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The strangest compliment

By Andrew on December 21st, 2011

“How do you know what you know?”

I have a cough. Not in itself too big of a deal, but the fact that it’s the most violent and persistent cough I’ve ever had is especially inconvenient. For the last few days I’ve been having a half dozen or so little naps throughout the night instead of a solid chunk of sleep. And during my exams I had to leave the room more than a few times just to clear my throat and keep my lungs in my chest and off of my test paper. I’m quite confident I’ve diseased the entire Classics department at U of T, over which I might normally be regretful if it hadn’t been causing such trouble for me recently.

Yes, as if it weren’t bad enough that this has been the most execrable undergraduate semester I’ve yet had, the bloody thing still isn’t over. My term paper for Latin Prose Authors (in which we read the first four books of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses and the first third of his Apologia) has set off the plagiarism alarms in my professor. Due to my inconsistent attendance and performance throughout his course, he doesn’t believe that I’m capable of the paper I wrote, claiming that it’s “too scholarly” and “suspiciously good,” and that the writing itself has a graduate student degree of confidence.

Naturally, I was flattered. While I’m not too crazy about the paper I wrote (most of it was fluff and I thought that my arguments were textual leaps of faith and insufficiently presented), it’s nice to be recognized as a talented writer. In fact it’s even quite ironic how he praises the confidence of my writing when I don’t view myself as a confident writer at all, such that I genuinely thought he wanted to speak with me about my paper because it was so bad and not because it was so good. I can’t decide whether or not this means I should stop writing my papers the night before they’re due with a bottle of scotch at hand.

At any rate, he had three major concerns, two of which were easily dispatched (how do I know so much about my topic, and how am I able to write so well?) while the third is causing my present troubles.

The subject of my essay is essentially a character comparison between a minor character in the Metamorphoses and a major character in the Aulularia (The Pot of Gold), a comedy by Plautus. I’ve taken courses on both Apuleius and ancient drama before and done rigourous studies of Aristophanes, Menander, Plautus, and Terence. So while I do know more about the subject than most undergraduates/classicists, I agree that demonstrating such knowledge might be suspicious to a professor who is unfamiliar with my particular interests. Fair enough. I explained my history with such material and told him that I’m contemplating a focus on ancient drama and ancient comedy should I ever commit myself to graduate school.

As for my writing abilities, I explained my leisure pursuits as an amateur writer/journalist to him. Working and writing for campus media for more than three years, editing pieces and developing other writers, how my dedication to the newspaper directly interfered with his course when I’m up all night Wednesday helping to put out an issue which meant I’d show up to his Thursday morning class without having slept, etc. “Oh, so you’re a practised writer…” he said as if to renege on his earlier words of praise.

While these explanations seemed to have convinced him, he still had to bring this charge of academic misconduct to the attention of the department chair, the reason being that his academic integrity is also now involved. Whether or not I wrote the paper and know what I know about the topic is now not the major issue; it’s the third concern regarding the possibility of intellectual theft.

Unfortunately, my paper bears such similarity to another piece of scholarship (which I’m aware of and skimmed over in the most basic act of preliminary research) that, in the opinion of not just my professor and the department chair but also to any classicist who read that scholarship and my paper side by side, it would be “a colossal coincidence” for my paper not be a “synthesis” of the existing scholarship. This is the headache. After speaking with the department chair on Monday afternoon, coughing constantly and likely with the faint hint of soothing scotch masked by Altoid peppermints on my viral breath, I learn that the possible academic offence I committed was purloining the ideas of another and presenting them as my own; that my paper does not contain my ideas which I developed myself.

In short, I’m screwed. How the hell am I supposed to argue that my ideas are my own? How the hell can I be charged with stealing ideas, not through simple “copy/paste” but through cleverly insidious “synthesis”? It seems like my only hope is the realization that it would be impossible for them to prove what they’re accusing my of having done, as much as it would be impossible for me to disprove it. Which I don’t say to suggest that I’m admitting academic misconduct while reveling in how I got away with it, but rather that the legitimacy of my high calibre writing is being doubted on coincidence, “colossal” or otherwise. It’s my essay, dammit, and I developed the ideas I put forth! In fact I’m disgusted with myself for even considering that I should just say, “yeah, whatever, I did what you think I did, so give me an F and let’s save us all some time…” as if it’s somehow my fault that my good work on a meagre 10% assignment has created this much inconvenience.

And for what? Because I freely admit in the interest of full disclosure to having glanced at the article from which they think I stole? What about my other voluntary admissions that the impact of that scholarship was so minimal that I didn’t even pay attention to who wrote it until I was made aware of this charge and was compelled to retrace my browser clicks and have a look? Or that most of that scholarship wasn’t even available to me because it appeared as a Google Book result with most of the pages cut out; that the only reason I did this most cursory amount of research was so that I would feel confident in the knowledge that this is a topic worth pursuing if others have gone there before? Or that most significantly I obviously would’ve made mention of utilizing this scholarship in a bibliography had I felt that it made any contribution whatsoever to the development of my essay and ideas?

If in that essay I made use of ideas not my entirely my own, surely those ideas came from professors in past courses I took on the subject, courses which are responsible for my current knowledge yet from which professors I’m not being accused of intellectual theft. The ideas of those courses and professors were far more influential than that scholarship and likewise went unattributed in my essay, yet that’s not the charge.

This is infuriating. Regrettably nothing more can be done until January since the university is now closed for the holidays, and I was really rather hoping that it would all be over Monday afternoon. In the mean time, this academically miserable semester drags on.

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The November roundup

By Andrew on December 2nd, 2011

I’ve been busy lately. With what, I’m not exactly sure. It’s been nearly a month since I last updated this site, and yet over the course of that time, I don’t feel I have very much to show for it. Of course I’ve been working with the newspaper, but in many other aspects of my life, I’m not too sure what’s been accomplished. I have lots of plans, and while I have been taking steps to effect change, the changes themselves are yet to manifest.

At any rate, here are the five articles I’ve done since my last posted article on the LGBT Activism honour. And in case anyone’s wondering, I’m effectively done with the newspaper until January. There’s just one issue left to publish, and I’m not doing anything for it except the usual puzzles (I’ve got two essays to write and some furious studying to do). Besides, our last issue is full of flighty Christmas/holiday crap, and I care for absolutely none of it.

This article was a massive headache to write, and I’m still not very happy with the finished product. It lacks cohesion, the headline is deceptive and manipulative, and I took the subject too seriously. The seminar, The Future of Crime, certainly had serious topics, such as the 2008 Mumbai attacks, but it also had lots of intriguing ethical stuff, some of which is quite humourous. For example, should there be real world laws for dealing with crimes in virtual communities? Should it be a crime to rape an avatar? Should it be a crime to have sex with the avatars of children? Should police departments be equipped to deal with the theft of virtual items in online games (apparently, there’s an entire branch of police in Seoul dedicated to dealing with theft in World of Warcraft and other such games)? Fascinating stuff, really, and I dealt with none of it.

This one was pretty straightforward, although to make the debate fairer, we changed the question. Instead of debating whether or not SOPA is a good thing (which it’s most definitely not), we debated the extent to which intellectual property owners have a right to protect their copyrights. To that I end, I argued that IP owners are going about it the wrong way with SOPA, and that they should fight piracy with revitalized business models and practices and not with Draconian legislation. For example, we now have iTunes after the “death” of the recording industry. We have Netflix with the downward spiral of the film industry, and we have Steam with the rumblings of retail revolution in video games. Piracy is a result of changing consumer preferences and demands and the reluctance or inability of businesses to change with the times.

Another dull article. I sat in for the three hour U of T Student Union Annual General Meeting, recorded the whole thing, and spoke with a few people after the fact. Pretty simple, with the only trouble being the absolute lack of anything interesting worth talking about. I also felt that the spicy headline was, again, disingenuous to the actual content of the piece. How do I get away with these things…

I’m notorious among my colleagues for hating cyclists and everything for which they stand, so naturally I was the perfect candidate for the negative side of this debate. The gist of my argument? Under the Ontario Highway Traffic Act, cyclists are governed by the same rules of the road as drivers, yet they do whatever they goddamn please.

My original piece was quite combative, which my colleagues felt might have been in bad taste since the impetus for the debate was the tragic death of Jenna Morrison, crushed by a truck while cycling on November 7. So it was toned down a bit, but the core of the argument remains: There are far more bad cyclists on the road than bad drivers, and I’ll be more sympathetic to their reckless transit choices when they begin to take traffic laws more seriously (red lights and stop signs aren’t suggestions, and I don’t drive on the sidewalk or in the wrong direction, and neither should they).

My indie game column has fallen by the wayside, partly because of other responsibilities, mostly because we haven’t been scrambling for publishable content as fiercely and no longer need it to fill up space. I haven’t been writing any additional entries because I have a trio of pieces (Hero’s Adventure, The Binding of Isaac, and Atom Zombie Smasher) in reserve, should we ever decide to bring it back.

Hero’s Adventure itself is an interesting little game. In three minutes, it undermines the core gameplay philosophies of most RPGs, especially those in the Final Fantasy mode. For that reason, I quite like it. The fact it’s by VVVVVV developer Terry Cavanagh just makes it all the more worthy of attention.

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U of T honours LGBT activists

By Andrew on November 5th, 2011

U of T honours LGBT activists

Province celebrates pioneers of gay liberation movement

“On 14 October 2011, 15-year-old Jamie Hubley, an openly gay young man, committed suicide after being bullied at school,” said Charles Hill, the first president of the University of Toronto Homophile Association (UTHA), visibly holding back tears. The tragedy of Jamie Hubley is a timely reminder of the challenges members of LGBT communities have faced and continue to face to this day. This saddening reality surely weighed heavily on the minds of many of the attendees and distinguished speakers who gathered in the East Hall of UC on Wednesday for the unveiling of a commemorative plaque to honour the UTHA.

Dedicated by the Ontario Heritage Trust, this provincial plaque is the first of its kind to honour LGBT activism. “I believe this plaque is something that we should be proud of,” said Rosario Marchese, guest speaker and Trinity-Spadina MPP. “It’s a symbolic way of acknowledging and honouring the sexual diversity activism that exists in our community, and I believe that we will eventually receive the full equality the LGBT community deserves.”

Gay activist and architect of the gay liberation movement Jerald Moldenhauer established the UTHA in October 1969. His move to found the association was influenced in part by amendments to the Canadian Criminal Code in that same year which decriminalized certain homosexual acts between consenting adults. It was not only the first gay organization at U of T, but one of the first of its kind in Canada.

“What the UTHA started was an almost continuous history of activism on this campus,” said David Rayside, Director of the Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at U of T. “There are very few – if any – institutions in this country than can claim as long a history of advocacy for LGBT issues. 1969 was an extraordinarily oppressive time for sexual minorities, so any organization of this type that was formed and had any kind of public face was an extraordinary achievement.”

Since the creation of UTHA, the U of T community continues to be a place where the recognition of gender minorities and sexual diversity is acknowledged and celebrated. From the earliest days of UTHA to what is now the LGBTOUT, the group has always been exceptionally vocal in their demands for social, legal, and political change.

“There’s been huge change; absolutely enormous,” reflected Rayside. “There’s been a tremendously positive shift in public attitudes, certainly from the 60s and 70s, and even over the last 20 years.”

Despite these vast improvements, many of which are tied directly to the work both accomplished and inspired by the UTHA, recent events demonstrate that, for the LGBT community, the fight for equality and acceptance is far from over. This past October not only saw the tragic suicide of Jamie Hubley, but also the regressive antics of BC politician Marc Dalton, who promoted an anti-gay church in the province’s legislature on October 18. Even the very day on which the commemorative plaque in honour of the UTHA was unveiled was not free of LGBT-related controversy, as U of T President David Naylor related the news of Shorter University in Georgia threatening to fire employees who refuse to declare that they are not gay.

“Often universities are the first refuge where young people can embrace and express their sexual identities,” said Naylor. “[Universities are] privileged places in that regard, but far from perfect. Outside of these walls, it is still not a sanctuary for many people who have sexual identities in the minority in our society. This is a fantastic commemoration and the impressive turnout certainly speaks to its own success, but it’s also a sign of the work still to be done.”

Naylor’s sentiment was echoed by every speaker who took to the podium to offer their own words on what the Provincial Plaque celebrates and symbolizes. “This is the first LGBT related Provincial Plaque in Ontario, and it acknowledges that sexual minorities are an important part of this province’s history,” concluded Rayside. “What I hope it doesn’t do is suggest that these struggles are purely historical.”

Perhaps Lisa Kadey, one of the many students of Sexual Diversity Studies in attendance, said it best: “Marking these moments in queer history is simultaneously a celebration of how far we’ve come, and a reminder of how much is left to do.”

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Indie Game Spotlight #8: Braid

By Andrew on November 4th, 2011

Metaphors in Mechanics

Braid offers a masterful blend of inventive gameplay and novel narrative execution

Three years ago, independent software developer Jonathan Blow released Braid, a game which at the time was something of a champion for the artistic merits of video game design. Lauded for its striking artistic direction, inventive time manipulation mechanics, and poignant narrative, few games before or since have been met with as much adulation.

Braid tells the story of Tim, a man searching for a princess snatched away by an evil monster. Although the events framing the action remain deliberately vague, occasional text preambles nevertheless indicate that Tim is hoping to reconcile – or better yet erase – a mistake he has made.

Tim’s adventure is an exploration of themes, which sets it apart from other trite “save the princess” affairs. Braid deftly uses a single game play mechanic to express ideas of forgiveness, decision, and place. The pragmatic end of saving the princess isn’t the goal; it’s the emotional discoveries made along the way as perspectives gradually shift and come into focus.

As a game, Braid is a fairly straightforward puzzle-platform affair across six areas, each with its own variation on time manipulation. One world lets you rewind time at will, another has time advance and rewind as the player moves forwards or backwards, etc. Each variation is alluded to in the area’s introductory text, which is the only kink in an otherwise immaculate interweaving of narrative and game play.

It’s fitting, then, that Braid’s overarching narrative is as sophisticated as its core game play mechanic. The paragraphs framing the narrative are out of sequence, reminiscent of the film Memento but with a more human touch. Saving the princess becomes a metaphor for the lengths to which one goes in order to repair what’s been damaged, for how learning from a mistake never comes without the sting of the fault.

Unifying Braid is an aesthetically lush and beautiful style, with vivid brushwork art and soothing acoustic melodies. The feeling of being lulled to sleep permeates the entire experience, which compliments the dreamscape design exploring fresh perspectives on a familiar tale. From beginning to end, Braid never ceases to charm, and its fascinating narrative makes it all the more attractive.

And yet even after three years, Braid remains as alluring as ever, perhaps in part due to its closure (or lack thereof). Like the relationship between Tim and the princess – indeed like the relationships of anyone – Braid may come to an end, but it never resolves. What conclusion could be more appropriate than that?

Braid is available on PC, Mac, Linux, PSN, and XBLA for $10.

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Supreme Oversight

By Andrew on October 30th, 2011

Supreme Oversight

U of T prof criticizes Supreme Court appointment process

On October 17, Prime Minister Stephen Harper appointed U of T alumni Andromache Karakatsanis and Michael Moldaver as replacements for Supreme Court of Canada Justices Ian Binnie and Louise Charron. However it was six months ago when Justices Binnie and Charron first announced their intention to retire from the Supreme Court, and for most of that time no clear process was established to fill those vacancies. For at least 25 years numerous efforts have been made to create a balanced, reliable method for the appointment of new justices, and yet none has succeeded.

“Often the power of the federal government to follow its own preferences when selecting new judges for the Supreme Court has been abused,” says Jacob Ziegel, professor emeritus in the faculty of law at U of T. “The incumbent federal government continues to choose the people it feels comfortable with and who are expected to reflect its political philosophy.”

The process by which judges are appointed to the Supreme Court is an often impromptu construction. When vacancies arise, it falls to the current federal government to determine how to fill them as necessity dictates. Bearing this in mind, it is easier to understand why Karakatsanis and Moldaver were chosen than it is to understand how they were chosen.

“The federal government compiled a list of potential candidates from a variety of sources,” explains Ziegel. “This was done for the benefit of a selection panel of five members from the House of Commons, consisting of three Conservative MPs, and one MP each from both the Liberal and the NDP. The panel was asked to choose six names and the shortlist was submitted to the Prime Minister who made the final choice of two.”

Like many other observers (including Sébastien Grammond of the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa and fellow professor emeritus in the U of T Department of Political Science Peter H. Russell), Ziegel has been openly critical of the lack of transparency and accountability in the filling of Supreme Court vacancies for many years. He has expressed these criticisms in a number of publications, including the National Post and The Globe and Mail. In one of his commentaries published September 27 on the U of T Faculty of Law blog, he refers to the delays in Supreme Court appointments as “unacceptable,” describes the process of selection proposed by the federal government as “tortuous,” and describes the lack of legislation prescribing the procedure as being of “even greater concern.”

“The new procedures have two manifest weaknesses,” Ziegel writes in his commentary, The right way to pick Supreme Court judges, published August 19 in the National Post. “The first is that the members of the selection panel will not be free to select the candidates they wish to consider and to recommend their appointment. The second and still more serious objection is that it misconceives the status and role of the Supreme Court of Canada in Canada’s constitutional structure. The Supreme Court is an independent institution and is not accountable to Parliament for its decisions or to the incumbent government. It is the guardian of Canada’s constitution and of the basic values enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”

When asked about the criticisms levelled against Justice Karakatsanis for her limited experience as a member of the Ontario Court of Appeal and of Justice Moldaver for being unable to speak French, Ziegel responded that he doesn’t question their qualifications, but rather laments a missed opportunity. “I’ve said publicly that I believe that one of the two judges that should have been appointed was Justice Robert Sharpe of the Ontario Court of Appeal. He’s a superb scholar and judge, very fair-minded, writes beautifully, renders his judgements quickly, and speaks French fluently. He has all the desirable qualities of a Supreme Court Justice and I think it’s extremely unfortunate that he was not selected.”

Ziegel cautions against a justice system that allows for deep divisions amongst judges based on their own philosophical beliefs and the unconstrained executive power which makes it possible. While the potential for bias is widely acknowledged, there is no effective mechanism in place to address it.

“It was fairly predictable that the candidates that were actually chosen would appear to have a conservative bias,” concludes Ziegel. “It doesn’t mean that they’re bad choices – quite the contrary, each of them has very considerable merits – but it does mean that they were chosen to reflect the philosophy of the government in power and not on the basis of the best available candidates.”