Print Edition: April 10, 2013
Congratulations, you’re a dick
I was fully prepared to write about open sneezers this week (people who don’t cover their noses/mouths when they sneeze), until something even more infuriating happened to me. I replied to a friend’s post on Facebook about a potential job opening and instead of a normal conversation about the details, I was met with an offer to be paid for sexual services from someone I don’t even know. The shocking part was that instead of being backed up, I was met with a barrage of derogatory statements from two other unknown males intending on making me feel bad about not accepting the offer with a flirtatious remark and a winky face.
“Missy is soooooo mad,” a patronizing bird chirped at me after I pointed out the problem in their words. I think my least favourite thing about engaging in conversations like these is that they wouldn’t even grasp the issue if I felt compelled to waste my breath – they think they’re entitled to speak to people in that way.
Do we really live in a society where this is not only an acceptable, but a supported behaviour?
If so, I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.
Clever girl: de-extinction now possible, but reckless
Hold onto your butts.
Twenty years after Spielberg’s adaptation of Jurassic Park, this month’s National Geographic has been turning heads with its cover story: reviving extinct species has made the leap from fantasy to reality.
Those cowboys already fantasizing about outwitting raptors in an inevitable dino-pocalypse can hand in their badge and gun; candidate species must have died out much more recently than your garden variety T-Rex. Scientists need more genetic material in order to successfully carry out the procedure, which draws on recent advances in cloning.
However, the number of years since the species’ extinction not only increases the degree of difficulty but also the risk.
Re-introducing extinct species could have unforeseen and devastating effects on a local ecosystem’s delicate balance. There are endless historical examples of transplanted species, particularly in colonial settings, wreaking all kinds of havoc on local flora and fauna.
The impulse to restore species destroyed by humanity is a noble one, but the complications of unleashing these species into the wild are prohibitive. It’s fighting carelessness with more carelessness.
Progress must be guided by a thorough, ethical consideration of the expected consequences and the awareness that every new feat comes with a set of unexpected side effects.
The opened box cannot just as easily be contained. Like the sage Dr. Ian Malcom says, “life, uh … finds a way.”
Wireless connections
If you’re a frequent internet user (and who isn’t) you may have noticed that the wireless access on campus leaves much to be desired. School computers do have steady access to the internet if you’re able to nab one, but for people like me who always seem to hit the library or the labs at peak periods, bringing a laptop or other internet-ready device is a more mobile and attractive option. Except for one thing.
The connection times out … all the time. It’s not as bad if I’m accessing it from my laptop; I just have to not close the screen to relocate, or close the internet window. But if I’m using my phone to access the internet, I have to sign in again every time I get a text message or phone call. And the “Web Authentication Redirect” never seems to appear automatically. I always have to go there manually, and sometimes it doesn’t work, so I spend five minutes trying to access that page.
Sometimes I’m on campus and I have to Google. I have to check myUFV, or the number of that room – which one again? Is it so much to ask for easy-to-use, don’t-have-to-sign-in-eight-times wireless access?
I can’t see the purpose behind fake frames
My perscription is somewhere around -4 in both eyes. My left eye has an astigmatism and I have to go in for health check-ups to test for glaucoma every six months.
If I had the choice, I’d throw my frames in the trash and never look back. They’re cumbersome and require constant maintanence. So when I hear about this new trend of healthy-eyed people wearing glasses for fashion, it bothers me a little.
Isn’t wearing glasses to look fashionable akin to rolling around in a wheelchair because it’s fun? It is exploiting a disability for personal enjoyment, while people bound to that disablity have no choice but to deal with its reality.
I mean, sure, I could find it flattering that having glasses is now the new fashion. I suppose it inadvertaintly makes me hip, but that is only for a limited time. Fashion has a way of moving on and leaving old fashion in the dust.
Overall, I just feel that men and women wearing fake glasses is an insult to those of us who have no choice. When they are sick of them, they can take them off and be no worse off. For those of us with perscriptions, however, we are required corrective contacts to even emulate those without frames.
To me, it just seems that fashion needs an eye check. It’s time to stop exploiting disabilities.
