Monthly Archives: January 2012

Green Living in Residence

Last November, a province-wide competition took place between university residences in which they were encouraged to reduce their energy consumption.  A few days ago, I took part in a focus group hosted by the research team from UBC that created the competition.  What the discussion reminded me was that reducing your energy consumption isn’t something you should only do because of a competition, it’s something you should continue to incorporate into your everyday habits.  Here are some tips for those living in residence that you can do easily every day to reduce your carbon footprint: Continue reading

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Things You Can do FREE with your UBC Card

As a UBC student, you have a ton of opportunities available to you – many of them for free, on your own campus!  Here is a list of some things you can do on the Vancouver campus for free with your UBC student card.

Vist the Museum of Anthropology.  Seriously, if you haven’t been to MOA yet, go.  It is sooo cool!  Even if museums aren’t really your thing, you can still wander through the outdoor exhibit space and check out the totem poles (although the coolest ones are inside.)

Check out the Nitobe Gardens.  If you haven’t heard about them by now, where have you been?! The Nitobe Garden is a peaceful Japanese garden right next to Place Vanier that you can easily while away an afternoon inside.

Go swimming. Did you know that your UBC card will get you into the aquatics centre, absolutely free?  Now you do!  This is one opportunity you can’t miss – fun and exercise for free, in one stop! And by the way, I also heard they have a gym in their basement, so you can save on your Birdcoop membership.

View some art. Another place that your UBC card will get you free admission in the Belkin Art Gallery.  I haven’t actually been there myself yet, but I plan to really soon, and you should too!

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Stop SOPA Day

Starting at 5 a.m. January 18th, it is Stop SOPA Day.

“The bill would authorize the U.S. Department of Justice to seek court orders against websites outside U.S. jurisdiction accused of infringing on copyrights, or of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement.[4] After delivering a court order, the U.S. Attorney General could require US-directed Internet service providers, ad networks, and payment processors to suspend doing business with sites found to infringe on federal criminal intellectual property laws.” – Wikipedia

To explain in laymen’s terms:

“Okay, here’s a general idea of why SOPA is bad. There are other reasons too, keep in mind. Let’s say Bobby uploads copyrighted content owned by Abby to YouTube. If Abby notices this and alerts YouTube, YouTube is legally obligated to take down what Bobby uploaded. This is fine. However, under SOPA, let’s say Bobby uploads copyrighted material to YouTube. Then law enforcement officials are allowed to shut down ALL of YouTube for the single video Bobby uploaded. This means that YouTube would have to check everything any user does before they upload it for the public to see. It’s impossible for one site to check everything any user does to make sure it doesn’t infringe on any copyright, so sites supported by user generated content would have to essentially shut down. Site like YouTube, Facebook, Tumblr, Vimeo, Flickr, etc. would be dead. So now you are no longer a sheep and justifiably outraged! There’s a whole host of other reasons it’s bad. Note that they’re also trying to pass PIPA which is very similar and also needs to be shut down.” – Ted Eaton, a facebook friend of mine

 

I believe that this bill if passed would set society back about fifteen years. At least.

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