The Wake

I don’t like drinking. I don’t like the taste of alcohol. I don’t like drunk people, and I was even totally sober for two years of high school. So why the hell am I writing a column in favor of lowering the drinking age to 18 for wine and beer?

Let’s play with a few scenarios. Todd is a new student at the University of Minnesota. He learned his drinking behavior during high school, when he and his friends lied, cheated and stole to get their hands on bottles of vodka. Todd hardly ever drinks beer because vodka and …

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Recently, Matt Damon compared Gov. Palin and her meteoric rise to fame to a bad Disney movie. It seems that he was more right than he ever could have known: we’ve recently discovered they really are making this movie. One of our writers sat down and recorded a meeting of screenwriters discussing the project.

Writer 1: All right settle down, let’s get to work. We open to the Alaskan Wilderness, serene pines, babbling brooks, blah blah whatever. Music is nice, cheesy sort of, until out of the sky BAM! Appears a helicopter with Sarah hanging out the window, touting …

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Angelina Jolie did it—so did Johnny Depp and Princess Diana. According to recent research studies, between 10-20 percent of college students do it too. Self-injury is an increasing phenomenon in today’s young adult culture, but it’s often misunderstood.

According to the Mayo Clinic, the majority of those who self-injure are adolescents. Risk factors include depression, anxiety disorders, substance abuse disorders, eating disorders, and other mental health conditions. Victims of childhood trauma are especially likely to self-injure—those haunted by neglect or abuse often have an impaired ability to control their emotions and behavior.

A common misperception of self-injury is that those who commit …

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I won’t trouble you with reductive binaries (good, bad, rich, poor) regarding the contentious nature of our current economic situation. As far as I can tell, with my head buried in books and hands juggling student loan, scholarship and study abroad applications, the so-called crisis is turning out to be whatever we make it.

In the course of the last two weeks, I have been interviewing concerned students and professors and reading through our quintessentially American disparate literature on the subject, only to realize that a metaphor from quantum physics is the best I could come up with to …

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The apex of a hollow point bullet is exactly what the sobriquet indicates; its tip is not solid like the rest of the alloy particles. Rather, the hollow point is the climax of a brief yet formidable structure. Only once one reaches the beginning of the cylinder does the solid metal begin.

Why does this matter?

My name is not really Brock Samson. And for the first time ever, someone I know died in the Iraq war.

What motivates the design behind hollow point bullets is the fact that upon striking the skin - or any surface, for that matter - the hollow …

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Atop a lofty skyscraper, you sit in your office on a break with the window open. The reflection off the glass is a rich shade of green. Crowded railcars navigate their endless tracks like caterpillars. Solar panels gleam in the sun. The tops of buildings are green with plant life. Below, you hear only birds chirping, people chatting, traders swapping goods in farmer’s markets. The chaotic noise of the city and the relentless roar of thousands cars is gone.

This daydream could be a reality of future “eco-cities” that would bring vast change to the most populous of human …

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Sustainability is a widely misunderstood and ambiguous noun, verb, and adjective. The Wikipedia definition of sustainability is “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Everyone can do their part to “meet the needs of the present;” and it can be done in many different ways. One of the simplest ways to reduce your ecological footprint is to re-evaluate your eating habits. Eating in a sustainable manner is easy once you train yourself to think about the bigger picture of food production. Before you choose your food, think about where …

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He stands five feet, five inches tall. He weighs just over 100 pounds. His blonde hair is slowly growing back, covering his once-bald head. Clothes that used to fit him now loosely hang on his frame. His eyes become livelier, less sunken with each passing day. He can’t bench press 300 pounds, but he’s one of the toughest guys in Minnesota. He’s thrown down with Death and knocked it out. He’s beaten cancer before. He’s trying to make cancer tap out again. This is 15-year-old Andrew Kippley. He’s tougher than cancer.

Andrew was first diagnosed with neuroblastoma when he was 2 …

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October 14 marks the unveiling of a new exhibit at Andersen Library that documents the Somali immigrant experience in the Twin Cities. “As I See It: Documentary Images By Students at Ubah Medical Academy” brings together the world-class research of the Immigration History Research Center (IRHC) and the communities that the organization hopes to preserve in its archive collections.
Various Twin Cities organizations, the Ubah Medical Academy and the Immigration History Research Center’s Children’s Literature Research collections coordinated the exhibit, inspired by photos and text by Abdi Roble and Doug Rutledge.

Abdi Roble, himself a member of the Somali Diaspora, initiated the …

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For those who can’t seem to function when the Twins lose and subsequently use their bedroom as a personal jail cell to ponder the reasons for the loss, ESPN’s new virtual “Play-by-Play” may just be the new remedy.

The new visual aid, which has been in the works for a full year, combines virtual athletes—for example, Madden NFL players—with real live anchors to demonstrate scenarios for upcoming games and replay past sequences. The idea is to help audience members understand team-specific strategies
and plays.

What if Tavaris Jackson from the Minnesota Vikings escaped that tackle at the 25-yard line? Virtual “Play-by-Play” …

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As this was being written, the Dow Jones dropped 679 points and plunged below 9,000, making this
the sixth straight day of triple digit loses. At this time last year, it was at an all-time high at 14,164.53, a decline of 39%. What does this mean for Joe Six-Pack? You could ask Sarah Palin and hear a folksy story about how Alaskans just want to drill baby, drill.

Or, you could join the Stock Traders Club here at the U. Formed in 2006, the organization brings resources to students so they can learn how to yell “buy” or “sell” very loudly and …

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Brother Ali made a stop at Coffman’s Whole Music Club last night as part of the Making Music Series, a monthly event where artists come to discuss their craft in front of a live audience. Ali talked at great length about his process of writing and recording music, his connections with Atmosphere and Rhymesayers, his childhood and early influences, his belief in Islam, and his views on the racial politics of hip-hop culture. Host JG Everest (of Lateduster fame) sat down with the man, but wound up not saying too much, as the rapper began to dominate …

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Rennie Sparks, one half of the alt-folk duo The Handsome Family, visited the U yesterday to give a lecture on the tradition of dark and violent imagery in the lyrics of folk songs. While her husband writes the music, Rennie writes the lyrics for The Handsome Family, whose often-times Gothic and bizarre content follow in the footsteps of the folk tradition. She has also adapted these themes into a book of short stories, titled simply Evil.

Sparks highlighted a number of folk songs, such as “Knoxville Girl”, “Barbara Allen”, “Oh My Darlin’ Clementine”, and “Pretty Polly”, …

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First Avenue dominates this week with back to back (to back!) highlighted shows. October seems to be the month for big names at big prices, and I know the economy is basically depression-lite right now, but gas prices are down, hey? Hit your parents up and you might very well be able to afford some of these indie shows in the $14-20 range:

Monday the 13th in the First Avenue Mainroom, Canadian nineteen-piece Broken Social Scene bring their grandiose sound to the stage (touring, sadly, with only eight members - c’mon guys, can’t afford a big enough van?), …

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On Monday, October 13th, there is going to be a clothing swap held in room 202, the Women’s Cultural Center, sponsored by the Women’s Student Activist Collective! From 10 am ’till 3 pm, there will be treats, a knitting tutorial, and tons of free clothes! Bring your unwanted clothing by room 202 any day leading up to the WSAC Clothing Swap. :) Lots of neat fun!