When the trailer for Miss Representation started making the rounds on social media, I knew I wanted to see it. Fortunately, it screened as part of the Vancouver International Film Festival 2011.

This documentary film, written and directed by former actress Jennifer Siebel Newsom, seeks to expose and question the representation of females in the media—particularly modern American culture. So many people grow up without media literacy—truly understanding the political economy of mass media.

Modern mass media in the USA (and consequently Canada) is mainly dependent upon advertising revenue, whose sole objective is to sell a product. These advertisements rely on making people feel insecure and anxious as well as using sexual imagery.

Advertisers are not the only culprits of this act. American teenagers spend approximately 10 hours and 45 minutes per day on media consumption, including listening to music, browsing the internet, watching television and movies or reading magazines. There are so many choices available that movies, music and entertainment shows consistently resort to violent, sexual and demeaning imagery to break through the clutter. These messages influence predominant cultural ‘norms’ and political discourse.

Between interviews with famous and powerful women such as Jane Fonda, Katie Couric, Margaret Cho, Condoleezza Rice, Geena Davis, and Rosario Dawson, the film shows startling facts and statistics about the role of women in one of the most powerful countries in the world: Read the rest of this entry »

The very first SlutWalk happened in April of this year in Toronto, but it has since taken local, national and even international media by storm. SlutWalks are popping up all over major cities in Canada, USA and across Europe in response to victim-blaming.

SlutWalk Toronto is a rally that began in response to the victim-blaming that occurs throughout society in response to rape and sexual abuse. The tipping point was when Constable Michael Sanguinetti of the Toronto Police Service advised women at York University to “not dress like sluts” to avoid getting sexually assaulted. Unfortunately this is not an isolated incident. In Manitoba, Judge Robert Dewar sentenced a rapist only to house arrest attributing it to the way the victim was dressed and behaved.

If this victim-blaming occurs in Canada, where we have a strange reputation for ‘politeness’, I dread to think what is happening in other countries around the world. Many women have it worse than us living in First World countries, but I strongly believe that action starts at home. Blaming victims of a sex crime—in any country—just doesn’t sit right with me.

A fantastic article was circulated last week (I saw it on Facebook and Twitter) about what would happen if we blamed the victims of other crimes. Do we blame people who are robbed for having expensive items in their home? Do we blame people who are the victims of credit card fraud or identity theft? No! Because that would be ridiculous.

So, this Sunday, May 15, 2011, I will be participating in SlutWalk Vancouver because “whatever I wear, it is never an invitation for sexual objectification, sexual harassment or sexual abuse. Never.”¹

Over the past five years, the Conservative Party and Stephen Harper have screwed up a lot for our country. Among some of the worst are:

• cut foreign aid funding and peacekeeping forces (and subsequently were denied a seat to the UN Security Council for the first time in history)
• cut funding for women’s advocacy groups (43% cut)
• cut arts funding ($45 million)
• gives tax breaks to large corporations such as the tar sands industry ($1.4 billion… more than the entire budget of Environment Canada)
• neglected funding for the mentally ill and addicted (but committed $2 billion to expand prisons)
• cut childcare funding ($1.2 billion)
• cut public funding for science ($138 million cut, while the US invested $2.75 billion/year)
• becoming the first party in Canadian history to be guilty of contempt of parliament.
• prorogued parliament… twice
• tried to secretly eliminate the long form census (which would result in uninformed decisions)
• fires employees who try to do their job (such as Linda Keen who ordered the shut down of a reactor at Chalk River because of concerns about the emergency power system)
• if they can’t influence committee proceedings… they decrease funding for the commission in question to the point where they can’t operate.
• refuses to sign the UN Declaration designating clean water as a human right
• decided to buy 65 fighter jets ($16 billion) instead of search and rescue air crafts

And the most ridiculous ones:

• renamed the “Government of Canada” the “Harper Government” on all official correspondences
• redecorated the Prime Minister’s office with pictures of only himself (Harper) instead of former Prime Ministers

Think I’m just spitting out a bunch of rubbish? Nope… there are news stories and truth behind all these facts which is very unfortunate for us here in Canada. Here are the two websites that compiled most of the news sources: ShitHarperDid.com & So What Did I Miss? blog & Unseat Harper.

Tomorrow (Monday, May 2) is Election Day…. and all eligible Canadians need to get out and VOTE for anyone but Harper.

My initial musings on my Sony eReader were not very positive due to technological issues. However, I do have some good news, some improvements, adjustments, and (of course) bad news.

Problem 1: Calibre did not work on my Macbook (Calibre software not compatible)
Status: Fixed. I installed an old edition of Calibre in my late-2006-era Macbook. This worked and I was able to successfully add books to my Sony eReader. But remind me not to update Calibre when it tells me there is a new version available.

Problem 2: Adobe Digital Editions and DRM-protected books
Status: Previously I had started playing with ADE after issues with Calibre. As I had got Calibre working, I thought I would be fine without ADE. But then… (famous last words, eh?)

I got two free books as a “holiday gift” from Chapters-Indigo promoting KoboBooks. I went to Kobo’s website, registered an account, followed the instructions on my postcard, entered the single-use-codes, and downloaded the books.

The books are DRM-encoded so I selected the epub format to download, knowing my Sony eReader supported epub files. Kobo automatically wanted me to use Adobe Digital Editions to open the epub files. Okay, so I did that— I also discovered I had to authorize them with an Adobe account too.

In ADE I was able to save the epub files to my desktop, so I did that and then added them to Calibre (as I already knew I couldn’t use ADE with Sony on my Mac). I opened Calibre, added the Kobo epub files, and then synced them to my Sony eReader. So far so good, I thought.

A few nights later, I crawled into bed and picked up my Sony eReader. I decided to start reading one of my free Kobo books, The Bishop’s Man by Linden MacIntyre, who won the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2009. I clicked to open the book and got the following message: Content Protected by Digital Rights Management. Waitaminute!

I ended up contacting Kobo support to explain the issue (Mac vs. ADE vs. Sony) and basically the response was ‘too bad, read it on your computer’. Well, looks like I’ll not be a paying customer of Kobo any time soon….

Okay, now not to open a DRM can of worms, but seriously? I realize that corporations and companies are worried about everyone pirating stuff, like what happened to the music industry, and all the torrent sites for movies and television. But I just want content I buy (or receive) to work on my devices that I buy (or receive).

I bought my iPod, I bought my Mac, I installed iTunes. I buy CDs and want to put the songs onto my iPod via my Mac (all of which I paid for) so why can’t I? Oh right, apparently I’m going to steal the music and give it to others for free.

Don’t even get me started on lending books vs. lending ebooks. Right now all I have on my Sony are books downloaded from Project Gutenberg because they’re in the public domain.

Now, since my iTunes has crapped out for the second time in less than a month, I’m going to go read my paper book. Sound familiar?

I don’t want to call this a review, because the opinions I’m going to express are personal and relate mostly to my trials, errors, and experiences. In the spirit of full disclosure, I received this ebook device as a gift from my workplace. It is a Sony eReader Touch PRS-650.

Upon first playing with it, I found it a bit slow in response time, and my boss (who was testing the office device) expressed a displeasure at the black screen flashing when the pages were turned. I actually didn’t mind that, at least it was some indication that the eReader was doing something.

When I started to click into the settings and books, I experienced a huge lag time between the touch and the action being completed. By “huge” I mean 4 or 5 seconds. But by today’s standards, that’s quite a lot. I would often touch the screen again thinking it hadn’t registered the first one. This would make me select something inadvertantly on the next page as the eReader stored my clicks.

I hooked the eReader up to my computer (MacBook) to charge it (as it didn’t come with a wall charger) and to install the Sony Reader Library software. I did not have a fun time with this software! The PRS-650 has 2 GB of memory space, but as I tried to sync my ebooks to the device, it would freeze. I thought that perhaps I had filled the memory (with the 14 free books I’d downloaded from Gutenberg).

When I Googled it, I discovered Calibre which most people suggested for the Mac/Sony eReader relationship. I used Calibre successfully, but a couple weeks ago it prompted me to upgrade. I had forgotten I’d intentionally installed an earlier version of Calibre because I have an older MacBook (4 years old). Once I’d upgrade Calibre, I wasn’t able to run it on my Mac (doh!) which was totally my fault.

In the mean time, I’d gotten a free holiday gift from Chapters-Indigo for two books — The Bishop’s Man and Oryx and Crake if you’re curious. When I downloaded them, they wanted to open via Adobe Digital Editions. So I downloaded Adobe Digital Editions and started playing with it. It had a decent way to organize my eLibrary and I liked that I could make different bookshelves.

I then checked Adobe’s list of supported devicees to see if the PRS-650 was supported, which it was. Score! Then I looked to the help section to find out how to transfer my books to the device. I followed all the instructions but Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) didn’t recognize my eReader. I knew it wasn’t my computer because it was showing up on my desktop as a separate drive.

After more Google-fu, I discovered that ADE and Sony syncing doesn’t work on a Mac. My exact thoughts (after searching for more recent comments about the relationship): Fuuuuuuuuuuck you. Please excuse my language, but in total, I have spent at least 5 hours messing about with this damn device. That is precious time that I could have been reading a paper book.