In this battle against tuition rise, the students have many things going against them, and right after the government itself, the second biggest shit disturber is without a doubt the inside resistance from certain students. Those students, whether ideologically opposed to the whole concept of this “Revolution Erable” or just simply fed up with not being able to study, have been turning to the courts since the Laurent Proulx case. Indeed, since the legislation surrounding the formation of students unions does not recognize the right to strike or the right to picket lines, many court orders have been issued to order the schools to resume dispensing class. It’s one thing to get a court order, but as the media reports, it’s a whole other thing to get that order carried out and respected. So far, some schools have remained shut down due to illegal picket lines carried on despite the order, and some ballsy teachers have went as far as to dispense their students of class out of their own initiative in support of the movement. This blatant disrespect of the law is a problem, a major one at that , with two causes: on one side the students, and on the other the teaching staff.

Ten weeks later, the province-wide conflict between students and government over the rise of tuition is still raging on. In the beginning, it was strictly about tuition, because students unions are OBVIOUSLY not politically affiliated with any political movement, party, or trade union. But now, funny enough, the debate seems to have opened up to much wider questions of governance… or at the very least, some people seem to be very eager to make it so.

As a computer enthousiast, I have live the most part of my life dreaming of big computer rigs. Gigantic cases with massive airflow, push-pull fan setups on everything, LED-lit this and that, all that jazz. After owning progessively bigger and bigger cases, from a Thermaltake Armor Jr (standard ATX mid-tower) to a Rocketfish RF-FULLTWR (E-ATX compatible behemoth of a full tower), I have lost my interest in blingy modified cases, and have started to build my computers with minimalism in mind. For pragmatism's sake, I traded big for small, and loud, in-your face styling for a more discrete, clean and timeless look. The form-factor of choice for my latest build being micro-ATX (mATX), I found that the Lian-Li PC-V354B fit the bill perfectly.

It’s been out for a couple of days now and it already has dozens and dozens of rave reviews. The release of Scuba’s third full length album on Hotflush has been long awaited, as has been the release of anything on this label these days, and it lives up to the hype. Here is my modest review of what I consider to be one of the year’s best albums so far.

It’s been in the air for a while now, and nobody ever really took it seriously, but yesterday it got real: as of next April (approximate date), the Liberal government of Quebec is tightening up the Code de la Route to remove young adult’s right to drive a vehicle with under 0.08 mg/L blood alcohol content (BAC), and will be enforcing a strict zero tolerance policy on alcohol for all drivers under 21. The media and those favorable to the mesure recommended by the Table québécoise de la sécurité routière are calling it an honest attempt a reducing mortality amongst the youth in road accidents, and a catch-up on what is being done in other provinces. I’m calling it yet another undue interference by the government and a perfect example of how the nanny state is restricting our freedoms and killing off the concept of personal responsibility.