The Wake Issue 7 Spring 2010

Non-profits

10

Music We Like

12

Haiti/ Poetry/ & more 09 – 22 february

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Editorial Editor-in-Chief Eric Brew

Sound & Vision Editor Deniz Rudin

Managing Editor Maggie Foucault

Humanities Editor Ross Hernandez

Cities Editor Trey Mewes

Bastard Ol’ Dirty (Jonathan Knisely)

Dear Readers,

Voices Editor Matt Miranda

The house that sits immediately outside my bedroom window expands by the work of a small construction crew. Every weekday they build and build. For the last month now, I’ve had to confront this steady presence and I don’t know what to think of it.

Production Production Manager Tarin Gessert

Photography Editor Ben Lansky

Graphic Designers Tarin Gessert, Jonathan Knisely, Lucy Michelle, Ryan Webert

Art Director Keit Osadchuk

Distributors Maggie Foucault, Tarin Gessert, Matt Miranda, Pammy Ronnei

First, I am appalled; it is the manifest of that American/Modern/Bourgeoisie ideal. I see something that is, in all likelihood, unnecessary. How my neighbors believe doubling the footprint of their house is so crucial to continue their comfortable living is beyond me. I think: why can’t we all live in tiny houses, together?

But I am not beyond viewing my neighbors’ home as something fair: it is our freedom to grow, to employ, and to help others (even in the middle of a Minnesotan winter). To see a group of people come together with consistency, even if overtly done for monetary gain, is something to admire. It seems rare that we come together over anything.

Copy Editors Katie Green, Brady Nyhus

Business Business Manager Colleen Powers

This Issue Cover Artist Guy Wagner Illustrators Klaeigh Souhan, Talia Carlton, Ryan Webert, Meher Khan, Angie Frisk, Guy Wagner, Lucy Michell, Rachel Mosey, Photographers Meredith Hart

Advisory Board James DeLong, Kevin Dunn, Courtney Lewis, Eric Price, Morgan Mae Schultz, Gary Schwitzer, Kay Steiger, Mark Wisser

Contributing Writers Joshua Hartfield, Deniz Rudin, Mark Thompson, Amy Nelson, Kirsten Hart, Eric Dolski, Maggie Foucault, Kevin Tully, Jessica Orton, Zach McCormick, Angie Sanders, Matt Miranda, Sam Karns, Matt Carlson, Rachel Keranen

9:1 ©2010 The Wake Student Magazine. All rights reserved.

Established in 2002, The Wake is a fortnightly independent magazine and registered student organization produced by and for the students of the University of Minnesota.

I suppose what I’m saying is this: there is a number of sides to each coin (quite more than two) and that a single side or power shouldn’t dictate our selves. Is not that not the idea of a self?

Even from our own staff, I’ve heard people critique The Wake for being full of people on the same side. I couldn’t disagree more; I am at odds with nearly everything we’ve printed in this particular issue. The Wake is instead a node for a variety of views. We are not beyond printing the controversial or even the ill-thought -out or the poorly-written (though we try to avoid the latter of these). To resort to more clichés, every voice needs a megaphone. No other periodical on campus dares to do what we’ve done, which is put our magazine completely in the hands of our readers and give them the freedom to manipulate or build as they wish.

So, I invite all our readers to harbor themselves in these pages and join us in discussion.

Eric Brew

Editor-in-Chief

The Wake Student Magazine 1313 5th St. SE #331 Minneapolis, MN 55414 (612) 379-5952 • www.wakemag.org The Wake was founded by Chris Ruen and James DeLong.

The Wake is published with support from Campus Progress/Center for American Progress (online at www.campusprogress.org).

disclaimer The purpose of The Wake is to provide a forum in which students can voice their opinions. Opinions expressed in the magazine are not representative of the publication or university as a whole. To join the conversation email ebrew@wakemag.org.

voices

Six Minutes to Midnight Caleigh Souhan

by Rachel Keranen How close do we sit to complete world destruction? According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, six minutes. While the figure might seem ominous, it’s actually an improvement on where our position was one month ago. On Jan. 14, citing a more “hopeful state of world affairs,” the BAS moved the minute hand of their figurative Doomsday Clock backwards, from its previous position of five minutes to midnight.

One minute may seem insignificant but, in the history of the Doomsday Clock, time has only moved within a range of fifteen minutes. Created in 1947 at the start of the Cold War as a means of measuring our proximity to world destruction, the clock started at just seven minutes to midnight.

North Korea increased their respective nuclear ambitions and in recent years U.S. policy gravitated toward favoring nuclear weapons for military purposes. Compounding the world’s woes, climate change’s growing impact forced scientists to incorporate it into the Doomsday Clock. By 2007 the minute hand sat at five minutes until mass destruction.

The BAS cited the election of President Obama as a critical component of a safer world. Could it be that WMD-fearing Bush himself was one of the most dangerous weapons of mass destruction? Unless the scientists foresee enormous potential in Obama, one must conclude that the demise of the Bush administration unloaded a monumental burden from the minds of atomic scientists and Nobel Laureates alike (19 of said laureates help in determining the position of the clock).

After its inception, the clock moved quickly to two minutes to midnight in 1953 as tensions escalated between the US and USSR. The hand moved back again as the Cold War slowly thawed. When the U.S. and the Soviet Union signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in 1991, the clock reached 17 minutes to midnight, its earliest and most cheerful setting.

The board also credited increased world cooperation in reducing nuclear weapons and slowing climate change as factors in the time change. The fact that time moved only one minute indicates that significant progress obviously remains – but one wonders if the world is really safer than it was last year.

Unfortunately, nuclear weapons persevered in both the U.S. and the former Soviet Union. Soon India, Pakistan, Iran and

Security is hard to measure from the privileged position of an American. It’s easy to feel jaded about the continuous

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conflicts in the Middle East, North Korea and elsewhere.

Throughout our lives we have always been aware that nuclear weapons threaten our existence, yet, unlike our parents and grandparents, few of us practiced air raid drills at school or stocked bomb shelters in the backyard. We’ve been lulled into a sense of stasis where nuclear warfare is more a dated tagline of the Bush administration than a constant fear.

More pressing, for us, is the climate challenge. The recent U.N. Climate Change Conference and Copenhagen Accord did little to solidify a strategy for fighting climate change, making the BAS board’s positive assessment of world cooperation questionable. Yes, the Accord recognized climate change as a scientifically valid problem, but they did little in terms of assertive action. The non-legally binding agreement fails to set concrete goals for emissions reductions and has since been criticized by the E.U., African nations, and numerous large and small actors as dangerously inefficient.

The Chinese Foreign Minister, on the other hand, called the Accord “significant and positive,” wholly unsurprising considering China’s interest in blocking any environmental limits on its expansion.

voices

NFL Overtime: One Coin to Rule Them All

by Matt Carlson I’m a white kid from Minnesota named Carlson, and it should be no surprise that I bleed purple. Unfortunately, Viking fans have shed mostly tears after yet another loss in an NFC championship game. It’s the Vikings’ own fault, though. This year it was turnovers, five of them. In 1998 Gary Anderson blew a chip shot field goal, which resulted in a loss to the Atlanta Falcons. But even though the Vikings continue to shoot themselves in the foot, the format of NFL overtime isn’t exactly easing the heartbreak.

Overtime should be the most exciting point of any sport. The athletes are fatigued and the competition is fierce. In the NFL it’s the exact opposite. I cringe when an NFL game reaches overtime. Possession is determined by the flip of a coin. No big deal, right? Wrong, because NFL overtime is a sudden death situation where the first team to score in any manner wins. A team can win with their opponent never possessing the ball.

This very scenario played out in this year’s NFC championship, which pitted the Vikings against the New Orleans Saints.

The game was hotly contested, and by way of many mistakes and missed calls emerged the dreaded sudden death session.

The Vikings called “heads” and the coin landed with “tails” up. The Saints elected to receive and proceeded to pick apart the Viking’s defense and march down the field. With the help of a pass interference penalty, the Saints reached field goal range. Garrett Hartley kicked a 35-yard field goal, sending the Saints to Miami to play the Indianapolis Colts in Super Bowl XLIV. The Vikings went back to a cold and soggy Minneapolis and a future riddled with question marks. Will Brett Favre play another season? Will we get a new stadium? Will we ever win a Super Bowl? One thing is certain: Valhalla must wait.

In football, possession is of all importance and a turnover is a critical mistake. In a game like hockey, a turnover, while still a mistake, is not nearly as devastating as it is in football.

Turnovers happen much less often in football and are much harder to recover from. Football overtime should be more akin to baseball and use an inning-based system. That may sound bizarre, but it already exists in college ball.

College football overtime does not revolve around sudden death. Each team is guaranteed one possession to score.

College football overtime does not revolve around sudden death. Each team is guaranteed one possession to score. Possession is granted at the opponent’s 25-yard-line, with a coin toss determining who goes first. There is no game clock, but there is a play clock. A team can score in any way, but can still forfeit their possession with a defensive take away or failure to get a first down. Teams must also attempt a two-point conversion after scoring a touchdown. PAT kicks are not allowed.

The team with the higher point total at the end of both possessions wins. If the teams are tied at the end of the possessions, the cycle repeats until there is a winner.

I’m not recommending the NFL adopt the college style of play. it’s far too drastic, and the conferences are different in style.

But there are other things the NFL could change. One idea would be to have each team receive a kickoff and the team that has a better return would get the ball first. From there sudden death would commence. Another idea would be that teams could only score touchdowns in overtime while still keeping sudden death intact.

I wouldn’t bank on the NFL changing anytime soon, though.

People will still buy tickets and games will still sell out. It’s our nation’s most popular professional sport (NASCAR doesn’t count because they drive cars). NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is too concerned with tradition, profit and making sure superstar quarterbacks don’t host illegal dogfights. It’s a disservice to fans and it needs to change. The game has to evolve as players become more skilled and technology advances. Just look at the implementation of the replay challenge. It’s definitely not tradition, but it was enacted to maintain the accuracy of officiating and ultimately, the sanctity of the game.

To the fans of other teams that are eliminated during the first possession of overtime games: I feel for you. To the Vikings: just hold on to the ball next season.

Simply put, sudden death overtime and football do not mix.

Sudden death should be reserved for sports where the change of possession is a fluid exchange. Hockey is a good example.

Talia Carlton

www.wakemag.org

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voices

D i $ a s t e rC a p i t a l i $ m Ryan Webert

How US and European Policies Contributed to the Disaster in Haiti

By Sam Karns The earthquake in Haiti was felt around the world. It is important not only because of its scope and the shattering number of victims, but because it has forced people to reexamine the response of the government to such disasters, the role of media in times of crisis, the history of impoverished nations, the tragedy of underlying corporate interests, and the nature of human compassion.

Media portrayal of the tragedy in Haiti has dramatically influenced the average American’s response to the situation. We, like other western nations, see it as our obligation to help the poor, the starving, the underprivileged. Mass media reinforces these values and loves to take advantage of a situation like this by sensationalizing tragedy and packaging it as entertainment to increase ratings and drive advertising sales. Regardless of which agonized group the media portrays, chances are, Americans will sit and watch as catastrophe destroys peoples’ lives.

They may even consider throwing them a few dollars.

The world is constantly being showered by disaster; what makes Haiti so special that the media would decide to cover it so extensively? One reason is that natural disasters of this scope happen rarely, but the very fact that this was a (relatively) natural disaster is another. There are no commercials on TV asking Americans to donate to the suffering people of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia or Palestine, who lose loved ones, homes and basic human rights every day. The human-induced tragedies in these countries are far less pow-

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erful than any natural disaster, especially in the eye of the media, despite that they occur relentlessly. In fact, humaninduced suffering means nothing to those in the powerful nations of the world w of its unwavering frequency.

Why did such enormous destruction occur in Haiti, when if the same earthquake had happened in San Diego, the death toll would be exponentially lower? The answer: Haiti is a “third-world,” underdeveloped nation with little or no protection against such natural disasters, lacking adequate public services in normal times. But why are they so poor? The answer may stem from the fact that Haiti became the first independent, black-led state in the world after a successful rebellion against French occupiers in 1804 and was seen as an enormous threat by the white-led European world powers of the day. And while that did contribute largely to Haiti’s demise, it is not the main cause. The real answer is more closely tied to United States involvement than people like to think.

Every serious political attempt to allow Haiti’s people to move ‘from absolute misery to a dignified poverty’ has been violently and deliberately blocked by the U.S. government and some of its allies.

According to Peter Hallward of The Guardian, “Ever since the U.S. invaded and occupied the country in 1915, every serious political attempt to allow Haiti’s people to move (in former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s phrase) ‘from absolute misery to a dignified poverty’ has been violently and deliberately blocked by the U.S. government and some of its allies.”

In 1910 the City Bank of New York, which was to become Citibank, bought the Banque National d’Haiti, then Haiti’s only commercial bank and the holder of Haiti’s national treasury.

In 1915, Woodrow Wilson sent a brutal, occupying military force to keep an eye on the U.S. banker’s investment. During this occupation, which lasted from 1915 until 1934, 40 percent of Haiti’s GDP was diverted to New York City financiers, according to Ted Rall of commondreams.org. Since then, the U.S. has backed ruthless anti-communist dictators, thrown democratically elected presidents out of power, enforced neo-liberal reforms to move rural Haitian farmers into overcrowded, polluted slums near the cities, and has largely ignored the sufferings of a people that have been part of a failed-state ever since they’ve been a state (over 200 years).

I’d say America has contributed plenty.

The response to this disaster has been swift. However, it’s the people of the world who are taking action, while governments jostle for favorable position for their corporate patrons.

Disaster capitalism, as defined by Naomi Klein, “seeks a blank slate on which to create their ideal free market economies.” A ruined capital, a failed government, a totally degraded environment and 3 million plus displaced Haitians…sounds like a blank slate, doesn’t it? While the U.S. has sent 2000 paratroopers, followed by an additional 8000 marines, to maintain “security” and protect vulnerable Haitians, the citizens of the world have been donating from their pockets, even in these tough economic times. But are these donations being sent with real compassion for the people of Haiti or out of guilt from an American public constantly bombarded with tragic advertisements asking for donations? Either way, money is money. I like to believe that people are generally good-natured and generous, but we won’t ever really know.

There is no easy solution to the situation in Haiti. The best we can do is question the intentions of our government and do our best to ensure they aren’t acting solely in the interest of corporations, advocate for legitimate humanitarian aid (if for you, that means donating to The Red Cross, by all means, do so), and try our hardest to remain hopeful in times of crisis.

voices

HOW YOU CAN HELP Hey you. Yeah you. College kid. Got an extra few bucks left over from your parental stipend (i.e. allowance)? Put down the phone. Stop ordering that Mesa pizza. Folks in Haiti need that money a lot more than you need more fast food.

Contributing to any disaster relief effort can be confusing. The number of charity organizations taking donations can be staggering, and transparency is often lacking. Never fear, though, The Wake is here to help. We’ve compiled a list of established, respected organizations involved in relief efforts in a variety of ways, from providing immediate human needs, to medical care, to long-term reconstruction. All donations are tax deductible, of course, so save your receipt.

American Red Cross (Basic Necessities) – The Red Cross has deployed more emergency response teams and disaster management specialists to Haiti than any previous operation in the history of the Red Cross worldwide. It focuses on the three most important human needs of food, water and shelter by working to distribute pre-packaged meals, clean water, blankets, tarps and sleeping mats. The Red Cross stresses that financial contributions are the most effective way to help. Find information about donating blood or money at www. redcross.org, or text “HAITI” to 90999 to make a $10 donation, charged to your phone bill.

Habitat for Humanity International (Short and Long Term Shelter) – Habitat has developed a long-term plan to help Haitians rebuild, consisting of three phases. The first phase involved distributing emergency shelter kits to Haitians whose homes have been destroyed and re-establishing their operations. Phase two consists of clearing rubble and salvaging materials to rebuild homes. In phase three, Habitat will begin the work of rebuilding Haiti’s decimated structures with an eye toward improving overall quality. You can donate to Habitat for Humanity at www.habitat.org or by texting “habitat” to 25383 to make a $10 donation, charged to your phone bill.

Save The Children

Doctors Without Borders

(Basic Necessities, Medical Care, and Shelter for Children) – Save the Children operates healthcare facilities in 32 refugee camps around Haiti. Many children in Haiti have parents who are dead or missing, and there are reports that child traffickers may be kidnapping orphans. Save the Children has established 18 Child Friendly Spaces in Jacmel and Port-Au-Prince, serving over 10,000 children.

Donate at www.savethechildren.org

(Medical Assistance) – Doctors Without Borders has physicians and nurses on the ground in Haiti providing emergency medical service to the injured and has been operating in Haiti for 19 years.

To donate to Doctors Without Borders, go to www.doctorswithoutborders.org

www.wakemag.org

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voices

Corporation > Citizen The Danger of Corporate “Free Speech” to Democracy

By Matt Miranda

Meher Khan

In war, the military and intelligence forces often engage in psychological warfare operations to influence popular opinion in a foreign country. One of the most important goals of these campaigns is to control the “information environment,” as the first step toward altering people’s beliefs is to control the overt and subconscious messages they receive through television, radio and other media. Media are one of the greatest forces in the process of socialization, through which individuals construct their beliefs about how the world is and how it should be, their very identity. The more central and prominent media are in the daily lives of the target audience, the more effective the campaign. An overwhelming media presence is pivotal in control of a population. Advertising, by another name, is psychological warfare.

When the Supreme Court ruled last week that corporations, as legal persons, are entitled to the right of free speech and thus can spend freely on political advertisements, they handed corporate power and, by extension, the wealthy few, an even greater ability to shape the aforementioned information environment. Whereas longstanding election laws have previously barred corporations from political spending, the floodgates are now open. The already cacophonous corporate megaphone has been turned up to 11.

As an average American citizen, you will see the most tangible effects of this change on your television, newspaper and computer screen during election seasons; there will be a massive increase in the number of political advertisements in all media. But the less obvious effects are more insidious, more cancerous to the very democratic ideals this nation was

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founded upon. With this decision, one of the last bastions against the imbalancing effects of money on the political process has been destroyed in one swift stroke. The haves already dominate the political process in this country, while the have-somes and the have-nots are condemned to symbolic votes for wealthy candidates who differ only in presentation, not substance. Interest groups for the rich dominate Washington, and now they will dominate the airwaves. If the tone and tenor of American politics is fractured, manipulative, violent and hyperbolic now, wait until the likes of Merrill Lynch and Conoco-Phillips get their voices into the mud-slinging match. The First Amendment was conceived to protect the vitality of American discourse, not to destroy it.

Consider the effect of special interest groups on Washington before the ruling. Elected officials regularly vote with loyalty not to their constituents or voters but to the special interests that put them into office. These special interests now have a voice in the political process amplified thousands of times by the Supreme Court ruling; politicians will be further obliged to pay for this influence with their votes. Corruption will abound as the line between corporations and government grows thinner by the day.

The sad truth is, regardless of whether the ruling is healthy for our democracy, it is the correct interpretation of the law.

As long as corporations are considered legal individuals, they are entitled to the very same rights and freedoms as the average American citizen. But corporations aren’t people; they are massive, soulless, conscienceless entities with resources far beyond that of the average Joe or Jane. They exist only to generate profit by whatever means available to them.

Legally considering them people would be laughable if it weren’t so terrifying.

The First Amendment was conceived to protect the vitality of American discourse, not to destroy it.

But the ruling is only a small event in a much broader trend; the shrinking voice of the mass public in their government, and the corresponding burgeoning of the corporate elite.

America is supposedly a democracy, founded on the idea that the people should hold sway over the course of the country and that the true sovereignty of the nation rests with them.

That democracy is rapidly eroding, replaced by a plutocracy of rich assholes who co-opt government, loot the public treasury with bailouts and pork-barrel subsidies, and generally live like parasites off the institutions that were conceived as instruments for the public good. Massive bailouts, crooked financial schemes and now the Supreme Court ruling have all but insured the steady flow of money and power away from the lower and middle classes to the upper crust. We are marching blindly away from the dream this country once was: a nation where the many would choose, not the few. It is all but dead. The day will come soon we open our eyes to find ourselves slaves in an invisible prison, wrought by the power of greed and wealth.

As George Orwell said, “All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others.”

cities

A Down-Right Fierce Group of Fighters

By Zach McCormick

Video games are stereotypically cast as the bane of a productive, sociable existence. Yet, this image hardly matches the one seen every Saturday in Stephen Pfister’s Apple Valley home. The room is packed with some 20 odd people, mostly male, of varying age, ethnicity and profession, all chatting pleasantly about game nuances, jobs, girlfriends and the occasional wager on a match’s outcome. In the center of the action, two combatants tap away at specialized joysticks made to mimic those found on the stand-up arcade machines of yesterday. There’s no frantic mashing and swearing but rather a quiet, professional-like respect that passes between them. This is a ranked match, after all, and the winner will have more than his fair share of time to gloat once the round is over.

So goes the unique experience of a MN Street Fighter ranked tournament, the organization’s way of sorting the top-of-theline from the relative newcomer. Tournaments work off of a ranked bracket system, with players earning points towards their overall scores, posted by Pfister on mnstreetfighter. com. Players compete for the highest cumulative total score over the course of several tournaments, with each different game having its own leaderboard. Games played for ranking are mostly 2D fighting games which include Street Fighter IV, III and II, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Guilty Gear XX Accent Core, and a few others, with the eponymous and recently released Street Fighter IV being the current main event.

The Street Fighter series is a classic of the genre, known for its Japanese quirks and dedicatedly old-school gameplay. The original Street Fighter is often considered a sort of prequel, released to arcades in 1987. The game featured only two playable characters, the series’ stars Ryu and Ken, and not much else. The worldwide smash hit success of Street Fighter II in 1991 set the series upon its throne as the king of fighting games, innovating the concept of multiple characters with unique move sets, creating a hitherto unknown amount of depth and replay value for the genre. Suddenly, the arcades became a proving ground of Street Fighter superiority, a competitive environment that Pfister says gamers his age (29) are starting to become nostalgic for. A newcomer to the league, Collin Pote, cites the arcade experience as a draw for him.

“Arcades aren’t really a big thing anymore hanging out with a bunch of guys that have same mindset, you kind of get that same mindset again,” Pote says.

Nostalgia seems to be a driving force behind the group’s choice of 2D-style fighting games, called as such because of the onscreen characters’ inability to move in a direction other than up, down, back and forward. Once a limitation of gaming’s earliest epoch, the 2D fighter has now become the gam-

Angie Frisk

It’s a little different than the online experience,” he says. “You know you’re going to see the person next weekend, there’s more respect involved.”

ing equivalent of certain forms of French cooking: a Spartan exterior invites the newcomer into a world of unseen depth and complexity, ruled over by die-hards who have decided that the old way was the only way and that they had better get very, very good at it. Pfister speaks of MN Street Fighter as a way for players to hone their skills. “Part of the way to get better [at games like this] is just by practicing. People said that wanted to play tournaments, so I started hosting,” Pfister says. After the initial group of friends who formed the league needed a way to keep track of who had won their tournaments, Pfister got the idea to form a website to keep track of rankings, and MN Street Fighter was born.

Possibly the most interesting thing about MN Street Fighter is the fact that, from a technological standpoint at least, it need not exist. Innovations in gaming have led to the ability for gamers to play against one another via the internet, through services like Microsoft’s Xbox Live, with the abilityto play ranked tournaments without ever having to leave the house. But Pfister insists that there’s more to it than that.

“It’s a little different than the online experience,” he says.

“You know you’re going to see the person next weekend, there’s more respect involved.” Indeed, the typical MN Street Fighter tournament chatter is a far cry from the usual semi-literate trash talk screed of Xbox Live. It’s this sense of professionalism and respect that makes MN Street Fighter’s community stand out against the unflattering portrayal of gamers we see regularly. Sure, trash talk is thrown around, but no more than at dad’s bowling league. In fact, MN Street Fighter seems to capture a bit of that atmosphere. It’s wonderfully unpretentious, a small group of gamers from all walks of life get ting together for a bit of friendly competition and a chance at the glory of being number one. While the bestselling game titles may still be interactive versions of Micheal Bay flicks, MN Street Fighter keeps the competitive spirit of the arcade alive.

www.wakemag.org

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cities

Not For Profit, For Kindness

by Jessica Orton, Zachary McCormick, Angie Sanders

Try something new. Do something different. Change someone’s life. The Twin Cities are home to thousands of nonprofit organizations seeking volunteers to help them make a positive effect on the community. No matter the cause, there is an organization that exists for each person, all he or she needs is the desire to get involved.

The following nonprofits are some of the more unique organizations in the Metro area, but there are plenty of other causes to dedicate time to.

Comunidades Latinas Unidas en Servicio (CLUES): Minneapolis Contact: Angela Severson, 612-465-8081, aseverson@clues.org St. Paul Contact: Teresa Ortiz, 612-379-4222, tortiz@clues.org CLUES works to enhance the quality of life in the Latino community. While CLUES provides a range of social services, the educational department courses are central to this organization. CLUES supplies instruction for classes on citizenship, literacy in both Spanish and English, English language learning, and computer literacy. In 2009, CLUES aided a total of 620 adult learners, with 154 volunteers and 20,900 recorded student-learning instruction hours. The organization is “helping both students and teachers improve their lives,” according to Angela Severson, the program coordinator of CLUES. Overall, individuals are given an opportunity to overcome barriers in an environment that is safe, supportive and successful.

CLUES is currently looking for ESL Classroom assistants, administrative volunteers, One-to-One Tutors, Children’s Program Teachers, and Computer Teaching Assistants. The organization is in the middle of their classroom semester, but at the end of March will be looking for volunteers to teach ESL classes. The time commitment and availability is relatively flexible, but to become an ESL teacher, CLUES asks for a 10week commitment. Spanish language skills are not required.

The Lab: Youth, Truth, Empowerment Contact: Mallory Haar, (651) 744-1002 www.thelabspps.com The Lab is a unique special education program of St. Paul Public Schools that serves students who have emotional behavioral disorders. Using four modalities, including poetry, visual arts, technology and experiential wellness, the Lab empowers youth to express themselves in creative ways.

Students develop skills for success within compelling arts and wellness activities. The Lab uses different strategies of expression, including podcasts, photos, videos, and blogs in order to help kids explore the arts and better the community.

The Lab is currently looking for volunteers who would like to share their creativity either in a one-on one setting as a mentor, or as a facilitator/co-facilitator of a small group. Projects can be anything from teaching guitar to yoga instruction to photography. Time commitment and availability varies.

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cities

Northside Arts Collective

Land Stewardship Project

Sojourner Project

612.767.2141

(612) 722-6377

952-351-46062

info@nacarts.org

www.landstewardshipproject.org

http://www.sojournerproject.org/

The mission of the Northside Arts Collective is to unite, enrich, and advance the Northside community through the arts.

By creating a network of artists and local organizations in the area, the Northside Arts Collective is able to support and encourage artists as well as the local community. In order to generate neighborhood involvement, the Northside Arts Collective actively coordinates local events, exhibits, and collective art projects.

Volunteers interested in activist movements such as Slow Food, rather than food distribution programs, need look no further than the Land Stewardship Project. The project was formed in 1982 as a means to help connect farmers and the urban and suburban consumers that they provide for, as well as promote ethical agricultural practices and develop sustainable communities. The organization focuses on supporting small, family-sized farms and gardens that practice sustainable agricultural methods to preserve the area’s food, water, and wildlife.

The Sojourner Project is a support line and shelter for women and children that are victims of domestic violence. Sojourner works to empower battered women, promote healthy communities and eliminate domestic violence. Not only does the Sojourner Project provide a safe haven, they also have community advocacy programs, outreach and education programs.

Sojourner has been helping the Twin Cities area since 1977, and assists over 1,000 mistreated women and children every year.

There are numerous ways to get involved in this organization because of its size. Whether as an artist wanting to engage in the community or someone who believes in art as a means of social change, the Northside Arts Collective always has opportunities available in which no time commitment is needed.

Food Not Bombs http://www.myspace.com/minneapolisfnb http://www.foodnotbombs.net/ Too often the relationship between caregiver and receiver in the world of social justice work is obscured by the bureaucratic red tape that it often takes to keep a major charitable cause afloat. It’s quite refreshing then to find a locally run grassroots cause with a concept so wonderfully humanistic, even though it is an activist cause. Food Not Bombs is an organization that takes on the most basic human need, hunger, and combats it at the level of the community.

The Minneapolis chapter, like all Food Not Bombs chapters, is not an official nonprofit, but more of a highly focused community effort. The organization secures donations of food from local restaurants and farms for their meals that are currently scheduled three times weekly. The group currently meets on Tuesdays and Sundays at 6 p.m. at their “No Pines” house on the NW corner of 33rd Street and Pleasant Avenue in South Minneapolis. They hold their largest meal on Wednesdays at 6:30 p.m. in the basement of the Walker Church at 3104 16th Ave. S. At these meetings volunteers will cook hot meals with a variety of options and serve them to anyone who chooses to show. Volunteers wishing to get involved simply show up early to the meals and ask to help out.

A word of warning may be in order to any prospective volunteers: FNB often comes under suspicion by police because of the national organization’s affiliation with more militant leftist causes, so this may be a volunteer opportunity more suited to the student not afraid of a little civil disobedience from time to time. The cause can be incredibly rewarding however, as Minneapolis student and FNB volunteer Katie Thornton cites the organization’s commitment to breaking down the walls between charity giver and receiver as an inspiring experience. “We all eat together, it’s a real community process and wonderful to see,” Thorton says. She also cites the program’s teachings for a newfound cooking ability as well as more efficient use of her food resources at home.

Through the distribution of a newsletter, an online information database, and regular classes and workshops, the LSP seeks to educate its members on the practice of sustainable agriculture. Much of the information deals with the basics of starting up a farming operation in both a profitable and environmentally responsible manner. The LSP also organizes meetings between farmers, as well as events such as farmers markets, where urban students get the chance to shake the hand that feeds them as well as purchase ethically grown produce at the peak of its freshness.

The organization requires a one-time membership fee of $35, which can be donated through their website or at their Twin Cities location at 821 E. 35th Street in South Minneapolis. Volunteers can help set up local classes, farmers markets, and participate in local community organizing toward the LSP’s goals.

Amicus 612.348.8570 www.amicususa.org Having an open mind and really wanting to connect with people is what Amicus is looking for. A unique nonprofit, Amicus is an organization that creates alliances between communities and inmates, ex-offenders, and juvenile offenders, in hopes of building stronger and safer neighborhoods and making successful transitions for those leaving prison and going back into the community.

The most popular way to get involved with Amicus is to participate in the “One to One” program. Once matched with an incarcerated individual that has similar interests, the volunteer visits the inmate and talks about anything, from books and movies to life inside and outside of prison. As a volunteer, it is a year-long commitment; a friendship is being formed, after all.

Volunteers can help the Sojourner Project by working as crisis phone support, working in the shelter, or becoming involved in the community outreach programs. The outreach programs raise awareness of domestic violence in the area as well as provide information on what to do if you or someone you know has been abused. Sojourner provides the proper training and education to volunteers to spread awareness and help those that have experienced violence in the home.

By helping the Sojourner Project, volunteers can help women and children take steps to leaving a life of violence and feeling safe once again.

American Swedish Institute 612.871.4907 http://www.americanswedishinst.org/ASI/Volunteer.html As a nonprofit with a great history, the American Swedish Institute is a great place to volunteer. For about 50 years, the ASI has been working to preserve the Swedish culture that is overwhelmingly present in the Twin Cities. This “hidden gem” helps connect generations and better understand traditions that would otherwise be lost in the Swedish community.

Experiencing these interactions and helping others network can inspire a greater understanding of one’s heritage and encourage one to become a more involved global citizen.

Volunteers can work in the museum office, assist the curator, be a greeter and tour guide, or even work in the museum shop. The ASI likes to hire a variety of volunteers, with diverse backgrounds and friendly dispositions. Being Swedish is not a requirement either—anyone can get involved.

Jenn Stromberg, the communications/marketing coordinator at the ASI, says, “one of the greatest things about working at the American Swedish Institute is experiencing the way this organization reaches out to and collaborates with various organizations, schools and people in the community.”

Steve Nelson, director of communications for Amicus in Minneapolis, says “I think the one thing people should know about Amicus and those we serve is that it’s just common sense to give ex-offenders a second chance. Giving a second chance isn’t soft on crime. It’s smart on crime.” Besides, doesn’t everyone deserve a friend?

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feature

2009 Music Retrospective 15 Albums 2009 that I liked Afgrund – Vid Helvetets Grindar Riff-heavy grindcore from Scandinavia.

Anni Rossi – Rockwell Newsom-y chirping and viola.

Antigama – Warning Avant-grind. Interesting drumkit.

Augury – Fragmentary Evidence Prog/tech/death.

Behemoth – Evangelion The best Nile album of 2009, by just a smidgen.

10 Albums that I loved

by Deniz Rudin

Five Albums that Other People * Loved From 2009

Roy Montgomery & Grouper

IIYHTDWONTIAAYAIIBOOOT = If you had to decide whether or not this is an album you are interested in based on only one track:

Akron Family

The Flaming Lips

Nomo

Ke$ha

Split

Bergraven – Till Makabert Väsen Weird, abstract, quiet black metal.

John Zorn – Alhambra Love Songs Continuing Zorn’s listenable streak.

Khanate – Clean Hands Go Foul Their most subtle, least cheesy; very menacing.

Mochipet – Master P on Atari Dance music that is also listenable.

Ocean Chief – Den Förste Best traditional doom since pre-hiatus YOB. S.K.E.T. – Depleted Uranium Weapons Excellent powernoise, punishing but danceable.

Shining – VI/Klagopsalmer A real rocker from the suicidal Swedes.

St. Vincent – Actor Catchy enough for you, bizarre enough for me.

Sunn O))) – Monoliths & Dimensions Without a doubt the best ever Sunn O))) record.

Why? – Eskimo Snow The (more) bizarre, poppy(er) flip-side to Alopecia.

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Split

By Eric Brew I admit my love for Grouper makes the mention of this album borderline self-serving. I could go either way with the 18-minute track by Roy Montgomery on the split, but Liz Harris' tracks (playing as Grouper) always captivate me—usually late at night, when I'm on the edge of drowsiness with a small degree of disgust from the day still in my gut.

The tracks are (as is most of Harris' music) brooding, crackling and deep.

Her voice, though often indecipherable, is like a drug that, once swallowed, catches onto some part near the inside of your left lung and never leaves—a sort of damage you accept and forever carry.

Set ‘Em Wild, Set ‘Em Free

By Pete Noteboom

Embryonic

By Kevin Tully

It’s hard to believe that the same guys whose last album featured a This album will make you feel like you’re giving birth song called “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song” and to magical multi-colored whose stage show is eggs filled with hope, filled with giant balloons truth, miracles and and confetti cannons everlasting friendship. recorded Embryonic. My Akron/Family sounds like first impression of the a couple indie kids took album was that it mushrooms and sounded like if robots wandered off into the with fuzzy guitars woods to roast some soundtracked a James marshmallows and talk Bond movie. Then I about how seriously decided that it sounded intense it is to grow up. more like if robots with On the band’s epic quest fuzzy guitars and an evil to Set ‘Em Wild, Set ‘Em Free, they wander through wizard soundtracked a James Bond movie the land of dancetastic party plucking and have a where the entire thing was just James Bond gander at the American panicking for no reason. dream while their Then I remembered that collective brain swells it was, in fact, The with appreciation of “The Flaming Lips.

Beauty Inherent In All Things” in a breathtaking cacophony of electric light.

Invisible Cities

Animal

By Zach McCormick

By Sam Johnston

Those floating, ethereal, percussive tones that drift mystically throughout Nomo’s music are the product of an amplified Kalimba, an African thumb piano. The Ann Arbor, MI band runs such simple instruments through a slew of effects pedals to craft everything from dulcet marimba chords to searing, distorted guitar lines. Calling Nomo an Afro-Funk group seems a woefully inadequate way to describe the band’s incredibly diverse range of influences: thick, complex horn arrangements recall 70’s funk, while reverbdrenched fuzz guitar gives the album a psychedelic edge. Truly one of the most unique and compelling records of 2009.

When Ke$ha was done puking in Paris Hilton's closet, she turned around and puked into my heart, and I'm not sure if I should thank her or not.

feature

Animal Collective The Mountain Goats Merriweather

Post Pavilion

The first AC record to be even in the same ballpark of good as their fans think it is, though it’s not the best album of the decade, or even of the year. The Collective have pulled off a complicated balancing act, creating an album accessible enough to find a wide audience, while staying bizarre and complex enough to satisfy their extant fanbase. The album combines organic psychedaelia with partystopping electronics, peppered with field recordings and deep, writhing sounds. This music is thick, wet and full of life.

IYHTDWONTIAAYAIIBOOOT: “In the Flowers”

The Life of the World to Come

This record is the first unqualified success of TMG’s hi-fi sound, their first studio recorded album that is completely unembarrassing in instrumentation and orchestration; the production of this album is spacious and engaging, with huge drums, warm electronics, reverberating piano and subtle violin textures. But as always with this band, the reason to care is the writing. As we’ve come to expect, each song on this record displays beautiful language and emotional subtlety and depth. The record is also a rarity in TMG’s extensive catalog: a well-crafted and coherent unit from the prolific but inconsistent John Darnielle, known for making good songs but not good albums.

IYHTDWONTIAAYAIIBOOOT: “Matthew 25:21”

The Paper Chase

Agoraphobic

Someday This Could All Nosebleed Be Yours Agorapocalypse

A deceptive album: totally catchy but genuinely threatening; this is pop music pumped full of infection and disease, accessible hooks with bitterly misanthropic lyrics.

Every instrument a little damaged, a little bent. Small touches of violence and discordance throughout every song, a complex patchwork of organic and digital sound. A fluidly connected collection of sternly epic death marches and barely controlled cathartics, each one seeping into the next. Producer/frontman John Congleton has come up with brand-new guitar noises, wild and screaming tones twisted out of recognizable shape. This band has a perfect sound, a gold standard for production junkies.

IYHTDWONTIAAYAIIBOOOT: “Chthonian”

Who would’ve thought ANb would put out an album with an average song length of over two minutes? The world’s fastest grind band slows down a little, with mind blowing results. Absolutely fucking insane thrash trades off with insanely heavy riffs, with the best drum programming in human history. This record has the perfect grind core mood: pissed off and wild and gross, offensive just for the sake of it, and ultimately lighthearted, playful, and carefree. But what matters most is that this band has finally become more about the music than the spectacle, though they’re still further over the top than just about anybody else.

Krallice

Dimensional Bleedthrough No other black metal album is so virtuosic, so guitaroriented, so consistent.

Possessed of both clarity and rawness. Mick Barr’s guitar melodies are catchy without being like anybody else’s. Absolutely mesmerizing, so constant in its energy and speed that it becomes meditative. The record is balls-out no-punches-pulled epic, eschewing the usual gloom and overwrought melancholy of the genre to provide an hour and a quarter of downright ecstatic music, an entire album of huge closing tracks.

IYHTDWONTIAAYAIIBOOOT: The last two minutes of “The Mountain”

IYHTDWONTIAAYAIIBOOOT: “Question of Integrity”

Zu Carboniferous Heavy bass, wild barry sax, pumping electronics and frenetic drumming centered around complex snare rolls. The saxophone used alternatingly for melody, for bassline, for percussion and for insane textures. A unique sound: heavy, intensely polyrhythmic, violent and celebratory, indebted to things like Lightning Bolt and John Zorn without sounding like anything but itself. This is bizarre, surprising, confrontational and meticulously constructed music; an impeccable album for a special breed of listener: those in it for the sound and the rhythm, not for a tune to hum.

IYHTDWONTIAAYAIIBOOOT: “Chthonian”

Andrew Bird Noble Beast

The most peaceful and pastoral record from the Bird, and also his best produced. Every track is a lush and constantly shifting mix of layered instrumentation; each verse and chorus of each song is tracked differently, and though the initial draw of the album is the vocal hooks, it is this diversity of instrumentation that draws you back again and again. An intelligent and skillful album—a treat for longtime Bird fans and first-time listeners alike.

IYHTDWONTIAAYAIIBOOOT: “Tenuousness”

Black Moth Super Rainbow Eating Us

Ulcerate Dälek

Gutter Tactics

The feel-good album of forever, a huge and bright and primary-colored sound that overwhelms whatever you’re feeling: sublimity by force. The album is sticky and sweet, weapons-grade happiness. Way better than a SAD lamp.

Standing on the black sand beach that is a rap record: beats pound in the ocean like waves beneath which lies a churning underbelly of anxious sound, undulating and nebulous. You can see dimly through the water the shapes of words shimmering like fish.

The wave of static breaks, the sky whitewashed with noise.

IYHTDWONTIAAYAIIBOOOT: “Born on a Day the Sun Didn’t Rise”

IYHTDWONTIAAYAIIBOOOT: “Gutter Tactics”

Everything is Fire Witness the percolation of a new style; if this is death metal then all death prior can be considered proto-. This album is beyond new: it is an album from the future. An alien thing come to our planet fully-formed; a melodic system from some other world. Spider-riffs weave webs around each other creating incomprehensible and amorphous rhythms. Many of the record’s best moments are bleak landscapes, but even at its most aggressive the riffing is abstract.

IYHTDWONTIAAYAIIBOOOT: “Drown Within”

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13

cities

Discerning Depression’s Evolutionary Path

BY Sofiya Hupalo

Although depression was classified as a disorder over 50 years ago, it existed long before the advent of modern classification methods. According to these scientific methods that now characterize the disease, nearly 121 million people worldwide are affected by depression. Many of these cases are left untreated. Unlike modern diseases such as cancer, obesity), depression’s origin has been contemplated since the time of philosophers Plato and Aristotle. Depression remains a prevalent and troublesome disorder despite the changes in social and environmental conditions over human history. Thus, it is important to ask: why has natural selection not culled it out through the course of evolution?

The human genome contains about 23,000 coding genes, each of which can be regulated by multiple others. There is no ‘depression gene’ that determines a person’s susceptibility to the disorder. People become depressed for different reasons or for no reason at all, and to different extents. The array of genetics and environment makes it quite difficult to predict why, if and when depression will hit. Some scientists have ideas, but no particular theory holds up to skepticism.

Symptoms of depression include difficulty in concentrating, feelings of guilt, helplessness, social withdrawal, and general loss of interest in life. Why do these severe manifestations of normal emotions persist, and what evolutionary advantage could they possibly offer? A trait must confer a reproductive fitness advantage in order to arise by natural selection, and it is this premise that underlies the claim that depression itself is an adaptation. The social navigation hypothesis proposes that depression evolved to help deal with social problems by allowing the individual to focus their energy on an issue at hand. Also, it could serve as a signal to friends and family to give the depressed one attention, which would increase care giving traits of the loved ones.

Depression affects 10% of the American population – if it improves survival fitness, should it not be more prevalent?

However, an adaptive trait does not necessarily have to be expressed unless a particular environment triggers the required response. Therefore, the adaptation can be widespread in the population but expressed only in a minority of individuals. Since depression is highly costly, it should occur in the most crucial cases.

National Science Foundation

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09 – 22 february

A big problem with this speculation is that depressed patients report causes of their illness to be life events such as death, divorce, or a layoff – things that most people deal with without developing the severe symptoms of depression.

What makes some more prone than others? Susceptibility for depression varies among individuals, reflecting the way a certain personality trait, say neuroticism, is variable in different people. Many supposedly negative behavioral traits

are thought to have an evolutionary purpose. For example, jealousy informs of a social competitor, eliciting actions to fight the threat. Also, neurotic individuals are more likely to stress over mistakes or low test scores, and as a result try harder to reach a goal. Neuroticism is highly correlated with depression and both are considered good predictors of marital failure. Seeing that marital failure does not necessarily solve social problems like it should under the social navigation hypothesis, the adaptation theory does not explain the disorder as much as regular bad moods.

In order for depression to serve an adaptive purpose, we need to examine whether its absence reduces fitness. Just as the inability to feel physical pain is detrimental and can lead to death, depression also impairs physical and mental health.

But does it really have a greater benefit? As mentioned, depression can be thought of as an effort to increase performance when faced with a social dilemma, but more often than not, the non-depressed individuals do just as well. People cope, remarry and find new jobs. Adaptation theories have trouble describing the benefits of severe depression.

In the search to determine why evolution did not wipe depressive traits off the face of the earth, we can contemplate other negative, seemingly ineffective behaviors. As is the case with neuroticism, the spectrum of personalities does include unhealthy outliers. If milder forms of neurotic features are advantageous for competition and achievement, the trait is still fitness-enhancing and selected for. Since variability and degree of a trait largely depend on one’s genes and environment, the extremes are bound to occur.

There are plenty of other evolutionary forces (and maybe adaptations, too) that together interact to create predispositions to depression. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to account for the myriad of factors that play the game of chance to produce individual differences and likelihood for disease.

But as we can see, trying to discern what some of them are is still an exciting endeavor.

cities

Angry Catfish Bicycle and Coffee Bar South Minneapolis’ Latest Addition

By Joshua Hartfield Bicycles and Coffee.

It’s the marriage of two ultra-hip products of our culture. And it’s arrived at the border of Standish and Ericsson neighborhoods in South Minneapolis.

So why should you give a damn about Angry Catfish Bicycles and Coffee? It isn’t because you’re looking for a new cup holder accessory to hold your coffee-filled thermos; it’s because you want quality.

Owner Josh Klauck cares both about quality of the coffee and bicycle-related paraphernalia served in his recently opened hybrid-store.

Currently, the coffee bar offer four kinds of extraction methods for their coffee beans. One of the more interesting of these is the Japanese siphon method – where a Bunsen-like burner heats up water until it is evaporated into a separate vessel and then drops back through the coffee beans to provide an ultra-pure, clean-tasting cup of joe.

Most coffee shops in the area offer one or two extraction methods – usually failing to produce a viable cup of coffee with either. These coffee shops feature baristas that are too busy stressing over a chemistry exam to create an even puck for an espresso shot or simply don’t care enough to discover what bean and brew style would best fit the customer’s desires.

seem to be the target market for Angry Catfish, though the store features three bicycle stations for regular maintenance.

The biking clothing in the store is currently limited to a selection of Twin-Six gear but the store will carry what they know from experience to be the ‘best’ products from a variety of lines. Continuous testing and research into all of the gear that the store carries will be a regular part of the store’s business, according to Klauck.

What else is to come for the store? If correct number of hoops are jumped through for the City, Angry Catfish hope to have outdoor seating come springtime. The space behind the store is also being scouted out for murals and a patio. The space seems to be fairly adaptable at this point – where it could go a number of ways depending on wants and desires of the surrounding community.

Until then, Angry Catfish will continue to offer their customers a undeniable attention to detail and willingness to help people find what the what want in the things they love: bicycles and coffee.

This find-exactly-what-you’re-looking-for mantra is one intended to run through all aspects of the coffee-bike shop. For coffee, this means selecting the finest roaster in the region, which Klauck believes to be Intelligentsia based in Chicago (with another headquarters in San Francisco).

“Two people have told me they would drive 50 miles for Intelligentsia coffee,” says Klauck. The beans sold by Intelligentsia come from farms that are visited regularly by Intelligentsia employees; they can then assure both top-quality beans and fair business practice from their farmers. Intelligentsia takes the beans back to their facilities for roasting and testing. Because ordering a dark roast is akin to saying ‘give me a coffee without complex and satisfying flavors,’ Intelligentsia only features light-to-medium-roasted, in-season coffee beans. The roasters also research a variety of brew methods and machinery to report to their customers how different extractions alter flavors in the coffee and which ultimately gives the best tasting brew. For these reasons, Intelligentsia holds the quality of bean that Klauck demands for Angry Catfish coffee. And this quality may only be found in a few rare stores in the cities.

Klauck emphasizes a similar selectiveness on the bicycle half of the store. He intends to pick the best fabricators, parts and apparel to carry in his store. So far this means bicycles from Moots, Independent Fabrication, All-City, Surly, Salsa, Colnago and local builds from Capricorn. Customers looking to custom-build their bikes or upgrade parts of current bikes Meredith Hart

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mind’s eye

Why You Ate That

By Eric Dolski

Hypothetical situation: you are a rat. There is a bowl of cake frosting in front of you. Do you eat it? The answer is yes. You eat it all.

So you’ve eaten an entire bowl of cake frosting—why would you do such a thing? You weren’t that hungry. Now we’re at an impasse. The frosting is gone. It’s behind (or within) you now.

Are you satisfied? Was it worth it? You have no answer for what you did, of course. You’re a rat.

Professionals are trying to find answers to this question.

While you were eating cake frosting, highly paid researchers were analyzing your tiny rat brain in an effort to figure out what made that cake frosting so darn appetizing. Like many things, it turns out it’s mostly in your head.

Professor Allen Levine is the Dean of the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resources Sciences at the U of M. He’s spent more than 20 years researching neural regulation of food intake and he knows more than a little about the science of eating. He held a seminar recently titled “Why Can’t We Stop Eating?” over on the St. Paul campus, Minneapolis’ agrarian little brother. So why can’t we stop eating?

Levine says that there’s not one answer; hunger, taste, and compulsivity, among other things, each have their parts to play. The brain’s perception of these things produces a cocktail of natural chemicals that influence eating habits. Levine notes that this is the reason America’s obesity problem hasn’t been “solved,” despite massive research on the subject: there is no cure-all for being hungry, being stressed, and acting compulsively. People, unfortunately, will be people.

To get a sense of the desire to eat, let’s first address the idea of taste. Things taste good not because they’re healthy for you, but because your brain thinks they’re a source of vital nutrients. Your brain doesn’t want to be “in good health” in the future, it wants to be full and happy now. You eat a jelly doughnut and your brain thinks “om nom nom delicious fats!” because it wasn’t so long ago that humanity subsisted on bread, rice, and the occasional famine. To your brain, fats in any form are welcome. On the flipside, when you try to choke down a few brussel sprouts, your brain thinks “what the heck is this ridiculousness?” You may know that brussel sprouts are healthy, but to your brain, brussel sprouts are gross.

This ties in with the concept of hunger, a straightforward idea if there ever was one. You, no longer a rat for the purpose of this example, eat when you’re hungry. You might eat when you’re not hungry too, but you definitely eat when you’re hun-

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Tarin Gessert

gry. You’ll eat brussels sprouts, or jelly doughnuts, or human flesh if the circumstances are particularly dire. Your stomach says “feed me!” and your brain says “feed it!” so you obey or you die. That’s the reality of hunger.

Hunger isn’t the reason people eat too much, though. For that, we have to get into some brain chemistry. Imagine you just had a big meal with your best friends, Perkins style. Texas Roadhouse style. International House of Pancakes style. Now you’re completely full and somebody (probably somebody very strange, all things considered) offers you a big bowl of unflavored oatmeal to top off the meal. Do you eat the oatmeal? Unlikely. You’re full. But what if, instead of unflavored oatmeal, this decidedly strange person offered you a slice of your favorite chocolate Bundt cake? Do you eat that? Quite possibly. So what’s the difference between unflavored oatmeal and chocolate Bundt cake at the end of a meal, besides the obvious?

The Bundt cake triggers the release of endorphins in your brain while the oatmeal does not. Endorphins, also known

as opioids, are basically feel-good chemicals. Endorphins are your brain’s way of saying “damn, that was delicious, I’d best have some more,” so even though you know you’re full, you still gain endorphin-derived pleasure by eating the Bundt cake. Temporary happiness via endorphins often wins over future discomfort at having had too much Bundt cake.

Simply put, your brain knows what it likes, whether that be Bundt cake, potato chips, or chocolate ice cream. It doesn’t always know what it needs. Your brain just wants to be happy, and that means it wants endorphins easily acquired from today’s readily available foods.

That’s where you stand, you and your brain and your stomach together. This meager text you just read through is only a short primer on the daily activity of eating. The Wake is not the ideal medium for explanations about the neurochemistry involved in human food consumption. If you, the rat or the meal-taker or the person with a brain, want more information about the craziness that is human desire for food, you’d best do the research and put in the time. Or enroll in CFANS.

mind’s eye

tion: did Christian Bök just achieve the first foolproof way to ensure immortality through his art? It’s said that ink fades, buildings crumble, and people die. But who ever said anything about radiation resistant bacteria?

Though Bök seems to have finally realized every artist’s fantasy, he certainly is not the first to try. Artists have been hellbent on achieving immortality through art since the dawn of time. There is a reason the Ten Commandments were said to be carved into stone—they were intended to outlast anything. But humans romanticize that their legacy will live on and on for more selfish reasons: to leave the world without really leaving it. Through time, many poets, painters and sculptors have added to the dialogue of the undying.

“Art is a man’s distinctly human way of fighting death,” Leonardo Baskin once said. William James wrote, “The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.”

Though many artists have vanished like sand in the wind, some have managed to form a legacy that lives on today. Sistine Chapel, anyone? The Mona Lisa? Art fanatics agree that these great works must be protected, revered, and carefully cared for to ensure their memory does not fade, along with their paint. But as for Bök’s poetry? We could strap it to an atomic bomb and it would probably still be there. Whether we like it or not, this poem is not going anywhere. In the instance of an atomic bomb, Deinococcus radiodurans would simply repair its DNA. Humans can reconstruct maybe three to five broken DNA connections. Deinococcus radiodurans can reconstruct 200.

rachel mosey

Eternal Art: Poetry Resistant

By Kirsten Hart

There is poetry all around us—in the way we walk, the way trees shiver snow off their branches, and even the way we slip and fall on a patch of unforeseen ice—it is easy to overlook the rhythmic beauty of our world. But there is one place poetry is far from expected: in bacteria. And in this case, we’re not talking about metaphoric poetry.

Christian Bök, an experimental poet native to Canada, is intent on creating poetry that can withstand any natural nightmare—he is coding his work into a genetic sequence and translating it onto the world’s most resistant bacteria, Deinococcus radiodurans. Listed as the toughest bacterium in The Guinness Book of World Records, it is known specifically for its resistance to radiation. To put this in perspective, this bacterium can withstand radiation exposure 3,000 times what would kill a human being. Not only that, it can thrive and multiply under constant exposure to radiation—which has caused scientists to speculate whether or not it originated on Mars, where levels of radiation are considerably higher.

Whether this bacterium is alien or not, Bök’s poem is going to be coded, assembled into a genetic sequence, and then carefully implanted into the bacteria. This gave rise to a ques-

So here’s a thought: Bök accomplished the first foolproof method of immortality through art—his poem is expected to outlast humankind, after all—but no one will be able to read it. Unless, of course, you are one of the few with extensive knowledge of DNA coding (or, in this case, decoding). But by blowing through all barriers and introducing this new alternative to paper, Bök gave rise to a very Brave New World method of sticking around after death. Using radioresistant bacteria from Mars as a vessel for artistic expression is something straight out of science fiction. But it’s not expected to become the new external hard drive for every artist’s prose and poems.

Bök’s work indicates his experimentation is just that. An experiment. The coding process constrains his palate of vocabulary to only 200 words. But keep in mind that whichever 200 he chooses, these words could likely outlive mankind. Cool.

Even cooler, they are also a parasite residing in another life form. It is essentially a tattoo on a very small, very durable person. A small, durable person that is capable of withstanding a dosage of gamma rays three thousand times more lethal than what it would take to kill a human being.

Though we are unaware of what Bök’s poetry will bring for our future, we do know that what it has given our past. Bök states, “Even though poets may pay due homage to the ‘immortality’ of their heritage, few of us have ever imagined that we might actually create a literary artifact capable of outliving the existence of our species—an artifact that might testify to our cultural presence upon the planet until the very hour when, at last, the sun explodes.” So maybe this is it— and we should all invest in some Deinococcus radiodurans, just in case.

Perhaps the internet is not the last frontier—DNA is. Bök is right, “DNA is the true Library of Babel.”

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17

sound & vision

An Avatar Intervention

by Maggie Foucault

Everyone, sit down. We need to talk. This Avatar business is getting out of hand. It was fine when you just wanted to go for the 3D glasses and special effects. The effects were epic and it is pretty sweet when a big-ass dinosaur gets all up in your face. But when you started painting yourself blue everyday that was my first clue that something was wrong. You’ve ruined all the bath towels, not to mention the sheets. The only thing you’ll listen to is the Avatar soundtrack, and every time I walk in the door I’m greeted with, “I see you.”

I want to help you, but I can’t understand why you think this movie is so important. You hate nature and spend most of your time at home playing WoW (or at least you used to; now it’s the Avatar video game). If you were really to go to the planet of Pandora, which I don’t think is even a planet but actually a moon, you would be eaten alive in minutes by those big pleather cats, or crushed by that hammerhead Tric-

eratops. Even if you made it to that big tree, how would you feel if some big blue dude showed up at our house and started imitating the way we lived? Watching us from the corner of our kitchen while we drink our coffee every morning, Jane Goodall style? I doubt your idols would be thrilled at the prospect of this.

I’ve tried to understand, I really have. Remember when I bought you tickets to New Zealand, where the movie was filmed? I thought you would love to be as close as possible to Pandora, but you scoffed at me: “The Na’vi don’t actually live on Earth, stupid.” I wanted to respond, “Yes, I know that, honey, but they don’t live on Pandora either,” but I wasn’t ready to talk you down from the roof of the garage while you threatened to jump and be reborn under Eywa.

Your obsession with this fantasy is really starting to get to me. Every night while you sleep in your homemade avatar chamber, I fantasize about cutting off your braid that you try to “link” to the dog with. I dream of better days, when I could kiss you without being covered in blue paint. Every day as I leave for work, I know that I might come home to find you curled up under the tree in the front yard, trying to transfer to your avatar body through the roots. I try to rehearse what I will say to the neighbors, but nothing sounds right. guy wagner

ChatRoulette.com: a Review/Reaction

by Kevin Tully

Lucy Michell

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09 – 22 february

ChatRoulette.com is the kind of website your parents warned you about when you first got dial-up in 1996: it’s chock-full of loose women, perverts, masturbation, pedophiles, and explicit language of the most vulgar and racist sort. It’s also got the ability to rope you in faster than you can say, “I’m failing out of college.” The concept is simple: it’s video chat with completely random strangers. If the person you get paired up with is insufficient in any way, no problem: just click the button that says “Next.” With at least 4000 users on the site at any given time, you never know what kind of freak show menagerie you might find; for every average Joe or cute girl, there are four penises being shamelessly fondled because there’s no chance in hell you’ll ever identify them or the person they belong to, and at least two douchebags asking you (whether you’re male or female) to bare your breasts for them. It’s also of note that spending a lot of time on the site makes you feel funny in social situations. You get so used to speaking to people briefly and without consequence that you find yourself just wanting to click “Next” on the guy in the elevator, or telling the woman on the bus to fuck off, or being surprised that you’ve been in class for five minutes and not seen anybody whip out their cock yet. If this website sounds creepy, sleazy, or pointless to you, you’d be absolutely correct. But, that being said, ChatRoulette is the Internet not only at its worst but also at its best: it’s anonymous enough to be basically harmless, and just entertaining enough to suck you into its clutches for hours at a time. Why not give it a go?

Log on, position your webcam just right, press “Start,” and accept the fact that any plans you made for tonight are totally not gonna happen.

Dear My Concert Diary

by Pete Noteboom

sound & vision

Goldmund – Philip Glass film scores on quaalude.

–Eric Brew, Editor-in-Chief

On Saturday, January 23rd, I had the privilege of going to see the gods of extreme death metal, South Carolina’s Nile, at Station 4 in St. Paul. For all the indie kids who comprise the bulk of the Wake’s readership, going to see Nile would be the equivalent of you going to see Wilco or Yo La Tango or something—Nile is a band widely regarded by metal aficionados to be at the top of their genre. Live, they are stunningly tight: they flawlessly replicate songs from six albums, material spanning over a decade (including last year’s Those Whom The Gods Detest, a punishing return to form after the minor whoopsiedaisy of 2007’s Ithyphallic).

Nile has been absolutely ruining skulls since 1993 with their highly technical brand of death metal. Off-meter blast-beats set the foundation for six-string acrobatics that would make those Shadows Fall lightweights drop trou and shamefully expose their puffy shredless labia. Nile’s guitar solos have been known to cause spontaneous, party-clearing air-guitar sessions, often climaxing in torpedo-esque dive-bombs that quite simply create erections. Nile is further differentiated from their oafish death metal brethren by frontman Karl

Sanders’ cerebral lyrics, centering on rites of ancient Egyptian antiquity. Both technically and intellectually, there is unquestionably more to Nile’s brutality than the run-of-the-mill death metal conventions.

However, seeing such eminence in the flesh I was struck by the shtick and limitations of Nile’s genre—halfway through the set I realized that I had seen this all before: a violent, smelly moshpit full of flatlining brainwaves; masturbatory, cookie-cutter inter-song banter; shirts for sale that actually say CAN YOU HEAR US… DEATH TO JESUS; musicians’ faces full of disingenuous anger, as though they aren’t incredibly lucky to be able to travel the world making fucking music.

As quality as Nile’s music is, death metal is a stale genre, as this show reflected. If you want music to engage you technically or to genuinely scare you (a pretty epic “if”), there are a number of heavy bands worth listening to that don’t follow the worn-out death metal formula (1349, Genghis Tron, and Converge all come to mind). But in the end, any night that involves an entire room full of people yelling “CAST! DOWN! THE! HERETIC!” gets a big ol’ hell yeah in my book.

Have an opinion on comic sans?

Thing of the Fortnight

the graphic design student association Bangs – Take U To Da Movies

Ocrilim – Beautiful guitarfucking.

–Deniz Rudin, Editor, S&V

Scout Niblett – A middle-aged British woman gives you blueballs.

–Peter Poght, Contributor

www.gdsaumn.com gdsa@umn.edu

by Deniz Rudin There is a recent and tremendous surge in the popularity, both general and youtubular, of the self-consciously or “ironically” bad, but people shooting for so-bad-it’s-good generally end up at so-bad-it’s-even-worse-for-trying. In this climate, Bangs’ gigantic and sincere awfulness is just the pick-me-up a serious camphound needs. Check out this fantastic video from Sudan’s finest rapper.

www.wakemag.org

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sound & vision Beach House Teen Dream

By Mark Thompson We probably should’ve seen this coming: Beach House’s musical development has floated along much like one of their songs. Beginning beautifully but a bit obscured by the haze, the band’s intentions cleared up on their second album, Devotion, paralleling the intoxicating, mysterious melodies that gradually seep into their songs. With Teen Dream, the band’s third and latest album, we see this song blossom into a chorus more gorgeous and entrancing than could have been imagined at its humble beginning.

Music feb 9. first ave. brother ali, sage francis, sims, toki wright (haiti benefit). 18+ 7pm $20

feb 10. loft literary center. equilibrium: spoken word, indigenous poets. 8pm free, donations accepted

feb 12. the whole. big quarters. 18+ 7:30pm $3 student/$5 general

feb 20. red balloon bookshop. derek anderson publication party (writer + nyt illustrator) 10:30am free

feb 12. first ave. gay witch abortion, halloween alaska. 18+ 8pm $10

film

feb 13. the cedar. lucy michelle and the velvet lapelles. At 7pm $12 adv/$15 door

feb 10. spsc theater. a serious man (coen bros) 7pm free

feb 13. sauce. sims, toki wright. 21+ 9:30 $5

feb 11. cmu theater. a serious man (coen bros) 7pm free

feb 17. triple rock. free bacon wednesday. 21+ 9-11pm feb 18. the whole. atlas sound. 18+ 7:30pm $7 student/$10 general feb 19. sauce. red pens, total baby, the bombay sweets. 9:30pm $5 feb 20. triple rock. retribution gospel choir, andrew broder. 18+ 8pm $10 feb 21. hexagon.

literary

feb 12. trylon microcinema. 2 or 3 things i know about her (godard 60s series) 7pm, 8:50pm $8 feb 12. spsc, coffman theaters. a serious man (coen bros) 9:30pm, midnight. free feb 13. trylon microcinema. 2 or 3 things i know about her (godard 60s series) 7pm, 8:50pm $8 feb 15. the heights. gaslight (1940 brit melodrama) 7:30pm $8 feb 19. trylon microcinema. contempt (godard 60s series) 7pm, 9:05pm $8

feb 09. kieran’s irish pub. loft’s fifth annual literary love fest (various speakers) 5:30pm free

feb 20. trylon microcinema. contempt (godard 60s series) 7pm, 9:05pm $8

feb 09. magers & quinn. wells towers reads his shorts. 7:30pm free

feb 22. the heights. brighton rock (1947 brit drama) 7:30pm $8

feb 10. birchbark books. monthly reading series (writers reading!) 7pm free

Beach House loses nothing and gains much on Teen Dream, their debut on Sub Pop. Still present are the lush organs that have defined the band, but they’re brighter this time around. Readily identifiable are Victoria Legrand’s thick vocals, but here they sound more confident, with traces of Stevie Nicks wandering in and out. Beach House are certainly sticking to what they have done in the past, but this album is far more consistent and accessible than either of their previous efforts.

The duo are masters of managing space. Occasionally recalling the auditory parsimony championed by upstarts The xx, Beach House are also not afraid to pile on the layers.

“Silver Soul” begins with a riff Sleater-Kinney would have written if Lil Wayne gave them access to his cough syrup stash, and the band adds plodding drums and distorted synth underneath to provide some snug accompaniment.

Then, in the first indisputable sign that this album is going to be something special, Legrand repeatedly sings, “It is happening again,” until the song’s conclusion, complemented by crisp “ah ahhs” in the background.

Beach House? Pop? Oh yeah.

Come to think of it, all these new “chillwave” kids on the block could take a lesson from Teen Dream. The whole record is a proclamation that subtle songs can also be triumphant. Whereas Beach House has spent most of their efforts trafficking in ambience up to this point, Teen Dream takes a half step forward, especially as Legrand’s often androgynous voice rises to the forefront toward the conclusion of several songs.

The standout track, if that can be said of a record that exhibits no apparent weaknesses, is “Walk In The Park.”

In stark contrast to “Gila,” the best song off of Devotion, “Walk In The Park” shows no hesitation to engage the listener. It’s flooded with nostalgia, from the constant organ to the simple, cheap drums. But instead of letting the sentiment wash over you, Legrand steps into the most engaging melody on the album in the chorus, conceding, “In a matter of time/It would slip from my mind/In and out of my life/ You would slip from my mind.” Whether it’s the hard “t” in “matter” or the fact that Legrand finally gives herself the space to sound anthemic, it’s startling to hear Beach House making music this direct.

The Aughts hurled more hyperbole at us than anyone could have asked for, and I hesitate to sully our new decade with more of the same. But what the hell: I think we’ve got a masterpiece on our hands.

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09 – 22 february

humanities

www.wakemag.org

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humanities

22

09 – 22 february

BASTARD

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LIMINAL literary journal ART PHOTO PROSE POETRY Liminal@wakemag.org

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