The Wake

Have you ever gotten the feeling that your young American life, with all of your hopeless problems and confusing issues, merits more significance than your international counterpart’s frivolous existence? Maybe it stems from your folk’s overly gratifying parenting style, calling you princess and mistaking mediocrity for excellence. Or perhaps it’s our consumer culture. You have more useless stuff than everyone else, so surely your life must be more important. Whatever the reason for your ethnocentric worldview, you are undoubtedly right. As unworthy as it may be, what our American generation thinks, believes and ultimately does with our lives will have a far greater impact on the world than any other group of people. America is currently basking in the glow of the post-Cold War power shift to the West. …

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I have a confession. Actually, I have several: I purchase compact discs at Best Buy. And Amazon.com. I make regular shopping trips to Target. I like General Mills’ cereal, find 3M’s post-it notes invaluable and my whole apartment is furnished by IKEA.I even spend nearly as much time working for one of the aforementioned corporations as I do the in the classroom or studying.“So sad,” you’re all thinking. “We have on our hands a classic corporate sell out!” And the ominous chant begins (everybody now, in unison!): “Anti-corp-o-rate, Anti-corp-o-rate, Anti-corp-o-rate!”I can relate, maaaaan. A little under two years ago, I would have joined the chant. “Corporate” was synonymous with “evil” by my book. But my existence in limbo between the corporate world and the anti-establishment realm has changed that outlook a bit.Thus, …

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Luckily, we live in a country that gives us controversial books like “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck, “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger and “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou, all of which faced the threat of banning. It also gives us the right to burn an American flag.Or does it? Enter the controversy over flag burning.In the latest attempt to spurn the U.S. Supreme Court, a certain Rep. Jerry Dempsey (R), introduced a resolution to say that Minnesota Legislature really, really doesn’t like it when people burn American flags.Dempsey has taken it upon himself to make us journey back to the days prior to a 1989 U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Texas v. Johnson, which made prosecuting someone for burning the American flag a …

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After several years of dismissing and scorning bloggers, the media can no longer deny their influence. They are the bastard children of the media profession, walking the line between heroes and pests. Bloggers have had their moments of journalistic greatness only to slip back into their role as pajama gossipers. Mainstream media has been able to reap the benefits of good blogging while deriding the medium as a joke, but that cannot last forever. Either bloggers need to be given the credit that is due or they need to be ignored by the media, and no longer influence print publications, Web sites and broadcasts. Judging from the way things are going, bloggers will soon be just another outlet of the journalism world; in some ways they already are.Bloggers in the MediaBloggers have gained acceptance in …

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In the next 10 years, the University of Minnesota aims to become one of the world’s top three research universities, according to the “Strategic Positioning Report” prepared by Provost E. Thomas Sullivan and a group of faculty and staff.The group who prepared the strategic plan was composed of an academically diverse group of faculty and some distinguished staff members, but no students.The two task forces working on refining the plan and putting it into action are also full of faculty and staff, but again, no students.Students received monthly emails, since October, updating us on the strategic planning process, and inviting our suggestions. Five town hall forums discussed the plan and hoped to get input from the students and university community. Unfortunately, only about 300 people out of the university’s 60,000 students, faculty and staff members …

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Thursday February 10, 2005 marks a sad day for many University of Minnesota Gopher hockey fans. It wasn’t the fact that our beloved men’s hockey team was in the middle of a slump. Oh no, it takes a lot more than that to get us down. It was worse … PrideOnIce.com, the premier men’s Gopher hockey Web site was down – out with a career-ending injury.As a freshman I originally went to PrideOnIce so that I could learn the cheers that everyone did at the games. It was only after I ventured into the message board that I realized POI was the real deal. The message board was an online gathering place for hundreds of hardcore Gopher hockey fans. People were discussing everything from where to tailgate to potential new recruits. Every week “WPoS” (a …

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Have you ever been unhappy? Have you ever felt depressed? Have you ever thought about talking to a doctor about it? Chances are you answered yes to the first two questions. The third question, however, is something many people from our generation ponder. When did it become normal to take a pill for mental health? Do these pills actually help your mental health? Are we too quick to take the easy road by popping a pill as opposed to taking a look at the relationships in our lives, or lack there of? From 1998 to 2002, sales of antidepressants increased by 73 percent to more than $12 million. A definite myth exists in our culture: sadness and depression are not normal feelings and, are in fact, a chemical imbalance in your brain and …

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My life has always been sheltered. I grew up in a safe neighborhood, went to a good school and always hung out with “good” people. Even after starting college, I never really left the bubble of suburbia. Of course there are those isolated instances where my personal safety has been compromised, but generally my life has been one big safety pin. As a result, when those few moments of unadulterated exposure occur, I relish every second. This isn’t to say that I seek them out, they just happen.Earlier this year I was watching “Showgirls” with my roommate Tyler. After realizing I wasn’t the only one in the room with a raging hard-on, I looked for an excuse to make my way to the gas station. When I pulled up, I saw the silhouette of a …

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Israel’s right to ExistBy Dennis RoyzenfeldIsrael since its conception has been engaged in vicious struggle against its enemies on all fronts. To this day, the wars have never really ended. Once the military option became impossible for the Arabs states to destroy Israel, they switched tactics. Terrorism, propaganda and Palestinian refugees are being used as pawns to apply pressure on Israel.Don’t get me wrong Palestinian suffering is real, but to lay the blame entirely on Israel is misguided. In 1948, when Israel was formed, some 800,000 thousand people became refugees. They were forced to leave the lands where they had lived for centuries. I’m not talking about Palestinians. I’m talking about the Jews that were expelled from places like Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Egypt. Israel managed to resettle these people, while the Arab …

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“Beat it Valentine’s,” says one holiday to the other. “This month ain’t big enough for the both of us!”“You go Mardi Gras,” I cheer her on. “Out with the day of Hallmark quips and in with the beads Bourbon Street is made of!”Hmmm. I suspect now that you can see through my beard of commercialism antipathy, particularly among those who are, oh how shall we say, “shacked up,” “taken,” or otherwise “previously engaged.”Oh, you know who you are. You whose Friday nights no longer include mind-numbing amounts of alcohol but instead a simple stop at the friendly neighborhood Blockbuster. Yes, you who reach across three people standing on a crowded campus-connector bus, just to hold hands. Yes, all of your sneaking suspicions are correct. I am currently writing from the boondocks of bachelorhood, the forests …

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VH1 makes me want to die. The other day I came home from a particularly stressful day at work, flipped on my pirated cable and came across “The Fabulous Life of Hollywood ‘it’ girls.” For those of you unfamiliar “The Fabulous Life of…” series, not only do I envy you, but I also hold you in the highest possible tier of cool. (Seriously. Beatnik-snapping-your-fingers-and-saving-the-world-with-a-haiku-cool). The rest of us know that this is one of the many recently developed and highly rated shows based on the (correct) assumption that the people of the United States will watch anything related to celebrities that doesn’t require much concentration. This particular show takes our love of voyeurism to new lows as it unabashedly breaks down the extravagant spending habits of the young and beautiful demi-gods of Hollywood, showcasing the …

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Last month, speaking candidly at a conference aimed at solving the problem of low numbers of women and minorities in science and engineering, Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers revealed the lingering boys’-club culture in the upper echelons of academia.Summers suggested factors on which to blame the lack of female scientists, and offered the suggestion that divergent test scores between high school girls and boys stem from biological differences. Most disturbingly, he used his daughter’s play behavior to illustrate his point about genetic predisposition. The girl was given two toy trucks in an effort at gender-neutral upbringing. Summers says she named them “daddy truck” and “baby truck,” as if they were dolls. Any Disney movie shows us that children like to imbue inanimate objects with personalities, and the fact that Summers used this anecdote to justify …

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Some say that God lives in Ely, Minnesota, way up near the “Arrowhead,” not too far from the Canadian border. It’s a charming town of about 3,700 people nestled in the sprawling Superior National Forest, a mess of evergreens, bluffs, lakes and streams. Ely is the gateway to the Boundary Waters, a pristine, unspoiled wilderness.I went to Ely in January and I saw God. Two friends and I hiked through the pines, trudging through fresh boot tracks and following cross-country ski trails. We joked around while hiking, plotting out how we might befriend a hibernating bear (after a tense initial standoff). Our hypothetical relationship with this bear, “Bitey,” grew in detail as we plowed deeper into the woods. By the time we came to rest on the shore of a frozen pond, we had …

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“I believe democracy requires ‘a sacred contract’ between journalists and those who put their trust in us to tell them what we can about how the world really works,” says long- time journalist Bill Moyers, addressing colleagues. These words resonated with many American journalists who are faced with a public that no longer places its trust in the media. I can’t say that I blame the public for turning off the evening news or canceling their newspaper subscriptions. Has the media really proven they even deserve our trust lately? We read The New York Times, the most trusted paper in the United States until we found out that one of its up and coming reporters, Jayson Blair, had lied in many of his stories. His front-page reports contained fabricated quotes, exaggerated truths and many …

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“Family Guy” enthusiasts know the episode –-the one where Peter starts his own country, appropriately labeled “Petoria.” While the authorities threaten to make Peter’s house and yard part of the union once again, Peter fends them off by eloquently citing the Constitution. By simply quoting the word “the” from a passage of our nation’s handbook, Peter convinces the soldiers to disburse and he is free to reign as the leader of Petoria.This scene brings up a good question (likely by no mistake of the writers): Why does the backing of what we perceive as an authoritarian source so easily blind normally skeptical eyes? There are plenty of well-publicized examples, as well as those that aren’t so highly-publicized, of people we look to provide information fooling even the most astute people.The most recent high-profile example that …

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