Archive - Apr 2007

Now I have the weekend to finish up pretty much everything else while working for some 13 hours at photo shoots. Awesome!

As I prepare with less than 6 hours to my capstone presentation (my large final graduate project), I'm comforted by Morpheus...

There is a difference between knowing the path, and walking the path

The Vikings have unveiled a plan for renovating the Metrodome. This looks great. Retractable roof, view of downtown, massive redevelopment in the area. Most importantly, it keeps the Vikings in Minneapolis and on the existing Light Rail Train line. The Central Corridor will also hit it, I think.

The plan is damn expensive - $1 billion (U.S.). But it is not just a stadium, it is a massive redevelopment project.

The light-rail station outside the Metrodome would be transformed into a Winter Garden, a dramatic transportation hub lined with trees, according to an urban planning firm hired by the sports facilities commission. On Thursday, the firm unveiled its vision for east downtown and the possible future home of the Vikings that would have parking lots give way to 4,500 residential units, hotels with a combined 270 rooms, 1.7 million square feet of office space, ground-level retail shops, restaurants and, perhaps, a grocery store.

Less parking lots, more usable space!!! Transportation hub, yeah! I think this is dramatic improvement for Minneapolis. The Strib editorial page agrees.

Also, the Vikings will be playing at the U's new stadium while the Metrodome gets redone - so that will be a great chance for the U to generate some revenue on its stadium investment.

I know that I am a cheerleader for big projects here - a billion dollar light rail project and a billion dollar Metrodome project - but we need to prepare for the future and both of these investments are forward looking.

SNL nailed the Gonzalez testimony.

Michelle, Kimmi, and I just watched the most amazing martial arts movie ever. The Protector is a Thai action movie - featuring Thai boxing and one seen with amazing capoeira. This movie blew us away. Tony Jaa seems a relative newcomer to the screen but combines Bruce Lee's kick assness with Jackie Chan's choreography.

On top of the great action and decent storyline, the cinematography makes me wish to never see another Hollywood martial arts movie not choreographed by Woo-Ping. They actual have an incredible 4 minute-long fight scene in one take. Stunning. No wires, no camera tricks, no regrets.

Rent this movie - you may see it listed as Tom Yum Goong. It was brought to the U.S. by Tarantino.

I have long advocated an understanding of terrorist motives that is premised upon a hopelessness link. They often turn to violence because of a sense of hopelessness or powerlessness in their society. Often, this results from people in impoverished areas.

Conservatives have derided this claim. They suggest terrorists are often wealthy. Bin Laden is wealthy! Many terrorists have had college educations or come from affluent societies within impoverished societies.

P.W. Singer, in Children At War, wrote something that supports my thoughts on this matter.

Some counter such claims by asserting that terrorism is an affair of the well-off elite from rich, stable countries; they usually point to those who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks as evidence. However, in doing so, they focus on leadership (Osama bin Laden or Mohammed Atta) rather than the membership of the wide organization and the troops who make the operations possible. For instance, if we look at all of those who seized the planes on 9/11, prosperity was not one of their hallmarks. Indeed, a number of the hijackers were alghamdi--a name that indicates that they did not even have a respectable tribal origin, and thus were accorded a low social status in their countries. Equally, all came from countries with growing poverty and steeply declining standards of living, including Saudi Arabia, and had lessened job prospects. Moreover, while 9/11 shapes most Americans' understanding of terrorism, it does not represent the whole.

I was assigned Children at War by P.W. Singer for a class in October and did not expect to get into it. Yeah, poor little kids, fighting wars in Africa. Life sucks. How many of us are capable of reacting much differently? Our ability to care about problems in Africa is greatly surpassed by our ignorance of the continent.

Therefore, I was rather surprised at an engaging account of how children are forced into these conflicts, what it does to them, and the difficulties in stemming the tide. I was immediately drawn in when Singer discussed the technological aspects of child soldiers.

Historically, children were considered off limits in combat because they were our future and they could not operate weapons. Kids with clubs? Kids with bows? Swords? Muskets even? AK-47s? Yeah. Out of all of those, it was the automatic weapon that allowed kids to become soldiers. They can use guns.

Kids also have the advantage of not requiring money to fight. You want to draft adults into your militia? It is far easy to convince/coerce/force kids to fight for your cause than other adults. They are cheap. In areas with a lot of child soldiers, they are also plentiful. If they weren't, those areas wouldn't be known for child soldiers... This is circular logic, but true.

Many of the children have only known difficulty. They have suffered incredible pain and may not have any family. If they do have family, once they have been involved with a militia, they may be ashamed to return to the family because they have participated in atrocities. Despite the fact that they were forced or tricked into it, we all know how easy it is to make children blame themselves for actions that they should not be held responsible for (because there are countless movies that dwell on it, not because I am a sicko).

The problem itself is circular. Recently, I seem to remember reading that the Bush Administration has loosened restrictions on immigration for those who participated in such atrocities when they were forced to do it. This is difficult to ascertain, but we cannot refuse refuge to those who have been forced to commit atrocities.

This is a step forward, but the U.S. hasn't even started baby steps toward solving this problem. While the U.S. likes to claim it gives more foreign aid than any other government, it gives less as a percentage of GDP (measure of economic productivity) than any other industrialized country. Even then, the "aid" that we give is designed to benefit us as well. 70% of U.S. aid is spent on U.S. goods and services. Hardly the altruistic leader of the world.

The book was an eye opener. If you want to understand this problem, check it out. As with many problems, the solution often lies with education and development. The solutions are there, but it mostly means we have to act less selfishly and have compassion for others.

I'm not sure whether to score one point for sensible policy in response to irrational religious demands or a point for anti-Muslim sentiment but I do agree with the Twin Cities' Metropolitan Airports Commission decision to punish taxi drivers who refuse to drive passengers who possess alcohol in their luggage.

Starting May 11, airport taxi drivers who refuse to transport riders carrying alcohol will be suspended for 30 days. And after a second offense, their license would be revoked for two years.

The Metropolitan Airports Commission voted 11-0 Monday to approve the crackdown, which some Muslim drivers say violates their religious beliefs. Commissioners called the change reasonable, practical and important for rider safety.

I hope this is a precedent for forcing "Christian" pharmacists to distribute birth control. If you enter into a profession knowing that you may have to do something that is supposedly outlawed by your religion, you need to enter a different field and not burden the rest of us with your antiquated notions of right and wrong. Get a damn different job, hippie.

We have enough problems defending important rights without allowing everyone with some earnest belief that God hates pork, alcohol, and/or non-procreative sex to start claiming new rights.

The Minnesota Daily has an opinion piece that disentangles Imus' sexism from the racism. That is an interesting read but I have two questions about this whole situation.

1) What is the societal problem here - Imus or his listeners? Is the problem that Imus is a bigot or that millions of American bigots love him?

2) Will getting rid of Imus solve either problem? Does showing him the door do anything to open the mind of the millions of bigots?

Obviously, I am more concerned with the millions of bigots rather than the one with the radio show. And I think tossing him out will further solidify the beliefs of the angry white males who are already convinced that they are being oppressed by women or quotas, or who knows what.

I'm glad that we live in a country where the government does not have the power to fire (or imprison or kill) Imus. However, allowing the market to make these decisions is another potential problem if we as people do not value freedom of speech. We don't. We like to pretend we do, but when confronted with someone like Imus, too many people want to toss him off the air and pretend his views don't represent millions of people.

Wired has a great article detailing New York's police force's total disregard for the constitutional rights of political dissidents.

We now know that before the 2004 Republican National Convention, the NY police used powers granted to them under the so-called PATRIOT ACT to spy on groups around the country that were organizing protests against the Republicans. They claimed to only be investigating those likely to commit crimes but that is an outright lie.

Let's be clear here, even if they were worried about people smashing windows, they should not be abusing powers given to them to combat terrorism to combat political vandalism. This is a great reason that law enforcement agencies should not be given special powers to supposed stop terrorism. They will abuse those powers and become distracted away from the mission to prevent terrorism.

The video clips shown as part of the Wired article clearly demonstrate that Joshua was set up - poorly - and arrested on faked charges of using chalk to write messages on the sidewalk. After the police impounded all his stuff and locked him away on fake charges, they never returned some of his belongings.

The police in the U.S. are supposed to be bound by the laws. There are still too many instances of them ignoring these laws and cracking down on those with unpopular political opinions.