The Wake - Fortnightly Magazine

Eric Brew

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Google Voice: A Review (of Transcription Services)

Voice mail transcription services have been around for a few years now but like most things it only gets big when Google does it.

Google Voice does more than just voice mail transcription; it will give you one number to ring all or a select number of your phones, free SMS and can record and store your calls online. It all sounds terribly convenient and there may be many users of Google Voice who utilize …

Music Education Build Destruction Approved

The Music Education Building at the University was constructed in 1888 and is recognized today as part of the Old Campus Historical District.

Being the second building ever constructed on campus, the building comes with many forms of what the city now determines to be code deficiencies.

The building was first used as a center for the Student Christian Association before hosting …

A Call for a 24/7 Library

Photo by John Hooper

Starting in a few weeks University of Minnesota Libraries will open Wilson Library for 24-hour service.

Not really. But that’d be nice wouldn’t it?

Any university with over 50,000 students and claiming to be research-oriented shouldn’t leave their students with limited access to the libraries we pay for. Out of this number of students, surely …

Hopeless

Photos: Construction of the Science Classroom Building

Discourse & Music: Why words never match sound

For the purpose of discussing music, we almost prefer an average musical experience to a great one because of what happens when something is so great: there’s nothing to be said. If we heard some average music, we might have criticized which of its flaws stuck with us the most. We may each have different flaws to note or perhaps one of us would have found it unremarkable enough to nod ‘yes’ through the others’ …

Two Reviews of The Machinist

Eric Brew

It may simply be my aversion to any discussion of morality that marks my distaste for The Machinist. It could also be the high hopes I had for its’ seemingly intricate and inquisitive plotline. Even until the end, despite the better part of my ego telling me precisely what the protagonist’s reality was, I refused to accept the obviousness of the resolution. I was set on …

Concert II

MSP Galleries

franklin art works4BWThe last thing crossing most consumers’ minds in a recession is: It would be awfully nice to fill some wall space with a nice piece of locally-produced art. Hmm…

But why is this? Galleries won’t stay afloat on their own – most continue their humble existence on donations and sales of the artwork they feature. Between Minneapolis’s free museums and innumerable art …

Althusser On Crack, Not Ideology

In his revisions of the expression ‘ideology’ and his proposal for a theory of ideology ‘in general,’ Althusser makes two assertions. First he says ideology is a representation of “the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.”

Imagine an old flatbed projector that is capable of producing a complete image of an essentially incoherent reality – the “real conditions of existence.” This complete experience could then be projected onto a wall (the wall …

sobjectivity

Objectivity brings on the conditional.

Can You Write 50,000 Words in 30 Days?

CITIES_novelwriting_angelafriskHow would you like to be a novelist by December? No, we didn’t say a good novelist – just a novelist.

Over the last 10 years, National Novel Writing Month has inspired thousands write their own book. Bound by 30 days and a goal of 50,000 words, these writers have overcome the madness that writing typically creates. The University of Minnesota’s own NaNoWriMo group is actively …

Bears Enter Over The Waves

She kept herself at a distance from the edge of the cliff. Her feeling when she approached it was careful and simple: I fear falling, so I tremble. Yet she did not fear death. It was the fear of surviving a fall that scared her more. Here she was, early thirties – already? Yes. Thirty-one, that’s early thirties. That aura of inevitability had not yet completely faded but she never thought her lack of fear …

The Serious Men: Joel & Ethan Coen

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 curse —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 …

Shit We Got in the Mail

cds
The Van Gobots – Guantanamo Beach Party
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 …

At the Café

To the Barista Android:

Why is your default setting to put my coffee in a paper cup with a plastic lid instead of a ceramic mug? Who programmed you incorrectly? It’s Sunday today – do I look like I need my coffee to go? I notice everyone else has paper cups. I see you have plenty of clean coffee mugs. What is your malfunction?

To the girls sitting within earshot:

Stop talking about the sodium-potassium pump like it’s …