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a, Research Briefs, Science & Technology

Research Briefs—Feb. 24, 2015

by Chloe Nevitt on

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  • Giving the finger

    The notion that there exists a correlation between the length of a person’s finger and their amicability may seem strange. However, researchers from McGill University are showing exactly that—but only in men. Scientists, by comparing the length of the index second finger (2D) to the fourth finger (4D), have created a reproducible standard for predicting behaviours in people known as the 2D:4D ratio.

    “Men with smaller 2D:4D ratios were more likely to engage in behaviours such as listening attentively, smiling, compromising, expressing reassurance and complimenting the other person,” explained Professor Debbie Moskowitz, lead author of the study.

    A person’s level of amiability can be made into a single mean by evaluating their reactions throughout the day, explained professor emeritus, Dr. Simon Young, a co-author on the study.

    “[Moskowitz] had developed a pretty nice method for looking at human social behaviour in everyday life,” Simon said. “People would check off various interactions that they had engaged in throughout the day.”

    For this study, Moskowitz and her colleagues studied 155 men and women over the course of 20 days and had them complete evaluation forms. From this data, Moskowitz was able to compile two major axes: Dominant or submissive, and agreeable or quarrelsome. The participant’s overall behaviour could then be averaged into one category. The team found that these character traits were directly correlated to the 2D:4D ratio.

    “The ratio of index finger to your ring finger for the 2D:4D ratio is related to testosterone exposure in utero,” explained Simon.

    Digit ratio has been shown to be determined by the amount of testosterone that the fetus was exposed to during development. According to past studies, it is highly likely that these same hormones affect development of the brain, which could account for the differences in behavior. Men with smaller 2D:4D ratios have had higher levels of hormone exposure, and were more likely to act agreeably with women, while the men with larger 2D:4D ratios had lower hormone exposure in utero, and were also more quarrelsome.

    “It gives this neat marker of what happened when an adult’s brain was developing,” Simon said.

    Other studies have shown that correlations exist between the 2D:4D ratio and the number of children a person will have, whether a person would be monogamous or not, and a person’s risk of developing cancer. Interestingly, these effects are absent in women.

    These results come as no surprise to the researchers and add to the ever-growing list of literature that relates digit ratio with behavioural and physical traits.

    “It’s interesting from two points of view,” Young said. “First of all, what is happening in the fetal brain can program the adult in this extremely specific way. And the second thing is human social interaction. This is just one more little piece in the puzzle of the factors influencing it, which we really need to know more about.”

  • New HPV vaccine effective against nine viral strains

    Two vaccines currently exist to protect against HPV. Cervarix is a “bivalent” vaccine, meaning that it contains viral antigens against two strains of HPV. It protects against the two most common cancer-causing strains, HPV-16, and 18, whereas “quadrivalent” Gardasil protects against four strains, HPV-6, 11, 16 and 18. Unfortunately, these aren’t the only strains that can cause cancer, and optimizing viral protection is key.

    In a recent paper in the New England Journal of Medicine a new vaccine—Gardasil 9—offers protection against the original four strains, as well as HPV-31, 33, 45, 52, and 58—making it nine-valent. When conducting clinical trials, this new vaccine showed a 20 per cent increase in protection against genital cancers in women between the ages of 16 and 26.

    While Gardasil 9 is associated with an increase in side effects from using the vaccine compared to its counterparts, the cancers that the vaccine protect against are not comparably dangerous. These side effects are expected due to the fact that the new vaccine has more viral antigens. The side effects include headaches, nausea, dizziness, and fatigue.

    Despite the assumption that only women should be vaccinated for HPV, in reality, it is highly recommended that HPV vaccines be administered to men and women. Men who have sex with other men and have not been vaccinated are also at risk from HPV-related diseases. Vaccinations contribute to protecting everyone, explained Dan Apter, lead author on the study.

a, Arts & Entertainment

Album Review: The Dodos – Individ

by Anna St. Clair on

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San Francisco indie band, The Dodos leaves behind its acoustic-folk sounds of 2008’s The Visitor and 2013’s Carrier for the neurotic industrial rock of its sixth release, Individ. The band’s usual intricate drum patterns and haunting lyrics make the album worth a listen, but the musical creativity of past works is lacking. 

The album has a promising opening, with the ominous guitar feedback and frantic strumming of “Precipitation.” Once the vocals pick up, there is a shift into heavy guitar chords but mundane melodies. Much of the guitar on the rest of the album falls into a pattern of sharp, repetitive strumming, which makes for a rudimentary sound.  One track that manages to stand out musically is “Goodbye’s and Endings,” in which both the percussion and guitar are more detailed and the electronic bridges add some variety.

While the guitar riffs are at times mind-numbingly drab, the haunting lyrics on tracks like “The Tide” show The Dodos’ strength as lyricists. Lines like “We’ll keep playing/ Until there is nothing/ There’ll be no room at the bottom” seem to mesh well with the anxious music. But the vocals of frontman Meric Long have never been The Dodos’ strength, and the indistinguishable groans on Individ are again flat and mediocre.  

It’s clear that The Dodos were trying to take its sound in a new direction, and while the fast and pointed guitar and percussion, feedback noise, and gothic lyrics prevent the album from being a total snooze fest, overall the album is forgettable.

 
 
 
 
 
 

a, Martlets, Men's Varsity, Sports

The week that was for McGill Athletics: February 24th

by Zikomo Smith on

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Athletes of the week

Samuel Labrecque

Birthday boy Labrecque scored two goals in 17 seconds to propel McGill to the OUA East finals on Friday. Labrecque was the key figure in McGill’s 2-0 sweep of Queens; in the series opener, he assisted both of McGill’s goals in their 2-1 victory. Labrecque doesn’t only show up on his birthday—he has been an offensive force this entire season. He leads all OUA players in playoff goals with five in as many matchups. He also scored 13 goals in the regular season, the most of any defenceman in the CIS. He is also only five goals away from the record for most goals in a season by a McGill defenceman and three away from holding the record for the most game winners in a season by a defenceman, all as a freshman. 

Alex Kiss-Rusk

Centre Alex Kiss-Rusk continued her front court dominance this week with strong performances against the Concordia Stingers and the UQÀM Citadins. She recorded 11 boards and 13 points against the Stingers on Saturday, two days after going 100 per cent from the free throw line on her way to a team-high 15 points, six boards, and three blocks against UQÀM. Her play was a big part of the Martlets out-rebounding their opponents by a lopsided 113 to 64. With the 6’4” Psychology major in the low post, McGill should feel confident matching up against any team in the playoffs.

Beyond the box score

Martlet Hockey

McGill (16-4) came back swinging in the third period against the Ottawa Gee Gees on Friday to win 3-1 and crush the Gee Gees’ dream of ending their 43-game losing streak to the Martlets. With the win and a Carabins loss in overtime against Concordia, McGill also secured the RSEQ division title. As a result, McGill will face Ottawa for the second straight year in the best-of-three RSEQ semifinals. Alexandria Serpico scored the game-winning goal three minutes into the third period, and Melodie Daoust continued her fine form as she slotted McGill’s 7th shorthanded goal this season to put the game out of reach with 29 seconds left to play. Brittney Fouracres also contributed a goal to the winning effort. McGill demonstrated its offensive dominance in outshooting the Gee Gees 46-9. The Martlets will undoubtedly be confident going into their matchup against Ottawa. They finished the season on a five-game winning streak, in which they avenged their ignominious 0-5 loss to the Montreal Carabins by defeating them 6-3.

Martlet Basketball 

By defeating Concordia (6-9) 65-53 on Saturday, the Martlets extended their conference record to 14-1 just two days after clinching the RSEQ regular season title for the fifth year in a row. Fourteen regular season games is the most a Martlet squad has won during Coach Thorne’s tenure. 

Forwards Mariam Sylla and Alex Kiss-Rusk continued their dominant play with routine double doubles. Both pulled down 11 rebounds apiece, while Sylla dropped 20 points and Kiss-Rusk tallied 13 points. The team out-rebounded the Stingers 39-21 on the back of these performances. Starting point guard Dianna Ros moved the ball effectively with six assists. McGill also improved its shooting performance from Thursday shooting 44.3 per cent from the field while holding the Stingers to 32.2 per cent. McGill will finish the season against Laval on Thursday, Feb. 27. The team will face either Concordia or Laval in the RSEQ semifinals based on the outcome of the final week of the regular season.

 

By the numbers

5 – The number of goals the McGill Redmen scored in their OUA East semifinal sweep of Queen’s, and the number of goals that defenceman Samuel Labreque has scored in the playoffs so far.

9 – The number of personal bests recorded by the McGill University swim team at the CIS Championships at the University of Victoria this weekend.

71 – The number of rebounds the Martlet basketball squad pulled down against the UQÀM Citadins. They added 42 more against Concordia on Saturay. 

a, Opinion

PGSS interim secretary-general profiles and endorsement

by McGill Tribune Editorial Board on

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  • SATURNIN NDANDALA

    Saturnin Ndandala, PhD student in Management and Higher Education, currently serves on the PGSS Policy and Structural Advisory Committee. According to Ndandala, his primary goal if elected would be to improve transparency within the PGSS. Other goals Ndandala lists include establishing minimum funding for all post-graduate students, and organizing a pairing program between Canadian and international students.  

    “Some post-graduate students are struggling, and some departments […receive] more funding [than] other departments,” he said. “I have no funding, for example [….] So I want to make it so post-graduate students have a much more equitable experience.”

    While McGill is currently facing budget cuts from the provincial and federal governments, Ndandala stated that he felt the university could cut administrative costs to improve its financial situation. 

    “McGill can balance the budget if they can cut the administrator teams and use that money to increment the funding of post-graduate students,” Ndandala said. “We can also [group with] other universities’ post-graduate societies here in Quebec to lobby with the federal government and to the provincial government in terms of incrementing the funding of McGill.”

    “Intrinsically, McGill can cut the budget of the administrative costs,” he elaborated. “Extrinsically, we can lobby with the federal and provincial government in terms of boosting the funding of provincial universities and especially McGill.”

    Ndandala proposed to increase PGSS’s budget by establishing a funding program with private sectors.

    “We are quite restricted by our budget,” he said. “We are limited in terms of being proactive in […] issues concerning students because our funding is not quite enough.”

    Ndandala pointed to issues within PGSS, including communication and the lack of participation from members. 

    “As a [committee] member, I never received any emails about any meetings, so there is a communications problem I’m thinking to resolve,” he said. “[Another problem is] hindering most PGSS students from being interested in […]  governing [events….] If I’m elected, I’m going to reconnect with the grassroots of the society, [hold] meetings with postgraduate associations with each faculty […] trying to be closer and implementing a more participatory approach, trying also to collect their concerns and structure new programs based on that.”

    Ndandala cited his extensive previous political experience as qualifications for the position. 

    “I have been the chairman of the […] National Congress party in South Africa at the University of Cape Town,” he said. “I was also president of the student society of the University of Cape Town. In France […] I was part of the campaign team of François Hollande [….] In Canada, I was the chairman of the NDP party in University of Toronto.”

    Ndandala also explained why he believed that his experience with political parties would not bias his participation in a non-partisan organization like the PGSS. 

    “I’m a very international person, based on my travelling around,” he said. “I have skills in diplomacy and […] I’m very impartial and objective in my leadership and judgement [….I have learned] regardless of our background, ethnicity, social status, we all want fairness and transparency. It’s a kind of universal human value.”

     

  • YONY BRESLER

    Yony Bresler, a PhD student in Physics, currently serves on McGill’s Appeal Committee for Student Discipline and Grievances. He explained that his main aim, if elected, would be to aid the rest of the executives in accomplishing their portfolios in the remainder of the academic year. 

    “I really think there’s an opportunity to help this current [PGSS executive], I think many aren’t staying next year; there are many things they want to get done, but between this turmoil and the CFS stuff, it took a lot of their time,” he said. “Even though it’s short-term, I think, having talked to lots of [the PGSS executive] about it, there are lots of things they want to push forward. My vision for what I want to do—the number one is just to help them do that, which is effectively the job of the secretary-general—to help coordinate things, and to try to help them accomplish their goals and fulfill their portfolios.”

    Bresler identified increasing transparency in PGSS as a goal he wanted to work towards. 

    “There’s stuff that’s already in place, for example, releasing minutes,” he said. “Technically, it’s in our bylaws, but there’s no strict timeline on it. So specifically and broadly, we can look at that topic [and] what we can improve: Strict deadlines for minutes so they can actually be released. Also more broadly, looking at transparency, looking at places we can improve.”

    In light of McGill’s financial situation, Bresler also anticipates working toward reducing the impact that budget cuts will have on students. 

    “In the climate of [austerity], you have to try to preserve, to the best of your ability, student services […] especially mental health services, which is a big issue for post-graduate students,” he said.

    Bresler explained that his two and a half years of experience in PGSS provided him with the experience necessary to take on the position. 

    “Starting out, I had to learn my way through Council, but over time, I became an active member,” Bresler said. “Through [that], I’ve learned about PGSS, governing bodies, and such. Outside of PGSS […] I was in the Physics PGSA. I was the VP Social for two years, planned a lot of different events, and this year I was the chief returning officer of the PGSA.”

    He emphasized that his prior experience with the PGSS would help him minimize the transition period and integrate into the executive team quickly.

    “I definitely see the value of new ideas, but I think in this situation, you don’t have the month to get your bearings straight,” Bresler said. “They’re already going full speed and you’re jumping in there. So I think in this situation […] the value of me having the experience and knowledge of how all these different parts work is going to outweigh the [benefits] of a new perspective. Also, given the time, I’m not sure with the new perspective, how much time you might have to actually do any of the things by the time you figure out how things work.”

    Tribune's endorsement — Yony Bresler

    Both candidates have identified organizational transparency, communication, as well as McGill’s budget cuts as primary issues to address. Ndandala brings a diverse array of experiences in previous non-McGill leadership capacities and has the potential to bring a renewed perspective to the position. However, in a three-month mandate, it is essential that the secretary-general comes into the role with an intimate understanding of what is required at Council in order to succeed this year. Bresler’s previous experience as a councillor will aid him in this role. Furthermore, Bresler is more realistic in what he will be able to accomplish and is the Tribune’s endorsement for the PGSS interim secretary-general position. 

     

a, Martlets, Sports

McGill knock Carleton out of the RSEQ Playoffs with dominant 10-0 display

by Zikomo Smith on

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McGill Martlets
10

 

 

Carleton Ravens
0

 

Even with the team up 4-0 against the Carleton Ravens (3-15-0) at the end of the first period, McGill Martlets Head Coach Peter Smith had no interest in the score as he went to address the squad (15-4-0) before the second period.

“We don’t really look at the scoreboard,” Smith said. “What I say in the room has nothing really to do with the scoreboard. It has more to do with what we are doing on the ice.”

McGill is a process-focused team that takes nothing for granted, a key to its sustained success over the course of the past decade. As such the Martlets did not relent over the next two periods of the game, putting another six goals past Carleton. The loss eliminated Carleton from contention in this year’s playoffs.

“It’s a hard game to play when you get up by that many goals,” Smith said. “As coaches, we keep on them to stick with the plan to stick with the habits. I thought we got away from it a few times. There are certainly lots of positives […] and when you score 10 goals, that’s positive.”

Smith also highlighted the performances of star forwards Melodie Daoust and Gabrielle Davidson. Davidson is now the leading scorer in the RSEQ and sits second in the CIS. Daoust, Davidson and freshman Alexandria Serpico each contributed two goals in the rout.

The victory also marked Daoust’s first game playing for the Martlets since 2013. In the interim, she went to Sochi with the Canadian national women’s hockey team, but had to sit out most of the regular season after injuring her knee just before the season. She will undoubtedly give McGill an offensive boost in the final game of the season, as well as during the playoffs.

McGill was impressive defensively, smothering Carleton on the counter-attack and conceding only 10 shots on net all game. Serpico, along with forwards Marie-Philip Lavoie and Leslie Oles,  impressed with strong fore-checks, jamming the puck into Carleton’s portion of the rink for the majority of the game–a key component of the Martlets’ style of play.

“We work hard on that,” Smith said. “No matter who we are playing, we want to play the game down in their end and I thought generally we did a good job of that.”

Senior Kelsie Moffat controlled the tempo of the game, recording one goal and three assists. The other scorers were forwards Jordan McDonell and Olivia Sutter, who notched one each. The win also completed McGill’s regular season sweep of the Ravens.

Sophomore goalkeeper Brittany Smrke recorded her third shutout of the season, whereas Carleton pulled their starting goalie following McGill’s fourth goal. Sutter tallied McGill’s sixth shorthanded goal this year, the most by any team in the CIS this season. Smith, however, still noted some areas for improvement.

“I did not think our neutral zone was very good,” Smith said. “We turned the puck over too many times in the neutral zone in the first period, [but] I thought we got better as the game went on.”

McGill will not win every game as easily as this. They have one more regular season game left before the RSEQ playoffs, but the Martlets find themselves in good stead with Daoust back on the ice.

“I think we are on the right track,” Smith said. “We have got some healthy bodies back and we are starting to play with some really good structure [….] The team is working hard, and we’ll keep at it.”

a, News, PGSS

PGSS interim secretary-general candidates introduce platforms

by Cece Zhang on

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Constituents of the Post-Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS) heard the platforms of the two candidates running for the position of interim secretary-general in a debate on Feb. 10. PhD students Yony Bresler and Saturnin Ndandala submitted their candidacy for the position after previous Secretary-General Juan Pinto’s resignation on Jan. 20. The interim secretary-general position will serve from Feb. 24 to May 31, spanning the remainder of the 2014-2015 academic year. 

Bresler was absent from the debate, as he was away from Montreal at a conference, but prepared a letter which was read by PGSS Chief Returning Officer (CRO) Colby Briggs. 

Bresler cited his two and a half years as a PGSS Councillor and his service as Vice-President Social and CRO in the McGill Graduate Association of Physics Students as relevant experience for his candidacy. 

“This year, I also served on the university appeals committee for student discipline,” Bresler said in his letter. “This experience in PGSS and other student government has given me the initiative to assume a more substantial role at PGSS and allow me to develop the qualifications to facilitate such involvement.”

If elected, Bresler stated that his priority would be assisting the rest of the current PGSS executive team in fulfilling their portfolios. 

“My main goal will be to facilitate and assist in the activities of the current executives and officers,” Bresler said. “I believe we have a great team in place, and with the CFS [Canadian Federation of Students] referendum completed, together we can make some great headway into various portfolios.”

Bresler also added that he is aiming to increase transparency at PGSS. 

“One issue I’d like to promote is transparency, whether it be our various governing bodies or to our PGSS members,” he said. “I intend to achieve this goal by improving regulations by introducing strict timelines for existing practices—such as the release of minutes—and looking into various new methods by which to increase transparency of the PGSS.” 

Ndandala introduced himself as a first year PhD student at McGill with extensive political experience at universities he previously attended in Cape Town, Paris, and Toronto. 

“I was the president of the student society of the University of Cape Town,” Ndandala said. “When I was studying in Paris-Sorbonne [University], I participated in […] campaigning for Francois Hollande [….] When I came to Canada […] I was the chairman of the NDP party at the University of Toronto.”

Ndandala said he planned to run for the position of secretary-general for the 2015-2016 mandate as well. He proposed some of his ideas for improvement at PGSS, including increasing transparency in the organization, working on fundraising strategies for PGSS to increase its budget, and increasing communication between international and Canadian students.

“I would also like to […] resolve the problem of sexual harassment on campus,” Ndandala said. “I’m thinking to organize a plan where all new post-graduate students will have a quiz […] for learning about sexual harassment.”

Ndandala also added that he would work towards obtaining minimum funding for all PhD students at McGill. 

“Some students in different departments don’t have the same [opportunities] for funding,” Ndandala said. “My proposal is […] to challenge the leadership at the university to make a minimum [for] funding for all PhD students at the university.”

The voting period for interim secretary-general will run from Feb. 18 to Feb. 24. 

a, Arts & Entertainment, Music

Pop Rhetoric: Time for an Album-of-the-Year alternative

by Jack Neal on

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When Prince announced “Morning Phase, Beck,” as the recipient of the 57th Album of the Year award at the Grammys on Sunday, Feb. 8, the reactions ranged from stumped (the general public) to outrageously excited (Beck’s wife) to frustrated (Kanye West), to total and utter shock from Beck himself. As he awkwardly ran up the stairs to receive the show’s most prestigious award, it was difficult not to draw comparisons to Arcade Fire’s ‘surprise win’ back in 2011 when it took home the award for its 2010 album, The Suburbs, leaving many asking who this group even was. Despite the fact that these types of winners come as a shock to much of the general public, it’s time for the Grammy committee to recognize them more frequently in its evaluation of the year’s best music.    

The Grammys are hugely hypocritical and blind, celebrating the ‘best in music’—with commercial success being the key behind the word masked as ‘best.’ At least, that’s how they have become, and thus that is what we expect from them. For example, take a look at the nominees for this years’ Album of the Year: Beyonce, Sam Smith, Pharrell Williams, Ed Sheeran, and last but not least, Beck. Aside from Beck, this year’s candidates are all commercially successful artists with highly grossing albums—with Beck the clear odd-one-out in an extremely pop-driven category.

Of all the nominees, Beck’s album is, critically, the second best rated album. With a Metacritic weighted average of 81 out of 100, it is only slightly lower than Beyonce’s score of 85. Yet, it would not be a stretch to claim that none of these Albums-of-the-Year nominees actually were the best albums of the year. Critically, musically, and thematically, there were numerous other albums that bettered these. St. Vincent’s St. Vincent and FKA Twigs’ LP1 were two hugely well-received, intricate, and incredibly produced and thought-out albums.

St. Vincent, which had a whopping 89/100 on Metacritic, was nominated in the Best Alternative Album award—a category synonymous with hugely critically successful albums that nonetheless failed to garner the commercial success of their Best Album counterparts, such as Vampire Weekend’s Modern Vampires Of the City (2013) and Bon Iver’s Bon Iver, Bon Iver (2011). Interestingly—if not horribly irritating—in the past five years the albums from the Best Alternative category have all received higher Metacritic scores than any of the Album of the Year winners. Worse yet, this category isn’t even awarded at the main show, instead announced at a pre-Grammy Live Telecast hours before the Grammys even begin.

This begs the question, what really makes the Album of the Year? Looking over past winners: Beck, Daft Punk, Mumford & Sons, Adele, and Arcade Fire, it becomes apparent that the Album of the Year is more of a nod to the artist as opposed to the piece of work nominated. Daft Punk was rewarded for both a well-received and commercially successful album, in addition to its hugely popular track, “Get Lucky”; Mumford & Sons and Adele won because of their massive crossover success into mainstream territory; and Beck was rewarded this year for the same reason that Arcade Fire won in 2011: Because he makes damn good music, and he’s been doing so for some time now.

As for this years nominees, it would be ludicrous to argue that In the Lonely Hour, GIRL, and X really were the best albums that came out during the eligible period. However, the artists behind these tracks all had 100,000 or more sales in their first week, toured internationally, and drew huge crowds.

Thus, Album of the Year isn’t really ‘album of the year’: It’s an acknowledgement of all the things an artist has done within the year they released their album. Essentially, society dictates what constitutes Album-of-the-Year-worthy material. While it could be argued that the Best Alternative Album category does in fact contain the actual best albums of the year, not nearly as many people would tune in to watch the Grammys each February if they were the ones up for the ‘most prestigious award’ of the evening. But that’s just the way it is, the way the music industry is, and the way society functions. What is popular is so because we make it, and thus it becomes a perpetual feedback loop. The Grammys are just a reflection of that.

a, Features

Busking for thought

by Natalie Wong on

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Noah Margo-Dermer worked in a summer camp as a music programming director for the past two summers. After the summer of 2013, Margo-Dermer decided to take a step into the world of busking.
“After playing music so much over the summer, I missed it,” he said. “So out of the blue, I decided to go busking at the Sherbrooke metro to see what it was like and to see if I could actually make any money doing it [….] I did pretty well. [It was] definitely better than minimum wage.”
According to Margo-Dermer, he found a lot of similarities between working his summer job and busking in the metro.
“There were a lot of parallels […] in terms of engaging kids in the summer camp and trying to engage random people walking by,” he said. “[The latter] is actually a lot harder and scarier.”
Margo-Dermer credits the Montreal busking system for his willingness to busk.
“I do really love how easy it is to just go busking at one of those [lyre] signs in the metro,” he said. “I don’t think the system is disorganized. I think a better word might be ‘unconventional’ because so many other cities require buskers to get licenses. I think because [Montreal’s busking system] is so simple and intuitive, it makes it easy to keep the whole thing running and in theory makes busking accessible to anyone. Had I had to get a license, I probably would have never gone.”
Although Margo-Dermer researched the system in Montreal while he was contemplating busking, the first day he went to busk was a spontaneous decision. For Margo-Dermer, it is this spontaneity that makes it difficult to commit to it.
“[Busking] is not totally a structured thing, and that is why I don’t think I kept on doing it—because you need that drive,” he said.

a, Martlets, Men's Varsity, Sports

Getting your head in the game

by Elie Waitzer on

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In a 1987 interview with Wilt Chamberlain, Roy Firestone asked the legendary big man about the secret behind Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s unparalleled ability to score. What made him so fundamentally different than all the other freakishly athletic seven-footers who couldn’t cut it in the NBA? 

“I believe they have athletic ability, [but] they don’t use this right up here,” Chamberlain said as he leaned forward and tapped his head. “I think that basketball players today are much better athletes, but […] their thinking process as far as the game is concerned […] pshht.” 

As a sports fan, you may hear broadcasters throw around clichéd terms like ‘team chemistry’ and ‘sports IQ,’ but when it’s coming from the mouth of ‘Wilt the Stilt,’ you have to pause. Was Abdul-Jabbar’s mental makeup at the heart of his historic success? Was his 7’2”, 225-pound frame just a happy coincidence? 

When Chamberlain tapped his head, he was pointing to the athlete’s brain, the central focus of the fascinating study of sports psychology. Born as an interdisciplinary mix of kinesiology, psychology, biomechanics, and physiology in the 1920s, sports psychology is a fledgling field of study as far as the sciences go.  At McGill, Dr. Gordon Bloom directs the Sports Psychology Research Laboratory and oversees the university’s graduate program in sport and exercise psychology. After being immersed in the world of Division I sports at California State University, Fresno, he wanted to come back to Canada to conduct further research and share his insights in the field of coaching. 

“I came here in 2000,” Bloom said. “When [McGill] brought me in to teach, the sports psychology program had been stagnant for five to six years [….] So they were looking to hire somebody, and they gave me a lab and basically said it’s yours to do what you want.”

Since then, the lab has grown to accommodate its surging ranks of post-graduate students. It provides training services for McGill and Canadian athletes in the 7,000 square foot Seagram Sports Science Centre and in a satellite laboratory at the Olympic Stadium: Many of its graduates have gone on to apply their knowledge to startling degrees of success. 

“Sports psychology […] is probably the fastest growing discipline in kinesiology—we get the most applications every year,” Bloom said. “It’s new, and it’s gotten a lot of attention with the Olympics [….] In Canada, a lot of universities have it, [but] doctoral programs are a bit more unique.”

Bloom’s primary field of research is in coaching, and after settling in at the lab, he quickly began to build relationships with the top-tier Redmen and Martlet teams.

“Our two hockey coaches at the time—Peter [Smith] and Martin [Raymond]—both had backgrounds [in sports psychology], so they had me come speak to their teams,” Bloom said. “I use them for my research and try to help the teams here as much as I can, so it’s a good two-way street.”

If an athlete is going through an intense period—whether coming back from injury, anxious about something off the court, or getting nerves before big games—Bloom is an invaluable resource. The lab offers one-on-one sessions and works with coaches and teams around exam time to help balance studies and athletics. On the flip side, many of the grad students in the sports psychology program complete internships with Redmen and Martlet teams, gaining valuable applied experience. 

 

When Martlet basketball captain Françoise Charest graduated and left the team last year, she left a hole in terms of leadership. Dianna Ros, the starting point guard for the team, said she struggled with the abruptness of the change, losing her mentor and having to slide into the veteran role of all at once. 

“The leadership component has been big for me this year,” Ros said. “I have had to move up this year and fill that spot with a few other girls.”

She started seeing Bloom in May, meeting a few times a month to sort out her thoughts. Though they did discuss specifics—displaying confidence on the court, embracing a leadership role, and mentoring younger players—their conversation went beyond just basketball. 

“We talked about the whole environment,” Ros said. “What’s going on in my life, the bigger picture.”

It all sounded like a normal session with your run-of-the-mill therapist. 

“[Sports psychology] focuses on health and wellness,” Bloom said. “When we’re doing research on coaching and training, we’re trying to identify ideal […] practices that not only improve performance, but also improve quality of life.”

While much of the research that goes on at the lab involves rigorous studies on various specific topics, the overarching philosophy of sports psychology is that promoting overall wellness in life has a powerful trickle-down effect into every facet of an athlete’s performance. Nobody has grasped this knowledge and applied it better than Chantal Vallée, head coach of the Windsor Lancers women’s basketball team.

After graduating from McGill with a master’s degree in sports psychology, Vallée took over the Lancers in 2005 with the goal of transforming one of the nation’s worst basketball programs from the top down. She had never coached above the high school level, but knew she could bring something special to Windsor.  

“She interviewed the top coaches in the country […] and found out how they built their programs, and [identified] ways to be successful on the court and off the court,” Bloom said. “[Taking] this personal approach, and care about [your athletes] athletically, academically, and socially [….] That’s a common theme in our research—how do you improve the quality of life and make [your athletes] feel better through coaching practices?” 

Within five years, Vallée and the Lancers were hoisting their first CIS Championship, setting the stage for a historic run of dominance from 2010 to 2014, during which the Lancers took home four consecutive Championships. Luck and good recruiting surely played a part, but Bloom did not want to understate the importance of sports psychology in achieving sporting success. 

“The most successful […] coach in [North American] sports history is Phil Jackson,” Bloom noted while pointing to a bookshelf lined with Jackson’s best-known titles. “He’s had talent, but before he coached the Bulls and the Lakers, other [coaches] couldn’t get the players to buy into it [….] You need talent to win, but that missing ingredient is team chemistry that starts from the coach […] and goes through the team leaders.”

 

On an individual level, McGill’s lab has used this philosophy to help raise the performance of several professional and Olympic athletes. Anastasia Bucsis, an Olympic speed skater for Team Canada and a visiting student at McGill, said that her experience with the lab helped her reflect and recover before Sochi. She explained that at a certain level, it’s a mental game, and learning to put things into perspective is crucial. 

“Everyone tells you that it’s the Olympics—anything can happen,” Bucsis said. “You just have to trust your preparation and everything you’ve done up until then because ultimately, you’re going to be skating in a circle.”

Sometimes, perspective can be everything. After winning three gold medals in swimming at the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games, Valérie Grand’Maison started to grow tired of the sport to which she had dedicated her life. When she came to McGill to pursue a degree in psychology, she decided to join the Martlet swimming team to change things up. 

“I had won six medals, so I thought everybody knew me—again, cocky,” Grand’Maison said. “It was very humbling […] and it was nice being one of the gang.”

Grand’Maison got to know Bloom after taking a few courses in the sports psychology department, and soon began to see him on a semi-regular basis. Like Ros, she said that her sessions seemed to wander off course, straying from the pool and landing on broader topics. 

“I would also talk about my life, not only swimming […] to align my priorities and work on assuming them,” Grand’Maison recalled. “Making my own decisions and going along with them.” 

Though the Martlets were never particularly successful during her time on the team, the experience was invaluable for Grand’Maison. Hearing her teammates, girls who had only just met her, cheer her on at meets—win or lose—completely changed the way she viewed the sport. 

“It really helped me to have fun with it and take some pressure off,” Grand’Maison. “Losing is a silver medal at the Paralympics—it was the end of the world for me [….] But being part of a team that means something, and juggling school and my dreams beyond school–putting everything in perspective–made me enjoy the sport way more.”

 

Aside from his generational talent, Wilt Chamberlain was known for being a loner. He drove across America 20 times, always by himself, and never once married or had a girlfriend. But, as he explained to Firestone in 1987, it was all by choice. 

“I am really very content with myself—I enjoy people, I like to interact—but basically I like to reflect and I like to do that by myself,” Chamberlain said. 

His solitude came from a deep understanding of who he really was, and gave him a sense of mental fortitude that made him unstoppable on the court and remained with him many years after he retired from the NBA. For Chamberlain, and for sports psychologists, the fundamental key to athletic success lies in the knowledge that the brain has to be well for the body to perform. As Grand’Maison put it: “It’s more important to be a better person than a better athlete,” she said. “It goes together.”

a, Arts & Entertainment, Theatre

The write stuff

by Chris Lutes on

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Hemmingway once wrote, “Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.” The lives of poets Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, as portrayed in Tuesday Night Café’s production of Dear Elizabeth, put that idea into practice. With a couple of brief exceptions, the sole pair of actors in the play are never actually together, talking to each other through the letters they write through their lifelong friendship. 

Dear Elizabeth, written by Sarah Ruhl and directed by Marina Miller, tracks Bishop and Lowell’s  relationship, spanning from the late 1940s to the ’70s. Told entirely through letters cut up and pieced back together by Ruhl, the actors spend their time sharing anecdotes about their lives, critiquing each other’s poems, and name-dropping every notable writer from the 20th century. While there’s no conventional narrative in the play, the content of the letters are meant to show the progression of their relationship—from almost-strangers to almost-lovers.

Ostensibly, the play is about weighty topics such as love, creativity, mental illness, and loneliness. However, it never really offers any form of insight into these issues—we sporadically see how these things affect each character, but there’s never a sense that it’s trying to reach further than the realm of cliché. For instance, Lowell (Max Katz) and Bishop’s (Julia Borsellino) mutual alcoholism gets distilled into him drinking and dancing too much and then passing out, and her taking a swig from a bottle of rubbing alcohol and throwing up. Other than that, it seems to have no effect on either of their lives. This lack of engagement may come from the limits of the source material—the Robert and Elizabeth of the letters are probably not very close to who they actually were, but instead, the version of themselves that they tried to show to the other person.

Playing Bishop, Borsellino makes the entire production worthwhile. A talented actor can run the gamut of emotions from happy to depressed to longing to energetic to wistful, but a truly gifted performer can express them all at once. She manages to give meaningful insight into Bishop’s inner life with every sidelong glance and weary stare. Every gesture has a hidden meaning that is simultaneously obfuscated by Bishop’s uneasy personality and illuminated by Borsellino’s performance. Every mannerism is a pixel in the picture of a fully realized person. When she breaks into tears over the death of a lover, it doesn’t seemed forced or actorly, but a genuine reaction to loss. It would have been very easy to go too far in either direction with the moment, but she plays it with such a perfect and precise level of disquiet that truly elevates the material.

Unfortunately, Katz’s portrayal of Lowell falls short of his epistolarian counterpart. In a play with so few characters, the success of the production is greatly influenced by the success of any individual performance, and Katz struggles through the part at times. Part of this certainly comes from the fact that Robert never gets the chance to reveal his true self through the letters in the same way Elizabeth does, and it should be noted that the performance comes alive at the moment when Lowell reads from one of his poems. But for the rest of the performance, I couldn’t get over the impression that his performance was mainly inspired by cigarette commercials from the 1950s, both in cadence and mannerisms.

The technical aspects of the production were uniformly fantastic. The set has a great sense of symmetry to it, with each half of the stage devoted to each character, and a desk with two typewriters in the middle that blurs the barrier between the two worlds. Bishop and Lowell’s relationship spanned three decades and two continents, and this production uses a number of stagecraft tricks to bridge that gap. Projections onto the back curtain of the stage show handy intertitles of the date, a night sky, and a beach where Bishop and Lowell grew closer together throughout the course of the play. The stage lights cut in and out to represent the passage of time. Costumes change to reflect the evolution of style over the years. With all of this, it’s still fairly easy to be confused on the time or the place, but the lack of firm grounding allows the audience to focus more on the content of the characters’ communication than the context. 

Dear Elizabeth runs from Wednesday, Feb. 18 to Saturday, Feb. 21 at the TNC theatre (Morrice Hall). Tickets are $6 for students and $10 for non-students. 

 

 

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