[adrotate banner="16"]
[feather_share show="twitter, google_plus, facebook, reddit, tumblr" hide="pinterest, linkedin, mail"]
By: Huphy Ghayer
Drivers will have to add patience to their new year’s resolutions. A new law requires drivers to wait until a pedestrian has crossed to the other side of a road before proceeding. This law applies to crosswalks identified with specific signs, road markings and lights, as well as crosswalks at stop signs or traffic signals with a school crossing guard present. Drivers will be fined between $150 and $500 for breaking the law.
A $5.60 cut has been put in place for students paying their own hydro bills. This tax used to go towards paying for old nuclear power plants. However, it has now been scrapped to put a little change back in students’ pockets.
With the arrival of winter, it is important to remember to stay safe while driving. A new law brought by the provincial government requires insurance companies to offer incentives for Ontario drivers to purchase winter tires. This provides an opportunity for students to replace worn out tires and ensure a safe winter commute.
58 grocery stores in Ontario are now licensed to sell beer. Smaller brands are legally guaranteed to occupy 20 percent of shelf space, but the brands are on offer will vary from store to store. In Hamilton you can spot the new item at the Queenston Starskys, Mall Road Fortinos, Rymal Food Basics and Queenston Fresh Co.
[thesil_related_posts_sc]Related Posts[/thesil_related_posts_sc]
[adrotate banner="16"]
[feather_share show="twitter, google_plus, facebook, reddit, tumblr" hide="pinterest, linkedin, mail"]
By: Sunanna Bhasin
Very recently, media outlets exploded with the news that Canadian serial killer and rapist, Paul Bernardo, had released a fictional violence-filled thriller and that Amazon Canada had categorized it as a #1 Best Seller. Bernardo was convicted of murder and sexual assault in 1993. He was sentenced to life in prison with a possibility of parole after 25 years. As the 25-year mark approaches, Bernardo has not only published his e-book A MAD World Order, he has also applied for day parole in Toronto three years early. The publishing of this novel — said to be filled with gory descriptions and violent crimes — is a double-edged sword: it will decrease his already near-zero chances at parole, but it has also reminded victims of his horrific crimes.
Bernardo is classified as a dangerous offender, meaning that he can be detained for an indefinite amount of time. This label was given to him after being convicted mainly for two first-degree murders and two aggravated sexual assaults of teenage girls, Kristen French, 15, and Leslie Mahaffy, 14. Ironically, Bernardo’s trial was subject to a publication ban in Canada to protect witnesses and victims, yet here Bernardo is today, more than 20 years later, able to freely publish work on the internet.
While Amazon Canada pulled the novel from the site a few days ago, it is astonishing that the book was published in the first place. It only took 80,000 signatures on a petition by NEWSTALK1010 calling for the removal of the book and Amazon customers threatening to take their services elsewhere for Amazon to act and stop selling the book. Someone like Bernardo, who has committed the most despicable, disgusting crimes, including raping young women outside their parents’ homes and murdering schoolgirls, does not deserve any sort of online presence. Yet, Amazon did not seem to care about the immorality attached to the book until their business was being threatened.
It is one thing for Bernardo to have needed a creative outlet to help him cope with his isolation, but it is another thing to give someone who has orchestrated unforgivable crimes publicity, without any sort of care for victims. Bernardo’s living victims who are witness to the publication of his book have every right to question Amazon’s much too flexible policy. Before being removed, A MAD World Order was selling for $7.77 according to the Globe and Mail, meaning that it earned 70 percent in royalties. If Amazon truly doesn’t “accept books that provide a poor customer experience” which the company states in its content guidelines, then where was the foresight when they decided it was okay to provide a platform for a convicted murderer and rapist to profit? The fact that Bernardo was given even a minute to profit off descriptions of killings, which he knows all too well, is horrifying. Amazon’s quick decision to pull Bernardo’s e-book from the site does not seem to be out of concern for his negative influence and the repercussions his online presence has already caused, but rather out of fear for losing the bulk of its dedicated customers.
The reality is that Paul Bernardo has hurt more than his chances of parole by publishing this book, but ultimately it is Amazon’s responsibility to screen what is being submitted. The book should never have been allowed on the site. Despite Amazon’s intentions being questionable, it was a smart move on their part to remove Bernardo’s book from their platform. At the end of the day, all that Bernardo’s online presence does is cause his horrific actions to be remembered, and because the nature of the publication does not represent any form of apology or regret, he should not be granted the right to sell his work.
Photo Credit: David Paul Morris
[thesil_related_posts_sc]Related Posts[/thesil_related_posts_sc]
[adrotate banner="16"]
[feather_share show="twitter, google_plus, facebook, reddit, tumblr" hide="pinterest, linkedin, mail"]
By: Sunanna Bhasin/Opinions Columnist
I remember heading to a sports tournament with friends a few years ago and having our taxi driver educate us on what drunk driving looked like. He pointed out one car in particular, just a few metres ahead of us. It was weaving in and out of its lane in an unpredictable pattern, travelling at relatively high speeds and the driver never signalled when switching lanes. I was shocked that the driver was drunk or severely impaired, but I was sure that he or she would be pulled over as soon as a cop caught sight of the sign of reckless driving. What would follow would be a brief interrogation and a breathalyser test. If the blood alcohol content was found to be greater than 0.08 mg/ml, then it would be goodbye to the offender’s driver’s license.
It was that simple. However with the election of the Liberal government, it is a possibility that marijuana may be legalized in the near future. With legalization and easier access to the drug, there is the chance of an increase in driving under the influence involving pot. Yet, how can police monitor driving high when there is no efficient test currently available?
The interesting thing about cannabis is that its main ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol — responsible for its psychological effects — can stay in the blood and urine days after ingestion. Unlike alcohol, which leaves the body before sobriety sets in, marijuana’s THC remains in the blood long after its effects have worn off. While taking a blood test can identify levels of active, or recently ingested THC, roadside blood tests are inefficient and time-consuming, not to mention expensive. In the time that it would take to conclude whether a driver is high, police could be missing those driving drunk. The question is should we be prioritizing one over the other?
The typical drunk driver exhibits three warning signs on the road: weaving within one lane weaving in and out of the lane and speeding. A high driver may weave within his or her lane but is less likely to display as extreme behaviour as a drunk driver. One may find reassurance in the fact that cannabis users are often aware of their impairment, and make conscious efforts to compensate for that on the road by keeping greater distances between themselves and other cars and driving more slowly. Drunk drivers, on the other hand, are often unaware of their inability to drive and do so anyway because of a false sense of confidence.
This does not make driving high less dangerous. Reaction time is affected in both cases, which can result in collisions and serious accidents. Because a stoned driver may not be displaying warning signs, the drivers around them might not realize that they should be concerned. The legalization of marijuana could add to the invisible threats drivers face daily. Surely, wrongly believing one is in control is worse than making the conscious effort to battle the impairment one is aware of being under when high.
The reality is that while both drunk and stoned drivers are a threat to road safety, so are distracted and tired drivers, and there are no tests to determine if someone is too overwhelmed with fatigue to be behind the wheel. The only way to prevent impaired driving is to continue advocating against it and educating the public on the risks. Given the research available, drunk drivers tend to do much more damage than stoned drivers, as there isn’t a clear positive correlation between traffic accidents and cannabis use, while there is a significant amount of evidence in regards to the risks of driving under the influence of alcohol. Finding a means to test for marijuana consumption would be wise nonetheless, but focusing on drunk drivers should remain the priority.
[thesil_related_posts_sc]Related Posts[/thesil_related_posts_sc]
Readers should be advised that this article contains mentions of sexual assault.
There is a pervasive cultural image of “The Good Survivor.”
The Good Survivor can be seen on television, in Lifetime movies and in those real-life stories of sexual violence which we choose to highlight.
The Good Survivor is white, middle class and was attacked by a stranger. She fought back. She wasn’t drunk, she wasn’t on drugs and she wasn’t in a relationship with her rapist.
She is straight, and young, and articulate. She immediately goes to the police, who believe her, and her rapist is prosecuted. He goes to jail, and she moves on. The movie ends there, with the implication that she has been changed but not traumatised, and that her rape was a mechanism by which she became “strong”. She forgives her attacker. She’s not a victim, you see. She’s a survivor.
I loathe her.
Philosopher and Holocaust survivor Jean Améry wrote, “man has the right and the privilege to declare himself in disagreement with every natural occurrence, including the biological healing that time brings about. What happened, happened. This sentence is as true as it is hostile to morals and intellects.”
Améry felt that when forgiveness is made a virtue, unforgivingness becomes the victim’s vice. The desire that victims forgive their abusers comes not from any wish for the victim to find closure, but to show that the victim was not irrevocably damaged. It absolves not only the attacker but those who allowed it.
When I was three-years- old, I trustingly followed my favourite uncle down to the basement. We were going to play a game.
The “game” didn’t end until he died five years later. In time, he started taking pictures.
I never told anyone. I didn’t fight it. There was a part of me, an isolated child with few friends her own age, that relished in the attention. It wasn’t comfortable. It wasn’t right. But you can reconcile many things. I thought that I was special.
In a movie, one of the Good Survivor kinds, my mother would have noticed, or I would have told her, and we would have gone to the police. They would have used my testimony to take down my uncle and the men he shared my images with. I would have emerged triumphant.
In reality, I dissociate completely when anyone touches my neck.
It is popular to refer to rape victims only as “survivors.” I understand that this gives many of those people strength, and I would never condemn anyone’s methods of understanding their own trauma.
I didn’t “survive” my rape as one might a forest fire. It was not an act of God. It was a crime, and I was the victim.
I was once given a workbook that subtitled itself “From surviving to thriving!”.
I hated it. I hated it more when it became apparent that the book and others like it were focused on helping return people their identity and sense of self that they had before their rape.
I was raped before I knew how to read. The background of my early childhood is one of profound trauma, but one which was my normality. There is no returning to some previous whole. If I was broken, I was broken so early and so often that there is no me without this brokenness.
If this seems to you to be clinging to victimhood, understand that I cling to it in a context which so desperately wants me to forget. A culture which so desperately wants me to stop talking about it, to stop feeling its effects — the emphasis on survivorship in feminist communities has often struck me as being terribly insensitive to those of us who have to remind ourselves that what happened was a crime. If we are traumatised, if we are broken, it is because we have experienced something that was designed to break us.
I take my strength from being broken, from these proofs I have that I was hurt by someone’s deliberate choice rather than an amorphous inevitability.
I refuse to forget. I refuse to forgive. I refuse to rationalise.
I was the victim of a crime. This sentence is as true as it is hostile to morals and intellects.
[adrotate banner="16"]
[feather_share show="twitter, google_plus, facebook, reddit, tumblr" hide="pinterest, linkedin, mail"]
In Canada, a person can now be arrested, jailed, and forced to testify in court without ever being charged with a crime or knowing the evidence against them. This is the legacy of Bill S-7, a bill introduced in 2013, that offers unusual power to authorities to jail and force people into secret investigative hearings. There is also Bill C-51 that introduced as law in June 2015. This bill gives the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), our C.I.A., the ability to act as a secret police force with little oversight, a considerable shift from its initial purpose to gather intelligence and pass it to the RCMP.
There is also the infamous practice of carding: also known as street checks, police checks or stop-and-frisk.
Carding occurs when police officers detain law-abiding civilians—people who are not suspects, under investigation or who are not criminals or in the act of committing a crime—in order to question, I.D. and record their information. Its purpose is to find something of an incriminating nature on civilians, such as persons breaching a court condition, or for leads on a number of criminal offences. The collected information is then stored in a police data bank indefinitely.
Carding is unconstitutional because by law the police are only allowed to detain a person when they have reasonable grounds to suspect that this person is engaged in criminal activity, has committed a crime or is linked to an ongoing investigation. If there are no such grounds, the detention is illegal and any evidence obtained during this detention must be excluded at trail. Carding violates our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, particularly the right to be free from arbitrary detention, and the right to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure.
It is also dangerous because officers regularly write moralistic statements and judgments of character on their ‘carding notes’ that influence other officers. This happened to Osgoode Hall Law School Juris Doctor candidate, Knia Singh. He was reported as “not police friendly” (along with being incorrectly identified as Jamaican though Mr. Singh was born in Canada), as if being not police friendly is unlawful or even an objective interpretation.
A working group under OPIRG McMaster called Black, Brown, and Red Lives Matter (BBRLM) has uncovered that this unconstitutional practice is enforced by the Hamilton Police Services (HPS). What was unearthed was that between 2010 and 2014 the HPS conducted more than 9000 street checks, despite having repeatedly told BBRLM that they do not engage in carding.
While in theory it may appear unbiased, in practice carding is rampant with racial and class bias. For instance, while only 3.2 percent of Hamilton’s population identifies as black, black people account for 12 percent of people carded. Likewise, Indigenous persons are two percent of the population but five percent of people carded. White persons on the other hand are 84.3 percent of the Hamilton population but 75 percent of the people carded. This data is additionally surprising as the HPS has repeatedly told the public that they do not collect racial identifiers during street checks. It turns out they do, and that they misled us. This is unacceptable.
In response to carding, which until recently also occurred in New York as “stop-and-frisk,” Alicia Garza, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement in the USA, is coming to McMaster again to speak on the topic.
[feather_share show="twitter, google_plus, facebook, reddit, tumblr" hide="pinterest, linkedin, mail"]
[adrotate banner="12"]
On Aug. 6, 2014, Twitch, a website used to stream user-generated videogame content, announced that they would be adopting a Content ID system to their videos, muting any archived videos that had copyright content. This is a very big deal. This change once against reflects a dated system of copyright that cannot keep up with the ever-changing technological landscape of the internet, and a growing imbalance of power amongst large corporations and independent content creators.
So what is Content ID? To those who aren’t familiar, it’s a system that automatically scans videos for audio content that is believed to infringe upon copyrighted material, and automatically removes it. This system was added December 2013 to YouTube, and has since migrated to Twitch as well.
While this may seem like an effective way to reduce the risk of legal action against Twitch or its users, this change marks a growing trend in the way online media is legally regulated, and has some serious drawbacks in terms of censorship and monopolization. This is because Content ID simply doesn’t work.
Because the system is automatic, there is often little way to tell if the creator actually owns the content, as the system just scans a database of existing audio files, and removes or mutes the videos as needed. This means that thousands of Twitch streamers and YouTubers have had their content removed automatically without warning, often with little way to fight it, even if they have acquired the appropriate rights.
As a result, companies like Valve have had their videos muted on Twitch, because they possessed copyrighted music inside the Dota 2 video game, despite them being the creators of the very game that was removed. The number of legal redundancies this system creates is seemingly endless, and unfortunately not everyone has the power to stop it.
Now some of you might be thinking: “What’s the harm? Can’t one simply stop using copyrighted material and avoid this problem altogether?” Well, that is where things get complicated. The problem is that copyright law in Canada and the United States simply hasn’t evolved quickly enough to deal with the growing amount of user-generated content.
For those unfamiliar, copyright systems in the United States and Canada both work under an exception that allows the use of copyrighted material if it is for research, educational purposes, criticism, review or news reporting, to name a few. In Canada this system is known as fair dealing, and in the United States this system is known as fair use. While the systems differ, both work on a case-by-case basis, and because of this many cases are decided by a judge.
If you aren’t seeing the problem, I’ll make it simple. There are not enough judges in the world to handle the amount of new material that YouTube and Twitch users produce. This means that most people burned by the automatic system of Content ID have no way to combat unfair regulation, leaving many smaller known users simply out of luck.
It seems as time passes the Internet is beginning to lose the freedoms and opportunities it once offered, slowly returning power to big businesses. It is time for North America and the world to address a growing issue stifling the freedoms of independent content creators. It is time to bring copyright law into an age of new media.
In previous years, most secondary school students looking to pursue careers in law would not even have McMaster on their shortlist of schools to apply to. Though well known for its strengths in legal philosophy, the Hamilton-based university famed for its scientific innovations did not stand out among a wealth of other options.
But acknowledging that no single approach guarantees admission to law school — especially during a time when competition to get in is particularly high —McMaster has entered into greener pastures with several changes that may beckon to prospective students.
As the Silhouette reported in Nov 2013, the university introduced a new program dubbed Justice, Political Philosophy, and Law (JPPL), which gained approval from the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities following several years of lobbying by members of the Department of Philosophy.
When asked about the effort that went into obtaining approval for the experimental program, Dr. Elisabeth Gedge said it was only natural. The Philosophy Department was already well established at the graduate and research level and there was a demand from the university to direct attention towards the needs of undergraduates.
Gedge has seen desire for spots in the program increase and she anticipates a growing interest. The Chair of the Department of Philosophy said that the interdisciplinary nature of JPPL attracts open-minded, intelligent students who like the flexibility the degree offers after graduation.
Dr. Stefan Sciaraffa believes the JPPL has a lot to offer, saying that the writing-intensive nature of the program provides students with valuable skills.
“[The program is] a unique opportunity to hone a highly valuable skill that will serve him/her well in any number of careers that require him/her to write legal briefs, memoranda, policy papers, and so on,” he said.
After seeing faculty succeed in bringing JPPL to life, the students enrolled in the program are now taking the lead in initiating further change with impressive results to show for it.
During the fall/winter term of 2013, Chris Leblanc, Louisa Matozzo, and Tiffany Leslie joined forces to create the McMaster Undergraduate Journal of Law and Politics (MUJLP). While undergraduate journals in other areas of study are not uncommon, MUJLP is the first undergraduate journal in Canada to focus on law and politics.
The trio was driven to found the journal in order to fill the void in the undergraduate journal landscape. They also want to give students an outlet for scholarly expression that is not normally afforded to them.
Leslie said she and her peers were disappointed at the lack of excitement with which most university students greet academic tasks.
She hopes that the thrill of having original work published in a peer-reviewed journal will offer an example of the practicality of theoretical knowledge to the skeptics.
The third-year JPPL student also emphasized the collaborative nature of the project, noting that hshe, Matozzo, and Leblanc have added nine more members to their ranks and that she would love to see the team expand further.
Leslie also noted that the number of the new hires speaks to the wide appeal of law and how it can be applied to any stream of learning.
“We have editors who are in Chemistry, some who are in Economics, and others who are in Political Science. There is really a broad range of interest being shown from all faculties.”
Various university employees were called upon to help steer the students to a manageable first year at the helm of an ambitious endeavor, as Gedge put it.
Along with Dr. Gedge, people like Associate Dean of Humanities Dr. Anna Moro, Dr. Stefan Sciaraffa, Dr. Nancy Doubleday, and Rowena Muhic-Day of Humanities Career Services were instrumental in handling procedural matters so that the students could focus on plotting the journal’s future.
For students interested having their writing published in MUJLP, Leslie said that the editorial board is welcoming submissions to the email listed on their website ahead of a conference that will take place in mid-March. They aim to have several professors and keynote speakers engage with students in a sociable atmosphere.
Combined with the JPPL program, the new journal is another feature that may entice future law students to McMaster.
J.J. Bardoel
Silhouette Intern
Humanities has introduced a new honours program to McMaster, Justice, Political Philosophy and Law, following approval from the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities. The program is the outcome of two years of steady preparation from the Department of Philosophy.
The program went through a long process of approval from department faculty, the university and the ministry. Those advocating for the program creating a detailed brief outlining the programs structure, aims of the courses and benefits for students involved, as well as the unique traits the program could potentially bring to the campus.
“In our case, the consistency with President Deane's Forward With Integrity was an important part of the case we made for the JPPL,” said Chair of the Department of Philosophy, Elisabeth Gedge. “The JPPL Program will instantiate the values set out in FWI in a unique way.”
The main focus for students in the JPPL program will be to help develop an understanding of law and legal institutions, as well as perspective on political and moral theories. The ideologies will be reflected throughout the wide range of courses available, ranging from law and global politics to feminist jurisprudence and human rights.
The majority of students already involved with the program are currently aiming to attend law school, although Gedge emphasized that JPPL will also prepare students for potential careers in other fields, including politics, philosophy, human rights or public policy. “More broadly, JPPL should appeal to any student interested in becoming an informed and engaged Canadian and global citizen,” she said.
The centralized focus on law with the heavy emphasis on philosophical reflection and theology make the program unique in Canada.
Those in the program say the program’s feasibility is based on its faculty; the Department of Philosophy currently has two faculty members with law degrees, and a professor who is Chair in Constitutional Studies.
“It builds on strengths we currently have in the Philosophy department in areas of legal philosophy, political philosophy and applied ethics,” said Violetta Igneski, assistant professor in the Department purchase propecia of Philosophy.
The program hopes to offer experience and opportunities for internships, placements and community engagements in legal clinic, round tables and immigrant centres. Senior undergraduate students will also have the benefit of the Department of Philosophy’s active membership in the Ontario Legal Philosophy Partnership, a joint agreement between the philosophy departments of McMaster, York University and Osgoode Hall Law School, which allows for constant collaboration between the three parties.
In order to qualify for the program, students are recommended to complete Humanities I with at least three units of Level I philosophy, along with submitting a supplementary application form in March of their first year in McMaster. Enrolment will be limited, with roughly 60 students expecting to be admitted.
“Lots of students and parents ask, ‘What can I do with my degree?’” said Igneski. “This program has an answer to that.”
The Hamilton Police Services has announced that, as of this week, there will be targeted driving and cycling enforcement leading to campus on Sterling Street. Police will specifically be targeting cycling infractions.
"The police have a number of partnerships in the Westdale community, including at McMaster. There’s been ongoing concern about cyclists obeying the rules of the road, particularly in the Westdale area," said Sgt. Scott Moreton of Hamilton Police Services.
Moreton explained that the Ainslie Wood/Westdale Community Association has been expressing concerns about road infractions by cyclists in the area, in addition to the problems observed by police. In particular, Hamilton police will be looking out for stop sign violations and cyclists riding on sidewalks.
He added the the crackdown on cycling infractions is part of a four-week "problem-oriented policing" project that began on March 3.
The Office of Sustainability notes that 37 per cent of students and 18 per cent of employees choose to walk or cycle to campus.
Album: Mirage Rock
Artist: Band of Horses
Author: Tina Cody
Rating: 2/5
Mirage Rock marks Band of Horses’ fourth studio album, and sadly continues the decline that began with their previous record, Infinite Arms. With Mirage Rock, Band of Horses tries to forage into the realm of pop music. Unfortunately, their distinct twang does not seem to fit this genre as the group attempts to create catchy tunes, which infuse a medley of musical styles.
Band of Horses find themselves unsuccessfully straddling the borders of rock, country, and pop. In many instances it appears as if they are floundering, attempting to assert their musical style while also confused about their exact stance. Their songs no longer seem to ebb and flow, instead they remain still and monotonous, lacking a certain degree of intimacy.
By the end of the album, Birdwell’s honeyed vocals and meticulous strumming grow tiring, and the record’s tunes seem to follow some generic formula. “Electric Music” and “Everything’s Gonna Be Undone” offer some respite, proving to be unique songs among the mess of sameness. In no way can Mirage Rock hold a candle to the group’s previous work. In my opinion, Band of Horses fans should treat this album as a mirage, a mere figment of their imagination.
Album: The 2nd Law
Artist: Muse
Author: Brody Weld
Rating: 2/5
Shortly after they hit the studio in September of 2011 to begin working on The 2nd Law (the sixth Muse album to date), they warned us that it would be “radically different.” That’s a hell of an understatement.
Don’t get me wrong; this is a solid album, but if you’ve been onboard the Muse train from the moment it left the station, you’re going to be baffled by the eclectic collage of styles. They’ve easily covered three decades of genres with this release. The first track, “Supremacy,” is one huge crescendo of gorgeous distorted falsettos and orchestra strikes. Don’t get comfortable with the thickly textured atmosphere though, it isn’t consistent throughout the album. Tracks like “Explorers,” “Animals,” and “Madness” are more traditionally minimalistic, while the groovy funk sound of “Panic Station” (slightly reminiscent of “Undisclosed Desires” from the last album) will have you wondering if you’re listening to the same band.
Album: Will Happiness Find Me?
Artist: Maria Minerva
Author: Justin Baird
Rating: 3.5/5
Maria Minerva’s sophomore LP Will Happiness Find Me? is not the most usual listen, although not particularly abstract.
Songs sometimes break up to change pace or overall sound and direction. Vocals are often processed with delay and reverb, creating a dizzying vocal track. Looping samples create the entire beat for one track, which is perhaps the best of the LP. However, the album has a structure that supports this sort of dissociative style without being too conceptual.
Not easily described as the most exciting music, the overall tone is quite pleasant. Although not exactly a notable change in style from her first album (which is a good thing), she’s certainly developed, as she incorporates bits of various themes to construct more of an eclectic sound. If you don’t like one song, that doesn’t necessarily mean you wont like the next, as there’s rarely a similar theme in two songs, without straying too far from her own style. Overall, it’s truly a creative album that deserves a listen for it’s strange lack of press coverage and it’s ability to cover a lot of musical bases without being a novelty.
Album: Shields
Artist: Grizzly Bear
Author: Michael Skinnider
Rating: 4.5/5
Grizzly Bear has always had a tendency to get stuck: on a particular instrument, as with "Two Weeks"' piano or on a lyrical motif, as in "Colorado"'s eponymous refrain. Shields, in this context, feels propulsive: even its poppiest songs make a concerted effort to avoid embracing a particular atmosphere. "Yet Again," the album's lushest song, closes with a minute of strident guitar squalls, and choruses have a tendency to drop out into nothingness midway through.
The band itself has emphasized the influence of democracy in the recording process, and indeed, Shields explores subtleties of tone and texture, combinations of each member's musical vocabulary that stand in contrast to Veckatimest's vocal-centric baroque pop. Perhaps this is why Shields is also the most grandiose record in Grizzly Bear's canon. Nothing in their discography comes close to the aggressive, orchestral tension of "Half-Gate," whose strings are sheer, Sun Ra-esque blasts of sound.
Shields doesn't really have an obvious entry point, and as a result, is a more challenging record than anything they've put out since Ed Droste's debut, quasi-solo album Horn of Plenty, but its intimacy and intricacy are just as rewarding.
Album: Babel
Artist: Mumford and Sons
Author: Michael Skinnider
Rating: 3/5
Following up a hit album can be difficult. Just ask Mumford and Sons, whose album Sigh No More was both commercially successful and critically acclaimed. Perhaps wisely then, they chose not to fix what wasn’t broken. Babel features many of the same qualities that made Sigh No More so successful. Folky song structures, lovely harmonies, lively banjo, and of course Marcus Mumford’s distinctive growl, are all alive and well on the album. There is a familiar balance between jaunty, up tempo blasts, and more intimate moments.
The album does come up short in a few areas however. Fans looking for serious stylistic progression will come away disappointed. That being said, there is a lot to like about Babel. It may not break the mould, but there is no doubt that the sound is distinctly, and uniquely, their own.
It proves that their first album was no fluke, and it affirms that Mumford and Sons will continue to be serious players in today’s folk rock scene for a very long time to come.
Game: World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria
Author: Jason Scherer
Rating: 4.75/5
Countless hours - bloodshot eyes - one more red bull - must reach max level! This expansion has put the breath of life back into World of Warcraft. Here are some new features that make Pandaria truly epic.
Cross realm servers solve low population server issues as well as shine a new light on PVP for those ready to get back to the roots of faction warfare. Now you can group up with friends from any server. However, there will be fewer enemies to kill for quests, more crowded areas, and less resources to ore. This is compensated for with fast re-spawn times.
Keeping true to the new eastern theme of Mists of Pandaria, a new playable race of characters has been made available to players. In MoP you will be able to crush enemies on either faction with the neutral Pandarens. For the first time, World of Warcraft has introduced a race which can be played as alliance or horde.
After countless hours of playing the new expansion, I can confidently say that gamers are in for a sick experience. It feels good to explore new areas and participate in the annihilation of the alliance. See you all in Pandaria!
