NEWSWIRE

Yorkfest 2005:
Ready for k-os

Hip hop iconoclast and former York film & video student k-os (Kevin Brereton) headlines another outstanding line-up of bands ready to rip it up at Yorkfest 2005. The largest one-day event at York happens Wednesday on the Harry Arthurs Common at York's Keele campus, presented by the York University Student Centre in conjunction with the Underground. Now in its 10th year, Yorkfest provides a great opportunity for new musical talent to shoulder up to big-name bands during a mainstage concert.

Futuristic Viva bus service
rolls onto Keele campus
York University commuters who live in York Region can now hop on a rapid transit vehicle at a number of stations and travel to the Keele campus in style. The new Viva rapid transit service will unfold in four stages and new additions to the service will be completed by January 2006.

196 Rocket service boosted by TTC
The Toronto Transit Commission has seen you standing in line and made changes to its 196 York University Rocket route. The Rocket provides express service between York, Downsview Station on the Spadina Subway and Sheppard-Yonge Station on the Yonge/Sheppard Subway lines.

Two York profs make TVO's top-10 finals
Two York professors have been named among the top-10 finalists in TVO’s Best Lecturer Competition. Rob Bowman, professor of ethnomusicology in York's Department of Music, Faculty of Fine Arts, and Paul Delaney, professor of physics & astronomy in the Faculty of Science & Engineering at York, were named finalists. Each will each have an upcoming lecture at York taped by TVO for a fall series that will include viewer voting to select the winner.

Grammy-winning prof goes Hollywood North
The always in-demand Rob Bowman (see above) also made his feature film debut at the Toronto Film Festival last week, typecast as a musicologist named Rob Bowman, in The Life and Hard Times of Guy Terrifico.

Counting the lessons of Katrina
The Hurricane Katrina disaster is a hard lesson in the value of prevention, says York Professor David Etkin, coordinator of the first Emergency Management program to be offered at an Ontario university. Decisions made long ago made by the city of New Orleans - which lies 80 feet below seas level - particularly vulnerable to the worst natural disaster in US history.

Ioan Davies lecturer looks at love
For Michael Hardt, literary theorist and a professor of literature and romance studies at Duke University in Durham, NC, the question of love and its existence in a world that has known great evil is a political question - but one which has been hijacked by modern thought. Hardt will present York’s annual Ioan Davies Memorial Lecture on Thursday, Sept. 15 at 5pm, in the Burton Auditorium located in York’s Centre for Film & Theatre.

Lighthouse leader, space pioneer enter Order of Canada
Two York stalwarts, a Canadian music legend and a space pioneer, have been named to the Order of Canada. Paul Hoffert (right) is an adjunct professor in York’s Faculty of Fine Arts and a renowned expert on new media and technology. He is also known as the founder of Canadian rock band Lighthouse. York professor emeritus Allan Carswell, who is working on NASA's 2007 Phoenix mission to Mars, was also honoured.