January 30, 2003

If you should ask any girl from the parish around/ What pleases her most from her head to her toes/ She'll say, "I'm not sure that it's business of yours/ But I do like to waltz with a log driver" -- The Log Drivers' Waltz
Especially if it's a McGill log driver. The Woodswomen and Woodsmen teams came out on top at the annual Lumberjack Championships. The event featured 25 teams from Canada and the U.S. competing in events like pole climbing, pulp pile, standing blockchop and ax throw. Above, visiting athlete Jeff Green, from State University of New York - College of Environmental Science and Forestry, feels the heat of competition in the water boil event.
Photo: Owen Egan

All photonics, all the time
Maeve Haldane
David Plant wants to make sure data can zoom along at the speed of light. The scientific director of the just-launched Agile All-Photonic Networks is steering the search for the seamless light-based switch point so that communications technology can heed us faster and further.

Law and mafias
Maeve Haldane
Human rights, humanitarian, refugees. The laws concerning these are all inter-related, or are they? The founder of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, Goran Melander, tells us what he thinks are the problems with the three families.

Battling the elements: McGill researchers on global climate change
Ed Kromer
A big problem requires big solutions, and problems don't come any bigger than global climate change. McGill's Centre for Climate and Global Change Research brings together researchers from disciplines as diverse as chemistry and economics who are working to put together a giant three-dimensional ever-changing puzzle.

Thinking CAPS for grads
James Martin
Caps for graduate students usually bring to mind a mortarboard for convocation. No more: Career and Placement Services (CAPS) will be launching Graduate Career Week for students entering the job market with a graduate degree or two under their belts.

TV Economist Quiz
Mark Reynolds
Call it reality programming at its smartest. You can watch the triumph and heartache of McGill's Economist Business Challenge team on a television set near you this month.

Questions of media control
Mark Reynolds
Former Gazette publisher Michael Goldbloom has been working at McGill for months, organizing the upcoming "Who Controls Canada's Media" conference hosted by the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada. He's also looking into the possibility of a new kind of journalism school.

Senate report
Sylvain-Jacques Desjardins
Senate came back to a new year with lots of new faces, as Heather Munroe-Blum was welcomed to the august chamber. Issues discussed included salary adjustments, hiring female faculty and possibly dropping the pre-exam study day.

Healing wounds faster
Sylvain Comeau
Mommy! I hurt myself! I need some progranulin! Okay -- Band-Aid has nothing to fear just yet, but experimental medicine professor Andrew Bateman has shown that a naturally occurring protein in the body has a key role in accelerating the healing of wounds.

Saving salamanders
Bronwyn Chester
The endangered mountain dusky salamander will be getting some help from the Brace Centre for Water Resources Management, thanks to a grant from the Nature Conservancy of Canada. The centre will be studying the groundwater that is a key component of the salamander's habitat.

From mortar to moniker
Mark Reynolds
The post office may know it as 1205 Dr Penfield Ave, but we know it as the Stewart. The names of buildings and rooms at McGill are an important part of McGill's campus life, but how do we get them? Well, it's more complicated than just picking one randomly from the phone book.

Also in this issue Message from the principal Letter Kaleidoscope Robin Geller makes the jump from Registrar to Secretary-General. So what does a Secretary-General do, generally? It might be easier to answer what doesn't she do?; Foundations: Magic Lantern -- Old technology meets new: the McCord has a virtual display of 1,250 "magic lantern" slides used by McGill in the days before slide projectors and PowerPoint. On campus It's jobapalooza over at Career and Placement Services, the Player's Theatre takes Private Lives public, Art History and Communication Studies talks about Distortion, Anita Rau Badami visits McGill. For those seeking to diversify their skill sets, PGSS has classes in everything from snooker to salsa.