There is an uncomfortable reality in the world’s food system that people are either unaware of or ignoring. Environmentalism is continuing to grow as both a fad and a philosophy—but the general public has little to no idea what the term really means. When it comes to sustainable eating, the reigning dictum is that local and organic foods are the solution to sustainability in our diets.

The public has learned to look for the familiar, green “USDA ORGANIC” labels on grocery items. Cooperative grocers also feature bright labels next to food items that came from local farmers or bakeries. Convenient. The Seward Co-op Grocery & Deli even informs its customers of their percentage of local food items purchased on each receipt. Small acts like these breed the mindset that these are solutions for the current food crisis.

It makes sense that a local food, which travels less distance to our stomachs, would be a more sustainable item than bananas shipped from Ecuador. When we look at mass shipping of produce versus a local farmer driving a pickup truck into the city to deliver a small amount of food, the image changes. Food is not as simple as the distance it travels, or even the means by which it is made. USDA Organic is a relatively unregulated territory – as numerous local farmers will tell you it is little more than filling out some paperwork and paying a fee. Many farms are never visited by USDA officials, which leaves the practice of organic farming at the discretion of the farmer.

Guidelines for organic do not always run parallel to sustainability. A farmer who utilizes a more efficient way to produce a crop, such as no-till growing, may need to apply small amounts of chemical fertilizers. For improving the condition of the soil to keep crop yields high, the farmer has sacrificed a position with the “elite” all-natural growers and is penalized by losing the premium paid by all-natural shoppers.

Nearly two years ago the New York Times published an article about food miles, highlighting how local food doesn’t always prove to be the most sustainable option. The article provides an example from a study completed by researchers at Lincoln University in New Zealand. Researchers analyzed the environmental impact of lamb raised and consumed in Britain versus lamb raised in New Zealand and shipped to Britain for consumption. In addition to food distance and transportations calculations, the study measured various aspects of the production of the food itself. The results showed that the lambs raised in New Zealand and shipped to Britain produced 1,520 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per ton while British lamb produced over four times the amount of carbon dioxide.

These results are mostly attributed to the pastures in which the lambs are raised. New Zealand’s pastures are lush with clover while Britain’s pastures fail to meet dietary requirement for its lambs. Britain’s farmers are required to use additional feed to match New Zealand’s pastures, which in turn gives a significant carbon addition to Britain’s lambs.

The researchers at Lincoln University performed their carbon analysis on other food such as dairy and fruit and found similar results. More fertile and favorable climates, for example, may produce a fruit more efficiently, making transportation a relatively insignificant portion of a food’s carbon footprint.

Numerous food studies have since been published, challenging the notions of sustainability in local food systems; however, it should not be taken that eating local is simply an issue of sustainability. Local is equally about freshness: supporting a community and its wholesomeness, though these ideas seem to have become lost in the domain of sustainability. One might attribute this loss to the fact that these things cannot be measured. Perhaps it is also because the public is looking for a simple solution to global climate change and sustainable living – a prescription for our carbon ailment.

“Localvores”—a term given to persons who support the production and consumption of local food—may fall victims of this simple-solution thought process. It is unrealistic to conceive of a world that feeds itself through a local diet. Limits of production and diversity for any given region would mean either famine or unbalanced diets dispersed through the world’s many less-food-productive regions. This is why food must always move—issues in sustainable food production should instead be focused on creating efficient transportation networks that use alternative sources of energy. Through these networks, regions that create a produce efficiently and sustainably can provide to regions that cannot.

Using information like that from the aforementioned study – which seeks to describe the efficiency of food production—we will be able to identify prolific nodes in a hub-and-spoke food system. The stem of the food network would be dynamic, meeting the seasonal needs of various regions and changing distribution ties according to demand by growth and decline.

But this is just one way of conceptualizing a sustainable food system. Perhaps the future will hold vertical farms—skyscrapers capable of producing and distributing food for thousands of people in urban areas. While the prospect of skyscraper farms seems unlikely in the near future, rooftop farms—which also seek to combine production and distribution in a single location—may be good indicators of potential performance of vertical farms.

Healthy and Sustainable Diets

As journalist and author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan, says: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” This advice, now ubiquitous among healthy and conscious consumers, came from Pollan’s research into our food system, which was published early 2007 in The New York Times. He offers the three sentences as a simple solution to eating healthy to those wishing to avoid reading the entire 10,000-word essay. Interestingly, nowhere in Pollan’s article is it mentioned that we should eat local foods to be healthy. While we should commend Pollan and his research, and ease of which his motto rolls off our tongues, the nine rules of thumb he writes at the end of his essay offer slightly more thorough advice.

In summary, Pollan suggests we should eat less—remarking that caloric restriction shows several benefits, including a link in cancer prevention. We should prepare and even grow our own food if possible, enhancing our connection to process of eating itself. Importance is also given to eating less processed foods, less corn syrup and fewer foods with unfamiliar ingredients. Lastly, we should eat diverse diets that contain mostly plants.

Pollan’s advice for consuming fewer plants is mostly based on the fact that cultures that consumed plant-based diets tend to have lower rates of chronic disease. However, a diet consisting of mostly plants also has a crucial role in sustainable eating. Numerous studies support the common sense notion that eating a plant is more sustainable and less energy-intensive than eating meat. Meat-based food systems have consistently shown that they require more energy, land and water than those that are plant-based. The difference is so great, in fact, that the benefits of reducing consumption of meat will create a much larger difference in your carbon dioxide footprint than eating more locally grown foods.

It is unlikely that there is an ideal food system. We must conquer conceptions like “organic” and “local” and avoid thinking of our food in such simple terms. Our population is growing in a world of finite resources. Because there may not be a picturesque food model, the greatest change in our food system will be multifaceted – change in not only where our food comes from, but how it is grown, processed, shipped and, ultimately, consumed.

As students pass through the University of Minnesota, it may be easy to feel insignificant or boxed-in. We have over 50,000 students on the Twin Cities campus—one of the largest student bodies in the country—and countless local functions that may live and die by University-budgeted decisions. It’s easy to feel that the University’s mandate starts at the West Bank and ends on the East, and indeed I have talked to students who have not even been so far as the Saint Paul campus. However, the U of M has its hands in all aspects of Minnesota’s functioning, and this point must be impressed again and again for each incoming generation.

Without stepping on the toes of the U’s promotional material, the unique makeup of Minnesota and the long-standing (yet ever changing) land holdings of the U have facilitated a symbiotic relationship that cannot be understated.  One of the most interesting facilities operated by our humble Land Grant behemoth is the Soudan Mine facility in Minnesota’s Iron Range. The misinformed existential angst concerning CERN’s particle physics work with 2008’s much-publicized Large Hadron Collider may cast dispersions, but that is neither here nor there. The Soudan facility can, in no way, shape or form, be construed as a doomsday operation, as popular folklore has erroneously declared about the latter. Whenever we feel that tuition is untenable or U management is unreceptive, that feeling must be tempered by the good that has come from our student fees.

Established in the early 1980s deep in an old mining shaft in Soudan, Minnesota (47 degrees 48’ 57” N, 92 degrees 14’ 16” W), the Soudan facility has slowly expanded operations over the decades as U of M and the Minnesota DNR have seen fit. Extending nearly half a mile into the bedrock of the Iron Range, the Soudan facility was an ideal choice for the monitoring of elusive subatomic particles. Minnesota is particularly geologically stable, and the site was chosen because a cavern was already extant from defunct taconite mining in the area. The Soudan facility is chiefly and famously known for its ongoing neutrino detection experiments. Neutrinos are very high-energy, fast moving particles that are ubiquitous and normally difficult to filter out from background radiation and more prominent particles. Their persistent energy and ability to penetrate unfathomably deeply into the Earth (or anything else, for that matter) form the reason for the University facility’s existence. Deep underground, neutrinos appear at a much lower rate than at the surface and can thus be isolated and studied in greater depth.

Northern Minnesota may not spring to mind when one imagines nuclear physics research, but the Soudan installation has become deeply entrenched in local culture over its lifespan. There are several large, ongoing experiments conducted at the mine, which are run collaboratively by the U of M, as well as its partners in academia and research all over the country. At any given time, according to brochures, there are a dozen to fifteen guest physicists working at the site, and the deep hollow maintains a steady and busy equilibrium.

The lab has been a great boon to the local economy and brings millions in state funding, which may have been otherwise allocated elsewhere.

Currently, the Soudan facility has two experiments in progress. The old husks of the Soudan 1 and 2 detectors were cleared to make way for the CDMS-II experiment. CDMS stands for Cryogenic Dark Matter Search – an effort begun at Stanford University and moved to Soudan in 2003. In this experiment, incredibly delicate detector plates composed of germanium and silicon lattices are super-cooled to temperatures within fractions of Absolute Zero, and thus are very physically static. The detectors are monitored for disturbances, however minor. The goal is to detect what are known as Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) and ultimately tangential confirmation of the existence of dark matter. Because WIMPs only interact with each other via the weak nuclear force and gravity itself, the absolute pristine conditioning of monitoring devices is critical to the experiment’s success. The CDMS experiments have been central to a global effort in researching dark matter and chipping away at one of the most fundamental problems confronting physics today.

The universe, when representative galaxies are sampled and “audited,” has a large disparity in the amount of matter found in visible sources (stars, planets, nebulae) and the observed gravitational interactions between the galactic bodies. It is theorized that the gap in observed gravity can be accounted by the existence of dark matter, and WIMPs are examples of a fraction of the heavy particles that could uphold existing theories. The experiment has been inconclusive in detecting these particles thus far, but the hardware undergoes constant revision and is by all accounts approaching the threshold at which it should theoretically detect WIM particles. Europe’s much-lauded Large Hadron Collider, before its malfunction, was still forecast to be less sensitive to these particles than the Soudan experiment, thus ensuring its continued relevance looking forward.

The other major prominent experiment underway at Soudan is the MINOS detector. Spurred by successful experiments at a similar facility in Japan, the Super-Kamiokande in Gifu prefecture, the Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search was initiated in the early 2000s. This experiment is a joint collaboration of the U of M, FermiLab National Research Laboratory in Chicagoland, and a host of participating academic institutions. While all previous Soudan experiments had taken place in a single cavern left over from iron mining, the MINOS detector required an entirely new wing, and the size of the facility was greatly expanded. The chamber holding the experiment is large and arrayed with a large, fairly abstract mural adorning one of its walls. One gets a feeling of overwhelming coziness despite the fantastic depth beneath the surface.

After years of preparation and setup, MINOS began operating in 2005. The procedure calls for Batavia, Illinois’s FermiLab to shoot neutrinos through the crust of the Earth directly to Soudan, Minnesota – a tangential distance of 456 miles. Each neutrino detector is a specialized and highly sensitive series of large, octagonal sheets of iron (which comes from our own Mesabi Range, of course!). The detector in Soudan weighs roughly 6,000 tons and dominates the cavern constructed for the experiment. Working in tandem, this experiment has promising aspirations to unlock the nature of neutrinos and their interaction with the “solid” matter they seem to be so adept at dodging. The resultant changes in energy, trajectory, spin, and other factors, however minor, can be monumentally helpful in refining existing models on these elusive particles. This experiment, as well, is unlikely to face obsolescence any time soon, and will remain at the cutting edge of human forays into physics.

Below the Soudan Mine’s humble, rust-hued elevator shaft head lays one of the most critically important and cost-effective initiatives undertaken by the U of M. It has grown organically in space and importance, and is now well poised to participate in breakthroughs critical to our species’ understanding of the cosmos. Its budget has been modest, the return has been enormous and invaluable, and it should highlight a prime example of a net positive enacted by our University and by academia as a whole.

Nestled above the now-defunct Manhattan Loft on Washington Avenue lies the office of the Minneapolis Film Arts (MFA)— an aesthetic milieu of films that seem to filter in and out with the passing of time. Dates on Post-its and colorful writings on whiteboards line the parameters of the cozy yet work-loaded suite, while The String Quartet plays adaptations of the Arcade Fire and Elliott Smith in the background. Even on a Sunday afternoon, coordinators Ryan Oestreich and Rena Hartman are busily occupied: the 27th Annual Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival (MSPIFF) is only a few weeks away. In every way, their lives are film—they watch it in the office, at home, and in places in between. And this “labor of love,” as they like to call it, never ceases.

Kicking off on the evening of April 16, the two-week festival will feature films from 52 different countries, precipitating world culture right into the Twin Cities. It will begin with a meet-and-greet soiree at the Bella Notte restaurant, where the film community will begin celebrating the craft of the films that reflect the eminently universal theme of the festival.

“I think we have a lot more variety this year,” Oestreich says. “I really see it in the films, and in the crew, and with the events. We’re bringing in diversity… with over 150 films. We’ve got a benchmark – I don’t think we’ve ever had [films from] more than 50 countries on one bill.” The countries of origin spawn from obscure, never-before-depicted-on-film nations like Mozambique, Macedonia, Burma and the Principality of Monaco to better-known locales such as Greece, France, China and the United States.

“We want to play a film that has not played in the Cities or even in the state before…a film that really represents a country or a subject matter cinematically and universally… we have to make sure that all the films have a universal theme, and come off so that everyone can understand them. We even shoot for the demographics of the Twin Cities… large populations of East Africans, Southeast Asians, and Scandinavians.”

Al Milgrom, the founding father of the University Film Society, is the official director of MFA and MSPIFF. Now heading a plentiful staff, he tours so-called first tier film festivals throughout the world, picking and choosing the perfect movies to bring back to the Twin Cities’ big screen. “Al goes to Seattle, Toronto, Sundance, Berlin, with his notebook, and basically rips through as many possible films as he can—then pulls out the best at each festival and brings them to Minneapolis… He seeks out producers and directors and sees if they want to be a part of our festival, and has been doing exactly this for the last 25 years,” Oestreich says. The ensuing worldly cinematic interaction is captured in the MSPIFF, whose prime motive is to “show the world.”

The universal theme of the MSPIFF is a “beautiful way to tell about another country,” says Oestreich. “If I can see a little of a country I would never travel to, I feel like I know a little more about it… The International Festival screens these people’s cultures and we want to show that.”

Thematic diversity is the festival’s most prized feat. Historical content revealed in a few Scandinavian films this year, about the Sami people of Northern Fenno-Scandinavia, may even be unfamiliar to the people from that culture. “[There are] a lot of undercurrent themes of climate change and culture,” Hartman says. New avant-garde indie films are also receiving their deserved notice.

“A film called Defamation takes a critical look at Jewish culture in America and how it paints Israel. It might irritate some people, challenge their values, but that is exactly what I want to show. I am not biased to any degree—I want to show a film from Iran as much as a film that criticizes America. I do. There’s no reason it shouldn’t play, and when I have the international spotlight right now, I’m going to shine it,” Oestreich asserts.

“Another examines problems in Peru, showing that there’s no way you can break the barrier in the class system. It’s therapeutic and it opens your mind, but it doesn’t drain you. It tries to help you understand the situation—it’s a big undertaking for anyone.” MFA’s decidedly open-minded stance on project selections sends a clear message that every culture, every type of belief system out there is being appreciated.

The community, however, is as big a part of the festival as the films themselves. Volunteers, projectors and viewers make it visual, real and uplifting. Hartman emphasizes: “[We’ve] connected a local element and tied every single possible community ethnic restaurant and any international aspect to take part in any way that they can in the film festival. For example, we went to a Croatian restaurant, and put up advertisements in Russian magazines. We’ve made a widespread effort to include every culture. Almost everyone has something they would like to promote on a cinematic medium.”

“There’ll be a lot of impromptu after-events,” says Hartman. “We want viewers to stick around after the film, find out what it was about, and talk to some of the directors.” To that end, Minnesota Film Arts has invited over twenty directors, producers, sound techs and cast members, many of them local, to present their films. Audience members will be given ballots to fill out about their favorite films, some of which will be chosen for post-festival screening at the Oak Street Cinema.

“I even put on a film for the frat boys,” Oestreich boasts of the documentary about the Las Vegas World Series of Beer Pong. “We’ve really tried to bridge the gap between international culture and hometown spirits, between generations,” Hartman added. “Stub & Herbs has been kind enough to host a party after the showing at Oak Street and invites everyone to play some beer pong.”

But not all is fun and games in the life of an organizer for a festival such as this; behind the scenes, a logistical whirlwind ensues—overnight FedEx’d film canisters, arrangement of guest star appearances, and managing secrets (such as what films will show for the opening and closing nights of the festival) as well as an army of specialized volunteers. Programmers had to be consulted for segments such as “Minnesota Made” and “Short Docs,” while the 35mm physical reels themselves had to be tracked down and fought over amongst other same-tier festivals going on concomitantly—even local competitors, such as the Beyond Borders Film Festival, have had the potential to co-opt some of MSPIFF’s highly-anticipated premiers.

To their credit, the team at MFA, being total celluloid purists, are proud to announce that more than two-thirds of this year’s lineup will be projected on their medium of choice—quite a feat in an era of almost entirely digitally shot/edited productions—with the rest being shown on Digibeta or HDCam enabled projection.

When asked about the venues, Oestreich assured us that this year’s festival would be run very much like the last: “Block E (Downtown) for the opening and closing galas, Oak Street, and Saint Anthony Main,” which will house the majority of MSPIFF’s shows.

Hartman also heads up volunteer coordination for this project. She tells us that, while a great number of the pre-festival details have already been locked down, volunteers are still being sought-after to help make the festival a huge success. Applications are currently being accepted for ticketing, ushering, events, etc., and anyone interested can send an email to info@mnfilmarts.org.

For two weeks, the crew at MFA will get to enjoy the fruits of their labors at MSPIFF. Those not scheduled to work certain events hope to get to as many showings as they can. Their infectious enthusiasm about each and every film and related event in the program is enough to make one want to drop everything from April 16-30 and become a major MSPIFF junky. Fortunately, festival passes are available in various amounts (5 films, 10 films, etc.) to help feed such an addiction, and to ease the burden on your wallet. Student discounts are also available.

After the festival is over, MFA staffers will be busy writing thank you notes, returning film canisters and cleaning up after an abundance of events. Milgrom will once again start his circuit of first-tier festivals, and Oak Street will resume its regular programming. Local theater owners from across the Metro may even try to incorporate some of the most noteworthy films shown at MSPIFF into their schedules for the upcoming year, as has happened in years past—giving people that “one last chance” to see a film they love on the silver screen. Aside from having a pricey Netflix membership, an opportunity to see this many quality films in such a short amount of time passes by this way only once each year. Go see an MSPIFF-affiliated show, stick around for the after-events, maybe even talk to a producer, director or actor in the motion picture. Play some art-sanctioned beer pong, and help to support the continuation of a very worthy (and educational) cause. Whatever you choose to do, we promise you won’t forget it. See you at the movies.

Since most of mainstream hip-hop’s lyrics tend to center on themes like hoes, cash, and more hoes, it comes as no surprise that the genre is, for the most part, panned by critics and serious music listeners alike. However, in what has become a truly historic year for America, rap artist Lil’ Wayne has succeeded in winning over some of those skeptics. By emphasizing quantity over quality, Wayne has, without a doubt, become the most ubiquitous and prolific figure in the hip-hop universe. Wayne has earned more Grammy nominations than Radiohead and been praised as ‘Rapper of the Year’ by every god damn music magazine in America It’s hard to go about your day without meeting at least one person who isn’t head over heels for the guy. Considering the outlandish nature of award shows like The Grammys and “music magazines” like Rolling Stone, I usually don’t bother paying attention to this kind of media hype. But the fact is that Wayne has managed to sway some of the most pompous and resistant-to-anything-borderline-mainstream music publications in his trek for super stardom (ie: Pitchfork gave The Carter III an 8.7/10.) Could it be that I’d been wrong about this foul-mouthed,
hard-to-understand, New Orleans native after all?

The only thing more trivial than the media’s obsession with Wayne are his die-hard fans, which can be just as cantankerous as your most rabid Phish head. Most people don’t just like Lil’ Wayne, they LOVE him; so much that the fans I spoke with failed to really justify their fixation. “He’s just so sick… his flow is…the best,” or something to that effect.

I needed to know what I should be looking for and managed to run into one listener who so emphatically put it by saying: “Just check out Tha Carter III. Just listen to it…. listen to the lyrics”.
At a party the other night, I couldn’t help but notice someone across the room who’d been singing along to “A Milli” playing in the background. Astonished by the fact that this guy was able to recite the words, I asked him. “Hey so do you have to look up the lyrics or can you actually understand what this guy is saying?” As you can guess, this didn’t go over well. Lesson of the story: Don’t insult a Lil’ Wayne fan…. Unless you’re behind a computer screen.

If Lil’ Wayne is so bold to declare himself ‘The Best Rapper Alive’ he’ll need to offer some lyrical content that is fresh and original and steers away from your standard ‘I’m-hot-you’re-not’ line of attack. Within the first ten minutes, Tha Carter III says everything it needs to. It is self-glorification at the highest caliber and Wayne doesn’t even bother stating his case. He leaves you with little evidence of why he’s a supposed lyrical genius and instead provides a cluster of songs, most of which are ill defined and filled with line after incoherent line of mindless drivel. Not only is the content absurdly narcissistic, but a majority of the lyrics make little sense. It seems as if Wayne is celebrated more for his delivery rather than what he’s actually saying.

In addition to preposterous lyrics are some atrocious vocals. Wayne always sounds as if he’s struggling just to get to the next verse and I found myself thinking— ‘Dude this guy shouldn’t be on a CD, he should be on fucking life support!’

His vague and perplexing self-absorption is best portrayed in the train wreck of a song, “A Milli”. Wayne, over what is one of the most irritating beats I’ve ever heard in my life, boasts about how “If hip-hop is dead, then I’m the embalming fluid.” The sheer irony of this statement is that a lot the things said to be detrimental to the spirit of hip-hop can be attributed to Wayne himself. About twelve years ago, when he got his official start, it was clear that the genre was becoming heavily commercialized and drenched in subject matter more materialistic than ever. Arguably, Wayne’s most famous contribution to rap’s shift in content would be his role in 1999’s “Bling Bling”. A song that is more or less emblematic of the present day rap culture. Did I mention it was released on Cash Money Records? How can one fail to see the blatant hypocrisy? He spends half a decade jabbering on about the ice on his chains and 26 inch chrome rims and then all of a sudden he’s the self-proclaimed savior of hip-hop just because (Jay-Z retired) he said so?

It’s not that Lil’ Wayne can’t rap. He can definitely rap. It’s that what he does isn’t songwriting or lyrical in any sense of the word. Wayne dishes out whatever comes to him and it ends up being a miss more often than a hit. But still none of that explained the relentless fawning. Then it hit me. It was all about persona. And after putting it in that context, it’s no longer surprising to me. Most of society just seems to be drawn to these big personalities rather than actual musicians. I mean just look at Amy Winehouse.

Thanks to the wonders of marketing and the self-generated buzz created by countless mixtapes, Wayne has managed to propel himself to the top of the food chain without being, well, a complete dick about it. Whether you like him or not, the grip Wayne has on the rap game has no parallel in mainstream music has in the last ten years. Nonetheless, it is certainly still a sad day to see the same genre that housed lyrical legends like Chuck D and KRS-One, reduced to something that wouldn’t have had a chance at succeeding if Tupac or Biggie were still around.

Thank god for underground hip-hop.

When you went to the ballot box on November 4, you were probably primarily concerned with electing a new president. However, another interesting and far more local issue was also on the ballot: the Minnesota Clean Water, Land, and Legacy Amendment. This measure, passed with 55 percent approval, raised Minnesota’s sales tax by three eighths of a percent in order to provide more funding to preserve the state’s cultural and environmental heritage. 14.25 percent of this money will be directed toward the Minnesota State Park and Trail system, according to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. The passage of this amendment shows Minnesota’s special relationship with their parks and forests.

Minnesota’s extensive State Park system has always been one of the nation’s best. If you’ve never been to a Minnesota State Park, or you’ve only been to one or two, you’re in for a treat. According to the DNR, there are 66 parks in the system, totaling about 267,000 acres (about 97.8 times the size of the University of Minnesota campus). With that amount of recreational space, there’s something for everyone. Here are a few of what I believe to be the best parks, including a few less than a four-hour drive from the cities.

My first camping trip at a state park was before I could talk, and each successive trip, be it with family, friends, or alone, offers a new and special experience for me. I’ve been to probably about half of Minnesota’s parks, and many more than once. Here are some of the standouts:

Jay Cooke
My absolute all-time favorite State Park is Jay Cooke. Cooke is located about 2 1/2 hours from the city just off of Lake Superior south of Duluth. The St. Louis River crashes through the park with rapids and giant rock canyons that make for great climbing and exploring. You really feel like a trailblazer. Known as an excellent park for hiking, Jay Cooke has a normal car-campground and several hike-in sites for those who want to be a little more secluded. There are also bike and horse trails. This is also one of the best places in the state to see amazing fall colors. Make sure to check the weather before your trip, though: the park’s soil is primarily clay. Rain, I discovered last fall, turns the park into a muddy, slippery mess.

Afton
Afton State Park is quite a bit closer, located less than 45 minutes east on the St. Croix River. Perfect for day hikes or quick camping trips on a weekend, Afton provides scenic trails and backpack camping on a bluff overlooking the river. If you can tolerate the number of suburbanites who come here to jog and walk their dogs, you’ll be in for a great day of camping, biking, or hiking a stone’s throw from Minneapolis.

Itasca
If you’re looking to get away from the Twin Cities in earnest, you might want to visit Itasca, Minnesota’s largest and oldest State Park. After about a four-hour drive, you will arrive at a park that boasts 32,690 acres of wilderness and is crisscrossed with tons of hiking trails. Biking is not so good here, but there are 11 really, really amazing secluded hike-in campsites that will make you forget your homework in an instant. This park contains the source of the Mississippi River, at Lake Itasca. It’s small enough to jump across.

Whitewater
If you’d rather canoe to your site than walk or drive, but don’t want to go to the Boundary Waters, then Glendalough State Park is for you. Situated around Lake Glendalough, the park offers great bass fishing (I caught a huge one here) and a canoe or bike-in campground. Glendalough also has a nice variation of terrain, from broadleaf forests to lakes to canoeable creeks to prairies. This is another one of my all-time favorite parks, and is definitely worth checking out.

As you can see, there are tons of recreation opportunities available at Minnesota state parks. Every time you buy something, you’re supporting this valuable resource, so it makes no sense not to take full advantage of it. A weekend of State Park camping typically costs less than $40 plus gas, so it’s dirt cheap. Reservations for the best weekends in the summer go quickly, so if you’re looking to plan a state park outing this summer, reserve a site quickly.

Reservations can be made at www.dnr.state.mn.us/state_parks/index.html

The renewed mandate for sustainable energy in America has forced policymakers to consider an unusual problem. The moratorium on new nuclear power plants in America has been in effect for over thirty years now, and the industry has a strange generational breakdown to show for it. In short, there are concerns that the current nuclear power workforce will not be able to readily assume the challenges of designing and constructing new plants. This process remains an arduous and lengthy one even with the lessons of older reactors under our belts. The concept of a generational absence may seem preposterous, but consider that, in 1979—the year of Three Mile Island and the impetus for the moratorium—most of the engineers and architects of today would have ranked relatively lowly in their profession. An engineer aged sixty and near retirement today may have been a thirty year old journeyperson at the time of the federal policy change, and far from the top echelons of reactor planning and design.

This disparity seems to echo a trend in several other highly specialized industries in decades past. The achievements of an older generation are taken for granted and those now living are standing on the shoulders of giants. For example, other pieces of American infrastructure date back to the enormous make-work programs of the 1930s, and our society has rested on its laurels and accomplishments ever since. The new direction of federal policy seems to ask us to challenge those axioms and glimpse our dependence objectively.

It becomes difficult to blame the American policymakers of yesteryear for discouraging nuclear power in the last 30 years. The industry claims a nearly threefold increase in output over that span, and since Three Mile Island there has never been another near-meltdown. The reluctance in
providing incentives for new plants may be owed to America’s extraordinary energy position. By all accounts, this country is sitting on hundreds of years worth of coal, and its cheap abundance has led to a great dependence.

The existence of nuclear power plants raise interesting issues of longevity that don’t cross into our lives very often. The process of setting up new plants has historically been slow and meticulously complicated, and it could be as much of a decade’s span between groundbreaking and commercial power generation. Once every reactor has run its course, there is an equally arduous process of decommissioning a plant. Many components of nuclear plants are not safe outside of their power generating use, and are disposed of with simple burial. The long-standing opposition to nuclear power has been primarily concerned with the disposal of waste material —and to wit, the federal government’s “hey man, just bury it” attitude hasn’t won any converts from that camp.

It was especially interesting to observe how traditional political boundaries blurred in the 2008 election cycle. The driving force behind the movement to stop nuclear power has been the realization that the contaminants produced will outlive all of us buried in Yucca Mountain in Nevada. This environmental wing was joined in opposition by those who worried about the efficacy of terrorist attacks on nuclear sites, forming an unholy alliance which rocked the vapid fabric of insipid, artificial party boundaries. The movement in favor of nuclear power was fairly non-existent until American dependence on fossil fuels found its way into the language of the pundits and policymakers. Nuclear power has been receiving a public image boost in recent years as government has reassessed its safety and ecological riskiness. Public perception was lost somewhere between the two interests, but the bottom line is clear: America will build more plants.

The aging nuclear workforce has been a noted phenomenon for some time, now. In a position statement in June 2006, the American Nuclear Society listed the industry’s aging workforce among its chief concerns, and they were not alone. The IAEA, the international nuclear watchdog best popularly known for its American-prompted finger-wagging at Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, has written extensively on the extraordinary aging concerns with the American workforce. In 2004, the ANS reported an average age of 48.8, and claimed that as much as 28 percent of the industry was eligible for retirement within five years. The problem reached such a noticeable degree, in fact, that it surfaced in an episode of The Simpsons in 1998. In it, Homer and other middle-aged co-workers record a poorly-scripted and -acted video recruiting fresh blood to the industry. The problem and industry solution, were not far from this satire. The nation’s post-secondary institutions have been adding and bolstering nuclear engineering programs in recent years in preparation for future demand. That said, it still may not be quick enough to placate the public’s desire for a nebulous notion of “sustainable” energy.

Even with a roughly static number of plants over the past thirty years, productivity and safety have greatly improved as the industry has refined itself. The nuclear workforce, as it exists today, is composed primarily of older Baby Boomers nearing retirement and a rapidly burgeoning crop of twenty-somethings and recent graduates who will re-staff the industry and constitute the next generation. A longstanding campaign against nuclear power has created unnecessarily negative connotations within public perception, and this was compounded by a widespread series of downsizings in the 1990s in the interests of productivity. The anti-nuclear campaign, interestingly enough, draws much of its power from the fallout (pun intended). The former was a 1979 movie which depicted a nuclear plant’s malfunction and meltdown, and the latter was the closest an American reactor has come to a real meltdown. Public perception has been further colored over the years with the slow revelation of details about the Chernobyl nuclear power plant’s complete meltdown in 1986. Popular concern isn’t without cause, however: the Chernobyl incident was only settled when an event with such broad implications that the offending reactor was hastily buried in a thick layer of concrete, and the nearby city of Pripyat, Ukraine was evacuated and abandoned. These are the incidents which define public opinion on nuclear power, and the industry’s saving grace in America may have been the environmental movement, ironically.

Overall, the industry has operated in the shadow of public perceptions for years. Although the oft-mentioned moratorium on nuclear power plant plans came in the late 1970s, the newest American reactor came online in 1996. The power grid has been growing at a pace independent of the reactions of a public which may or may not realistically care about the source of its power. It is only with the galvanizing force of scarcity that the issue has returned to prominence in public debate. By this reckoning, the stigma of nuclear power has only served to empty out the industry of graduate interest, and cause a knowledge retention problem that is rather unique. No lasting “damage” (if one terms it as such) has been done, however – Toshiba announced in late February that it will be constructing state of the art reactors at an existing site in southern Texas. The nonchalant, necessary influx of nuclear design expertise from other nations is, if anything, evidence of a more realistic global view of enterprise, and not a fatal blow to America’s “homegrown” prowess. How the debate will shift further in the coming decades is anyone’s guess. The disparity between pop culture campaigns and federal policy, however, should be noted in questioning the efficacy of public reaction initiatives on our day-to-day lives.

Wal-mart. I hear the word and my mind reels with the force of a thousand objections shooting to the surface. When it comes to Sam Walton’s infamous big-box nightmare, my brain is stockpiled with sensory and numerical data detailing exactly why we should be dismantling those big blue buildings brick by brick. This is no doubt facilitated by my ability to actually walk into a Wal-Mart, wrinkle my nose and walk right back out and go somewhere else.

When it comes to a company like Google, though, you can’t really do any of those things. There is no Google storefront, no obviously offensive elements and—realistically speaking—little to no competition. As technology and tech culture progress, more and more companies like Google—companies that are completely intangible to the human mind; companies with no physical identity—are going to become huge corporations that will be in need of policing and monitoring. The problem is that we barely seem to notice. No one really thinks about exactly how much money, energy and political clout it takes to build something like the Google empire; a business structure based upon a product so ubiquitous that it’s name is used more often as a verb than a noun. Hell, no one even thinks of it as a business, let alone an empire. When you pull back the layers of tasteful design and cheery philanthropies, though, Google is indeed a corporation and the way it does business is problematic.

First—and maybe foremost, depending on your temperament—is their disrespect for privacy. It’s been known for quite a while now that Google uses cookies to track users’ search histories, but the implications have rarely been pondered. Under U.S. law, such data could be subpoenaed by the U.S. government, with Google servers acting as a centralized database of every search ever undertaken by users worldwide. It becomes even more worrisome when you consider that Google programs are constantly combing your e-mail messages, looking for keywords to create more relevant advertising. Now I’m not trying to sound like a conspiracy theorist here, but it is a fact that all of this information is available to the U.S. government. To facilitate this kind of data storage and also claim to not be breaching users’ privacy is simply dishonest.

The worst invasions of privacy, though, have come with Google’s forays into the physical world. The much-discussed Google Earth has been labeled everything from life-changing to terrorist-aiding, but there’s no denying how creepy the premise is: a compendium of street-level photos of areas around the world. When you combine it with Latitude, the new tool that uses GPS to track an individual’s exact location, it gets really creepy. These tools may seem cool for a second, but what kind of actual function do they serve? These applications completely rob us of our privacy and for what purpose? Unless you’re a stalker, I can’t imagine what you would do with them besides waste time.

Of course, all of this technology requires upkeep. One of the biggest criticisms of Google has been their rampant consumption of energy. According to an article in Harper’s Magazine, the Google compound will require enough energy to power 82,000 homes by 2011. With energy needs like that, it’s no surprise that Google utilizes government power subsidies and foreign aid via tapping into Lithuania’s power grid—which, by the way, is 78% nuclear. Google has made a lot of noise about investing in sustainable energy, but it’s been mostly that: noise. Investing some money in vaguely-defined “sustainable energy” has been a winning strategy used by oil companies for a couple of decades now. Basically, you pledge enough money to fix your image but not enough to actually change anything. Despite these “efforts,” we’re still using oil, just like Google will still be using cheap energy for years to come.

And it’s not like they’re spreading the goodwill when it comes to intellectual property. Despite fighting their own copyright and IP battles with Microsoft (over the Chrome browser) and assorted agencies, (over the Google Books project) they’ve still found time to go after various developers and websites for “co-opting” their image. These individuals are often actually trying to increase the functionality of search applications by developing add-ons. An illustrative example is Chris Langsdale’s Deskbar add-on, whose logo was targeted by Google lawyers despite the fact that, under U.S. law, they have no claim to the font or color used in Google’s logo. Still, as they told, Langsdale, “we [Google] do not allow uses of our logo font and color scheme, even if it is being used in connection with words that aren’t Google trademarks.” Uh huh. Run that by me again?

The sort of territorial pissing that characterizes Langsdale’s case is indicative of the way that Google has managed their brand worldwide. In 2007, Google partnered with Dell to bundle their application with all Dell computers as well as develop a Dell-Sponsored search page. That search page is patently ridiculous, devoting the vast majority of space to ad space and pushing user content off of the page. This page is also tied to the Google toolbar application that comes bundled with a piece of spyware that gives users the run-around if they try to uninstall it. If you do manage to get rid of it, you’ll be forced to deal with another piece of spyware that intercepts browser queries and generates error messages. It’s one thing to feel like you have no choice but to use Google, but it’s another thing to actually be cyber-bullied into using it by a malicious computer.

Their tryst with Dell is not the only example of Google abusing its clout. There are so many examples of Google managing ad accounts and search results with an eye for profit and bizarre biases that it’s hard to pick a favorite. Maybe it’s the way that Google deletes ad accounts based on its vague and tyrannical terms, allowing certain companies to keep them while deleting others for insulting scientology. Maybe it’s the way they axed the search-within-search at the request of companies who feared losing ad revenue. Or maybe it’s simply that search results are bought and sold by major corporations, making their ad accounts nearly redundant.

The thing that scares me—and the reason I’m writing this article—is that most people don’t even begin to think about Google as a corporation that is capable of such infractions. The common wisdom is that Google is that bunch of nice boys with the motto of “Do no Evil.” The truth is that the internet has created a completely new market wherein we are consuming without spending money. The human mind’s natural propensity to view consumption and support as money exchanged for tangible goods has allowed corporations like Google to flourish without criticism. What kind of future can we look forward to when most corporations are like Google and, thus, outside of the public’s view?

Truth be told, I have no idea. Google is so ubiquitous that I have no idea how to criticize, lash out, boycott or really do anything against it. I mean, shit, I used Google to find most of the facts in this article. When second rate student journalists use your service to write articles slagging you off, I think you’ve won.

The bottom line is that we need to change the way that we conceptualize corporations. Unless we want to live in a world dominated by ruthless monopolies, we need to become smart consumers of data and technology as well as tangible goods and services, even if this writer doesn’t really have a clear idea of how to do that. All I know is that I saw Terminator 2 and Google looks a little too much like Skynet for comfort right now.

Minneapolis is known for its skyline. It’s the silver city, the minne-apple. Minnesota’s outsized number of major corporations have built, demolished and rebuilt the city five times over. Historic preservation has long been overlooked.

Even though Minneapolis’ Heritage Preservation Commission was formed in 1972, many “lesser” buildings have since seen the wrecking ball. Block upon block of downtown Minneapolis lies empty, full of cars by day and empty by the night. The North Loop and St. Anthony Falls feature the only large swaths of old Minneapolis.

The Essay (Note: Click on photo for info)

The North Loop Warehouse historic district is at the epicenter of historic Minneapolis, yet a large part of the district is only on the National Register of Historic Places. The city is now in the process of adding the area that stretches from a half-block east of Washington to as far west as north 5th street and from 2nd avenue in the south to 10th avenue in the north. This will add additional barriers to unnecessary demolition.

This important move will preserve an important piece of our city’s history. But this must not be the end. We must continue to preserve important buildings, no matter how old or new. This photo essay explores the North Loop and other downtown building now under protection thanks in large part to the Heritage Preservation Commission.

On first glance it seems a little pretentious. A title like “Life” has a lot of implications, and to form any sort of art around a topic as large as life itself sounds a bit silly. But Frans Lanting probably gave his work this title for a couple of reasons. First of all, as the world’s foremost nature photographer (as claimed by some), Lanting has spent the better part of his life immersed in some of the wildest places in the world, searching for the best representations of this planet’s amazing ecosystems. Secondly, his newest collection, “Life,” is the culmination of this entire life’s work. Recognizing this, Lanting seems to have accomplished what he set out to do: document life in its entirety, past to present, left to right, plain and exotic, the whole gambit. After one sees his images, all ideas of pretentiousness or ridiculousness are cast away and what is left is a collection of images that defy our very sense of the world.

“Life is like a skin on the planet,” a monotonous voice states from a television screen in the center of the exhibit. Lanting describes his work as an attempt to picture life photo courtesy bell museum on planet earth, from its humble ocean beginnings to its complex and varied existence today. He suggests that the unifying force between all life on this planet is time. He does not believe that there are any separations in nature or on the earth for that matter. Lanting wanted to create a symbiosis of art and science, and to do so he used the art of photography. The result of such a combination is extraordinary. To Lanting, life is as important a force as the very processes that cause our planet to rotate, or for the continents to move. Life is the most important, dynamic and essential force on the planet.

The final form of this artistic work is the accompaniment of Lanting’s amazing photos with a musical score written and played by none other than Philip Glass. As you walk through the exhibit and look at all of the photographs, the ephemeral and cellular music Glass composed gives a voice to the images, making them both mysterious and wonderful. The Bell Museum has also used concrete examples of fossils and skeletons to go along with Lanting’s desire to express life on earth over time. From a plaster copy of the famous Berlin Museum’s Archaeopteryx (the famous fossil that links the evolution of reptiles into birds) to tortoise shells, the culmination of the art, the music, and the science behind it all brings the history of life on this planet to um, life.

Franz Lanting’s “Life” is on display at the Bell Museum of Natural History, here on the University of Minnesota Twin Cities until April 12, which gives you plenty of time to see it. On March 21 Franz Lanting himself will be appearing at the Bell Museum for a day-long workshop about nature photography and how he envisions his art. Tickets for this are $69.

It may have been inconceivable in decades past that the end of Pax Americana would come so soon. Oh, there were movies, of course. Little tongue-in-cheek nods to what we smuggly, privately “knew”: that our age was different. The world had reached a new epoch of development. This time around we would stave off the pitfalls that have dampened economic “progress” in the past. The new, everexpanding network of producers and consumers would expand, without bound, providing jobs to all of the disenfranchised third world and bringing developed nations more wealth than had ever been accrued before. Faux-pastoral suburban sprawl dominated the landscape and quickly became the default environment for Americans. Credit was abundant, terms were good and everyone was happy.

As the media has noted extensively, this was not the case. The plan backfired for its shortsightedness. The long trend of false pastoralism in the suburbs has been met with a snapback effect, which threatens to further bury the Rust Belt and decimate the American Southwest. Detroit, for example, has been on a downward trend for 50 years. Large portions of city blocks have been turned over to the prairies they came from.

In the Southwest, sprawl and cheap credit have been the law of the land. Las Vegas and Phoenix, two prime examples of sprawl with no urban center, are also critically dependent on an allocation of resources. Lake Meade–the man-made reservoir that is the lifeblood of Greater Las Vegas– is at roughly 30 percent of its total capacity. Catching a glimpse of a single desert-bound, irrigated golf course is enough to know why. The western states draw their water predominantly from the Colorado River; the headwaters of which fall under the jurisdiction of the eponymous state. Water is becoming an issue with substantial political hay in the West, as the Coloradoans feel threatened by ever-expanding allocations of their water from those downstream. Some speculate that Arizona’s John McCain may have lost Colorado solely due to the perception that he would forcefully renegotiate the Water Compact if elected president.

Many of the long-standing initiatives of the environmental movement have become mainstream. Americans realize that we are on the downward slope of an epoch that will be physically impossible in the future. There seems to be great confusion and denial about the severity of our outlook. If I would allow myself to speak some meta-truth for a moment, it seems that for every job lost, there are about ten worthless Op-Ed pieces reporting through the looking glass. All the snarky, post-modern analysis of the status quo, however, won’t change the physical reality that we have been depleting our resources at an alarming rate. The people know the truth: that under the veneer of material progress there’s a tissue-thin barrier between humans and catastrophic change. That’s an objective truth that is larger than any credit default swap or federal policy. It seems now that Americans are suffering from a massive onset of ALH – Acute Lovecraftian Hysteria. Like a character in any number of that author’s horror stories, the revelation of a lurking, unknowable truth with universal application precipitates the onset of a catatonic withdrawal from reality. America has met its Lurking Horror. For some reason, out of all of the painful truths in the world, the fact that we can’t keep our ornate manmade oasis is coming crashing down whether we like it or not.

There is a bright side, of course, in the realization that the end of traditional home ownership will ultimately lead to a much more mobile, well-adept workforce. It’s impossible for one to quantify the human damage which could have been avoided if residents were forced to move away from Michigan, Indiana or any other number of Rust Belt states that have been in a small-scale successive recessions for decades. A measured dose of mobility within the country crossed with a destruction of ideal homeownership would likely be good for Americans in the long run. It would ensure, among other things, that people not be held down by 30-year mortgages in regions that are already being turned over to desert. The idea of a nation of perpetual renters may seem like a recipe for solidification of our everexpanding class gap, but if renting is perpetual serfdom, I honestly can’t see a difference from modern notions of “idyllic” American living arrangements. Americans today are far less mobile between states than in previous generations. Whether this is tied to an apparent resurgence of regional identification is unknown. Maybe Lovecraft hit us with the unknowable truth, “Wisconsin sucks” as well.

In our postmodern society, it will be particularly interesting to see how the media covers the idea of widespread homelessness and poverty. Whether the “economic crisis” has been exacerbated or introduced by the media is a topic for a billion other self-righteous college opinion columns. However, there should be serious concerns about whether the current generations can even process the idea of real scarcity. In addition, media coverage will likely reach a new equilibrium in substituting bread and circuses for substantive discourse. After all, there are only so many dodgy euphemisms and simplistic graphic work one can endure before the reality of resource destitution comes crashing down.

We live in a closed system. Las Vegas, Phoenix and the Sun Belt may go down in history as reminders of the delicate and finite nature of our closed system on Earth. It may be possible to provide a comfortable way of life for the billions that will inherit the planet, but lifestyles will appear very dissimilar to those of the Western Hemisphere today. The abundance of cheap land translated into cheap resources, cheap credit, and so on until the system became so taxed that it went beyond its natural buffering capacity. American suburbs and improbable cities will exist as an analogue to Percy Shelley’s fictional statue of Ramses II, proclaiming
unequivocal greatness while overlooking desolation. Whether current trends fall within the realm of long-dead romantic poetry is irrelevant. What matters is that we are sitting in the middle of a transitional period that would have sounded laughable just ten years ago. Whether Fox News hems and haws about it, or distracts its viewers, the truth is spelled out in every overwrought business park and chintzy, consumer packaging you’ve ever seen. Fortunately, humans have shown a marked talent for creating one-way systems of rapid resource change. We will certainly be tested to see if we can rein it in to something rational. Whether we approve or not, it’s going to happen; we may as well get in on the ground floor.