The Wake Issue 2 Fall 2009

Sex Education

08

A Serious Man

18

RFID / Futurism / and more 14 – 27 october 2009

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ALSO SEEKING: –Photos of Science Classroom Building –Poetry and Short Stories

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Editorial Editor-in-Chief Ali Jaafar

Mind’s Eye Editor John Oen

Managing Editor Sage Dahlen

Sound & Vision Editor Eric Brew

Cities Editor Trey Mewes

Humanities Editor Ross Hernandez

Voices Editor Matt Miranda

Bastard Ol’ Dirty (Jonathan Knisely)

“Exposure of the self to others in varying degrees is a concomitant of life in a civilized community. The risk of exposure is an essential incident of life in a society which places a primary value on freedom of speech and of press.” Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U.S. 88, 102 (1940).

Production

You dig?

Production Manager Ben Alpert

Photography Editor Ben Lansky

Graphic Designers Ben Alpert, Jonathan Knisely, Nathan Pasch

Art Director Keit Osadchuk

Distributors Ben Alpert, Maggie Foucault, Matt Miranda, John Oen, Pammy Ronnei

Copy Editors Katie Green, Brady Nyhus

Lay it on me.

Sage Dahlen Managing Editor

Business Business Manager Colleen Powers

This Issue Cover Artist Keit Osadchuk Illustrators Danielle Attinella, Talia Carlton, Rachel Mosey, Keit Osadchuk, Guy Wagner

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

Contributing Writers Zach Bibeault, Sofiya Hupalo, Ryan Kennedy, Andrew Larkin, Patrick Larkin, Amy Nelson, Brady Nyhus, Dana Raidt, Pammy Ronnei, Trevor Scholl

Photographers Ben Lansky, Patrick Larkin

8:2 ©2009 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.

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 aJAAFAR@wakemag.org.

voices

daniel rivard

Access to Frustration Does Access to Success Unfairly Profile Students?

by Brady Nyhus

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14 – 27 october 2009

voices

U

niversity of Minnesota freshman Clark Rahman considers himself to be something of an intellectual and successful individual. At age 18, speaking proficient French, well-traveled and with 35 college credits already in the bank, he is perhaps justified in making those assumptions.

Aside from his middle class financial status, a person may wonder what other factors could possibly limit this gifted student, aspiring publicist and former male model from quickly reaching his full potential.

But Rahman isn’t white (At least that’s not what he listed on his U of M application).

His given ethnicity, “other,” while all but guaranteeing entrance into this racially [self-]conscious university, has, in his opinion, also put him at a great disadvantage upon arriving here: in short, mandatory participation in a one year social program, ironically dubbed “Access to Success.”

Access to Success, or “ATS” for short, is one of those programs that was designed with students’ best interests at heart, but has fallen somewhere south of that position. A catch-all category for many of the underrepresented groups here on campus, individuals selected for this program are forced to endure all or part of its moving pieces: specialized ATS advising, a computer lab, peer-to-peer mentoring and tutoring support are made available to all students. (Sounds terrible, right?) But there’s more: select students are also required to take 6 credits—two semesters’ worth—of ATS’s own breed of College of Liberal Arts classes.

CLA 1005, or “Liberal Arts Learning,” is the first of two courses taken by ATS students at the U of M. (The second is called CLA 2005, or “Introduction to Liberal Education and Responsible Citizenship.”)

In this course, designed to provide a “continuing orientation” to the greater U of M portfolio, they learn study skills, the liberal arts, finances and other life issues, and four-year planning, which are pretty generic, standard things that all students should learn—whether as part of a class or just as life lessons. What’s more interesting, however, is the kind of racist garbage that often works its way into the curriculum.

In a recent talk delivered by ATS Coordinator Andrew Williams and a colleague, one Dr. White from the University of Michigan, students learned about the “Psychology of a Black Male,” strangely racially charged in its intent. A companion video to the lecture, streamed from YouTube, painted whites as an enemy. It said “[a] healthy suspicion of whites” was indispensable to the black man’s strength.

This may all be well and good, if not downright empowering, to a group of Black Power enthusiasts, but what of the less culturally angst-driven? What of the Caucasians and members of other ethnicities also present in the class? (After all, we have an African-American president, the North won, segregation is over, and in many, many other ways the “glass ceilings” around us are continually being broken.) One student interviewed put it this way: “Imagine if someone had

written down ‘healthy suspicion of blacks’ as a component of white male success.” (Many of the students interviewed for this story did wish to remain anonymous, either because they feared jeopardizing their full ride, multicultural, ATS-affiliated scholarships or other types of reprisals for speaking out).

ferring in, was welcomed with a “College Advisor Approval Hold” on his record and condescension and micromanagement in every single one of his fall semester course choices.

And what’s more: He has to take CLA 1005 & 2005, whereas Schuelke does not.

Finally, required reading materials for the class, specifically The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie and A Hope in the Unseen by Ron Suskind, are not college level books—the latter is written at a ninth grade reading level—and do little to prime students of any race for continued academic success.

Naturally, Rahman has tried to appeal the decision and will try to appeal it again next semester, but isn’t too hopeful. Instead of learning about his “talents and abilities,” with a side of general liberal arts education, Rahman feels his time (and money) would be much better spent taking upper division classes, or perhaps another trip abroad—both things ATS has made quite literally impossible for him to do this year. Ironically, Access to Success has given this high achieving student a one-way, one-year ticket to a deleterious remedial education—in the hopes that, given the necessary resources, he will thrive in the future.

“Disparate Impact”? –or “Disparate Intent”?

In the legal world, there are two very different types of racism: one is intentional and the other unconsciously perpetrated. HR professionals working toward EEOC compliance in the corporate environment have for years referred to these as “disparate impact” and “disparate treatment or intent.” Disparate treatment occurs when members of a protected class are treated differently from others, such as when a lecturer speaks to the differences between blacks and whites. Per LawMemo.com, disparate impact “is the idea that some employer practices, as matter of statistics, have a greater impact on one group than on another.”

Ironically, Access to Success has given this high achieving student a one-way, one- year ticket to a deleterious remedial education.

Obviously, the relationship between an employee and his or her employer is different than that of a student at an institution of higher learning; we pay them, instead of the other way around. But the same principle applies here, especially if we think of ourselves as being full-time students. An example of disparate impact is the student makeup of Access to Success.

By all accounts, persons that would be considered “white” on a U of M Admissions Application populate less than 10 percent of the class. If disparate impact is fought with statistics, it is safe to say that these discussions and lectures are not representative of the true proportions of students from different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds attending this school. This situation would be inherently problematic to any would-be racial auditor.

A Tale of Two People Rahman is close friends with 18-year-old Hannah Schuelke, a freshman, of Revillo, S.D. Like Rahman, Schuelke was selected for enrollment in the Access to Success program. Schuelke claims that a letter was sent to her, prior to starting school here, which explained she was to be in ATS because of a twoyear CLA foreign language requirement that had not been satisfied with her high school transcript.

Unlike Rahman, however, the U of M never followed through on its promise to remediate Schuelke. Rahman, who boasts a higher ACT score and far, far more college credits trans-

At the core, Rahman is concerned that because he is originally from the “inner city,” isn’t white ( in fact he’s part Iranian), and isn’t wealthy, he has been singled out, along with every other student that fits and/or closely resembles his description, and has been given this unwarranted-yet-mandatory “special” treatment. This is the opinion, of course, of one man—but many of the people this reporter spoke to in the program shared his sentiments.

In this country, we are told we can be whatever we want to be. The sky’s the limit. But what happens when the [glass] sky breaks, only to reveal another glass sky directly above it?

People have alternately crucified and praised programs like Affirmative Action, so it makes sense that a program like Access to Success evokes in us a mixed reaction.

If anything, Access to Success should be opt-in and not something that some people are forced to take in order to reach graduation. Hell, this writer could probably use some of the worthwhile things taught in CLA 1005 and 2005. But it’s complete bunk to think that the people in that class are required to be there, perhaps because of their ethnicity, perhaps because of where they went to school, perhaps just because of their social class, ET CETERA—and some of those individuals have clearly been misplaced!

The Access to Success program should exist, but the disparate impact it has on minority students at this university needs to be addressed. Having the program be opt-in would be better; de-stigmatizing even the idea of receiving help, and then providing those resources to all students who sign up for it would be ideal. This would curb the unconscious tendency our society has toward racial and socioeconomic marginalization, and may actually end up benefiting students.

The classes could certainly be more rigorous too: after all, six credits of “A,” no matter what college you’re in, should actually mean something. But this reporter doesn’t want to end up too much of an iconoclast at such a young station in life. We’ll save that one for now.

Let the debate continue.

www.wakemag.org

05

voices

Health Care for All

By Ryan Kennedy, Minnesota Public Interest Research Group The debate over health care has been raging at the national level for the past few months, dominating the news cycle and engaging many Americans in the political process. The most heated part of this issue is the discussion surrounding the “public option”.

First, let’s establish why the issue of health insurance is being addressed now. In the United States, there are currently 47 million uninsured American citizens, which is over 15 percent of our population. College-age adults (ages 18-24) are the most likely to be uninsured, as 27.9 percent of people in this age group are currently going without insurance. Those between the ages of 25 and 34 are almost equally as likely to not have insurance, at 25.9 percent. This debate is not just about the uninsured, however, as millions more are underinsured.

These are the people that are spending a significant portion of their annual income on out-of-pocket health care costs outside of their health insurance premiums.

The public option is a government-organized health insurance option that citizens could opt-into if they are uninsured or have issues with their current coverage provider. Take note: people still have every right, and it will likely be the norm, to retain their private health insurer. This option benefits from the increased efficiency that the government brings in regards to overhead costs. Only 2 percent of Medicare costs are administrative costs, compared to over 25 percent for most private insurance providers. This efficiency will save consumers money on their health care costs, allowing many low-income people to get the coverage that they need.

The under-regulated health insurance industry, along with the pharmaceutical industry, capitalizes on people getting

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sick. In order to maximize profits, these companies have begun focusing on denying the claims of the ill. So while ordinary citizens, young and old, are being told that they’re going to have to pay for their treatments out-of-pocket even though they have insurance, health insurance CEOs are raking in tens of millions of dollars every year. Their business model is to limit the amount of old, sick, and other high-risk individuals that they are covering while raising prices on the rest of their customers. The most significant problem with this model is the fact that those same high-risk individuals are the ones that are most in need of health care. A public option would help people who are being discriminated against by their health insurance provider receive the care that they need without going bankrupt.

The President’s plan for a public option will not add additional costs to the national debt. In fact, the White House predicts that finding savings within the existing health care system can pay for the entire plan. There will be a provision in the plan that requires the government to come forward with more spending cuts if the savings promised don’t materialize. Health Care reform now will help our country avoid the very real situation of rising health insurance costs, and the resulting increase in uninsured Americans, bankrupting our country.

Opponents of health care reform will have you believe that relying on a government-operated health care plan that is accountable to the public through elections and oversight is worse than a private system with no public involvement or oversight in its operation. You might expect a statement like this from the insurance industry; in fact, they are funding the opposition.

Let’s be clear: health care reform will probably not help the CEOs of health insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

The people that will be helped by this reform plan are the rest of Americans, 25 percent of which are currently uninsured or underinsured. By restricting the ability of insurance companies to deny a person health care due to a “pre-existing condition”, Americans rich and poor will face far less discrimination when they are just trying to get better. An efficient, effective public option will benefit not only those enrolled in the plan, but also those whose insurance companies realize that they need to start focusing on running an ethical, efficient business instead of focusing on how to make the most money off of the sickest people.

Is the status quo really what we want? As college students, we often feel invincible when it comes to issues like these.

The majority of us have not had to face a life-threatening condition, but we likely will at some point in our lives. If the health insurance industry goes without reform, if these trends continue, those that are insured will become the exception instead of the rule.

The Minnesota Public Interest Research Group (MPIRG) is a grassroots, non-partisan, nonprofit, student-directed organization that empowers and trains students and engages the community to take collective action in the public interest throughout the state of Minnesota. www.mpirg.org

voices

Keit Osadchuk

Return Healthcare to the Free Market

By Zach Bibeault, Young Americans for Liberty

Our current healthcare system is a mess, and leaves individuals in situations where they are forced to pay an arm and a leg for treaments that years ago were hardly expensive. Often, because of these costs, the sick cannot get treatment at all, and many die because of this fact. Unfortunately, our political leaders and the mass media have painted this as a grim situation with only two possible answers: increase government oversight of the health care industry, or leave the situation as is.

This is just as false a dichotomy as the supposition that we, as voters, have only the Republicans and Democrats to choose from, and must choose between neoclassical or Keynesian economics.

The assumption has been that our medical/health care industry has been largely a free market that has led to constantly increasing costs because of the “greed” of health care/insurance CEOs seeking profit. These assumptions are false. The truth is that the high cost of health care today is a direct result of numerous years of gradual government intervention in the health care industry.

During World War II, in an attempt to counter mounting inflation, the federal government instituted a wage freeze. Wages are the main way that companies compete for labor, so companies had to look for other ways to compete for workers. Companies overwhelmingly favored offering health insurance benefits to their employees, and over the years the government has instituted more and more incentives – usually through tax breaks – for companies to provide health benefits to employees. These tax incentives, and the employer mandates that eventually followed, were the key reason that employer-provided health insurance became a mainstay. It was never a natural result of the free market.

This increase in benefits gave the incentive for individuals to visit the doctor more often than they normally would (even for rudimentary colds and such) because they did not pay directly for benefits. It acted as a price control, driving up costs and creating shortages, reflected in waiting times at doctors’ offices and hospitals.

Medical patents stifle competition by granting pharmaceutical companies monopolies on ideas. Abolish patents, and competition would flourish, developments would progress, and big pharmaceutical companies would likely cease to exist, replaced by a more diverse and less economically stratified medical business field.

Additionally, the entire system has helped to shift insurance’s use from covering risk to paying for the basic healt care necessities like hospital visits. If our auto insurance system were run like our current health care system, auto insurance would cover checkups, gasoline, oil changes, and tire rotations, rather than just the chance of crashes, and we’d pay co-pays to auto insurance companies. But this isn’t the case, because the government never got itself so entrenched in the auto insurance business (It is no coincidence that you don’t see people in Congress and the media calling for “single-payer auto insurance” and saying that “auto care is a right, not a privilege!”).

Food and Drug Administration regulation, which requires medical companies to gain approval for various drugs and technologies (approval which favors big medical companies like Pfizer because of insane approval costs), contribute to big pharma’s oligopoly as well.

As a result, we now have a cartel of insurance companies that make tons of money because the government has placed them into an arbitrary middleman role in paying for health coverage. Costs are rising because of decreased efficiencies and increased demand from the moral hazard of additional insurance benefits.

There are also other factors that no one in politics or the media is talking about. The American Medical Association limits the supply of health providers by pursuing legal action against those who do not have the adequate licensing and training “needed” to perform the job, forcing prices higher.

Greater government intervention in the health care industry is the equivalent of trying to put a Band-Aid on a finger you just sliced off with a butcher knife. It will give consumers short-term relief while driving prices and shortages up within no time, ultimately failing. To reform the health care system, we need to return the health care industry to the free market, not take what little is left of its market involvement and socialize it. Insurance must be returned to its classic role as a hedge against risk, not as medical middleman. The AMA’s influence must be curtailed, medical patents must be abolished, and prices must be allowed to rise and fall at will to insure that people economize their health care dollars. Only when this is accomplished will our health care system reach pristine quality.

The mission of Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) is to train, educate, and mobilize youth activists committed to “winning on principle.” Our goal is to cast the leaders of tomorrow and reclaim the policies, candidates, and direction of our government. www.yaliberty.org

www.wakemag.org

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voices

Obama’s Surge 10,000 More Troops in Afghanistan?

By Matt Miranda

election in the first place, since he was perceived as the more dovish candidate. Growing frustration with overseas deployments, as well as Obama’s lackluster performance in pushing healthcare reform, may leave his administration without the political capital necessary to implement other policies. On the other hand, if he chooses to keep troop levels as is or reduce them, he could be branded as being soft on terror.

War, more than almost any other undertaking, has the potential to define a presidency; for better or worse, war presidents are often judged more on victory or defeat on the battlefield than the nitty-gritty of domestic policy. And in each war, administrations are faced with pivotal choices that can change the course of a war, the country and history. President Obama is faced with such a moment now: he must decide whether to grant a request from his hand picked commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley A. McChrystal, for at least 10,000 more combat troops, thus escalating the operation there. And while Obama inherited the Afghanistan conflict from the previous administration, it is fast becoming his war, and his decision at this important fork in the road will be a pivotal moment for his presidency and our country.

Arguably more important, however, are the repercussions a failure to increase troop levels could have on the situation on the ground. Conditions are tenuous, and the deck is stacked against U.S. forces. Thought to be defeated, the Taliban insurgency has made a steady comeback since Bush began withdrawing resources from Afghanistan to support the surge in Iraq. The Taliban continues to use guerilla tactics and knowledge of Afghanistan’s rough and unyielding terrain to harass and attack U.S. troops and civilians alike. Taliban fighters hide in the mountains, where the only method of travel is often goat paths, and where the U.S.’s impressive arsenal of tanks, vehicles, and high-tech Cold War weaponry is relatively useless. They also operate from bases across the border in tribal regions of Pakistan, much like the Viet Cong’s use of Cambodia during the Vietnam war.

It certainly won’t be an easy call; there is no clear choice.

Whatever he decides to do, he will seriously aggravate some part of the political spectrum; escalating involvement risks losing the support of far-left liberals who compose a significant pillar of his political base, both in the legislature and among the public. Additionally, the country is arguably experiencing a sense of war-weariness from eight years of protracted engagements. This fact contributed to Obama’s

Additionally, Taliban rebels have set up a shadow government mirroring the official one. Kidnappings, killings and other violent crimes are a common fear for Afghanis. Ironically, the Taliban are the only form of authority in some regions, as the central government under Hamid Karzai has made little progress or, indeed, effort to establish rule of law in rural provinces. Afghanis on the whole don’t support the Taliban, but they have seen their lot rise little since the U.S.

Sex Ed for Senator Hatch

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To stabilize the country, Afghanis must begin to see marked improvements in their circumstances, such that they begin to believe in their government. They must feel safe, and they must have access to basic necessities. But the current U.S. strategy focuses primarily on counter-terrorism operations against Al-Qaeda, not nation building, which is what the country sorely needs. And as Bush found in Afghanistan, nation building is a complicated process that is very manpower and resource intensive. It also doesn’t happen overnight, and could be a long and costly ordeal. It is instructive to remember that Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989 amounted to their Vietnam, costing them 15,000 lives and mounds of treasure. And with U.S. forces stretched to the breaking point from two protracted wars, it is not entirely certain that the U.S, still recovering from economic crisis and fraught with political polarization, can succeed where Russia failed without major international support, an unlikely massive home-front mobilization program à la World War II, or both. The question may not be whether we should continue the fight, but whether we can. Obama is faced with choosing from two difficult options. His decision will have profound implications for the future of two countries. Let’s hope he weighs it carefully.

Not only does abstinence-only education take away a crucial opportunity for teens to gain knowledge that is essential for them to operate in reality, it also does not enable discussion of important topics that are indirectly related to sexual education, like sexual assault and mutual consent. Comprehensive sexual education reform would better prevent not only Sexually Transmitted Infections and unplanned pregnancies, but also occurrences of sexual harassment and sexual assault. We live in a rape culture – we are steeped in sexuality, traditional gender roles and violence in nearly every aspect of our society, so of course these issues are in teens minds; adults shouldn’t be pretending that the situation is any different, no matter what their personal morals. Educators and politicians need to wise up – teens deal with sex.

by Pamela Ronnei On Wednesday, Oct. 7, I attended the screening of the second installment in a student-produced film series entitled Sex Ed for Everyone. Acording to the producers, members of the Women’s Student Activist Collective, the goal of the Sex Ed for Everyone project is to “create discussion around topics related to sexual education, to make sex ed comprehensive and accessible, and to include a broad spectrum of sexualities and genders.” The screened episode, titled “Consent,” is a pre-teen friendly film that defines mutual consent, specifically focusing on the importance of obtaining verbal consent before beginning or continuing any sexual contact. The video does an excellent job of including couples that represent multiple sexual orientations, as well as emphasizing that a person cannot give consent if they are severely intoxicated or less than fully conscious. It also does a great job of touching on concepts that I wish my junior high peers could have been exposed to, offering a sharp contrast to the message that the Senate Finance Committee sent in the past few weeks when they approved Senator Hatch’s bill that would provide $50 million per year until 2014 to exclusively fund abstinence-only education. In light of this political regression, the question that this film raises is this: In a country that sets the standard for medical research and proclaims to have secular politics, how is it that we are still dealing with the sexual education controversy?

invasion eight years ago. There are still too few schools, water treatment plants, sewage systems and hospitals. Aid projects that are completed are prime targets for the Taliban. Further, Karzai’s victory in recent elections comes amid widespread accusations of electoral fraud and weakens still more the ability of the Afghan government to rule effectively.

We as adults need to acknowledge that teens have control over their actions. We need to give teens the tools and the confidence they need to make healthy decisions about sex, because they will be faced with making these decisions whether we equip them with knowledge and support or not.

What better cause could $250 million go towards than to promote healthy decision making and open communication about sexual issues in America’s youth?

Tell kids not to have sex, and they may or may not have sex.

Tell kids how to avoid STIs and unplanned pregnancies and create a safe discussion space for them, and they still may or may not have sex, but if they do they’ll know how to protect themselves and their partners. Down with abstinence clowns, up with healthy progress. ben lansky

cities

Operating on the HCMC Budget

By Patrick Larkin For the uninsured and economically vulnerable in Hennepin County, the number of healthcare options available may be dwindling. Last spring, Gov. Tim Pawlenty vetoed the General Assistance Medical Care program for the state, which provided $43 million in revenue to the Hennepin County Medical Center, the county’s safety net hospital that provides health care to vulnerable populations. The county has since proposed a 3 percent property tax to address this cut funding, but the 3 percent would provide only $18.7 million, leaving a $24.7 million funding cut to be absorbed by the center.

Dave Lawless, the Director of Budget and Finance for the county, says the 3 percent increase is likely to pass, though he added that it has yet to go through the reviewing process by the county commissioners.

Without regular access to health care, people allow their conditions to worsen until it becomes a catastrophic situation.

Lawless says the 3 percent increase was decided upon because it will cover roughly half of the vetoed $43 million. Though the county saw a need to address the funding cuts, there was a desire to have HCMC deal with the problem, according to Lawless. The county “is not willing to pay all of it,” he says.

Mike Harristhal, vice president of public policy and strategy at HCMC, underlined the ill effects of the funding cuts.

“The people who’ll be affected are people who are in very little position to help themselves,” he says. Many of those affected make less than $8,000 a year and are likely to be more concerned about paying for food than paying their medical bills.

Many people receiving General Assistance Medical Care through the state were able to use the insurance at private hospitals or clinics - the Hennepin County Medical Center is only used by about 30 percent of those who receive insurance through state general assistance funding. The choice to go to private facilities will no longer be available. As a result, more people will seek health care at public institutions like HCMC. According to the Hennepin County Web site, the general medical care program provided care for around 26,400 lowincome Hennepin County adults who didn’t qualify for other insurance programs in 2007.

Harristhal estimated that the number of uninsured in Hennepin County is around 100,000. In addition, Harrisal says he expects that more uninsured will end up in emergency rooms. Without regular access to health care, people allow their conditions to worsen until it becomes a catastrophic situation and they go to an emergency room, he explained.

State law requires emergency rooms to provide medical care regardless of whether the patient has insurance or money to foot the bill.

The cuts “could affect not only the uninsured but also the insured” that use the county facilities, Harristhal says, explaining that the trimming of various programs offered by the

keit osadchuk

center could increase the time a patient has to wait to be seen.

“We believe it doesn’t save money in the long run,” says Harristhal of the funding cuts, noting that the cutting of the general medical assistance may mean a tax increase for the public.

To address the funding cuts, HCMC is looking at the entire breadth of its programs for ways to reduce costs. The center’s CEO Arthur Gonzalez told the Twin Cities Business Journal they are considering shrinking or cutting programs such as medical education, behavioral health, medicine used to treat carbon monoxide poisoning, and its burn center. Additionally, Harristhal says it is likely that the health center will no longer accept uninsured people from other counties except for emergency room care. In 2002, the center served more than 25,722 unique patients from the other 86 Minnesota counties.

Lawless says that HCMC has done a fairly good job of cutting costs in past years.

General Assistance Medical Care will end on April 1, 2010. The program covers homeless people, who cannot receive state assistance via MinnesotaCare, a joint-funded state/federal health care program, because the program requires the patient to have a residence.

The Hennepin County Medical Center serves largely vulnerable populations – 64 percent of their outpatient registrations and 54 percent of inpatients are on Minnesota public programs.

The three percent property tax increase that would go to the county medical center is part of a slimmed down county budget. The 2010 $1.6 billion budget is down from $1.7 billion in 2009 and includes 163 job cuts, a hiring freeze, and the elimination of the Solid Waste Management Fee. Most county departments will have smaller budgets than in 2009. “These times have forced, but more importantly fostered, innovation within our organization,” says Hennepin County Administrator Richard Johnson on the budget.

As for the 3 percent property tax increase, Lawless says the county is being cautious with property tax revenues. He explained increasing numbers of building owners are trying to reduce the valuation of property. The owners file petitions that contest the county’s appraisal of the property. In 2007 there were 900 petitions, last year there were 1,200, and this year there are 1,800. The petitions take a few years to go through the court system, and while many won’t pass, they have the potential to decrease the county’s revenue from property tax.

www.wakemag.org

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cities

Covering a Community?

The issues behind the negative press in Minnesota’s Somali community

by Trey Mewes

Take a walk through the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood in Minneapolis. Amid the shops and sidewalks, around the Brian Coyle Community Center, you’ll find large congregations of Somalis and Somali Americans, whose move into the neighborhood en masse, due to almost two decades’ worth of trials and tribulations, is still creating excitement today. Yet despite being another group within Minneapolis’ vast racial spectrum, the Somali community deals with some of the most negative press around, due to the issues that plague their homeland, issues which still affect them half a world away.

Somalia has been mired in civil war since 1991, when militant factions and clans overthrew decades’ worth of dictatorial government under the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party; it was granted its independence in the 1960s after decades of semi-colonial control by Europe. Since 1991, infighting between rival factions and widespread panic and fear has left the country in a precarious position among African nations. The U.S. and U.N. have tried multiple times to send food, aid and even troops to the East African nation over the past 18 years, with little results and even less good news received. The biggest news to come from the region before 2004 was the infamous Black Hawk Down incident, where 18 U.S. soldiers were killed during a joint U.S. and U.N. attack on militias in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, in October 1993, which left a lasting impression on the minds of American society.

The Somali community in Minnesota, here since the first refugees and immigrants came in 1993, is the largest population of Somalis and Somali Americans anywhere in the U.S., with population estimates ranging from 60,000 to 80,000. Since that time, there’s been news aplenty about Somali issues, whether it’s Somali cab drivers refusing to serve people who carry alcohol, or the current hot-button issue of Somali youth violence.

“It’s really exposing people to only one side of the story,” says Fadumo Ali, a finance and accounting sophomore at the University of Minnesota. “I feel like people are only seeing the negative aspects of Somali people. There is a lot of positive aspects of Somali culture.”

Those positive aspects can seem hard to find in a 24hour news cycle. Common perceptions abound that the news only reports on crises, tragedies and breaking scandals. Somali-related news is no exception. The recent spate of news within the Somali community in Minnesota was the September 2008 shooting death of Ahmednur Ali, a 20-year-old Augsburg College student who volunteered at the Brian Coyle Community Center and, unfortunately, was the fifth young Somali man

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killed in the community over a 12-month span. This unfortunate story illustrating the issues of Somali youth violence in Minneapolis was soon replaced by the stories of Somali piracy off the Gulf of Aden and the news of as many as 20 young Somali men leaving Minnesota to fight in their homeland as part of the Al-Shabab organization, considered by the U.S. to be terrorists with ties to Al-Qaeda.

It is no small wonder to see what happens from here.

Stories of Somali piracy, of Somali terrorism connections, and of Somali investigations spread throughout the local media circuit through the summer, with the Star Tribune reporting in July that at least four of the 20 or so young men had died in Somalia during the infighting. Yet the recent tone in news concerning Somalia shows a positive shift as most, if not all, media outlets in the Twin Cities reported on Somalia’s president, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, and his recent 3-day tour in Minnesota, meeting with Somali families, elders, and even giving a highly publicized, packed speech at the U of M’s Northrup Auditorium. Ahmed, widely seen as the man who could unite the country in peace, was himself driven out of Somalia just a few years earlier, when as head of the Islamic Courts Union he lost power when Ethiopia invaded Somalia in late 2006 to try and restore order to an Islamic militant-held Mogadishu. Since his inauguration in February, Ahmed’s attempts at a moderate Islamic government have been met with large praise and support, making him the most viable president of Somalia to give it a bit of stability and peace since the beginning of the current conflict.

The biggest problem is the sporadic attention Somalia receives.

Other mixed news flows out of the Somali community recently, as The Minnesota Daily reports an increase of youth violence in the past month is causing Cedar-Riverside residents to call for more action in educating newly immigrated-citizens on the use of 911 and reporting crimes as well as educating Minneapolis police on the cultures and practices of the community at large. While the increase in youth crime is worrying, the calls for more understanding by both citizens and police signifies a good, improving climate and a way to shift misguided perceptions about the Somali community, among other communities of color in the area.

Yet the biggest problem is the sporadic attention Somalia receives. Although there is more news coverage now over Somalia’s troubles, the call to pay attention was

cities

first brought about by the piracy and terrorism coverage Somalia has received. According to Ali, a group of Japanese students recently came to the U of M in order to learn more about Somalia since the only information they had about the Somali culture was the recent news coverage on Al-Shabab and piracy. “I was really shocked,” Ali says.

Such misunderstandings have been at the forefront of the editorial pages of The Daily recently, as many have commented and debated about a recent opinion column questioning what the author perceived to be certain sexist tendencies by “East African males,” who may or may not practice Islam. This furor only echoes the negative perception Muslims face nationally, as even Ali admits her identity as a Muslim woman wearing a hijab or a burka is challenged more than her identity as a Somali American.

The answers to how the Somali community can garner better attention are beyond the scope of this article. Certainly, more dialogue between the Somali community and outside communities needs to be established. Ali hopes the more positive aspects of Somali culture can be seen, that both the Somali community and the communities in Minnesota can come together to discuss these issues. It will help to see more articles about Somali officials visiting the state, as well as Somali success stories like the New York Times article on Mohamed Aden, a Somali leader who has managed to bring stability and functioning government to about 5,000 square miles of land around Adado in the middle of Somalia. In time, this coverage may help in addressing the critical structural problems inside the Somali government. For now, identifying the problems and opening a dialogue may be the start of an answer.

keit osadchuk

www.wakemag.org

11

The Van Gobots

Meridene

by Patrick Larkin

by Sage Dahlen

From a band name like the Van Gobots, I had expected to be listening to a kitschy oddball synth-driven band. At least I had hoped there would be quirk.

But alas, the album was synthless, quirkless, and rife with pentatonic scale dual-guitar boogery, including a beefy guitar solo on the first track. The singer comes out washy and indistinct, is lacking dynamically, and spews out lyrics in a barky and sometimes awkward sequence. The production is fairly clean and straightforward, which emphasizes a fairly tight drummer and well orchestrated, albeit wanky, angular guitar interactions. I probably wouldn’t walk out if they were opening for a better band and only played for 20 minutes.

Dear Maridene,

MISC

4) I don’t get your album title.

Guantanamo Beach Party

Happiness is Easy

by Andrew Larkin While some sound like the unfortunate offspring of pop ballads and vaguely dissonant post-rock, many of the choruses on MISC’s Happiness is Easy are simply bad. Harmonies on “Such a Fighter,” the album’s fourth track, are cringe-worthy and poorly introduced by the mixing. The record is somewhat dissonant; the first half of Badman Recording Co. owner Dylan Magierek’s release successfully attempts to misunderstand all the charm of groups like Mogwai by adding the numbingly earnest voice of Daniel Ahearn, while the second half is spent on stylistic experimentation intimating at folk, electro-pop, what-have-you, but never with enough charm or originality to stick. Perhaps the most consistent aspect of this album is that all the songs overstay their welcome. Its 40 minutes seem long as each song hammers every repetition in, but somehow, at the end of it, it’s hard to remember anything about it at all.

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You’re Not Pretty, You’re Worse

1) The music on your album is pretty good. I especially like the horns on “Kill the Memory.” But your lyrics are forgettable. Forgettable lyrics are hard to get stuck in your head. This is a pop record. Catch my drift?

2) Where is the harmony? Again: pop record.

3) Your one sheet reads: “…a record full of the happiest sad songs you might ever come across.” I listened to your record. I still think the happiest sad song is the J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers rendition of “Last Kiss.”

Ada Jane Again…Again

by Patrick Larkin Ada Jane is one of those bands that comes in big with them horns at the chorus. The first track ends with “whoa-oah-oah’s.” Though some brief moments of instrumental play are intriguing in their abrasiveness, the band falls easily into the patterns of folk/blues standard stylings which makes for predictable ends. The vocalist’s alt-countryish singing drawl often reaches moments of overkill. The lyrics can get awfully sentimental, with tons of mushy romantic lines like, “With all this busy-ness/Just stop by every once and a while for a kiss.” However, lyrical gems such as “Every time I cop a stance someone’s waiting behind me pulling down my pants” can be gleaned from the record.

Future Lisa

UltraChorus

by Eric Brew

by Ross Hernandez

We first encountered Future Lisa in the present, which is now the past.

Over time, our initial innumerable copies of Clone dwindled to one. Despite this passage of time, we still seem to be eons behind Future Lisa. At present, the lyrics are too simple for meaningful connection: “The discussion is over when I end it.” The vocal recordings are far too articulate – we can hear every uncomfortable vocal nuance. We investigated. Clone was recorded, mixed and mastered by Tom Herbers of Third Ear Recording – the same studio that played a part in Andrew Bird’s Armchair Apocrypha and various Fog and Low albums. Yet Third Ear mentions nothing of Future Lisa on their website’s past clients list.

UltraChous’s Words Kept Talking/Planetman is auto-tuned dance music with nicely patterned samples. Side A, “Words Kept Talking” contains a groovy dulcimer (!) sample that contrasts the airy synths that fade in and out of the mix. “WKT” is about words talking on their own volition. In fact, in a parallel universe there is a club in southern Costa Rica where the dance floor is packed with raving raised hands screaming, “you wasn’t talking and the words came oOOut.” That’s my dream. “Planetman” is a bassier track with a less catchy hook: “it’s the end of the night and I’m so excited” or other banal stuff that rhymes with that.

Clone

Words Kept Talking/Planetman 7”

Where’s the future clients list?

Alicia Leafgreen

Brendan Themes

by Colleen Powers

Fast

by Trevor Scholl The music of local artist Brendan Themes leaves much to be desired in his new six minute EP, Fast. Themes plays one-man acoustic pop punk.

The songs aren’t completely inept as it is clear he has talent in his guitar playing. Unfortunately, Themes has trouble writing anything original.

His production value is low, as all his songs end very abruptly and none are over two minutes. Also, Themes’ lyrics in Fast are far too simplistic.

It will be hard to win an audience with the hook “What exactly are you, hiding in the open?” I recommend skipping this artist, at least until he improves his talent.

The White Lesbian Rapper EP

Maybe it’s too easy to compare every white MC to Eminem, but Alicia Leafgreen not only sounds like a female version of the real Slim Shady, she openly namedrops him. Unfortunately, she doesn’t quite have the fierceness to sell the chip on her shoulder. The Twin Cities rapper’s simple, driving beats and smart-alecky rhymes are fairly engaging, but her boasting about her confrontational persona would be more convincing if her delivery weren’t so laidback. There’s something appealing in these tracks, but Leafgreen’s hip-hop neither gets in your face nor makes you want to party, and it ends up feeling a little empty.

www.wakemag.org

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cities

Seward

photos by patrick larkin, text by ali jaafar The Seward neighborhood is bound on the north by I-94, on the east by the Mississippi River, on the south by 27th Street East, and on the west by Hiawatha Avenue. It’s an interesting place; a mixture of industrial grey and lush green. Matthews Park shares space with a factory row, the Hexagon butts up to empty lots full of broken driftwood and chipboard, murals dot the landscape and the dumpsters are plentiful fonts of bread and cookies. As many people are going home as are passing through and the old man in the window of the guitar shop never sleeps.

MMA in MN Savage Combat!!!

by Trey Mewes There was a feel of battle in the air at Neisen’s Sports Bar & Grill in Savage, Minn. on Saturday, Sept. 26. There was also beer, the stench of stink bombs, and an annoying woman yelling “elbows and knees!” to every fighter in the cage at Savage Entertainment’s latest Professional Mixed Martial Arts event.

Among the highlights of the 10-fight card were the amazing performances put on by Andy Selvig, of Lake City’s own Team Crazy gym, as well as the professional MMA debut of Bryan King. Selvig, at 140 lbs., faced off against an opponent making his MMA debut. After a quick takedown within a minute of the

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opening bell, Selvig gained mounting position and got caught in a combination armbar/triangle choke attempt. Keeping his cool, Selvig picked up and powerbombed his unfortunate opponent at least five times into the mat, each slam drawing a larger groan from the audience as his opponent’s head bounced further and further into the floor. After wrestling a bit, Selvig ended the fight in the first round with a rear naked choke, picking up an impressive victory and boosting his MMA record to 3-0.

Bryan King, of the American School of Martial Arts in Savage, picked up an impressive professional debut victory against Bruce “Armbar” Johnson of Team Crazy. King and Johnson

exchanged blows for a bit, with King knocked down at one point. Yet King backed up Johnson into the cage, pressuring Johnson to rest against the cage and on the heels of his feet and catching him with a huge knee to the face as Johnson jockeyed for position. The fight was stopped immediately after, with King the winner by TKO and his opponent now 7-9.

The big announcement of the night was the upcoming tournament Savage Entertainment will host in November. Open to all serious featherweight, lightweight and light heavyweight MMA fighters, it will be at Neisen’s on Saturday, Nov. 7. Read The Wake for more details down the line.

mind’s eye

The Immortality of Futurist Predictions

Planned Obsolescence In A Shifting Economy

by John Oen

by John Oen

Anyone who self-identifies as a futurist carries a burden: virtually every future prediction made has fallen somewhere on a scale from “wrong” to “very wrong.” Most predictions can be proven patently absurd after the smallest lapse of time. There is an extensive list of technologies that were hyped far beyond their ultimate practicality: virtual reality, flying cars, human space travel, artificial organs, Scramjets, et cetera. It seems that the proliferation of technology never progresses along the same timeline or direction as predicted. One prominent contemporary futurist, inventor, and author, Ray Kurzweil, has a laundry list of bold claims so extensive that online editors have seen fit to grant them their own Wikipedia page.

«Planned Obsolescence» refers to several paradigms of product and market design that came to prominence at the end of the twentieth century. On the material side of things, it is a conscious and candid effort by manufacturers to restrict the usable lifespan of consumer products. From a marketing perspective, it refers to the ever-expanding marketing barrage bent on convincing consumers of the premature inadequacy of the products they already use in their daily life. While consumer advocacy groups have made incremental progress in curtailing flagrant instances of this design philosophy, the prevalence of tech gadgets in recent decades is a textbook example of the principle involved.

Now, with the public's line of credit largely slashed regardless of spending habits, how will newfound frugality influence buyers' choices looking forward?

Kurzweil has penned several books, notably 2005's The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. An interesting 650 page read, Kurzweil has framed a steppingstone for fresh debate and a manifesto for a line of thinking known as Transhumanism. Adherents to this line of thought believe humanity will reach a “singularity” of innovation—a point at which each new technological boundary is overcome by an even newer technology. In a nutshell, it is that “good tools beget better tools.” The ultimate goal of this is the physical supplantation of the human body itself. Kurzweil has recently claimed that every person alive who is under 40 can expect to live for hundreds of years, due to advances in nanotechnology and tissue fabrication.

Criticisms of Kurzweil are easy to synthesize. Even the uninitiated will observe that technology has done very little, so far, to address the core of human aging. Advances in world life expectancy are primarily centered around the elimination of life-threatening conditions, rather than any proven assault on the vague parameters governing “natural aging.” Modern agriculture, septic systems and antibiotics are among advances that have minimized traditional causes of mortality in humans. A victory for statistics rather than fundamental overcoming of natural boundaries. The bottom line: even under ideal conditions, human quality of life tapers off around 80 years of age.

The assertion that humanity will overcome its lifespan asymptote seems like a lofty prediction. Advances in tissue fabrication and biological “reprogramming” are cited, but heretofore unproven. At worst, it's an idealistic pipe dream of a man who clings to the possibility of his own immortality, even at odds with empirical evidence. This is the burden of the futurist. As technology accelerates societal absorption, bold claims have come and gone as their authors' biologically normal lifespans remain unchanged. Technology has continued to “zig” when its vanguards expected it to “zag.”

guy wagner

The driving force of recent advances has been profit, and it seems absurd to assume that technologies such as artificial tissue generation or programmable, biologically-driven nanomachines will be deployed in any way that clashes with increasingly constricted intellectual property rights. In short, the process by which future life-extending technologies will become ubiquitous cannot be predicted, and those alive today cannot expect to reap the benefits of a scientific arms race that has not yet come to pass.

Some industries are more immune to consumer backlash than others. American auto manufacturers, for example, were arguably done in because they consciously produced an inferior product than foreign competitors. Warranty information is increasingly verbose and difficult to navigate in products of all sectors. In modern iterations, ensuring rapid obsolescence can be as simple as denying access to the workings of a product with standard, non-proprietary tools. Companies like Apple, Inc. have long been cited for their proprietary hardware practices - in essence leveraging their products' customizability with intangibles such as a consumer's relative demand. They are not alone, obviously: the centerpiece of «hi-tech» plans for obsolescence is the lithium ion battery.

Lithium batteries are ubiquitous and cheap enough that they can be tailored to virtually any hardware configuration. They are light in weight and recharge quickly. They also require a near-constant supply of AC power if their chemical lattice is to be kept intact. Other battery mixtures may favor total discharge before optimal recharge, but these batteries lose their charging potential rapidly when they are used batteriesonly. Since each battery is more or less tailored to the specific shape of its hardware, replacement is either very expensive or simply impossible. On top of this, there are forces in advertising media that may prompt a consumer to ditch their old devices prematurely. Consumer usage patterns fuel the perpetuation of marginal design, and it comes to a point where literally every consumer product has been tailored for a quick and orderly demise.

Has this changed in the wake of the worst economy in eighty years? It's difficult to say. Advertisers have made a marked point of returning to old-timey, unsubstantiated claims about mileage. The rise of Twitter and blogs has provided a new outlet for consumer advocacy and feedback. The axioms of a world without scarcity have been put on hold for re-evaluation for the time being. Consumer culture has some serious soul-searching to do. While it may be unreasonable for a company's bottom line to design products with flexibility and encouraged consumer workarounds to failure, it may be worth considering some kind of industry standard. Consumer spending may be cyclical, but where there is a tangible product involved, there will be tangible waste. Eventually there won't be anything left to re-brand for consumption.

www.wakemag.org

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mind’s eye

Tesla’s Dream in the Mainstream

making changes immediately to jumpstart wireless charging computers. Sony is working on a prototype LCD television that works off the idea. This display could be portable or freely placeable in a house without concern about power cable wires. GPS devices are also looking to use the technology so drivers don’t have to keep a charge wire around at all times and to render car-based units independent of wires.

by Trevor Scholl If you’ve ever found yourself in a bind because you forgot your laptop or cell phone charger cord, a new technology may be exactly what you need. New technologies are emerging that may revolutionize the way electronics are powered. Inductive charging, also known as wireless charging, is being released in a range of products new to the market, notably a new laptop from Dell Computers and the “PowerMat” by a startup venture of the same name. Inductive charging employs small coils in devices or pads to create a small area electromagnetic field around the device to recharge the battery. The charging system will also turn off when the battery is full, allowing the charger to not waste energy. Wired chargers infamously continue to draw energy at a much higher clip even when the lithium ion battery has been recharged, as sidewalk-placed informatives around the University of Minnesota's IT buildings remind us daily.

A recent ComputerWorld article claimed wireless power charges could go mainstream as early as this year. The goal of the new wireless charging technology is to replace plugs and power cords. The technology could revolutionize how we charge appliances and make the times when a power cord or outlet can’t be found obsolete.

University of Minnesota engineering student George Shaffner is very intrigued by the idea of not needing power cords.

“The price will matter,” says Shaffner, “but when the capability and charge times improve it will replace batteries.”

He also noted what possibilities can come from the wireless technology. “Think of the best implications, what if you could run a car with it?” Shaffner says.

Many companies are jumping on the opportunity to see what they can develop with the wireless charging technology. The Palm Pre smartphone already uses the technology and is the first cell phone to use it. Laptop companies are

The Impending Value of Radio Frequency ID

by Andrew Larkin The PATRIOT act has long faded from popular consciousness and Google seems to be a bigger threat to the concept of privacy. Paranoid speculation is leaning more towards corporate espionage dystopian theories than government-run ones. RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) technology can accomodate both, and as 2007's incorporation of RFID chips into U.S. passports demonstrated, it seems to be mostly following the trend.

Radio Frequency Identification refers to cheap, ubiquitous tags attached to objects that emit a distinct radio wave. Businesses use them frequently for tracking various products along the supply line, but their use has expanded drastically.

These tags can not be read from anywhere; whatever reads them has to be relatively close, yet privacy concerns are largely focused on how easy it is for anyone to design a reader.

For instance, RFID chips in passports usually contain the passport's information, meaning anyone who can receive an RFID signal can counterfeit a passport.

danielle attinella

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However, its full potential remains untapped, and the Vice President of Systems Architecture for Sony Ericsson, Hakan Djuphammar, expects every mobile phone sold in 2010 to contain an RFID chip. From there, it's not difficult to envision corresponding developments. RFID may be embedded in keys for cars or homes, or the use of IP (Internet Protocal) mapping combined with mobile user location data to prevent

Wireless induction has long been within the realm of superscience myth, both new and old. Institutions such as Bell Laboratories and M.I.T. have worked for decades meticulously refining and reproducing the wireless induction proposals of Nikola Tesla. Arguably the most venerated inventor of all time, and a tremendously gifted electrical engineer, Tesla experimented meticulously with the technology, even as his health and financing failed him. Now the use of this technology has moved from its niche in semiconductor manufacturing to its first steps in the mainstream tech market.

It is possible that workrooms could add this technology to desks allowing employees to not have to worry about broken power cords ever again. The ability to charge without wires can have ambitious applications, and a slew of companies are scrambling to join the bonanza. Even in a time of curtailed consumer spending, there is money to be made from truly exceptional new technologies.

credit card fraud by determining card location at all times.

Real-time traffic mapping using RFID could also be sold to GPS companies to provide detailed dynamic information.

Djuphammar, who describes these scenarios as “win-win” made no comments about the possibility of opting out of having an RFID-enabled phone.

American Express, which is designing an “ExpressPay” system using RFID tags in its credit cards, so the card just has to be tapped against a reader for a purchase to be made, has also speculated about RFID applications. According to Spychips. com, an advocacy website against the proliferation of RFID tags, an American Express patent application suggested using the technology to monitor consumer movements within a store- what items they picked up, how long they spent in certain aisles, whether or not they paused to observe specific promotions. American Express met with one of the most prominent anti-RFID groups, CASPIAN, and agreed to review their patent application about this technology, and to take more steps to ensure consumers are aware if they have an RFID-enabled card and could opt out of it.

It seems hard to argue that they should. The Vice President of InformationWeek blogged about RFID technology, “In a world jammed with surveillance cameras, cell phone cameras and imminent smart-grid brains that will scold you for using more electricity than some bureaucrat thinks you should, this paranoia over RFID goes beyond silly to absurd.” While this could be an overstatement, we do live in an era where companies continue to blur the lines between market research and invasive voyeurism. RFID technology has too much unexplored potential to simply be ignored -both for simple curiousity as well as profit-driven utilizations.

mind’s eye

Capturing Sight for the Blind

by Sofiya Hupalo

The ongoing quest to help the blind see has been a long, arduous endeavor that’s embarked innovation in physics and biology for centuries. Age-related blindness is a problem on the rise – the federal government spent four billion dollars on related remedies in 2005. Ten million Americans face macular degeneration – a figure that is only expected to grow. But we may be on the brink of a breakthrough; researchers are now in the final steps of constructing a wireless microchip to insert in the eye that would ultimately transmit visual information to the brain.

The Boston Retinal Implant Project was founded in the 1980s as a collaboration of the Harvard Medical School, the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Its initial goal aimed to better understand retinal transmission of information to the brain. As time passed, BRIP focused on a new goal: to develop a prosthetic eye. A new optic implant developed by the consortium aims to achieve just this.

Experiments done with pigs have sometimes failed because their bodies rejected the foreign prosthesis.

Thinner than a strand of hair, the elastic microchip contains 30,000 stimulating transistors that receive wireless information from a coil on a pair of eyeglasses. Meanwhile, a camera on the glasses records its surroundings. Using radiofrequency transmission, the coil converts visual data into a specific pattern of electrical impulses that it sends to a corresponding coil implanted behind the eye. This small electrical current passed on by electrodes transmits stimulation to retinal ganglion cells, which process input to the brain, thus creating the perception of vision.

The BRIP has yet to receive full approval from the Federal Drug Administration and carry out successful implants in humans. So far experiments involving people have been limited to low electrical stimulations of the retina for a few hours at a time. Consequently, blind subjects have reported spotting glimpses of light. Due to the invasive nature of the surgery, researchers are aiming to create the most long-lived prosthesis that utilizes the lowest voltage necessary to reach the stimulation threshold of nerve cells without harming any surrounding tissue.

The delicate retina also contains fluid that could interfere with the positioning of the microchip. Biocompatibility is another point of difficulty – experiments done with pigs have sometimes failed because their bodies rejected the foreign prosthesis. The current vitreoretinal approach involves an ab externo procedure – to create space for the implant, fluid is injected into a pore behind the eye to separate the retina from its surface. Then, the implant is wedged into this spot from the external side of the eye where the flap has been made.

rachel mosey

The development of this device is far from completion. Human testing experiences a lag behind the experimental tinkering on the bleeding edge of technology. Research is still needed on how blindness affects neural pathways and brain plasticity – the development and reorganization of the brain in the wake of trauma or disability. It may be a while before blind patients can experience normal vision, but progress is being made at an astonishing rate.

www.wakemag.org

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sound & vision

The Serious Men: Joel & Ethan Coen

by Eric Brew

A Serious Man is a dark comedic tragedy that borders on a parable of a dismantled existence. The story is set in 1967 suburban Minnesota and centered on a beyond–unfortunate— possibly cursed—middle–aged Jewish father, Larry Gopnik.

As a professor of physics at a small university, Larry clings to the routine of his life and the freestanding equations that supposedly describe his surrounding world. He is so far detached from this world that he lingers before he falls—as a cartoon character might after unknowingly speeding off a cliff.

Like most of the Coen brothers’ characters, Larry is a victim of his environment. As an academic living in a middle-class Jewish neighborhood, Larry finds himself lost and beleaguered as his wife leaves him. The man of interest is an elder colleague of Larry’s who has ambition and importance in the community, Sy Ableman (played by a deceptively calm and gregarious Fred Melamed). Additionally, Larry’s disillusioned brother (Richard Kind)­—who is working on a probability map to predict the events of the universe—is falling apart both physically and mentally while living on the couch.

Larry’s daughter is preoccupied with stealing money for a planned nose job and his son is smoking weed when he should be preparing for his Bar Mitzvah. At his job, Larry receives a bribe from a Korean student who wants a passing grade while the board responsible for determining his tenure is receiving anonymous letters urging them to not grant him the position.

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Larry is for the meantime relatively passive in situations; he is undertaking an effort in becoming a righteous—and simple —man.

It’s clear the Coen brothers have taken much pleasure in finding ways to torture their protagonist. They treat all of Larry’s problems with the same amount of humor and importance— from the petty issues concerning his neighbor mowing over the property line to the more serious dissolution of his marriage. A face readily recognized and lauded in the New York theatre scene, Michael Stuhlbarg, plays Larry in the film.

Stuhlbarg, like most of the cast of A Serious Man, remains relatively unknown to moviegoers—a reportedly conscious effort by the Coens.

The film is pieced together like an unsympathetic homage to middle-class Midwestern Jewish life. While it may be one of the first explorations of this life in film, the story still feels dry. The struggle Larry goes through is the struggle of many others, but the universality of the story doesn’t hold strong.

Perhaps this is because of the Coen brothers’ blatant disregard for their character’s well being.

Larry confronts the disintegration of his life­—after some prompting from both his peers and a divorce attorney who acts as one of Larry’s/Job comforters—by consulting a rabbi.

The senior rabbi is, of course, occupied. Larry is forced to re-

sort to consulting two lower-ranking rabbis. The consultation of multiple rabbis is a play on the importance of questioning in the Jewish faith. But just as the passive and increasingly neurotic professor is left with no answers after either consultation, the repetition adds little of anything other than comedic effect for the audience.

Because the film simultaneously occupies and exhibits the milieu of Jewish values, Midwestern lifestyle and ’60s culture, the humor of the film is diffused and then concentrated across the domains of culture, geography, and generation.

This means that while the film appeals to a wide audience —perhaps through the absurdity of the situations themselves—references to Ron Meshbesher will be lost on many moviegoers.

The Coens have proved themselves as experts at analyzing sub-subcultures. Just as Fargo encompasses its own stereotypical Minnesotan world or Barton Fink and its exploration of entertainment writing in 1940s Hollywood, A Serious Man is another self-contained effort. This time the Coen brothers turn to a more familiar setting and have succeeded in pointing to all the nuances while crafting a story that is, in a way, all-encompassing.

The world of Larry Gopnik has been created with perhaps more intimacy than any of their other films. Having been

sound & vision

raised in a Jewish community in St. Louis Park by parents both from academia, the film is closest to home for Joel and Ethan. Yet there is no restraint in the situations the Coens pushed their protagonist through. In comparison to their other films it lacks the blood that has splattered over every other character, yet the situation—the meaninglessness and dryness that the story is presented in—could not be harsher.

It’s clear the Coen brothers have taken much pleasure in finding ways to torture their protagonist.

Cinematographer Roger Deakins returns from a brief Coen brothers hiatus to wonderfully capture the quintessence of the late ’60s suburban Jewish neighborhood. The freshly constructed suburban homes seem to already occupy their own faded glory in a treeless and otherwise empty neighborhood captured in Bloomington, Minnesota. The shots are crisp like fall weather—we can already taste the death that occupies the scenes. Less of the sweeping, wide-angled shots that characterized many of the Coen brothers’ previous films impart the feeling of being enclosed in a suburb with little place to turn to or vent. Deakins utilizes hard-focuses and closeups to reinforce the shallow intimacy viewers take from the storyline.

Despite the visually striking composition of the film, the film fails to create a strong connection between Larry and the audience in order for his struggle for meaning to be worth following. This may be a deliberate superficiality by the Coen brothers. Though, the brothers have little to say of their satisfaction with A Serious Man: “[the film is] Okay.”

images courtesy Walker Art Center

The strong points of the film stem from its somewhat enigmatic trailer. The trailer opens with Larry Gopnik’s head repeatedly being slammed into a chalkboard by Sy Ableman.

There’s an unsettling, partly unconscious, impression as the sound of a head meeting chalkboard runs through the film’s trailer. It’s a brilliant representation of what is seen in the movie: Here is our protagonist being thrown from one disruptive and sometimes-horrific situation to the next with the same result. While Larry searches for answers, in a quest to be a serious man, he only encounters the same hollow message: the Coen brothers are cold-hearted misanthropes.

www.wakemag.org

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sound & vision

music oct 15. acadia. days of rae, kymara, alshley gold, alicia wiley. 8pm free oct 15. turf club. magic castles, eye of the great protector. 9pm $4 oct 16. turf club. little man, backyard tire fire. 8pm $8. 21+

oct 18. the entry. times new viking, whitesands/ badlands. 8pm $13

theatre

oct 18. turf club. fan fiction, pocahontas county.

8pm $3

oct 14 - 25. jungle theater. mary’s wedding $28 - 36 ($10 off rush tickets, 30 minutes before) jungletheater.com

oct 22. acadia cafe. levitt, philip westfall, minor kingdom, tim fast, dustin lee. 8pm $5 oct 23. the cedar. the pines, spaghetti western string co. (cd release) 8pm $12 adv, $15 door oct 23. turf club. the crossing guards, farewell milwaukee, small cities. (dual cd release) 8pm $5 oct 24. turf club. the mighty mofos, grant hart, private dancer. 9pm $5 oct 25. the cedar. great lake swimmers, the wooden birds. 7pm $12 adv, $15 door

oct 14 - nov 1. pillsbury house theatre. king of shadows $5 - 15 students pillsburyhousetheatre.org oct 15 - 18. gremlin theatre. marisol $14 - 41 theatreprorata.org oct 15 - 25. redeye theater. the thugs $8 students redeyetheater.org oct 15 - 25. ritz theater. pas de quatre: the oriental ballets $10 - 20 ritzdolls.com oct 16 - 24. rarig center proscenium theatre. big love. $13 - 15. theatre.umn.edu oct 16 - nov 8. theatre in the round. rebecca $10 20 theatreintheround.org oct 21 - 25. mcguire theater. the walworth farce.

2pm, 8pm. $28 - 42. druidtheatre.com

oct 26. moos tower 2-650. voices merging open mic.

8pm free

exhibits

oct 27. the cedar. thao and the get down stay down, portland cello proj, david shultz, skyline. 7pm $12 adv, $15 door

oct 14 - 26. hga gallery - rapson hall. 10x10 low cost housing & contemp architecture in warsaw. 9am9pm free

film

debauchery

oct 15. oak street cinema. le doulos (jean-pierre melville) 7:15, 9:15pm $5 students

oct 21. the cedar. fall wine tasting with zipps.

6:30pm $25

oct 15. walker cinema. burn after reading (coen bros) 7:30pm free

oct 23. happy gnome tent. st paul scotch & whisky fest. 12pm - 8pm $10 stpaulscotchandwhiskeyfest.com

oct 16 - 18. oak street cinema. il divo (italy, paolo sorrentino) 7:15pm $5 students

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oct 21 - 23. oak street cinema. revanche (austria, gotz spielman) 7:15pm, 9:30pm $5 students

oct 17. fine line. state radio, dovekins. 5pm $17

oct 21. the varsity. pretty lights, prep school. 8pm $13 adv, $18 door

14 – 27 october 2009

Esk i Sn mo ow

oct 18. the cedar. youssou n’dour: i bring what i love. 7:30pm $8

oct 22. walker cinema. astra taylor on the unschooled life (artist talk). 7pm free

oct 20. the entry. samantha crain, the midnight shivers. 8pm $6

Wh y?

oct 16. trylon microcinema. scanners (cronenberg series) 7pm, 9:10pm $8

by Dana Raidt WHY? songs have always gone beyond verse-chorusverse structure, beyond drums/bass/guitar, and beyond the comfortable - especially in terms of singer Yoni Wolf’s subject matter. On the Oakland band’s fourth album, Eskimo Snow, acoustic guitars, piano and live instrumentation have taken the place of the hip-hop loops and beats of past WHY? albums. In the past, the band never made songs in the traditional sense of the word, but created vignettes – the music serving as a backdrop to Wolf’s half-sung, half-spoken poetry illustrating the absurdity and intensity of everyday life. Those hip-hop-backed vignettes may have finally become structured songs, but that doesn’t mean WHY? is any safer.

Wolf’s embarrassingly dark and poignant (and sometimes creepy) stories of death, shame and love are more potent than ever on Eskimo Snow. When paired with the more organic sound of pianos and acoustic guitar, Wolf sounds more relatable and pained than normal. The colder sounding instrumentation of previous WHY? albums and the detached, distant and even robotic lyricism made it hard for listeners to sympathize with the robot-like Wolf. This distance, conversely, makes it easier to digest the sometimesdisturbing imagery. But now that Wolf’s poetry is more natural sounding and more human, it’s hard not to be affected by it.

Musically, Eskimo Snow (which features contributions from Wolf’s former Hymie’s Basement bandmate and Fog frontman Andrew Broder, as well as Mark Erickson) hardly contains a trace of the darkness of past WHY? albums. But Wolf’s lyrics – covering topics ranging from religion to sex to death to existentialism and everything in between – is still the glue that binds the band’s sound together, and his uncanny ability to describe the human experience continues to infiltrate the brain of anyone who listens.

P.S.- Radio K can now be heard on the FM 24/7 at 104.5 and 100.7! You can also hear it at 770 AM and streaming online at radiok.org.

humanities

Biogeography 1001: Essay for Biogeography

by Amy Nelson

In 500 words, explain the established concept of the spherical shape of the Earth as a physical given. Be sure to include important figures and dates, as well as the logic developed in astronomical and geometrical fields of study.

In the beginning, the world was flat, and all men stood upright with their face to the gods. Men stood where the gods put them, and wandered very little. A man on one side of the world did not know a man on the other. This all changed, however, one day with a fisherman called Linus. He was greedy, and always took out of the sea more fish than any man should ask for. This angered the sea, so the sea created a new sort of fish that when eaten, sends the devourer to a long fast sleep. Just as the sea predicted, curiosity overcame Linus and as he tasted the fish, he fell fast asleep. The wind hung in his sails, and his ship drifted off further than any man had ever gone.

At this time, the goddess of the earth bore a son called Demitri. He was given the mindless task of circling the disk of Earth making sure nothing fell off. Demitri was winding around the earth when Linus’ ship neared the edge. The little god tried pushing the ship in the other direction, but he didn’t have enough strength. He tried waking the captain up, but Linus was deeply sedated from the fish.

The little god grew frantic as the ship neared the edge of the world. As rashly as anyone has ever acted, Demitri pulled the edge of the world around and tied it to the other. Linus’ ship was then the first to travel around the world.

The goddess of the earth was very unhappy with Demitri for ruining her lovely shape, especially when all of her lovely, earthly things began to fall off. She assigned Demitri the task of adding magnets to the bottoms of every tree, table, foot, and fish, so as no thing would fall off the giant globe.

This worked for a moment, but soon war broke out among mortals for who gets to be on top of the world.

The gods definitely had a problem on their hands. With a globular world, who gets to hang out on top? They assembled on Mount Olympus for a pow-wow. “Obviously,” said the Mighty, “the noblest of them all should be on top.”

“And all of the terrible people should hang upside down on the bottom!” sneered the god of dark things.

“Unfortunately, that just can’t work,” one of the Fates chimed in. “These people are not all good or all bad, as I watch their fates change day to day, month to month, and year to year. The only way that would work is if the world spins around.”

So it was, and all of the gods exalted. Demitri was deemed “Spinner of the Earth,” and with all of his might he spins the earth round and round.

Every once in a while, even to this day, a mortal can tell if he on top of the world, and he rejoices.

www.wakemag.org

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humanities

BOY’S CLUB

The King of Burger

by Ali Jaafar

by Patrick Larkin

1. was a dark room so thick with human, filled with bodies rotting, twisting, grotesque, not dead but sweating out the humanity in the middle of the summer 2. is a figure departing, opening the front door, cruel heat trap that should be open but for the sake of propriety, left closed 3. is the hand on the wallet filled with money stolen from grandmother’s purse, a bill so large that it’s measured in time; carrying two months in his decaying wallet 4. is the neon glow of the arcade, cold and stark in this city, a huge heat sink for all of the northern shore

8. is the wallet, revealed, showing too much of the aforementioned bill, which is immediately snatched 9. is the entreaty, repeated: a. give me back my money 10. is the response: b. if you come back here at night, i’ll give it to you 11. is the moral: c. why wouldn’t you? if you haven’t done anything wrong, nothing bad will happen to you

5. is the man, black raincoat and plaid shirt tucked into jeans - pay attention - weird hair blown by the wind to reveal a huge wound, long “healed” but untreated, forming a huge purple gash - poverty’s terrible kiss

12. again:

6. is walking with him in the midday heat, away from the “mall” down surrounding streets that are somehow so different as to be another city completely, doorways black and green, no lights, no metal, all yesterday’s plastic and wood

13. again:

7. is their hangout, a club settling into it’s foundations where the young men play pool and darts and cards and the smokers outside approach the fence to greet grandma’s boy, showing their deformations like badges of honor: a. no arm, wound poorly cauterized b. no left eye, no patch c. various hard, red patches on face, maybe burns d. upper and lower clip cleaved, saliva drips from slurred speech e. etc.

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14 – 27 october 2009

c. why wouldn’t you? if you haven’t done anything wrong, nothing bad will happen to you

c. why wouldn’t you? if you haven’t done anything wrong, nothing bad will happen to you 14. the chorus (from over the fence): d. come back and i’ll fuck you, pussy 15. is the departure, figure twisting through unfamiliar streets, finding dead ends and escapes in equal measure 16. etc.

Cheesecake between those butts, you know, the lemonade TV rappers drink, Wednesday afternoon JC Penny’s parking lot hook-ups missed on Craig’s List.

I could jab a french fry in my eye, but my eye is not barbecue sauce and not even the register girl is watching a baseball hat eat a bacon chicken sandwich.

In the stall the boobs have been ripped off and the pages smell like failed leopard cologne.

In the backseat under the to go box a one dollar bill. Your kid can eat a styrofoam mini-bitch for all I care.

Gunk up the computer screen with self-discovery.

The first woman in outer space was made of Jello and all man needed was a straw.

BASTARD

Talia Carlton

www.wakemag.org

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