Keeping Hope honest...

The incoming Obama administration hasn't yet taken the reins of the White House, but they're certainly preparing themselves for the task at hand. His accompanying cabinet is bi-partisan in nature, with membership spanning both the Democratic and Republican parties. 

His cabinet selections are not without there own controversies. Obama's selection of Eric Holder as Attorney General upsets many who feel his ties to the Clinton Inc and his controversial pardon history are an unfair renege on Obama's earlier promises of "change". The new Secretary of Transportation, Ray LaHood has created an unwelcome stir among the environmental crowd because of his ties to the GOP and how he'll handle transportation issues as part of Obama's grandiose plan to revitalize the American transportation industry. Appointing Hillary as Secretary of State has certainly left some scratching their heads.

The point is that the days of tirelessly running around touting Obama over everyone else are quickly coming to a close. He's in. There's no one else to beat. You'll notice that the frequency of words like change, hope and "yes, we can" has fallen significantly in the media and from Mr. Obama. The country's (and the rest of the world for that matter) love for him should no longer be blind. And it is becoming clear that Obama is not the idealistic saviour that many (myself included) made him out to be during the last two years.

His faults are becoming increasingly clear as time progresses. He plays the political game like many other politicians, as his cabinet appointments have clearly indicated. The hulabaloo erupting with his selection of the strongly anti-abortion and anti-gay Rev. Rick Warren as part of his inauguration reflects the need to look at Obama's own values. He doesn't seem to be quite as left-of-centre as we made him out to be, as he's clearly tiptoeing the centre as he gets ready to take over the most difficult and responsible position in the world.     

This is not to say that I am angry at Obama, nor do I believe he isn't the right man for the job. He's doing what he should to run the world's most powerful country. But what makes the job so difficult is that he has to answer to his decisions and explain why and how he will make those decisions. The public and the media especially should not turn a blind eye to Obama's choices and statements, as many of us may have during the elections citing that "it's OK, he's the almighty Obama. Let's trust he knows what he's doing". 

So when Obama takes power on January 20, we can celebrate that we've finally got someone else running the country. But let's drop those pro-Obama allegiances, critically examine the administration and keep him honest. It'll keep the Hope-Train on the tracks and going in the right direction. 

The Take-Home Exam...

I just finished my last exam of the semester a few minutes ago. It feels wonderful. But it's also 11:43 PM. So what the hell am I doing writing this thing at such an hour, let alone writing about it minutes later?

It was a take-home exam. I've only heard of such things in myth, but this year I was given my first one. Now that I no longer need to fret about it, I realize that the take-home exam is quite an interesting concept. 

It's an exam, but such a quirky one. No need to study frantically for hours on end for that single session of intense exam writing because you are given it well in advance of its due date. Rightly so, they would expect more of you than what you might answer in a typical exam. But it's also not a paper. There is no need to heavily research external papers or information; everything is right inside your class notes and readings. And bonus, no need to cite anything.

But there are some other elements to it that stand out in my mind. Do they really expect us not to discuss it or work on it with other students? I mean, few of us are stupid enough at this stage to hand in carbon copies of work, but general ideas about questions can easily be discussed. This is not to say that one would do this, but the potential is there. Even though it's clearly prohibited, how on Earth are they going to enforce such a thing? The honour system is only so effective.

But maybe there's more here than we think. For instance, I considered this take-home exam to not really be an exam. I finished those awhile ago. And then I flew home immediately after completing them, still without starting the take-home. My ability to go over it and discuss with fellow students was therefore severely inhibited (although still possible...woo internet and telephone). So perhaps the same thing occurs for other students who may go home. They consider the take-home exam to be much easier than the other exams, so they go home (away from the university town) and work on it there. Perhaps the instructors take that into consideration? Or maybe I'm thinking way too far into it. But it's a possibility.

The take-home exam is an interesting thing. Not too hard, but not too easy. And worth enough for one to care enough about it to try to do a good job. But full of so much cheating potential. I wonder why they give out such things?  

If I had a billion dollars...

A billion dollars used to seem like a lot of money. But nowadays, that value has somehow diminished in my mind. 

Don't get me wrong, it is still a lot of money. I have no idea (and probably never will) what having that kind of money would be like and when a lot of thought is put into it, a billion dollars is a whole whack of cash. 

But I'm talking about the bigger picture. When I hear that a company is worth $1.7B, I think to myself, "Oh, it's only $1.7B. That's not too big." Or even when I hear that the Big Three are losing tens of billions of dollars; it just doesn't hit me as hard as it once might have.

So why is this happening in my crazy ol' mind? I think it has to do with the amount of money being thrown around in this economic crisis. Remember the much-heralded $700B bailout plan that was the talk of the town for so many weeks? I wouldn't be surprised if you forgot about it. Because apparently it wasn't enough. There were other bailout plans passed through, some in the $200B range, but even those don't seem all that big anymore. Compared to $700B, $200B is just a tack-on. 

Once it became known that $700B wasn't nearly enough to fix everything, the notional value of a billion fell off the map. With these absolutely ridiculous dollar figures being thrown around daily on the news, it's not hard to imagine why the lesser figures aren't as meaningful anymore. Remember when hearing that Bill Gates had $50B or something silly like that? That ain't nothin' in my head now, at least in comparison to everything else. 

It's strange. A billion dollars is a lot of money. But it just doesn't have that same ring to it. Who would've thunk it?  

Cur--sive??...

This past Saturday I took one of the more difficult tests that I have faced in my life: The LSAT. This is the uber-standardized test that plays a significant part getting people into law schools in Canada.

I was a tad nervous before the test, but went into it feeling strangely comfortable. Little did I know that the most difficult and stressful part of this 3 hour-plus exam would be the administrative hulabaloo right at the beginning.

Under normal contracts or tests of this nature, there is a statement that states that you will not cheat, not provide answers to others etc, and you are usually supposed to sign it. But not for the LSAT. Instead of simply signing the five-line statement, I was required to copy it out and then sign it. The worst part: it had to be copied out in cursive. Shit.

With the exception of my signature, I hadn't used cursive writing since grade 6. I quickly realized I had forgotten what many of the letters were supposed to look like, so I elected to make some up (after all, the test supervisor had said "cursive, or your best non-printing writing). It was atrocious.

Nothing could have prepared me for the stress of such a task. One by one, the people around me dropped their pencils to their desks as they completed the statement with ease, while I struggled having only completed half of the damn thing. It soon became clear that I was the only one left, as the test supervisor repeatedly asked when I'd be done. That was not fun.

I'm not sure where such a task came from or why it was necessary. Perhaps it is the real part of the LSAT that law schools look at, nevermind all those other mind-bending multiple-choice questions.

If this is the case, I'm screwed.

A bizarre request...

During one of my lectures this morning, someone sitting beside decided to convince those around him that I was a well-established drug dealer in Peterborough. This was done solely to amuse this one guy, who of course did not think anything would come of it. I passively ignored him, assuming the same thing and thinking his dire need for attention would slip through the cracks.

Before too long I was approached by an interested 'customer'. In a quiet and careful manner, he asked me whether I sold drugs. I very quickly told him no and he is asking the wrong guy. Hoping the topic would be dropped, I returned to my notes and listened to the professor give his lecture. The original perpetrator of this bizarre little situation was cracking up emphatically, perhaps trying to attract more attention to himself.

The 'customer' returned a second time, this time considerably more interested and little irritable. He claimed that he was told that I would say that I don't sell drugs because I deal only in highly illicit and expensive ones and do not wish to expand my market too large. He then went on to ask me for two types of hard drugs: MDMA (which I hadn't heard of at the time, but later learned is similar to ecstasy) and heroin. I was rightly amazed to be asked about these drugs and quite shocked, immediately telling him that he should go away and that I was sorry I couldn't help him out, but I wasn't the guy he wanted to talk to, nor did I know who would be. 

He was a little upset and fairly embarrassed. Justly so. The guy who started it all was laughing his head off. What an asshole. And to top it all off, this all occurred while the professor was speaking and the rest of the class was silent, perhaps catching every word of this bizarre encounter.

A few issues to mention:

1) The last thing I want is other people catching bits and pieces of that conversation and walking away assuming I'm a dealer of hard narcotics. It's not a good thing for one's reputation.

2)  I don't want to generalize, but people who are itching for heroin might very well be a little more, say, aggressive in their search. The last thing I need is an angry heroin addict coming after me for someone else's stupid prank.

3) I don't deal drugs. But even if I did, that's not how I would go about it, especially with something as illicit as heroin or MDMA. Silent, public places don't seem like a good spot for negotiations of that magnitude.

4) Jesus Christ! Heroin?!? 

   

If Canada only had a reset button...

So the last federal election was a humongous waste of time and money. Only about 60% of eligible Canadians showed up to wield their democratic right, the lowest in history if I'm not mistaken. It swamped the Canadian media for over a month and very little policy was discussed, but we did get to find out how each federal leader appreciates to arts. Yawn.

And after it was all said and done, what do we get? A slightly larger Harper minority; the expected land-second disappearance of the Greens; rambunctious Jack making up a bit of ground but still far from his unrealistic bid to actually run the country; and the downfall of the Liberal superpower at the hands of the outgoing (and not a minute too early) leader, Mr. Dion. 

So now what? The Liberals (still in debt) are in the midst of another unaffordable and overly dramatic leadership race, Elizabeth May has disappeared (perhaps abducted by eco-aliens), Jack is being Jack, Quebec is acting like the good ol' nation within a united Canada that it is and Steve, well, he's still leading this country into oblivion, sweater vest and all. 

Government finally got back into session and within a week or so there's talk of another election. The Conservative government released its economic update, stating that it has been forced to cut a number of programs including funding to the other political parties, all in the name of keeping the budget balanced. The big piece missing from all this: a nice big stimulus package for the economy.

Don't Flaherty and Harper keep up with the times? Big, fat stimulus packages are all the rage these days. And as much as we may like balanced budgets, this is one of those times where its OK for the conservative folks to roll down their socks and spend a little money. Otherwise there won't be much of a budget to balance next fiscal year after tax revenues have dwindled to nothing when the average Canadian Joe the Igloo Plumber doesn't have any money to be taxed of. 

So what's the other option? Obviously we can't let this go through, so now the opposition parties are considering a coalition. Oh, great. I'm sure this will be a very co-operative group. The drama that will unfold from that may be worse than holding another election. Who will be the new Prime Minister? We might all cry if its Dion. Duceppe isn't all that much of a national guy. Jack would be lousy because he'd have no one to complain about. And May doesn't have a seat, so scratch her off the list. Ignatieff or Rae might forego the leadership race and just step in, which could be alright, but I'd be a little bit worried about Rae after his time serving with a coalition government and then heading a majority for several very awkward years at the helm of Ontario.

So basically it's a huge mess. Election=bad. Even less people will show up and the last thing we need is an election at a time when politicians should be at work saving the country from economic collapse. Coalition=probably bad. Expect lots of infighting and hairpulling. 

I offer a simple solution. Perhaps we can grab a four year free-trial from the United States to join up and make up their giant 51st state. At least we'd have a decent guy at the helm who seems to know what he's doing, and we could sit back and enjoy the benefits of these massive stimulus packages. And by the time the taxpayers have to start paying back the $2 trillion or so of government debt, we kindly return to our status as an independent nation.  

 

Only at Trent...

Trent University has a fairly progressive reputation. It is often compared to UC Berkeley, the United States' uber-hippie school. Hacky sack, bongo drumming and Birkenstocks are essentially pre-requisites to get in.

But our President, Bonnie Patterson does not quite share those feelings about Trent. As a former professor of business, Patterson has brought a more corporate approach to running Trent, which as you can imagine, leaves many students less than impressed. She is often the main target in the student newspapers and is less than popular among the student body. She recently elected to sell (and threatened to tear down) Trent's famed downtown college, Traill College. As my witty roomate Travis pointed out, it was quite appropriate she was later named one of Canada's Top 100 Most Powerful Women by the Women's Executive Network. After all, she got the award as part of the Trend-Setters and Trail-Blazers category (zing!).

But it appears Trent has had a powerful effect on our 'corporate fat-cat' President. A rumour began floating around last March concerning her involvement with the school's chancellor, famed biologist, photographer, medical doctor and astronaut, Dr. Roberta Bondar. Apparently the two were now an item. Talk about a power couple. Rumours, right?

Not quite. The rumours have now evolved into near fact, as I have had confirming conversations about their relationship with members of the faculty, administration and senior employees of the provincial government.

I think Trent is one of the only places in the world where the right-wing university President can leave her husband and fall in love with a photograph-taking, nature-loving, doctor that happens to also be an astronaut and the chancellor of the school. Man, what a school.