The Wake

Making sense of health care reform over the past two years has not been easy. We spend more on healthcare than any other country and yet our life expectancy lags behind Chile, Cuba and the United Arab Emirates. Health insurers can deny coverage to a patient right when they need it most, in fact, because they need it most. Thankfully the Patient Protection and Affordable Healthcare Act was designed to make the system a little more user friendly. Pre-existing conditions won’t be a problem for anyone after 2014, and subsidized premiums (along with insurance exchanges) will allow millions of Americans to buy into private insurance plans for the first time. These reforms are badly needed and are a big …

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And I beheld the frost upon their skin
Hollow and adherent to none
Aimless
Their porcelain dead decorated the holes in the floor
I know not what I felt
For I know not what I saw
The ice that gleamed in the midday sun
Did not affect my judgment
And this surely a sign of ill-fated footsteps
Walls stripped as bare as its inhabitants
A duet of chanting resounded from the corner
Something remained.
Pained I am that these words have faded
However I fear their importance
And I beheld the raging storms
Multitudes of twisting winds
No matter where I perch or hide
I am found.
Blades of obfuscation
Whipping through my mind
Mundane affairs rendered irrelevant
For not all storms are of this world

ocd is clean hands - but even this is overrated.

the worst thing is missing engagements.

philosophy is you can speak like a madman and no one will lock you up.

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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 something complex, profound and/or meaningful. I don’t like that tone. You think you’re so insightful. There is so such thing as an ‘overshoot phase’ so stop calling it that. It’s called hyperpolarization. And don’t even think about trying to make that word sound special - it’s simply a description of what is happening. Or what we think is happening. Why …

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On February 10, in the dark of the night, someone posted a series of writings by people of color in a stairwell at the U of M Barbara Barker Center for Dance. As spring progressed more images, words and phrases like “Privilege” and “What are you ashamed of?” continued to appear, all accompanied by the word “THIS.”

THIS is an anonymous protest. It is making people angry and making people talk. It addresses institutional racism, a series of non-overt practices that are inherent in our system. It criticizes faculty members who have spent years doing their best to fight racism. It refuses to delineate any specific instance of wrongdoing.

“When the protest first started, many people thought it was a project for my class,” said Ananya Chatterjea, director of …

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Background information: I have a small scar along the right side of my face. It begins somewhere along the lower part of my cheek and extends down to the front right side of my mandible.

After my senior year of high school I headed to South America to visit a former tennis teammate and good friend. I will refer to this friend as Diego. Diego and I had grown very close during his stay in the States. My family had hosted him under a strange set of circumstances that involved his former host family selling their house, moving to another state and refusing to return $50 of Diego’s change from a department store purchase. But I digress. My flight arrives late in the night to Asunción - under more interesting circumstances which involved an underage …

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For those of you who “get it Daily” (read: pick up the competition instead of us) yesterday’s top story on the reorganization of the Graduate School into the Office of Graduate Education was a shock for everyone involved. Yet, the competition failed to expand on the impact this reorganization will have on graduate students themselves. According to a press release by Senior Vice Provost Tom Sullivan, this change is meant to reduce costs, among other things. Yet it was just last week when the Emaciated Gopher, a group of graduate students who want to make a few changes in the U’s thinking, protested student fees. Loyal Wake readers will remember we profiled the Emaciated Gopher last semester, ahead of the current graduate school news. Who knows what’ll happen next, but it’d be nice to see …

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The Blager has been on an extended vacation from blogging, but hopes to bring you more great tidbits on beer and other happenings around the cities in the coming months. For my birthday I headed over to the Summit Brewery. I was expecting to pay a few bucks to get a shoddy and short tour and then drink some delectable local brews. Well the later two were true, but the tour was free. Not only that but you get not one, not two, but three free beers. Because lil’ gal couldn’t drink more than one I ended up downing four beers before noon.

Why free, you ask? Well, the state of Minnesota, unlike its drunken neighbor Wisconsin, does not allow breweries to sell directly to their customers. So a small brewery, like …

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Apparently, the appearance of a wordsmith was like the second coming of Christ. Susie didn’t rave about it on the bus ride over, yet Marnie could see anticipation in the way she sat upright and clinged to the handrail. All this for some guy who told tall tales while scamming people for food and money? He was probably homeless and his words were nothing more than the result of being beaten down for a lifetime. His sanity was cracked, she was sure of it; she was determined to think so. What was Marnie anticipating? A scraggly, rancid, plump old man who didn’t know up from down. She anticipated the hipsters who fancied themselves his disciples.

The bus hit a pothole, didn’t even bother to swerve out of the way. Marnie and Susie were shocked out of …

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Art by Lucy Michelle