notion of unlimited growth.”

The post Coming to terms with the water crisis appeared first on The McGill Daily.

I and the ten others of team “Touchdown” step into the “airlock chamber” where the marshal explains the Code of Honour to us: there will be no vulgar language, coverage of our sensors, physical contact, and we will all play hard but fair. As the rest of the group charges into the maze, I tentatively enter this new world. The maze is a five level labyrinth of walls, mirrors, ramps, grates, and holes all shrouded in a hazy fog. Despite my excellent form –  modeled after Hollywood secret agents – I find myself playing against my own terrible sense of direction for a good portion of the game, timidly walking around deserted areas of the maze. Although I only encounter team “Flush” a few times throughout the game, each occasion ends in confusion for me. Did I get tagged? Did I tag anyone? Was that actually an active member of the other team? When the game ends I am both dismayed that the game is already over and afraid to see the results. As expected I come in last place and apologize profusely to my teammates, all the while crying silent tears on the inside.

My laser tag experience is just one of many to be had. Andres Rodriguez, general manager of Laser Quest Montreal, explained to The Daily that the game never gets boring. Even if you play multiple times in the same arena, you can play a different game each time depending on your mood.

Additionally, there are several different game types, such as the team game I played, the more prevalent solo missions, “Queen Bee” – where teams must protect a certain player, and “Captain” missions where a certain player is able to heal others. Each game gives players a unique experience. Often, groups or companies will come in wanting to relieve stress or build better team work skills and these different game types cater to each group’s purpose, said Rodriguez. In addition, Rodriguez said that school groups will sometimes come in for workshops where they are able to closely examine the technology behind the lasers, maze construction, and other technical aspects of the game.

Taking into account the general public as well as these special groups, the overall age range for laser tag is between five and eighty-five. However, for a company situated in the midst of large population of young people and students, Rodriguez estimates that 60 per cent of Laser Quest’s clientele is under the age of thirty.

As a result of being open to such a wide range of people, Laser Quest inevitably receives a certain number of intoxicated clients. Rodriquez stresses that if he or other employees believe the Code of Honour will be violated, they will ask patrons to wait or refrain from playing. Ultimately, safety and fun for everyone come first.

Laser tag is not only a recreational activity to be enjoyed by all, but is also a competitive sport for some. In fact there are professional laser tag teams that will play weekly, even competing in regional, national, and international competitions.

Unlike traditional sports, however, laser tag invites an element of fantasy and creates an unconventional experience. Choosing a new name, entering a new realm, and playing a unique game all make laser tag an immersive experience for players from start to finish. For twenty minutes, I was not Jenny Lu, McGill student, but Nouille, world class master of hiding in vacant corners.

But this element of fantasy is not always met with approval, and many accuse laser tag of encouraging violence and evoking images of war. In response, Rodriguez asks us, “What shape is your hair dryer? What shape is a drill? They are shaped like guns but they are not guns.” He goes on to say that the Code of Honour ensures that the game is kept safe for everyone, and that packs can be shut down remotely if players are endangering others. He also says that at Laser Quest they make further efforts to dissociate laser tag from war connotations through word choices. Instead of “shooting” or “killing,” the terms “tagging” and “deactivating” are used, and names that involve death, war, or other words with potentially offensive connotations are forbidden. And while the nature of guns conjures thoughts of war and violence, they are ultimately just another piece of sporting equipment. Ice skates, baseball bats, fencing foils are all potentially deadly weapons, but when viewed in the context of their respective sports are and essential parts of the game.

Personally, though I will be retiring Nouille after her abysmal performance, I will not give up on laser tag entirely. Next time, a more intimidating name will definitely ensure my rightful place at the top of the scoreboard… or at least hopefully not at the bottom.

The post Legends of laser tag appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The video game industry is comprised of people from many different fields, such as design, music, and marketing. About a third of these people come from Computer Science programs, the graduates of which are primarily male. Addressing this skewed gender distribution is the subject of a joint research project between the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Education and its Department of Computing Science. Their research involved introducing boys, who had more experience with video games, and girls, who had less, to ScriptEase, a game design program. Their findings showed that girls and boys showed equal interest in the program, despite differences in initial experience.

According to one of the paper’s researchers, Duane Szafron, a Computing Science professor at the University of Alberta, it is important to have more women in the field. He believes that a greater balance between genders is necessary in universities because, “it is important for students to be educated in an environment that is similar to the one in which they will spend their lives. … The education they experience should be in a context in which they interact with as many women as men. This idea also suggests that other kinds of diversity should be present in the university [setting] to match the diversity of the Canadian community with regards to race, religion, et cetera,” he added in an email to The Daily.

“Anytime someone is in a minority population there is a danger that they will be treated differently by the majority and feel that they don’t belong. I believe this is currently the case for women in Computing Science programs. It is too easy for them to feel that they don’t belong and so too many leave the program for the wrong reasons. In some ways, the minority is self-perpetuating,” wrote Szafron.

Judy Truong, project manager in the Technology Group at Ubisoft, a French video and computer game company with a development studio in Montreal, explains that any female engineer, not just in those in the video game industry, will face male dominated environments. However, she explained that what drew her to the industry was that “the video game industry is so up-and-coming; there’s design, marketing, and computer science aspects; there’s just a lot of possibilities.”

Szafron’s research also confirms that for many women, the lure of video games is not the enjoyment derived from playing the games, but rather the design and creation aspects of the industry. However, according to Truong, “many women don’t know about the industry unless they have been exposed to video games, which is not as common for women.” For Truong, who is an occasional gamer, video games were not something foreign nor unfamiliar. But even with this prior exposure, she was still surprised by the breadth of the industry. For many women, it seems that this lack of information deters those who would, if made aware of the different disciplines involved, be interested in the design of these games.

Szafron and Truong agree that the best way to increase the number of women in computer science is through a change in curriculum. Currently, high school Computer Science curricula are much less developed than those of other sciences, such as physics, biology and chemistry, and vary widely from school to school. Additionally, many universities do not allow Computer Science to be used for entrance credits. This means that Computer Sci-ence is an afterthought for many students in high school, resulting in misconceptions about the discipline. According to Szafron, “most students do not actually know what the discipline is about. Many high school students equate Computer Science with either using a computer to social network, find information on the internet, or write papers. They are not introduced to Computer Science as a discipline in which a wide variety of problems can be solved by applying computational methods, and in which creativity is required to build artefacts that can be used to entertain, educate and assist. The few high-school students who think about Computer Science as a problem solving discipline usually think that computers can only solve “math problems” and that the solutions do not involve any creativity.”

However, Szafron believes that these problems can be solved by implementing “a course that centres around game design, where students work in project groups to create a game. They learn Computer Science and programming concepts while they are working on it, but they have a concrete creative goal and they can discuss the artefact that they are working on throughout the term.”  A second approach, he says, would be to introduce a series of science problems based in the real world and have student solve them computationally. “For example, computationally identifying protein sequences that are involved in some metabolic pathway that is associated with a disease.” Truong agrees with these suggestions, saying that introducing more three dimensional design and Computer Science-specific courses would be beneficial for all streams of engineering.

Perhaps the day will soon come when girls in video games won’t only bring to mind those of the animated variety.

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People often talk of “saving the world,” but we must realize that we need Earth to survive, and in preserving it, we are saving ourselves too. We too are animals, another species that lives on this great planet known as Earth. Other issues that threaten our survival are dealt with at the utmost speed and fervour. Take war for example: even the longest war of 335 years does not compare to the amount of time we have spent abusing the environment we depend on for survival – without any real form of resistance to this destruction.

Environmentalism should not be optional. We do not live in an anarchical society; already, there are things we cannot do. Those who might argue that the way things are now is “natural” must remember that natural usually only means customary.  In the SSMU cafeteria, sustainability initiatives have been proposed to implement more viable practices. These include eliminating styrofoam and bottled water through cooperation with the Plate Club, buying local food, better waste management by using Big Hannah and Gorilla Composting, more vegetarian and vegan food options, et cetera. All of these require collaboration between SSMU, the vendors, different campus organizations, and the McGill administration.

However, the current state of affairs leaves something to be desired. For example, although there is talk of better waste management through composting and recycling, we have yet to see a single permanent composting receptacle on campus. There have also been no real efforts to reduce the amount of waste produced, such as through the use of biodegradable take-out containers as opposed to the plastic, styrofoam, and aluminum foil ones used throughout McGill.  The SSMU cafeteria is only one of the many places food is served at McGill. Problems there can be seen everywhere else on campus as well, but may prove to be even more difficult to tackle due to the fact that most cafeterias are controlled by Aramark Canada.

The marginalization of student input in these matters is evidenced most strongly by the Architecture Café closing last semester. Despite promises to “meet and exceed environmental and sustainability requirements,” I have yet to see any changes in the food served anywhere on campus. The choice of vegetarian and vegan options remains pitiful; there are few mentions of local food; and the enormous amount of waste produced along with a lack of waste management must make us wonder whether Aramark and McGill are really taking student cries for sustainability seriously.

But progress is a slow and gradual process, and we must all do our part by continuing to care and make our voices heard. Support environmental causes (that you believe in, of course) like Midnight Kitchen, the Plate Club, Organic Campus, Gorilla Composting, and the Flat, to name just a few. Talk to these groups and listen to their mandates. Demand more sustainable objectives from our student leaders in SSMU, AUS, SUS, et cetera, and from our world leaders in government. Do little things like turning off the lights, avoiding bottled water, recycling, and composting. But most importantly do not sit back and say: “this is enough.” It may be an uphill battle, but in the end… it certainly can’t be harder than chugging lukewarm Boréale at Bar des Arts on a Thursday.

—

Jenny Lu is a U1 Arts and Science  student and a member of the Plate Club, but the views here are her own. She can be reached at jenny.lu2@mail.mcgill.ca.

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Everything we eat goes through a series of chemical reactions and, depending on what is lacking or in excess, our body’s metabolic pathways are constantly changing. When we need energy, the first thing to be metabolized are carbohydrates, starting with simple ones, like sugar, and ending with more complex ones, like starch and fat. Carbohydrates are the main source of energy for our bodies. Simple carbohydrates are metabolized very quickly and only provide energy for a short amount of time. Complex one’s are metabolized more slowly and provide energy for much longer periods of time. This is why athletes like marathon runners, will eat a huge amount of complex carbohydrates for long lasting energy. If our bodies have insufficient amounts of carbohydrates, they will start to metabolize their own proteins, essentially eating themselves. This is what happens during starvation and, given enough time, will lead to death.

Bodies are extremely complex. Proteins, fats, glucose – all the molecules within the major metabolic pathways can all be interconverted. If too much sugar is consumed it will be converted into fat. This is why many fat-free diets do not succeed, because without the long-lasting energy fat provides, dieters eat an excess of other carbohydrates, like sugar, which are then converted into fat. Similarly, all-protein diets create an excess of protein, which also ultimately ends up as fat. Basically, what you eat is less important than how much you eat, and counting calories is the most popular way of restricting how much is eaten.

Still, losing weight is a process more complex than counting calories. Muscle is much denser than fat; so if a fat cell shrinks and the muscle cells grow the same amount, overall weight will actually increase.

For athletes who already have extremely low body fat, however, losing weight usually means losing muscle mass. Losing muscle means lowered performance, and finding the balance between weight loss and sports performance is very tricky.

“When people are restricting calories they don’t fully recover in time for their event or competition,” said Ross Andersen, professor of Kinesiology and Physical Education at McGill. “Would they be better fighting up a weight class and not having to reduce their calories? Probably.”

He also stresses the importance of psychological health. “A lot of times, athletes who are severely restricting calories will eat pure protein to pee a lot and shed weight quickly. And we know that when they do that they feel cranky, they don’t feel good. But, psychologically, part of what we want to do, especially with elite athletes, is have them coming into a competition … raring to go. But when a wrestler has had to lose five pounds in a few days they don’t feel like that.”

In addition to counting calories, wrestlers – and other athletes trying to lose weight – frequently try to lower the amount of water in their bodies. Some benign suggestions include chewing gum and spitting a lot. But many athletes do this by exercising in plastic suits, or in other environments that will cause them to sweat more. Wrestlers like Rory Ewing, U3 Mechanical Engineering, recognize the dangers of this, but concede that sometimes drastic measures are necessary. “It’s bad for you and it’s really hard on your body,” said Ewing, “But it is a way to lose those last couple of pounds.”

Both Andersen and Ewing, however, stress the importance of maintaining health throughout the year and not just before weigh-ins. “I would focus more on overall health and weight management,” said Andersen. “For athletes in the combative sports, trying to make weight classes – trying to find a weight at which they are fairly lean but can manage – will help them perform better in the long run.”

Ewing agreed, explaining how he and other athletes who are more deeply invested will maintain their weight throughout the year, so that come competition time, they can cut weight without taking drastic measures. “There is a right and wrong way to do it,” said Ewing. “Sacrifice doesn’t necessarily yield good performance. If you do it the wrong way you can give a whole bunch but not get any back.”

Both agree on the importance of being well informed. Andersen suggested working with dieticians, nutritionists, and coaches to come up with a plan.

“If I knew someone who was going to get into it I would say do your homework,” said Ewing. “It will be more effective and less damaging to your body.”

Despite health ramifications, wrestlers acknowledge that this sacrifice is part of the game. “As with any combat sport, performance does not just concern being sleep deprived, food deprived, water deprived. It’s not just that,” said Ewing. “It’s that wrestling is not a comfortable sport. Six minutes may not seem like a long time when you’re sitting on the bench but it is six minutes of the hardest effort you’ve ever put in. And it’s those last couple minutes, seconds even, that will determine whether or not you win the match.”

Although it is undeniable that cutting weight is not the healthiest thing for your body, it is an inextricable part of wrestling, as well as other sports. We must also keep in mind that those involved are not necessarily in it for the health benefits. All athletes get hurt, and almost every sport has some kind of health risk. However, athletes are there for the love of the game – and there are definitely benefits to doing something you love.

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Her three math books are all directed toward pre-teen girls. They contain little nuggets of wisdom from McKellar regarding boys, success, self-confidence, and the like. They are packaged more like fashion magazines than math textbooks, with covers featuring phrases such as “What Guys Really Think About Smart Girls” and “Boy Crazy Confessionals.”

For me, learning math started long before my pre-teen years. My father allegedly began cultivating mathematical seeds in my mind when I was still in my mother’s womb. As much as I resented this in my youth, I now appreciate the importance of understanding fundamental mathematics from a young age.

However, for many parents battling their young and angst-filled children, teaching them math might not be the easiest task. With this in mind, I think it might be useful to talk about crushes in math textbooks. Let’s face it: for many heterosexual pre-teen girls, if asked to choose between boys or math, they would probably pick the former.

Although these books talk about boys, friends, and clothes, they are still math textbooks: they contain all the standard algebra information on how to solve for x, and whatnot. The seemingly superfluous tidbits may in fact be instructive to the overall learning process – beyond their mathematical applications. Although I have never experienced gender inequality when trying to do my differential equations, many girls may be intimidated by what seems like a male-dominated world. McKellar writes in the books that learning math is not just about tricky algebra and solving for x, but can be a parallel about overcoming life’s obstacles in moving toward your own goals.

Should all textbooks take a leaf from McKellar’s book? Should our math books include encouraging life stories? Should organic chemistry textbooks put a little “Good Job!” note after every tenth problem? Should the publishers of textbooks put a little more effort into making their books a little more enjoyable rather than churning out a new edition every few years?

Although some textbooks are slightly less visually offensive than others, due to the inclusion of nicely spaced bodies of text and coloured pictures, in general I cannot say that I have met anyone who loves to read them, save for those who love the subject.

Why aren’t textbooks written with the social context – or entertainment – of the students in mind?

We view learning at the post-secondary level as a prestigious act. After all, it is “higher education.” Many of the subjects we study all have a sense of importance. They have existed for generations and it would be daunting to approach academic subjects and “vandalize” them with irrelevant information.

I believe that there is an element of elitism and exclusiveness to education. The more people who can do calculus, master kinematics, or understand mechanisms for chemical reactions, the less special it becomes. This is not to say that textbooks are purposely trying to be difficult to understand. In fact, the contrary is true: textbooks are competing to be the most easily understood. But not many textbooks will actually try to sell the subject itself. Unlike McKellar’s books – which seem to try to sell math itself to teen girls – many textbooks are aimed at those people who are probably already a part of academia.

We can’t know whether textbooks will change, and for now I must resign myself to the rather sleep-inducing ones I have. But I cannot help but wish that the author of my book would put a little box in the side column telling me about the time he had acne as a teen and the girl he loved cruelly rejected him.

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“The title of this lecture series sounds morally charged and invokes a sense of obligation as if on behalf of good citizenship, so to speak, we should trust where the sciences are going,” said Borck, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Philosophy and Language of Medicine.

Proceeding to outline the past 150 years of neuroscience’s history, Borck began with Hermann von Helmholtz, a physicist who measured the velocity of nerve impulses in the 19th century. Helmholtz created a time gap between signal and cognition, and since then new technological advances have helped fill this gap. In fact, these advances even surpass the brain. We are sorting out the brain’s unknown future while still processing what has happened.

Today, almost all of the theories we make regarding the brain are metaphors.

Wilder Penfield used an electrode in an attempt to show that the brain was like a very special tape recorder, which recorded events from a subjective internal perspective. Over time, many similar mechanical metaphors have been used, such as Charles Sherrington’s enchanted loom. But researchers of the early 20th century would not understand why we compare machines to the brain because they emphasized its intrinsic biological nature.

Then, new cellular biology discoveries, along with Darwin’s theory of evolution, contributed to the popularity of a biological model of the brain. This analogy drew from the most basic organisms, linking a jellyfish’s feelers to sensory fibres and its tentacles to neurons.

Non-visual metaphors, such as Freud’s, were also used. He invited people to try and simultaneously imagine all the buildings ever to have existed in Rome, stating that the brain could only be described with language.

A new metaphor replaced all these when electroencephalography, or EEG, was first discovered. Brain waves paved the way for the most powerful and important technological analogy of all: the computer. Both body and machine use electricity. The all-or-nothing principle of signal transmission also agreed with the computer’s binary code. But paradoxically, it was an IBM computer’s victory over chess master Garry Kasparov that made this metaphor falter. While computers were more intelligent in their ability to perform calculations, they were also clumsier than humans, in the case of robotic bodily movements. These observations all led to the fall of the computer metaphor.

Borck wonders what metaphor will be next – an iPhone, the Internet? Thankfully, the decline of the computer metaphor coincided with the rise of neuroimaging, such as magnetic resonance imaging. This powerful new tool showed both structural and functional details of specific brain activations. Models and metaphors failed at describing the brain because they focused on the differences between object and concept. These images conflated the object with its representation.

Neuroscience is highly efficient at complicating its subject matter. Every answer leads to many more questions. With so many neuroscientists around the world, the brain story is bound to get ever more complex. And in light of the historical persistence of different theories and “almost there” metaphors, maybe this new science isn’t very reliable.

But Borck believes that neuroscience research should keep going, even if it means making the problem even more complex. “If anything, it is the hanger-ons of the imminent elucidation of the mind brain which limit the future,” he said.

Who knows how people 100 years from now will scoff at our trust in coloured brain images, but even if these imaging techniques still leave the question open-ended, they allow neuroscience to keep moving forward.

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