Affordable Mini Housing

The thought of ever having enough money to own a home seems like a magical fairy tale to the average University student like myself, whose idea of splurging consists of ordering an import beer at  bar, or buying that shampoo you like, even though it wasn't on sale. The downpayment alone for an average home in a major Canadian city is more than my student loan debt, which is clearly a frightening and unfathomable figure.

Even for many average working class Canadians, home ownership is miles away from the constraints of their budgets. However, one British Colombia based company is working on changing this. NOMAD Micro Homes is designing affordable, sustainable, and adaptable houses starting at $25,000 for the basic models.

These mini houses, slightly bigger than a shed, can be set up just about anywhere. Almost as easy to assembly as Ikea furniture, it takes about a week for a couple of moderately construction savvy people to get up and running. Customers are able to customize their home to their needs, whether that be bare bones, or coming equipped with kitchen and bathroom appliances. To live in such a small space, the average person would likely be forced to say goodbye to a plethora of unnecessary belongings currently taking up space in their dwellings. While this lifestyle may not be for everyone, this seems to be the perfect innovation for today's minimalist. 

Learn more about NOMAD micro homes here:  http://www.nomadmicrohomes.com/index.html 

My writing experience v.s. Helen Keller's

When writing, the two senses I draw upon the most are my sight and hearing. Before I put pen to paper I think about what I am going to write, and I hear myself saying it in my head before anything is written. I use my eyes to see what I am actually putting on the page, and to check it over after it is written. I re read each sentence after it is written to make sure it still makes sense, again hearing the words in my voice in my head. For Helen Keller, writing is a very different experience. She isn’t able to say the words aloud in her head, for she has never experienced what they sound like. She couldn’t use her eyes to see if the words were properly placed because she was unable to see. Even with these substantial differences in what our bodies are capable of, both Helen and I are able to tell a story with our words. Everything Helen learned was through feeling; she did not hear nor see words, but she felt them. First she felt them being written on her hands through her teacher. She later learned to write them by feeling her letters, and learned speak them by feeling her voice and her lips. I have spent very little time thinking about how language feels, and that is the only way Helen knew language. However, after reading Helen’s story, I realized we use the same language the same way to describe our experiences.

How anonymously created memes have changed online racism

There is no doubt that the average person is willing to speak much more candidly in an anonymous online situation than they would be were their name and face associated with what they were saying. This means that in the online world, we are typically faced with far more shocking, radical opinions and statements than we are in the real world. For example, sitting in the library if a stranger next to me were to start spewing some racist opinions at me, I would probably be pretty shocked. Conversely, if I saw a random username posting the exact same opinions online, I wouldn't think it to be strange at all. The same concept also goes for humour and jokes online; people can joke about absolutely any topic online and offending people doesn't seem to matter.

Memes are a very popular style of online humour, with many websites dedicated to them. 9gag.com is an example of a website where any user can anonymously post meme type files for all to see. It is very common for the most viral memes to be racially offensive, however no one really seems to care. More and more the online community has been adopting a kind of "it's all okay, or none of it is okay" attitude, and I believe anonymity is the foundation of this. If you can't tell what the person who posted this racist meme looks like, you can't really identify how offensive it is. It's not considered racist if Chris Rock, or Eddie Murphy are on TV cracking jokes about black people, but society would have a very different reaction if a caucasian comedian were to be making the same jokes. Since we are unaware of the author of online jokes, we're not sure if it's racist or not; if the joke is funny, we just laugh at it without feeling bad. 

The following image was posted on a meme website. 

(http://memes.survivedavis.com/details.php?image_id=594)

This meme could be taken as being fairly offensive, it's definitely racist, however no one posted any angry comments about it. I'm sure people of all ethnicities saw it, yet no one seems to have gotten offended. No one knows who posted it, or whether they're black, white, asian, or a unicorn; the author doesn't matter, people just saw the joke, and took it for what it is. 

Racism has been a very touchy topic for the duration of my lifetime, although it seems now that racism itself is becoming the joke. 

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/thats-racist

This particular meme is clearly making fun of Mexicans immigrating to the United States, but it's also basically saying "racism...hahahhahaah". Because of online anonymity, most people are just willing to laugh off stereotypes, without getting offended. Anyone can make fun of anyone in this form, it's open season, and it has to be; if we can't laugh at all of it, then we can't laugh at any of it, and no one wants a humourless internet.

Rant- The City of Calgary Encourages Drunk Driving .

Take a second to imagine this situation: It's 2:30am, and you've just been asked to leave the bar where you were drinking all night. You step outside into a cold -20 winter evening, which feels even colder since you've been gallivanting around a hot sweaty bar for the past three hours.

 Since you know you're clearly too drunk to drive you think "Let's catch a cab, I'll get my car in the morning". This is an excellent responsible decision, pat yourself on the back. Only there's one problem...You can't catch a cab! Only a few cabs seem to be in the vicinity, and none of them are vacant. To add to this problem every other bar on the street has just asked all of their inebriated patrons to leave as well, leaving a slew of freezing cold drunks littering the streets.

You find it strange that there is such a high demand, yet no cabs around to capitalize. Why is that? The City of Calgary allows there to be a limit on the number of cab licences available, allowing Checker and Associated Cabs to have pretty much all of them. The effect of this is that every time the demand for cabs is even moderately high, it becomes next to impossible to find one. Calgary should increase the number of licenses and allow competition in the cab industry to ensure everyone can be served.

You've now come to terms with the fact that you're not going to catch a cab, so you start to think of other alternatives. "We could just take a bus, or train". Once again you can pat yourself on the back for thinking of a great alternative to drunk driving. However, there is another problem; you can't take public transit, because it doesn't operate at 2:30am. Calgary should recognize this issue and at the very least have the train and/or major bus routes operating later on the weekends.

So, you can't get a cab, you can't take transit, how are you going to get home? Walk? Too bad you live in Mackenzie Town/Hawkwood/Temple/any of the eighty-zillion communities that have been contributing to the terrible urban sprawl problem. If you did walk home you'd get there at about 8am, assuming you didn't freeze to death on the way.

 Your only two choices are to freeze to death or get in your car. You could just simply sit in your car with the heat on until there is an opportunity to get home in a responsible manner, but then you might get charged with a DUI anyways. You know you probably shouldn't be driving, but all that alcohol has clouded your judgement, and it's making you feel a little bit better about making risky decisions. You already thought of all the responsible alternatives and none of them are presently a viable option. The only option left in front of you is driving under the influence, and you can thank the City of Calgary for that.

Don't worry though, the city and province has spent millions of tax dollars on ensuring they catch you, and prosecute you to the full extent of the law, because you're an irresponsible criminal. If the government REALLY wanted us to not drink and drive, don't you think they would put more money into prevention? Better transit or cab service? It seems to me that they are much happier to assist in causing the problem, so they collect the fines from all the people who have been stuck in this predicament.

Typical.

I have a tendency to be late for everything, particularly classes at this school. This semester has been no different than any semester prior regarding my habit of tardiness. In fact I was late to the semester all together, missing the first week for vacation, and causing my first day in this class to be last Wednesday.

 To my surprise I managed to make it to my first class a whole seven minutes early! I was quite proud of myself, I felt very organized that day. As I waited for class to begin I noticed the other students in the class pulling out textbooks. I thought to myself "I didn't see anything about textbooks in the outline...uggghhh now I need to buy ANOTHER textbook?! " 

After waiting the seven minutes for the class to begin, a woman walked into the room, stood at the front, and asked who had missed the first day, so naturally I raised my hand. Then I had another epiphany, "I'm pretty sure I read on blackboard that the instructors name was Charles....this lady does NOT look like a Charles to me...perhaps the instructor changed." 

The lady at the front of the room continued to talk about how this class would not be an easy one, lots of reading to stay on top of, and many large papers to write. "This woman is awful! This is only a GNED course! Why does she have to be so hard on us?! And why are we having to read so many books in a class called 'writing in a digital context'?! This is going to be a nightmare!" 

She continued to explain the class and then it finally dawned on me, "I am DEFINITELY in the wrong class right now...." 

"So now what do we do, self? I need to formulate an escape plan...I don't want to be rude...but I can't just stay here... and now I AM late for class...I'm really blowing it right now."

Once I had casually gathered my belongings I leaped up and darted out of the room as fast as possible, eyes shot towards the ground. After the 4 seconds that felt like a lifetime I reached the door and was free of my embarrassment. Once I made it outside I realized that my absentminded nature must have kicked in on my way to class, because I clearly just walked into the first computer lab, with no regard whatsoever to what number was written outside of the room. I walked down the hallway another thirty feet and found EA2067, an easy task once I exited the other realm my brain transcends to regularly. So there I was, walking into my first class ten minutes late...typical.

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