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a, Student Life

Butternut squash puff pastry tart

by Alessandra Hechanova, on

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Makes 12 slices

Ingredients

1 sheet frozen puff pastry

Egg wash (1 egg and 1 tsp water)

1 butternut squash (medium)

1tbsp olive oil

¼ cup honey

Dash of chili flakes

2 tbsp water

10-12 sage leaves

Dash of salt

 

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 375oF and line baking sheet with parchment paper

2. Roll out sheet of thawed frozen puff pastry and transfer to baking sheet

3. Prepare egg wash and lightly brush over pastry

4. Slice squash into 1cm rounds and arrange over pastry

5. Bake for approximately 10 minutes

6. Brush squash with olive oil and sprinkle with salt

7. Continue to bake for 25-30 minutes or until a golden brown

8. Boil honey, chili flakes, and water in saucepan until thickened

9. Drizzle honey mixture onto pastry

10. Fry sage leaves in a oil until crispy

11. Cut into squares.

 

 

a, Sports

10 things you didn’t know about hockey

by Anthony Snell on

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1. This year marks a new era in the NHL. As part of the league’s conference realignment, the Winnipeg Jets are back in the Western Conference after a 17-year absence, and the Detroit Red Wings moved to the Eastern Conference after a 20-year stint in the West.

2. There are also new rules in the NHL introducing hybrid icing and restricting the size of goalie pads. These are designed to increase scoring and player safety. In addition, players are now being penalized for taking off their helmets when fighting, as concerns about brain injuries have increased. Last year’s most penalized team, the Toronto Maple Leafs, as well as the perennially tough Philadelphia Flyers will have to adjust to the new rules if they want to succeed.

3. The average NHL player travels at over 20 mph in most game situations. The fastest players often top-out above 30 mph on a daily basis. To give some perspective, Usain Bolt has never sprinted above 27.79 mph. But if you think that’s fast, just wait till you hear how fast the …

4. … World Record for hardest slap shot is. The rocket shot clocked in at an astounding 114.13 mph and occurred at the 2012 KHL All Star Game Skills competition in Latvia. The hardest shot ever recorded in the NHL came off Boston Bruin Zdeno Chara’s 108.8 mph shot. He also happens to be the tallest NHLer, standing 6 feet and 9 inches tall …

5. … In contrast, current Caroline Hurricanes left winger Nathan Gerbe holds the honour of shortest active player in the NHL. The Michigan native stands at 5’5”, which hasn’t held him back from scrapping with the local giant, Chara, himself. Gerbe also holds the distinction of having scored two goals in five seconds against the New York Islanders, proving that size doesn’t matter

6. Since 2008, the NHL has held outdoor games every season. Teams have faced off at Fenway Park (Boston), Ralph Wilson Stadium (Buffalo), Wrigley Field (Chicago), Heinz Field (Pittsburgh), and Citizens Bank Park (Philadelphia). These Winter Classic games routinely draw crowds of upwards of 40,000 fans willing to brave the elements to enjoy their favourite sport in its purest form. But that doesn’t compare to the crowd that showed up for…

7. … The Big Chill at the Big House. On Dec. 11th 2010, Michigan took on rival Michigan State in the NCAA in what is considered the largest attended hockey game in history. Over 110,000 fans were at the game and saw current New York Rangers winger Carl Hagelin score two powerplay goals to lead Michigan to a convincing 5-0 victory over the Spartans.

8. In June, the Stanley Cup will be handed out for the 86th time in the NHL era. 2004-2005 was the only season Lord Stanley was not awarded, as the season was cancelled due to the player lockout. Weighing in at 35 pounds, the Stanley Cup is one of the heaviest and most recognizable trophies in all of sports and was once hoisted by…

9.  McGill alumnus Mike Babcock in 2008 when he coached the Detroit Red Wings all the way to the Stanley Cup. Babcock was not the first former Redmen to win the Cup, as Lester Patrick guided the New York Rangers to glory in 1933. In 2010, Babcock won gold with Team Canada in Vancouver, finally bringing Olympic hockey gold back to Canada. In high-pressure games, Babcock is often seen sporting his lucky McGill tie behind the bench.

10. Canadians make up 52.6 per cent of all players in the NHL, which includes about 363 players on current NHL active rosters.Twenty-eight out of the 58 rookies in the league this year are Canadian. Roughly 600,000 males register with Hockey Canada every year. Taking age into consideration, a young Canadian male’s chances of playing at least one NHL game are one in 4,100.

 

a, Creative

Thanksgiving in Quebec City

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a, Arts & Entertainment, Music

Preaching from the choir: The Zolas explore their musical evolution

by Sara Marjanovic on

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When I called to interview Zachary Gray of The Zolas, he was in a line deciding on a pastry to buy in Toronto. Since September, after stops in Toronto and Hamburg, Germany, they’ve been on a Canada-wide tour. Now, Zolas is embarking on a 30-day tour with Ottawa’s Hollerado and Toronto’s Pup, reaching Montreal on Oct. 18th. Gray and his band mate, Tom Dobrzanski, first met in the British Columbia Boys’ Choir before forming Lotus Child and, eventually, The Zolas together.

“Our chemistry has always been a pretty classic duo where one person is a very detailed thinker and one person is a big picture thinker and that’s sort of how we are. Tom has a mind-boggling detailed mind,” Gray explained. To elaborate on this idea, he felt it was necessary to identify Tom’s spirit animal as a dog.

As for himself: “I’m not a detailed person—although I’m working on that. I’m more of someone who just knows how they want something to feel. So together that’s how we approach things. I would write the big brushstrokes, and he would fill the details. But that’s always changing. [.…] Now it’s a lot more of an orgy of a bunch of talented people.”

Based in Vancouver, BC, The Zolas’ music is best characterized as indie piano-pop. Last year, they released their second album, Ancient Mars, after their debut album, Tic Toc Tic, achieved praise in 2009.

“We had been listening to a lot of The Kinks, and they have a very organic sound. It sounds just like a band in a room kicking the s*** out of their songs. And that’s what we wanted for Tic Toc Tic [.…] For the second album, we wanted the opposite of that. We wanted to create a false atmosphere—aesthetics that wouldn’t normally exist that sound very interesting in your headphones, but nothing that you can produce right away with a four-piece band. We’ve been listening to a lot more produced music like Gorillaz and Beck and Spoon, and we wanted to sound like that.”

Gray has a personal attachment to the Montreal stop on his tour: his mother grew up in the city, and “Local Swan” is written from the perspective of his brother, a Concordia fine arts graduate and roommate of singer-songwriter Sean Nicholas Savage.

“We’re going to be really happy to be there—especially in Montreal [.…] Canada is a very charming country, but in a lot of ways, there are only three proper cities, and Montreal is sort of the biggest jewel in that crown, so playing in Montreal is always a fun thing and an honour.”

As excited as they are to perform in Montreal, they are equally excited about spending time in the van. Normally, the band spends their tour downtime watching cover videos of their songs, but this time, they plan to develop new skills. Gray will spend the month studying to speak Spanish fluently, while bass player James Younger is planning to make electronic beats with a digital audio workstation.

Gray offered some advice to aspiring musicians: “be the best at what you’re doing. Don’t think about the industry [.…] Don’t think about the business—just think about being the best at what you’re doing.”

He appears to be taking his own words to heart.

“We’ve always had high-minded ideas of what we’re going to do and never followed through, but this time, we’re following through. Mark my words, McGill Tribune.” Words marked.

This Friday, extend a “hola” to Zach, witness Tom’s inner Husky, and be entwined in the Zola’s out-of-this-world musical atmosphere.

The Zolas can be seen on Oct. 18th at the Cabaret du Mile End. Tickets are $29.

a, Science & Technology

Ask Scitech

by Jitika Shah on

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Perhaps the easiest lie to detect is when someone says they have never lied. From social fibs, in which a person lies in order to protect someone else’s feelings or to benefit others, to self-enhancement fibs, in which a person lies to save face or avoid consequences. In a nutshell, lying plays a major role in our interactions in society.

So how did this innate ability to lie develop? Did it evolve from a survival instinct thousands of years ago, or is being dishonest more of a present-day manifestation to ensure personal gain?

While we may never discover the primal origins of the need to fabricate, we can understand how and why children develop the ability to lie. This knowledge can help us understand, to some extent, why we lie as adults.

Canada Research Chair in Developmental Psychology and Law Victoria Talwar examines children’s social-cognitive behaviour at McGill’s Talwar Research Team. According to Talwar, “the occurrence of lying in children is considered a normal cognitive development.”

Talwar explains that while lying is a positive sign of burgeoning intelligence and imagination in children, in adults, this childhood; discovery of fibbing can manifest itself in a manipulative manner because we are much more aware of either the personal gain or the avoidance of negative consequences that lying provides. Since lies themselves depend on context, place, and person, children do not really start to lie until pre-school age. Before reaching this stage, the reasons for lying are more to do with wish fulfilment then actual deception.

However, the motivations behind adult lies are less rooted on cognitive development. Based on a study conducted by Dan Ariely, professor of psychology and behavioural economicas at Duke University and described in his book The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty, the science behind an adult’s decision to lie is far more profound and complicated then was thought.

Ariely conducted a series of experiments to examine the motives behind the desire to lie. He provided participants with math questions and directed them to solve as many as they could within a five-minute time frame. At the end of the five minutes, the group members received a monetary reward for each correct answer. The average number of questions answered was four in this particular group of people.

The experiment was altered with a different group of participants. Members were permitted to destroy their answers after they had completed the math problems, and were instead asked to simply state how many questions they had solved. As a result, members had the opportunity to lie, as there was no evidence to verify the truth in their responses. Within these altered conditions, the average number of questions correctly answered increased to seven.

Then, Ariely added a twist to the experiment. He increased the monetary value of each math problem solved correctly for this second group of participants. The findings were surprising. Participants in the second group did not adjust their fictitious results to show a larger number of correctly solved problems from their original lie. In other words, the participants in the second group were not inclined to be more deceitful when the opportunity to make more money per question was introduced to them.

Concordia graduate Nada Hafez, who completed her undergraduate studies with a bachelor of science in psychology, shed light on the interpretation of this experiment,

“These experiments demonstrate that [people are] constrained by a sense of their individual ethical guide [when lying],” Hafez said. “Why was the average number of questions solved within the group that lied not nine or even 10, but seven?”

She explained that this phenomenon is known as cognitive dissonance in psychology, where the participants experience discomfort as they struggle between two conflicting cognitions, the appeal of dishonesty and belief in telling the truth when reporting the number of math questions actually solved correctly.

“And in the process of this internal conflict what ends up happening is that, as in the case of the second group, they want to distort the truth enough to gain advantage from the situation but not so much that they feel they deviate from their moral schema,” Hafez concluded.

Evidently, our motivations for lying are a lot more complicated than we might think. It’s up to future studies in psychology to continue to shed light on why we engage in this behaviour.

a, News

Meet your mayoral candidates

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Election day in Montreal is just around the corner, with the McGill-hosted English language mayoral debate on Oct. 22. and the mayoral election date set for Nov. 3. Although there are 12 candidates in total, the Tribune offers profiles of a few of the frontrunners, their backgrounds, and their platforms, to give you a better understanding of the people you can vote for when you show up at the polls.

Can I vote?

You are eligible to vote in the municipal election if you fulfill the following criteria:

1. You are 18 years old or older before or on the day of Election Day on Sunday, Nov. 3

2. You are a Canadian citizen, and have been a resident of Quebec since March 1, 2013

3. You have been a resident of Montreal since Sept. 1, 2013

 


Denis Coderre

Founder of the Équipe Denis Coderre pour Montréal, Coderre was a Member of Parliament (MP) under the Liberal Party for six terms, from 1997 to 2013, representing the Montreal riding of Bourassa.

Under the Jean Chrétien administration, Coderre was appointed Secretary of State for Amateur Sport, and established the World Anti-Doping Agency based in Montreal, which aims to promote, coordinate, and monitor the fight against doping drugs in sports and has been adopted by more than 600 sports organizations worldwide.

Under Prime Minister Paul Martin, Coderre was appointed Minister of Immigration, where he oversaw the implementation of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act in 2002, which outlines the guidelines for foreign residents immigrating to Canada. In 2009, he became the Quebec Lieutenant under the Liberal Party—acting as an adviser and spokesperson on issues directly related to Quebec.

Platform highlights:

>> Create an inspector general position to oversee the investigation and punishment of municipal officials to combat corruption

>> Increase  public transportation (expand the metro, create 50 kilometers of cycling paths, and extend reserved bus roads)

>> Implement an intelligent transport system designed to make transport more accessible, cleaner, and less carbon intensive

>> Develop, strengthen, and retain the culture of Montreal neighbourhoods, through means such as the appointment of an Economic Development Commissioner to enhance culture and the development of the entertainment district, Quartier des Spectacles.

 

Richard Bergeron

Mayoral candidate of the Projet Montreal party, Bergeron is currently a city councillor representing the Jeanne-Mance district of the Plateau-Mont-Royal borough.  In this position, Bergeron has been proactive in preserving city green spaces, developing transportation in ways such as furthering a plan to build a tramway, and improving snow removal. In 2000, Bergeron became head of strategic analysis for l’Agence métropolitaine de transport, or the Metropolitan Transport Agency (AMT). He was former president of the real-estate union Fédération des cooperatives d’habitation de l’ile de Montreal. The union’s goal is to provide the housing cooperative with services such as education and management services, political representation, and development and support services for cooperative entrepreneurship.

Platform highlights:

>> Implement sustainable transportation (expand three of the existing metro lines, expand bike paths, increase the number of pedestrian-only streets, reduce vehicle traffic by adding bridge tolls, and reduce the number of parking spots)

>> Renew democracy and fight corruption

>> Improve housing

>> Develop Montreal’s economic prosperity

>> Improve quality of life and culture through projects such as increasing green spaces and river access, and capitalizing on Montreal’s francophone and cosmopolitan nature

 

Michel Brûlé

Brûlé is well known in the Quebec media world as a publisher, author, and singer, and is the leader of the Intégrité  Montréal. He has founded several publishing companies, including Éditions les Intouchables, which focuses on the publication of children’s books. He is the second largest publisher in Quebec in terms of sales, and has also written articles for many Quebec newspapers, including La Presse, Journal de Montréal, and Métro.

Considered a sovereigntist, Brûlé has stated that he does not anticipate receiving many votes from Montreal’s English-speaking population. He has also made a series of controversial statements, including “English is not a beautiful language,” as well as calling Americans “uncultured imbeciles.” In 2009, Brûlé released a book titled Anglaid, which describes the imperialism and ethnocentrism of the English world’s culture.

Platform highlights:

>> Reduce the number of elected municipal officials from 103 to 31

>> Increase focus on art and culture in public places

>> Establish free public transit for the elderly and parents with young children

 

Marcel Côté

A career economist and politician, Côté heads the Coalition Montréal. He was a founding partner of SECOR, a strategic management consulting firm, where he worked until it was acquired in 2012 by KPMG, one of the world’s largest professional services companies. Côté currently sits on the Board of Directors for Osisko Mining, and has previously sat on the Boards of ING Bank of Canada and Intact Financial. He also chaired the board of directors for the Montreal YMCA, and was on the board of directors for the Foundations of the YMCA of Quebec. Additionally,  Côté held the position of economic adviser for Premier Robert Bourassa from 1986 to 1988.

Platform highlights:

>> Construct 2,000 new houses and condos plus 15,000 social housing units over the next five years to keep young families in the city

>> Increase the amount of green spaces

>> Fight corruption by hiring an ethics commissioner and simplifying the City charter, ensuring open public governance by allowing party members to vote freely rather than enforce party discipline, and promoting civic innovation

>> Appoint an internal committee to deal directly with construction firms charged with collusion

>> Freeze house taxes to the level of inflation

>> Improve public transit; not by building new projects but by investing in maintaining what currently exists

>> Reconfigure the city’s executive committee structure and decision-making process

 

Mélanie Joly

At only 34 years old, Joly is by far the youngest of the mayoral candidates and the leader of the le Vrai changement pour Montréal. She received her law degree at Université de Montréal and received her master’s degree in European Law at the Oxford University. From 2000 to 2009, Joly worked at two Montreal law firms, Stikeman Elliott and Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg, practicing primarily in commercial, civil,  and administrative law. From 2009 to 2013, Joly worked as associate director of the Montreal office of the international communications agency Cohn &  Wolfe.  During the Liberal Party Leadership election, Joly was the Trudeau campaign’s chief-organizer for Quebec.

Platform highlights:

>> Create 130 km of rapid bus service

>> Establish Transparency by making all political decisions, official documents, and infrastructure contracts accessible to the public for free online

>> Add new green spaces throughout the city

>> Develop low-cost housing to allow 30,000 families to affordably move into the city

>> Increase city and commercial arteries to improve the city’s ambiance and strengthen the city’s economy (extend store hours, make Saint Catherine Street a pedestrian-only street, and improve cooperation between nightlife and the community)

>> Fight social exclusion and isolation, particularly for Montreal’s homeless population

>> Improve and simplify operations for businesses

a, News, SSMU

SSMU Council approves Midnight Kitchen referendum questions

by Cece Zhang on

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On Oct. 10, the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Legislative Council met to discuss two referendum questions regarding Midnight Kitchen and an amendment for allowing councillors to sit on committees as members-at-large. Principal Suzanne Fortier also attended council where she spoke on the importance of SSMU.

 

Midnight Kitchen existence and fee increase referendum questions

SSMU approved two questions for the Fall referendum period in relation to the Midnight Kitchen. The first question will ask students to support the Midnight Kitchen’s existence and the second asks for a fee increase of $1 from the current fee of $2.25. Wade Walker, a representative of Midnight Kitchen, said the increase would help Midnight Kitchen improve and expand its current services.

“We want to create a new breakfast service, and there are ongoing needs to improve the kitchen, as a lot of student groups, both internal and external, also use it,” Walker said.

The student body will be able to vote on both questions during the Fall Referendum period, which runs from Nov. 6 to 15.

 

 

Amendment allowing councillors to sit on committees as members-at-large

Council also voted against amending the Accountable Leadership Policy to allow council members to sit on committees as members-at-large, which are usually filled by students who are not affiliated with Council. Vice-President Internal Brian Farnan spoke in favour of the change.

“I feel like the Accountable Leadership Policy places some restrictions on councillors in a way that does not reflect the original spirit of the motion,” Farnan said.

He continued that allowing councillors to sit on committees as members-at-large would provide committees with enough people to meet working capacity that could otherwise be lacking.

Clubs and Services Representative Zachary Rosentzveig expressed concern that this change would negatively affect the ability of other students to fill members-at-large seats.

“Members-at-large are an important way of engaging the community, and this would only be watered down by letting councillors apply,” Rosentzveig said.

He also said the amendment would reduce a committee’s incentive to advertise for members-at-large to sit on committees.

 

Suzanne Fortier speaks to the Council

Principal Suzanne Fortier spoke at Council, where she affirmed the value of SSMU, its initiative, and said that the university values student interests above all.

“I’ve been here often at SSMU, because you are a very important part of the life here at this university,” Fortier said. “You have taken extraordinary leadership, not just recently, [but] over a hundred years that SSMU exists [….] I’m very impressed with the initiatives that you’re taking, with the leadership, with the engagement.”

a, Editorial, Opinion

SSMU conduct on General Assembly an abdication of duty

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Last Wednesday’s Fall General Assembly (GA) of the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) was once again marred by staggeringly low attendance. At its peak, the assembly only managed about 50 attendees attendees—far from its 100-member quorum. The apparent absence of an engagement campaign leading up to the event was confirmed through statements by SSMU executive members; advertising efforts were deemed to be a poor use of resources and abandoned almost entirely. This defeatism on the part of the executive illustrates both an abject failure to represent the interests of their constituents, and a neglect of the basic responsibilities of their office.

Raising awareness of the GA is not simply a good practice for the executive, but is mandated by SSMU’s constitution. While GAs officially fall under the president’s portfolio, the burden of outreach extends also to the speaker and the rest of the executives, as laid out by Article 29.3 of the constitution.

“The office of the President in conjunction with the executive and the speaker shall be responsible for the wide scale promotion of the General Assembly, including but not exclusive to: emails, website promotions, publicity in the campus press as well as posting,” the article reads. “The SSMU executive will use all means at their disposal to meet quorum for this body. The executive shall make every effort to actively advertise the assembly in the campus media.”

Nonetheless, this GA came and went with little evidence of any effort to raise awareness of the event. Email correspondence was vague, posters were eschewed due to cost, and class announcements were also deemed a poor allocation of resources. Apart from a few ads placed in the McGill Daily, advertising in the campus media was also mostly cast aside—the Tribune received notice of the motions set to come before the GA only two days prior to the event.

Last year’s SSMU executive put an emphasis on advertising, increasing efforts for the Fall GA and doubling them for the Winter. However, in Council on Thursday, SSMU President Katie Larson explained that last year’s low turnout despite the increased advertising had led her to expend fewer resources this year. “Given the fact that we just hit quorum last year, I didn’t think that it would make a huge difference,” she said.

Evaluating previous efforts depends on one’s  definition of a successful GA. To say that they were unsuccessful because, despite increased attendance, the assembly failed to maintain quorum, depicts quorum—not general participation—as the sole objective of a GA. Rather, engaging students must be the first priority. Only by continuing to build awareness and a culture of participation will quorum become attainable.

It is easy to focus on the quantity of advertising, but quality is also important. This year’s GA also presented an opportunity to engage students on a current and controversial issue. One of the items on the GA agenda was the proposed Quebec Charter of Values, which has seen vocal opposition around campus. However, the vague nature and limited scope of the assembly’s advertising did not make clear that the charter was even up for discussion at the assembly. Giving a clear picture of what is at stake is imperative to engaging students.

There are many constructive discussions to be had about the relevance of our GAs to students, as well as students’ responsibility to participate. However, these conversations cannot even begin if the initial effort isn’t being made on SSMU’s end to raise awareness and to put students in the seats. There is some hope, however, after a productive Council discussion resulted in the creation of an ad-hoc committee, through which councillors will seek to assist the executive in addressing these issues.

The passivity demonstrated by the executive towards involving students in the political process is troubling. It is indicative of a disregard for the input of the membership at large, an attitude that we hope to see resolved once it comes time for the Winter GA. Encouraging student participation may be frustrating, and it may even turn out to be unsuccessful; but making the effort is imperative in keeping one of SSMU’s most valuable democratic checks intact.

a, Science & Technology, Student Research

McGill Hackers battle it out in 30-hour MIT ‘hack-a-thon’

by Abhishek Gupta on

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Thirty hours, more than 1,000 hackers and over $10,000 in prizes—this was HackMIT. Hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the picturesque town of Cambridge, Massachusetts, HackMIT brought programmers from every level to participate in a ‘hack-a-thon.’ The purpose of the event was to create a product or a service from scratch in a fixed amount of time with a team of up to four ‘hackers’. All hacks were required to be computer-related, but the projects ranged from web, desktop, mobile, and hardware tasks, such as websites and iOS apps.

The event was sponsored by Sequoia Capital, a large American venture capital firm known for being an early backer of Google. After a brief introduction followed by crisp descriptions of various Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), the event kicked off with teams rushing out of the auditorium to find themselves a cozy and comfortable spot that would be their home for the next 30 hours.

Forty-five students represented McGill at this event, all of whom were members of the emerging group aptly named HackMcGill. These devoted members—who traveled all night to make it to the Hack-a-thon the following morning—were eager to take advantage of the exciting opportunities offered by the event.

Teammate Ivo Bratanov said “HackMIT was an incredible opportunity to meet, interact with, and learn from some of the brightest coders in North America.”

Representatives from the big names in the social media world, like Twitter, Facebook, and Google were present to discuss their APIs with students. This opportunity allowed hackers to network with people in the industry, while at the same time acquire some sample ‘swag’ as souvenirs. Technical talks were also conducted throughout the day by these companies, which gave the hackers an opportunity to take a break and get some air.

As the hack-a-thon progressed, the hackers lost Wi-Fi connectivity because of the heavy pressure the event put on the network. This led to frustration across the event. Within a few hours the organizers brought Ethernet cables and hooked all the groups up to Internet. The venue quickly took the shape of a tropical forest floor littered with vines.

Despite these technical difficulties, the true spirit of the hack-a-thon kicked in as the day progressed. The cables, laptops, pages on pages of product designs and discussions, and energy drinks—the key to a 30-hour hackathon—all contributed to the lively atmosphere.

As the evening drew near, the organizers provided air mattresses for those looking to take a little break. However, most hackers stuck it out through the night to come up with brilliant hacks that were displayed the next morning in the judging session. The judging period was immediately followed up with the closing ceremony at the Kresge Auditorium where the winning hacks were announced.

Though HackMcGill did not return with a prize, hackers returned with new friendships, memories, and a renewed spirit for hacking.

a, Arts & Entertainment, Film and TV

The Italian surveillance job

by Mark Haydn on

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Gianfranco Rosi’s panoramic portrait of the working communities connected by Rome’s Grande Raccordo Anulare (GRA) highway hews closely to broad-brush expectations of what one might find in the region: a man chews a cigar in the golden bathtub of a palatial home, a fisherman trawls for eels at dawn, and women tear at paper-wrapped ham and talk mozzarella in the cab of a truck.

The winner of the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice festival—the first year in which documentaries were eligible for the competition’s prize—Sacro GRA, Rosi’s measured, peripatetic film, chronicles a two year period spent encircling the city’s outer limits; it is embroiled in the daily life of paramedics, dancers, and scientists. The filmmakers remain invisible throughout, affixing cameras to dashboards, training lenses on apartment windows, and tracking the action of their subjects from a distance. Stories of the film’s production report the whittling of a much greater pool of footage, the filmmakers’ omnipresence perhaps explaining the relaxed, unaffected demeanour of its protagonists. However, Sacro GRA only intermittently succeeds in transcending its portrayals of the workers on screen, the majority of the film representing little beyond the scope of their professional roles.

Rosi’s muted, unobtrusive urban ethnography is akin to recent documentaries like Alma Har’el’s Bombay Beach, faithfully recording the activity of a subculture for those outside it, often reinforcing stereotypes without critique, as with the display of a cigar smoker’s gauchely opulent interior decor, showcased for the audience with a sardonic eye.

What the film offers most valuably is simply access: to the weary working day of the ambulanza medic, returning home to eat pasta in the glow of Skype conversation with loved ones; or to the private moments of two dancers, dressing for and unwinding after an evening twirling on countertops at a small-town bar. The context of the film remains set, its subjects constrained to a distant reality rather than allowed to echo beyond it, but within these limits we are afforded a glimpse into what we otherwise might not see. We observe the quiescence of an elderly couple, together in the kitchen, reading aloud and sharing melon across a lemon-patterned tablecloth, or the piercing, watchful gaze of a sex worker aside the highway, signalling at unceasing traffic.

Sacro GRA affords the viewer transport to a destination separate from the nearby tourist hub to which visitors flock, bypassing the local sights to instead communicate the feel of life inside its partially occupied modern housing developments, and out onto its sparsely populated, twilit streets. While the characters of Rosi’s film may not follow you from the cinema, they exist relatively vividly for its 90 minute runtime, gesticulating and communicating. They are the varied participants of a day spent elsewhere, reachable by taking the second exit on the way to Rome, or else available for the price of cinema admission.

Sacro GRA plays again at 3 p.m. on Tuesday Oct. 16 at Cinema Cineplex Odéon Quartier Latin, as part of the Nouveau Cinema festival, which continues until October 20.

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