Participant Observation

I thought mosquitoes and tornadoes were decent-enough plagues for Minnesota. Then, in 2007, the Monster from SimCity 2000 attacked a bridge of ours and we had to choose between fording the river, taking a ferry across, or just waiting until they rebuilt the damn thing. This summer, it’ll be swarms of Republicans descending upon the Twin Cities in fucking Zubaz.

I suppose it will be an incredible week for prostitutes, taxi drivers, pick-pockets, the Mall of America, area hotels, and anyone else who can think of ways to profit. The rest of the Twin Cities will just have a 4AM closing time to look forward to.

Comparisons drawn between the upcoming Olympics in Beijing and the 1936 Olympics in Berlin are almost too easy. We cannot trust the measures taken in preparation by China, such as the relocation of 200 factories and removal of 60,000 buses and taxis from the congested roads. Just as the Nazi agenda held onto its facade of peace, using the Olympics as a debutante ball, China is readying itself for international spectators and scrutiny.

Despite protests, the US ultimately did not boycott the 1936 Olympics. US Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage held pro-Nazi sentiments, alleged a “Jewish-Communist conspiracy” behind boycott motivations, and received a contract for his company to build the Germany embassy after the Olympics.

Similarly, the West has too many business ties to China to criticize them. Labor rights suppression yields cheap goods, covered in toxins for companies who sell them for massive profits.

After all, it’s not hard to come up with reasons to boycott China:

• Eugenic laws, forced/sex-selective abortion, and female infanticide due to the one-child-per-family policy
• Oppression of non-state religious groups (e.g. Falun Gong, Catholicism)
• Criminalization/imprisonment of journalists/activists, lack of press freedom, and censorship (online and off)
• Disproportionate use of the death penalty (~10,000 executions per year, exact number uncertain) and organ harvesting from prisoners
• Dangerous and troubling pollution (400,000 Chinese deaths annually)
• Sweatshop labor in the manufacture of cheap, defective, and unsafe products
• Rampant violence in Tibet [warning: graphic photos, nsfw]
• Major supporter of Sudanese government/militias in Darfur through oil as well as arms and military aircraft
• Sole supporter of the Myanmar regime in Burma

It is unfortunate that the calls for Chinese boycotts, whether for human rights violations or unsafe product recalls, are predominantly split bipartisan. Many people refuse to buy products marked “Made in China” because of xenophobia and McCarthyism fears of Communism, while some who protest for human rights take radical, alienating routes. China should not be boycott because it is Communist, but because it is corrupt and restrictive. All similar regimes should be boycott, as well.

It should be sufficient enough to boycott over the issue of Sudan alone. They have been listed in the US as a state sponsor of terrorism since 1997, but has become almost entirely ignored. Africa is out of sight and out of mind, despite that the Sudanese government is a similar strand of anti-Western Islamic extremism as Osama bin Laden (with rumored ties). There is even oil in Sudan, which generated a revenue of $397.78 million during February 2008, but the US couldn’t care less. It is simply Africa: another lost cause.

Rain pools up in a leaf structure.

Despite being warm and sunny earlier this week, it has rained heavily the past two days. Today, the rain slowed to a mist and I was able to check out the beginning of tulips in someone’s yard on the block.

A Minnesota House bill introduced by Reps. Phyllis Kahn, DFL-Minneapolis; Chris DeLaForest, R-Andover; Tom Rukavina, DFL-Virginia, and Leon Lillie, DFL-North St. Paul, seeks to lower the minimum drinking age to 18 for the purchase of alcohol at establishments holding liquor licenses. Critics of the proposed shift argue that binge-drinking and drunk-driving would only increase, but don’t recognize the combination of psychological reactance and alcohol expectations as active forces behind current underage drinking behavior.

Reactance is a psychological theory that explains why people will subconsciously deviate towards what they cannot have when they feel their rights are unjustly restricted. Ruth C. Engs and David J. Hanson observed this during the 1987-88 school year (after the National Minimum Drinking Age was put in full-effect across America) among 56 colleges when alcohol consumption among people under 21 actually increased, as compared to information dating back to the early 1950s. Another such example is a study of marijuana use among Dutch and Americans done by Peter Cohen at the University of Amsterdam: little over twice as many Americans than Dutch reported having used marijuana, despite the drug being illegal in the US.

Alcohol expectations are the beliefs held about the effects of alcohol use. The beliefs operate like self-fulfilling prophecies, even during experiments where the individual isn’t drinking alcohol, but is lead to think such. In cultures where alcohol use is seen as relaxing and positive, the results of alcohol use are rarely negative.

While it doesn’t help that the state would in turn lose 10% in federal highway funding, as Kahn is quoted in the Star Tribune, Minnesota seems perfectly willing enough to lose out on $15 million through not heightening the seat-belt enforcement law. In light of understanding why the drinking age has been so difficult to enforce, achieving a reduction in the serious, negative consequences experienced as a result of underage drinking would be possible over time through lowering the drinking age.

While using Europe as a model to show that a lower drinking age will not necessarily lead to binge-drinking and getting into a car afterwards, it is important to factor in the issue of transportation. There are certain European countries whose minimum driving age is actually higher than their drinking age, as well as their lower illegal BAC levels, stricter punishment for DUIs, and more accessible public transportation.

Drinking is a regular pastime in both city and rural areas of Minnesota, but even in the high-density areas with public transportation, people rely on cars, as many buses do not run between midnight and 6 AM. In areas where there is no public transportation at all and residences are spread out, there is no choice but to drive.

In instances where critics of the proposal are basing their opinions on personally held ideology rather than science, it could be possible to appease them with restrictions upon the formerly underage drinkers. Such restrictions could include keeping the zero tolerance law in effect for drivers under 21, or restricting the purchase of hard alcohol and allowing only beer and wine. In addition, the lost funding could be reclaimed through higher taxes on alcohol.

I’m not quite sure why who thought this story about busting underage drinkers would be positive for advertising the use of a police department’s resources, especially when coming across parts like this:

Because police didn’t have a specific address, officers had to search for the party. About 2 a.m., they found it in the 1100 block of Lockridge Avenue South.
“We had officers on patrol … going to specific neighborhoods,” McCarthy said.

Is there honestly nothing better to do than to track down and cite 33 people for Minor In Possession of alcohol (~$200 fine) on a Saturday night at closing time off in Cottage Grove? Clearly not, as evident by the party-goers thumbing their nose at the cops, refusing to let them in, and forcing them to get a search warrant before they would let them indoors.

As a life-time resident of the city of Minneapolis, refusing to let the police inside my house, while entirely within my legal rights, sounds completely foreign. The MPD are heavyweights, and they do not play around– it’s just got to be much easier to have the underage drinkers hide or scatter off into the night than to refuse entry to the police.

If your police force can’t instill the fear of God into some drunken teenagers, something is gravely wrong in your town. When you are searching out a house party full of kids instead of potential drunk drivers of legal drinking age, your priorities are misplaced.

While watching the first parts of the John Adams miniseries Sunday night, I was interested as one of his sons played with a set of toy British soldiers on their living room floor. He would toss a small wooden ball at the standing soldiers and knock them over, pretending to fire from a toy cannon. It was the 1770s equivalent of a video game such as Counter-Strike.

Children are developing members of society, and are the most vulnerable. They learn behavior from watching adults. Children quickly discover that misbehavior comes with consequence. When they play violent games, it is often in the black-and-white view of “good guys versus bad guys.” Whether the bad guys happen to be British soldiers, Indians, robbers, or terrorists depends on upon the time period in which they are living. And whichever side they choose to play on depends on which role in society they feel like trying out.

We are led to believe by assorted advocate groups that violence and gore had not been as widely publicized until the modern advances of television and computers and somehow didn’t exist, but the underlying violence has been there all along. Violence has always been inherent in American society, because violence is a primal urge as a human being. In order to eliminate the risk that children will grow desensitized, adults need to recognize and rationalize why exactly we find mock violence to be distasteful but still watch it.

After all, these video games and movies wouldn’t be made unless they were guaranteed to be bought. It’s not a matter of banning children from R-rated movies, forbidding them from buying or renting violent video games. It’s trickier than that.

TSA are huge assholes. If you go into an airport expecting behavior a bit more tolerable, you will be disappointed. Prepare to be treated like shit while completely at their mercy. All you need to know about TSA is that they have badges embroidered onto their uniforms. Their authority is just thread, the airport equivalent of the person checking your receipt as you leave Sam’s Club. Nothing like a government job that pays retail slave wages!

After having worked nearly a year at the airport, I am unsurprised when I such stories as the one where TSA thinks a MacBook Air is suspicious or when they force a 14-year-old kid to open up his sterile, back-up feeding tube. Meanwhile, for 4 days straight I was able to go through security when I had accidentally left my pocketknife, a lighter (back when they were banned), and lotion in my purse. There is also the dreaded, rousing cry of “Bag check!” It is promptly canceled upon discovering it is a pilot’s or flight attendant’s luggage. You’d think there would be some concern about NWA employees getting disgruntled and turning to the dark side.

TSA sees fit to pull me aside and swab my purse after seeing my iPod, camera, cell phone, or even a roll of laundry quarters, “just to be sure.” I can keep my shoes on, but as an employee I still have a cloud of suspicion hanging over my head. What the hell was the point of the background check and the drug testing? I gave you my fingerprints for this? I don’t understand.

In the most basic understanding, “hearing aid-compatibility” is the ability to wear hearing aids and use a cell phone without receiving radio frequency emissions and electromagnetic interference while the aids are set to the telecoil (T-coil/inductive coupling) function.

T-Mobile currently offers 9 hearing aid-compatible cell phones, only 4 of which are still available for purchase on the website. Customer Care told me it could be possible to still get ahold of the other ones in-store, if they haven’t sold out of their stock.

I’m not sure how they are going to be able to comply with the FCC’s ruling that 50% of their phones have to be hearing aid-compatible by February 18th, 2008. My guess? Yet another lengthened “phase-in” period will be granted.

Until then, the only viable options are either ripping out your hearing aid (if you have a moderate hearing loss like mine) and using the phone as normal, or using such devices as TecEar’s T-Link into the phone, or having a phone compatible with BlueTooth to use something like TecEar’s MaxIT.