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MEDIA How York's spam security brigade  A few months ago, York University's e-mail boxes began filling up with unwanted messages touting can't-miss stocks and cheap medicine, reported The Globe and Mail Sept. 28. Like other institutions and businesses, York's information technology department has many ways of fighting spam. But a new flavour – image-based spam – had slipped past their well-laid traps. Some unlucky people received dozens of these annoying e-mails each day, according to Ramon Kagan (left), a manager in the University's Computing & Network Services department.
Welcome to the latest chapter in the spam wars. Spammers are increasingly hiding messages in image files to escape detection and hit their intended target: your e-mail box, said the Globe. "We've had our rash of image-based spam," Kagan said in an interview. "In the last three months, it's really started to escalate." York's central e-mail system, for example, was forced to increase its storage space by 38 per cent in the space of five months, with half of that absorbed by image-based spam, Kagan said. York recently added another weapon to its anti-spam war chest. It started using a technique called greylisting, which blocks a dodgy e-mail the first time it is sent, forcing the user to send it again. Spammers typically don't bother. Its filters used to catch more than 90 per cent of spam. That figure dropped to the low 80s with the emergence of image-based spam, but greylisting has brought it back to the previous level. "That's done a lot for getting rid of a lot of the spam," Kagan said. Rae Days will dog Liberal leadership candidate "I always thought he was a more natural Liberal than a New Democrat and so, in a way, I feel more friendly towards him now because he's where I think he ought to be," said Laxer. "But party loyalties are a weird thing. They go pretty deep, and I've met people in various parts of the country who have said 'There is no f---ing way that I'm going to vote for this guy. Can we really trust him? Is he one of us?'" Political sex scandals don't draw blood "In contrast to the American press, the Canadian press over the past 25 years has been pretty tolerant or understanding in not wanting to get too far into the private lives of politicians in Canada," says David Shugarman (left) , a political scientist who specializes in ethics at York University in Toronto. "My own view…is that generally, this is not the business of the population until it comes into an area of criminality or security." Shugarman believes most Canadians just don't make moral judgments on the private lives of their political class. Talk of enabling sex for disabled moves forward Loree Erickson is a PhD student at York University doing work in sex and disability. Due to a condition that has left her muscles weak, she uses a wheelchair and requires attendant care. She also has some attendants – a team of friends and volunteers – who facilitate some of her sexual activity: such as changing the batteries in her vibrator, helping her put on a sexy outfit or facilitating the inclusion of a partner. "In my life, the folks that I have doing my care are fairly sex-positive people, so it's a lot easier to talk about sex," she says. "We need to challenge people's conceptions of what is sexy," says Erickson. "That would not only help people with disabilities, but all people." Scarborough public school trustee calls it quits Still, Rutledge said he thoroughly enjoyed his time as trustee. "I do know that I have grown as an individual," he noted. "And if I wasn't a trustee I would not be at university today." Rutledge returned to school and is currently majoring in law & society and minoring in sports administration at York University. Rutledge didn't rule out a return to politics but also hinted at becoming a teacher in the future. Successful curator studies art history at York Toronto turns on its art light for Nuit Blanche An assistant curator at the Art Gallery of York University (AGYU), Changhur thinks a lot about buses. She and AGYU curator Philip Monk have already established the Performance Bus: hired wheels that take downtown denizens to AGYU openings but that also try to make the arduous trip up north into a thing of wonder. At Nuit Blanche, Changhur broadens this idea by mapping out an intrepid network: three yellow school buses run counter-clockwise throughout the city. "TPTPC isn't about me," says Changhur. "It's a code word for playing along with institutions, but also for being involved so you can change things." Peer group helps younger breast cancer patients After a lumpectomy and removal of 12 lymph nodes at North York General Hospital, Bayami had aggressive treatment at Sunnybrook. She joined a support group on the advice of her oncologist but did not bond with the other, older patients. Although her extended Iranian family, friends, boyfriend and his family rallied around, Bayami felt the need of a confidante who truly understood her experience. Enter Laurie Dudo, who contacted Bayami through Sunnybrook's program and began weekly phone chats with Bayami. Bayami believes she has fared well because of her top physical condition when diagnosed, and because she is by nature an optimist and always upbeat. "I've always been high-energy – go, go, go – especially with my school work. I had to learn to let things go that weren't top-priority. I'm a more peaceful person inside and I now live in the moment." Canada's first space tourist will be a York alumnus The 42-year-old recalls watching lunar landings on a black-and-white TV when he was a child growing up in Victoria, BC. Then, during his university days, what Criswick had hoped to become was an astronaut. His studies and early career all pointed to space flight. In the early 1990s, Criswick studied space physics in York’s Department of Earth & Space Science & Engineering. After obtaining his master's degree from York, he worked at an observatory in Utah. Soon after Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic began accepting expressions of interest, Criswick became the first Canadian to book a seat on a rocket plane that is expected to take off in the next year or 18 months. He paid US$20,000 down – 10 per cent of the full fee.
Osgoode trade expert publishes report touting benefits of corporate diversity Drills, drains and lawyers: Counterpoint It is simply wrong-headed to contend that [law schools] should concern themselves only with instructing students in the basic tools of the legal trade, wrote Hutchinson. In comparing lawyers to dentists and plumbers, Teitel fails to understood why the role and function of lawyers in society is different. Indeed, his basic insistence that "law is a trade puffed up into a profession" is as telling as it is mistaken. If law is only a trade, then society is worse off for it. Teaching technical knowledge and practical skills is a necessary, but not sufficient condition of a good legal education: good technicians know not only how to, but also when to and why to. As one commentator put it, "Technique without ideals is a menace; ideals without technique are a mess." It is incumbent on lawyers, therefore, to appreciate that their trade skills should be placed in the service of larger societal ideals. Some schools, like my own, said Hutchinson, have recognized that students do need to be trained better in the basic legal skills; no amount of idealism can make up for a lack of primary technical competence. Accordingly, clinical programs have been developed and introduced which strive to combine lawyering craft with social and ethical sensibilities; service and skills are seen to be mutually reinforcing. In attempting to produce lawyers who have technical proficiency and social awareness, the real danger is that law schools will fail miserably on both counts. Negotiating better this difficult and demanding educational terrain is the central challenge for today's law schools. But the real failure would be, as Teitel seems to recommend, for law schools to give up on this noble and essential challenge. Social awareness not part of law school When I entered law school, wrote Teitel, I had had 27 years of my parents' and two years of my wife's examples of honourable living to guide me. I had worked as a factory worker, farm worker, furniture mover, babysitter, bellboy, bartender, writer and cab driver, devoted countless hours volunteering on behalf of disadvantaged people, lived abroad for a year, backpacked alone through Eastern Europe during the Brezhnev era and spent my undergraduate years browsing till midnight in the stacks. I did not need to be taught social awareness at the knees of Dean Hutchinson and his crew. I expect that if the dean were to spend his next sabbatical driving a cab in Thunder Bay he'd become a lot more socially aware than he would by doing yet more legal research. City approves its portion of Spadina subway payment After providing a brief history of his own advocacy of the project – pushing early to have environmental assessments done, meeting with York Region Chair Bill Fisch to talk about cost-sharing, and working with York University – Li Preti said the project will bring immense benefits to the city. "At a personal level, I do not mind being recognized as a one-issue councillor if this brings spin-offs and benefits for all the citizens of this great city," said Li Preti, before sitting down and adding his vote to council’s unanimous approval of the deal. Crotchety but brainy Provinces, companies await payday loan rules Conservatives doing right thing She has fond memories of York’s borscht Qigong instructor taught at York Commuter student calls York professor’s downloadable course ‘awesome’ Diane Zorn (left), a lecturer in the School of Arts & Letters in York’s Atkinson Faculty of Liberal & Professional Studies, is the second lecturer in Canada to offer video lectures via Apple iPods, after a Carleton University professor. "The online course is important to me because I spend so much time working...that to be able to work at home is really great for me. So far it's been awesome," said Foley, a full-time student and part-time receptionist. Zorn and Foley say online chat forums make up for the lack of a classroom setting and social interaction with fellow students. Zorn also set up a message room exclusively for students, with the invitation, "Professor never enters here." "In the past, the way online courses were designed, students felt isolated and didn't have the experience of community learning. The way online courses are designed now, that's not the case," said Zorn, who also spoke about her course on SUN-TV Sept. 25. College or university? The boundaries blur Not every college-university collaboration has worked according to plan, however. At Seneca College, Canada's largest with more than 100,000 students, president Rick Miner discovered that many of his students who were seeking a degree didn't want to go away to university, even after taking the first two years of degree courses at the Toronto-based college. Seneca has university partners across the country and worldwide, but York University remains a popular choice among students. Professor sues York for $10 million Angry that his claims were being called bigoted, Noble filed a grievance seeking an apology and $10 million in damages for defamation. The fight has now gone before labour arbitrator Russell Goodfellow, who suddenly adjourned the hearing over concerns about how to protect witnesses from hearing each other's testimony while still permitting coverage of the proceedings.
The suspect union secret ballot Martinuk asserts firstly that essential services in Canada are "overunionized", said Doorey. That's an odd assertion. The right to join a union is protected by our Charter of Rights of Freedoms and is considered a fundamental and core human right in all of the key international human rights instruments to which Canada is party (including ILO Conventions and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights). Our charter also protects her freedom to argue that Canada should not protect the fundamental human rights of its citizens. But then Martinuk rehashes the old neo-liberal argument that "the secret ballot vote" is the only democratic way to test whether employees wish union representation. The alternative approach of establishing majority support based on union membership cards signed by employees, which was the norm in Canada until the mid-1990s and remains the process in several Canadian jurisdictions, she described as "blatantly anti-democratic." Drug tests don't include those on more than one medicine Lexchin published a research paper last year that estimated that 41 drugs were withdrawn from the Canadian market for possible safety reasons from 1963 to 2004, one of few efforts to measure the magnitude of the problem. He said another regulatory weakness in the current drug-testing system is that Health Canada doesn't have the authority to demand new safety trials once a drug has been approved, and monitors adverse reactions only in a passive way through reports made by doctors. "I think that there is a recognition in Health Canada that things are not adequate at this point," Lexchin said. Hezbollah’s becoming an important social force, says Rahnema York Middle East analyst qualifies Shia support for Iran In Spain, old divisions are reopening Artist comes with baggage Por came to Canada to escape serving as a combatant in the Vietnam War, married, had a couple of daughters and worked as an architect. In the recession of the early 1990s, like many 40-somethings, he got laid off. He tried computers, didn't like it, so decided to pursue his passion. He enrolled at York University, "absolutely loved it," and in just two years earned a bachelor of fine arts degree. Since then, living "incredibly frugally," doing a little teaching, that's how he's earned his living. Schulich student targets drunk drivers Two things helped to change all that. Inspired by his older sister's activism, he became an anti-impaired driving advocate. "I remember thinking it was shocking, unfathomable, that drunk driving, something so entirely preventable, was the leading killer of youth," Brown said. His involvement with OSAID (Ontario Students Against Impaired Driving) led his teachers to choose him as an ambassador to a youth leadership conference. "They taught us to be loud, to take charge, to fire on all our cylinders and to have fun at what you do," he said. "I'm relatively modest, but you have to declare yourself, to get things done." Book takes hard look at Canada's policies "Today, in Canada, we have human rights, equity and social-justice polices in place which are inclusive, but on the ground, there are bureaucrats who continue to violate those policies, not applying them equitably," he says. "As for the argument about our refugee policies being Eurocentric, why is the government so proud to send planes to Kosovo and not so proud to send them to Somalia?" He notes in his book: "Contemporary studies continue to demonstrate that immigration policy practice often excludes Africans, not simply because they cannot adapt and contribute to economic well-being, but because Africans are still deemed inferior compared to other immigrants in the minds of immigration officials." Toronto's growing sky high Wekerle has spent much of her career studying high-density issues, namely the mile-high monument to intensification known as the residential highrise, whether it's condos or apartments. And it's led her to challenge the idea that if you plunk a condo down somewhere in the city, you can call it a neighbourhood. "These folks who move into a 30-storey building, do they get involved in the neighbourhood? Do they care what the parks are like and the street?," she said. Leslie Kern, a York PhD student writing a dissertation on first-time condo buyers, shares those concerns. "There are certain neighbourhoods that are just condos, like the Harbourfront," she says. "There's no reason to go there unless you live there. It's just kind of taking up space, but not necessarily integrating itself into the community...They're increasingly privatized spaces," she adds. "People are, in many ways, encapsulated in their own buildings. In a way, it's kind of allowing the city to back off a little bit from its responsibilities for providing public spaces." Free beer parties help spread the word "When you see a 30-second commercial, you know exactly what it is. A lot of these new forms are lot more subtle." But not necessarily less ethical. "Young people know what's going on. You cannot underestimate how sophisticated they are...They know the world we live in is a market-based economy where people try to get to them...I'm always impressed by the good intelligence of consumers." Dewdney moves in a writer-in-residence at Windsor Our evolving view of angels The notion of angels appears in the Bible’s Book of Genesis. On Day Six of creation, God says let "us" make humanity. Many ancient writers believed God was speaking to angels in that Scripture. According to one text, the heavenly choir didn’t like God’s tune. "The angels say ‘Really bad idea. Bad idea. Don’t make these human beings.’ It’s the genesis of a sibling rivalry," Turkienicz said. Younger student sees an advantage York student tries to beat the bookstore blues York University has an online classified system that connects sellers and buyers of used books, the Star also noted. It offers prices that are a fraction of the bookstore price. Vitti snagged one book – listed at $52 in the bookstore – for $30 through the online system. She has also searched amazon.com, but the books she needs weren't available there. Ice Gardens set for renovation Investing in literacy has a financial payoff With these cuts, the federal government plans to take away $17.7 million over the next two years from the numerous literacy organizations across the country that attend to the literacy needs of adult Canadians, wrote Middleton. The beneficiaries of these programs are working-age citizens whose low literacy effectively holds them back from realizing their full potential as members of the community and as people who can get jobs, seek promotion, and contribute fully to the Canadian economy. An investment in their welfare is a direct investment in Canada's productivity – something that should be on our radar when, as one indicator of Canada's performance, the World Economic Forum in Geneva has, once again, downgraded Canada's global competitiveness ranking to 16th from 13th last year. Statistics Canada research indicates that a rise of one per cent in literacy scores relative to the international average is associated with an eventual 2.5-per-cent relative rise in labour productivity and a 1.5-per-cent rise in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per person. 2005 statistics revealed that there are an astounding nine million adult Canadians who struggle with low literacy. This is a hard fact that isn't going away. We can acknowledge the problem and invest in rectifying it. Or we can pull funding. The federal government, wrote Middleton, seems to have chosen the latter course. Osgoode faculty members ask justice minister to restore Law Commission funding As part of a package of program and spending cuts announced on Sept. 25, the government of Canada has decided to close the Law Commission of Canada. As former and present members of the commission's Citizens' Advisory Council, researchers who have contributed to the commission's work, and citizens who recognize the importance of its contributions to justice in Canada, we ask that you reconsider this action and restore funding to this vital and important agency. In 1992, a previous government abolished Canada's path-breaking Law Reform Commission. It took five years before the federal government realized the value of what had been lost, and established the new commission in 1997. We urge you to avoid making this mistake again. The mission of the law commission is to engage Canadians in the renewal of the law to ensure that it is relevant, responsive, effective, equally accessible to all and just. Its mandate is to provide independent, non-partisan advice to the government to ensure that our laws and legal system meet the changing needs of Canadian society and its citizens. It also stands ready to advise the government on specific questions referred to it by your office. The social issues Canadians face in their communities are complex and dynamic. The law commission facilitates an approach to law reform that recognizes this complexity and is equal both to Canada's diversity and to its common commitments to justice, equality, fairness and accountability. Since its inception, the commission has addressed a range of difficult questions. How can the law be used to restore the dignity of those who have suffered institutional child abuse? How can law better support close adult personal relationships? What should the relationship be between public and private law enforcement? The letter was signed by law professors and others from across Canada, including Osgoode professors Bruce Ryder, director of Osgoode’s Centre for Public Law & Public Policy, Chantal Morton, academic director of Osgoode’s Intensive Program in Poverty Law, Janet Mosher, Roxanne Mykitiuk and Margaret Beare, who is also a sociology professor in York’s Faculty of Arts.
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MONDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2006 |
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politically damaging Canadian amours have tended to be those that crossed the line from private life to public policy or criminality.
York student Patrick Rutledge (left) will miss the staff and students he's served for the past six years as a Toronto District School Board (TDSB) trustee. But he won't miss the ineffective way the board of trustees operates, reported the Scarborough Mirror Sept. 28. "There is no effective decision-making process," said Rutledge (Ward 22, Scarborough East), who had some choice words for the board's current "outdated" governance model. Rutledge will not be seeking re-election this November, noting that all politicians have "best-before dates".
Military co-op opens door to a career
Ottawa should consider a company's commitment to diversity before awarding a federal contract, argues a new report commissioned by the Canadian Aboriginal and Minority Supplier Council, reported the Toronto Star Sept. 28. Minority-owned businesses often struggle to integrate into the Canadian market. In general, minorities are expected to make up one-quarter of Canada's population by 2017, and the disproportionate unemployment and poverty rates minorities experience will continue to grow without government intervention, says the study, which was released yesterday. The 58-page supplier-council study, co-authored by Charles Gastle (left) , professor of international trade at York’s Osgoode Hall Law School, and former colleague Zara Merali, also highlights the economic opportunities aboriginal and minority businesses offer.
On Sept. 22, Toronto lawyer Murray Teitel used the National Post opinion page to deliver a harangue against the present state of legal education, wrote Allan C. Hutchinson (right), distinguished research professor and associate dean (research & graduate studies) at York’s Osgoode Hall Law School, in an opinion piece for the Post Sept. 27. Teitel maintains that law students are ill-prepared for legal practice and that law schools are more interested in training legal philosophers than legal tradespersons. These are serious charges that warrant a strong rebuttal.
It's the latest in distance and online learning, reported The Toronto Sun and its sister 24 Hours’ Vancouver edition Sept. 26. Students plugged into their Apple iPods, listening intently to what's presumed to be the latest chart topper, may actually be listening to the beat of a new drum – a podcast university course. Laurie Foley, 27, uses an hour-long subway commute from Mississauga to York's Glendon campus to listen to her philosophy lectures on her iPod.
Labour lawyer David Doorey (right), a professor in the School of Administrative Studies at York’s Atkinson Faculty of Liberal & Professional Studies, wrote a letter to the National Post Sept. 26, commenting on a column by Susan Martinuk (Unions Must Practice What They Preach, Financial Post, Sept. 20). Doorey wrote: It's often difficult to know when newspaper columnists write about labour laws and democracy in the union organizing process whether they truly believe that a secret ballot vote of employees is always more "democratic" than a count of union membership cards, or whether they are really just cloaking their personal preference for fewer unions in the glow of democracy discourse. Are they pushing an anti-union agenda, or are they just ignorant about the way things work in the real world? My guess is that it is often a little of both.
Dr. Joel Lexchin (right) , a professor in the School of Health Policy & Management in York’s Faculty of Health, said clinical trials for new drugs often do not discover the full range of possible adverse effects of the medications, reported The Globe and Mail Sept. 25 in an article about a new study on prescription drug testing. These tests are typically done on a relatively small number of people, usually adults between 18 and 64, who are taking only one medicine. This means drug reactions on the elderly, children and patients being treated for multiple conditions might not be adequately assessed. "It's a real crap shoot in terms of figuring out if there will be safety problems in those people," Lexchin said.
York alumnus MacDonald Ighodaro's book Living the Experience will be released at a Fernwood Publishing launch in the first couple of weeks of October, reported The Daily News (Halifax) Sept. 25. Ighodaro (left) (BA ‘94, BA‘95, BEd ‘98, MEd ‘98), an assistant professor of sociology and criminology at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, moved to Canada from Africa two decades ago for, as he says, "the pursuit of human decency." He went to high school in this country, failed to secure a job after that, and so went on to do his bachelor of arts at York University in Toronto. He later earned an education degree and masters in education at York, as well as graduating with a diploma in migration studies.
"A lot of the condos today are really vertical gated communities," said urban planner and York University Professor Gerda Wekerle (right) , of York’s Faculty of Environmental Studies, in the Toronto Star Sept. 24. "We don't really know if these folks are getting widely involved [in their community]," Wekerle added. In the background there's a steady, persistent refrain from developers and urban planners: density is good. "It's over and over and over again," Wekerle says. "It's a concerted attempt to reshape the way we think about what's happening in the city."
If you believe in angels, you might imagine them as invisible bodyguards who serve and protect us, wrote The Record(Kitchener, Cambridge and Waterloo) Sept. 23. That is a comforting thought, says Rachael Turkienicz (left) , an instructor in Jewish education and rabbinics in York's Faculty of Education and a Fellow at York’s Centre for Jewish Studies. But there is much, much more to those heavenly beings. During a lecture for the Jewish Studies program at the University of Waterloo, Turkienicz delved into ancient texts to flesh out our bare-bones image of angels. She said she personally discovered her own fascination for angels while combing through ancient Jewish texts while studying for her doctorate.
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