February 17, 2008 - February 23, 2008

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Critic's Notebook: Hyderabad House

Filed under: Food

I grew up in Madison, WI, understanding only about four different kinds of cooking: home cooking (lasagna, casseroles, chicken and green beans), Door County lodge food (fish fry or fish boil, cherry pie, ice cream cream puffs) German food (bratwurst from the Brat und Brau or Union Terrace), and Italian-American food (the red-sauce and pasta at Paisan's).

So when I entered my late teens and started to go out to restaurants with friends, everything seemed new.

Going to Hyderabad House took me back to some of my first restaurant experiences in college. Though I attended UW-Madison, one of my closest friends went to school in Chicago, and I'd drive down to visit her whenever we could get our schedules to click. She'd take me out to little Thai and Indian places around Hyde Park or on Devon Street, and my mind was blown by how different food could taste. At that point, everything — pad siew, samosas, chicken tikka masala — was a revelation, no matter how well (or poorly) executed it might be. It was just off of my very limited little experiential grid.

One place she took me was (if memory serves) called Hima's Kitchen. It was tiny — maybe 8 or 9 small tables — and it functioned as part restaurant, part daycare. Indian toddlers ran at high speed from table to table, and you felt very much as though you'd wandered into someone else's home, and that they'd decided (for reasons unknown) to feed you. Sure, you paid a bill, but there was an informality and chaotic feel to the experience that made it highly entertaining. Hyderabad House had the same kind of vibe; our waitress (who I'm guessing is the owner's wife and/or co-owner) kept knocking my spoon when she set down various dishes, and by the end of the meal it had become a running joke: "That spoon is broken!" After running my card at the end of the meal, she thanked me by name: "Thank you very much, James." You're not supposed to acknowledge that you know a customer's name after you run their card. It's not local custom. And yet... hell, I left the restaurant with a silly grin plastered on my face. I was acknowledged as a person, not just a financial unit.

And I as I drove back down Central Ave. to Uptown, I thought a little bit about what I'd eaten, and thought that the food tasted... for lack of a better word, real. Not processed, not picked-over for perfect consistency, not checked against any kind of measurement of what people in Minneapolis-St. Paul at large would want to eat, but checked, instead, against what people from the cook's family would want to eat. There's an intimacy to food like this.

I don't mean to over-romanticize the experience. As I mentioned in my review, I didn't much care for the handling of the meat in the main dishes. I tend to like my meat tender and well-organized, broken up into little bite-sized pieces or chunks. Call it a cultural bias, or call it my personal taste, or what have you, but there you go. And I know there are people who like their food to mildly spiced, or just plain "mild"; as a general rule, the cooking at Hyderabad House wouldn't be for you. But there are so, so, so many places where you can get your main meal exactly how you want it (or how you think you want it, or how you're conditioned to want it) that hitting a place that does things differently — hell, in a truly foreign manner, without compromise — is really a joyous discovery. At the very worst, it's fun to talk about what's different, what's "wrong," what's new about this kind of eating. And at best (here I think of the keema paratha and the samosas), it's a visceral thrill.

Posted by James Norton at February 22, 2008 10:00 AM | Comments (2)

 

Daniel Ellsberg: Beyond the Pentagon Papers

Filed under: 3 Questions

Daniel Ellsberg gave the White House and world quite a shock in 1971 when he leaked 7,000 classified pages of a Defense Department report outlining the full extent of the U.S. role in Vietnam to The New York Times. The documents revealed that the federal government had been steeped much deeper in battle in Vietnam than the public had been told, and that presidents had acted unconstitutionally to carry out their plans. Ellsberg was charged with espionage, theft, and conspiracy, and the federal government sued to stop newspapers from publishing the leaked documents. Ultimately, the charges were dropped, and the government lost its case in the Supreme Court. Since then, Ellsberg's political activism has gotten him arrested 70 times, as well as earning him several awards.

Tuesday he visits Northrop Auditorium to discuss dissent with U of M professor Larry Jacobs.

City Pages: Does everybody with information that American citizens should have about potential wars or governmental misdeeds have a responsibility to go public, even if it's a great risk to them?

Daniel Ellsberg: Not at all. There are secrets that should be kept certainly. I'll give you an example: the name “Valerie Plame Wilson,” the clandestine CIA operative the White House revealed wrongly in order to undercut Joe Wilson who was a truth teller with respect to Iraq. I would never have put that name out there and I don't know any colleagues that would have been so stupid to undermine an operation that was, after all, aimed at discovering periferation and stopping it. So, should anybody who has secrets put them out? No. That's a secret that should not have been put out and was put out by this administration for political purposes and it's not the only example.

The premise here is that in the case of a war like Iraq, as in Vietnam, there are hundreds and perhaps thousands of people who are well aware that the documents in their own office safes that would disprove statements the president is making in order to manipulate Congress into an illegal, hopeless, doomed war in which many people will be condemned to death both Americans and others—millions of Vietnamese and perhaps more than a million Iraqis by now. So that means that those people are aware, whether they think of it or not, their boss, that their president is violating the constitution of the United States which puts the decisions of war and peace into the hands of Congress.

By manipulating them falsely into an aggressive war, he's violated his oath of office to uphold the constitution, and when they keep silent about their knowledge of that situation, they are themselves violating their own oath to support and defend the Constitution. Other examples would include not only the Constitution, but domestic law. For example, probably hundreds, perhaps a thousand or more employees of the National Security Agency have been aware that the president was illegally and unconstitutionally violating the FISA in enlisting them to do warrantless wire tap surveillance of people in violation of that law and in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. Those who kept silent about that, which are probably numbered in thousands all together, were violating their own oaths. Just as if the Senate proceeds to vote immunity for the telephone companies who were violating not an oath to the Constitution, but violating domestic law, as a number of them do. Giving them immunity from civil suits for those violations, as the Senate may or may not do in the next few days, would involve violating the oath of the office for each member who votes for that.

I say this in recognition--belated recognition--that I myself violated my oath when I was in the Pentagon in 1964 and 65 when I saw similar crimes being conducted without revealing them to Congress of the public. I didn't think of it in those terms, and I'm sure these people aren't thinking of it in these terms. But almost fifty years later, we've had enough experience for people to have gotten that message. I'm doing my best to really put out the message to people in that position: Don't do what I did. Don't wait till bombs are falling in Iran or a new war is started wrongly or thousands more people have died when you know that your bosses are lying the public into a wrongful war or committing other crimes or violating the constitution. I am urging them to do what I wish I had done in 1964, and that is to go before Congress and to the press to reveal truths that would save untold number of lives.

CP: The Republicans don't control either chamber of Congress, and President Bush only has a year left in office. Do you seriously think there is a good chance he will lead us to war in Iran in the next year?

DE: Yes, I do. I know some people think that new National Intelligence Estimate virtually precludes a war with Iran because it takes away the motive of stopping an ongoing nuclear program. But I don't agree with that. It certainly has reduced the probability from a very high probability to something less than that, but I think there is still a very significant likelihood. The president, who is distancing himself from the National Intelligence Estimate, he's saying he doesn't agree with it. He thinks they are still aiming at nuclear weapons despite that 16 intelligence agencies have combined to tell him the opposite. So moreover, he hasn't relied on that single excuse for over a year, from the time he knew over a year ago that they were in the process of taking away that rationale from him in the intelligence community, he and Cheney have been talking up other reasons for going to war with Iran such as alleged involvement in the Iraq war. That one is weak at the moment too, in terms of evidence from Iraq, but he could revive it at any time. We could have an incident such as the one that the Defense Department deliberately hyped up about a month ago of a supposed confrontation in the Persian Gulf, an incident that looked very much like the Tonkin Gulf incident that got us into the Vietnam War. We could have that tomorrow. They could pin up one or deliberately misinterpret this incident in the Persian Gulf. I must say there are elements in Iran in the revolutionary guard that seem to underestimate the risks to Iran of acting and speaking provocatively, and they might be willing to see war occur. I don't think that's true of the leadership in Iran, but it might not be up to them entirely.

So, I think that the risk remains significant, and indeed the fact that the President isn't running again for office may free him in his mind. I think it could happen even after the election in November in the last months of their lame duck administration. And certainly Congress has not done all they could to prevent that. Hilary Clinton signed, inexcusably, to an act calling the Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, which as Senator James Webb pointed out, gives virtually a green light to the President to go ahead on his own discretion and attack them. She was criticized rightly for that by her campaign rivals. But nevertheless, that act is on the books. She's not the only one to blame of course; it was a senatorial action. Congress has done literally nothing to put obstacles in the way of the President acting unconstitutionally, and in their inaction, it colors him as acting with their consent which is constitutional. So, they've acted very badly on this, and the media have hardly done what they could to expose these risks. So I still believe it's a dangerous situation, yes.

CP: Can America's next military disaster be stopped today if people just come forth with information that they have?

DE: There would be no guarantee of that because we have seen a lot of examples of sufficient proof coming out thanks to people revealing it as whistleblowers with the Congress ignoring it and doing nothing about it. So there is no guarantee that telling the truth will avert these disasters. But there is a pretty good chance that these disasters will occur over time if people don't. I think it's necessary and has a chance to succeed. For example, when the national intelligence analysts a few months ago threatened to resign and go public if the new National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that Iran was not producing nuclear weapons and had not been for some years, was not made public. If they hadn't threatened to resign, that report would not have become public, and I think we'd be closer to than we are to going to war against Iran right now.

Even so, as I said their action doesn't guarantee that the president won't just go ahead on his own terribly misguided belief that he has unlimited power as commander-in-chief, that he's virtually a king, despite the passage of the Constitution two centuries ago. That's his sincere belief, and if we let him act on that, he'll be right; it's true, he's a king. But I do think that there is information in government safes right now that would have a high chance of preventing us from a disastrous war with Iran if people would risk their careers, their clearances, and even risk going to jail by putting out this information. I think they should consider doing that. They might well suffer in their personal lives, but they might have a real chance of saving hundreds of thousands of lives.

CP: In a 2006 piece you wrote for Harper's Magazine you state that Senator Wayne Morse, one of only two senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, told you that by not revealing all you knew about America's involvement in Vietnam earlier, you were, in some way, accountable for horrible aspects of the war. All these years later, do you consider yourself to be partly responsible for the thousands of Vietnam War dead?

DE: Certainly, without any question. I'm glad you inserted the word “partly.” Obviously responsibilities differ and it would be grandiose of me to take the whole weight of it on as if I made all the decisions myself, or were anything but a medium-size cog in a very big machine. But yes, I was there, I was a part of it, as were we all who worked for the government, and really all the people allowed themselves to be so easily fooled with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in Congress. Morse is one of the few who can say he did everything he could to avert that. And I am not one of those who can say that. I've tried to learn from it. It's not a matter of making amends, but of doing better, and that's what I'm asking of people in the government now. I'm not asking them to be better than I was or better than I am, but to learn from my own bad experience of participating in wrongful war that led to many unnecessary and wrongful deaths. Many people are doing the same now. My interest is not in punishing them or even condemning them, but in making them realize they can do better than that. They can change and do better for their country and for themselves.

CP: How do you live with that?

DE: It would be harder if I felt that I had seen that clearly at the time and for personal reasons or cowardice or careerism to that I shrunk from doing that; that would be significantly harder. As it is, I can tell myself that it didn't occur to me to do that, and no one else did it, it didn't occur to any of us; it had never been done. I think that is extenuating. But I don't see it as letting me off the hook altogether. Why didn't I think more about it? Why didn't I seek more information? No, I haven't lived with a great burden of guilt, nor have I acted out of a sense of guilt. In fact I remember many years ago, my wife commenting that maybe I should feel guiltier than I do. The fact is, I do feel some sense of responsibility for having been one of those in the government who helped us get into the war. That definitely gave me a sense of obligation to do more than what others are doing to get us out of the war, and it has given me an obligation for the rest of my life to share what I've learned, and to keep other people from making the same mistakes.

CP: Is our government fundamentally untrustworthy?

DE: Oh, all governments are untrustworthy. “Trust” is not the appropriate basis for relating in a democracy. That's the very idea of democracy. Our Constitution with its provisions for separate branches for the possibility of impeachment, which is being neglected now very much, for an independent judiciary and for oversight responsibilities by Congress of the executive branch--all of these things bespeak a need for vigilance; not for trust. Or as President Reagan used to say with respect to the Russians, “trust but verify.” And Congress is failing to exercise its responsibilities under the Constitution, to exercise that oversight and to rein back and to counter an executive that is both lying, which all governments do as much as they can get away with, and moving toward executive tyranny, toward abuses. Unfortunately, we've gone so far in that direction in the last seven years, that I've come to start saying that a coup has occurred against constitutional government. The issue is not whether we avert a coup, but whether we roll back and rescind actions like the so-called Protect America Act which supposedly legalizes warrantless wiretaps, I would say that an act of Congress can not repeal the Constitution, but they're acting as if it could and as if they'd want to do that.

So, what I'm saying is not that our government is worse than other government officials, but I agree with the journalist when he says all government officials lie, and nothing they say is to be believed. That doesn't mean they're lying with everything they say, it does mean that nothing they say should be taken as the last word, or as you say, on trust. That's a wholly unwarranted suspension of disbelief. And we should be taking advantage of our constitution and our form of government of which the genius is the processes and institutions that have the chance to protect us from executive tyranny if we act them. But it takes some courage to act on them against an executive branch. And we haven’t seen much of that courage in Congress, and if we don't see more and in the public, we'll have lost our freedoms.

CP: Do you consider yourself to be a political radical?

DE: I believe in democracy. I believe that our Constitution, despite its shortcomings and flaws, which were significant, had some marvelous innovations in it. The idea that forbidding laws to be written that would protect freedom of speech and freedom of the press was an amazing political invention. It was certainly radical in its time. To your question, I'd almost have to say it's radical right now, because clearly Congress and much of the public has gotten tired of these kinds of freedoms and the courage and effort it takes to sustain them. So you could say that I am a radical democrat, small d, in that I really believe in regaining the kinds of protections and tyranny usurpation that were meant to be built into our Constitution. I would not have said there was anything radical about that when I was growing up 60 years ago, but I'm afraid it's radical now in the sense of going back to roots, and our roots are in the concept of democracy.

That's not a system I want to see change. I don't believe in a one-party system no matter what it calls itself. I don't believe in one-branch government whether it calls itself socialist, communist, capitalist, democratic, or whatever else. It's a recipe for tyranny and for wars like Vietnam and Iraq and for torture like what we are shamefully conducting right now in CIA secret prisons and Guantanamo and places that should not exist on the face of the earth, and are being tolerated by our government right now. So if that's radical, make the most of it.

Daniel Ellsberg and political science professor Larry Jacobs will discuss dissent and democracy as part of the U of M's 'Great Conversation Series.' $18.50-$23.50. 7:30 p.m. 84 Church St. SE, Minneapolis; 612.624.2345.

Posted by Ben Palosaari at February 22, 2008 7:00 AM | Comments (0)

 

Chef Shack Preview

Filed under: Food

Damn, it's cold outside, which means it's a great time to start thinking about summer. I'm really looking forward to the reappearance of Chef Shack, which serves up some of the Twin Cities’ best street food. I was lucky enough to catch Lisa Carlson and Carrie Summer, the chef and pastry chef from Spoonriver, test-driving the Chef Shack at the St. Paul Winter Carnival a few weeks ago. The trailer was topped with a hula-hooping go-go dancer and was blasting music to lure parade goers to gourmet takeout fare, including pulled pork sandwiches, vegetarian chili, chocolate mousse, torched-to-order creme brulee, and those awesome cardamom-spiced mini-doughnuts Carlson and Summer were selling last summer at the Mill City Farmers Market (which is where they plan to park the Chef Shack this summer, so stay tuned…)

Posted by Rachel Hutton at February 21, 2008 5:55 PM | Comments (0)

 

Surprise Tapes n Tapes Show Tonight

Filed under: Local Music

Tapes Inc. will be playing a surprise show at the Turf Club tonight, according to Big Hassle Media. They'll be performing songs from their new album, Walk It Off. Vampire Hands and the Blind Shake open, plus it's only 5 bucks. Doors at 9pm. Sounds awesome, yeah? Yeah, it really does.

Posted by Sarah Askari at February 21, 2008 11:09 AM | Comments (0)

 

Introducing A la Carte

Filed under: Food

When I began chatting with City Pages about food writing, I was concerned that my own style of dining (which leans toward "humble" — some of my favorite meals have involved beer-boiled bratwurst, authentic tacos, or old-school slices of pizza) might not click in a metropolis where the high-end restaurants bump so confidently up against a national scene.

So when the word came down that my former Minnesota Monthly colleague Rachel Hutton was going to take on the haute cuisine stuff via The Dish — leaving me free to pounce on little neighborhood eateries and ethnic holes-in-the-wall — I flipped out. This new column, named A la Carte, was a perfect fit. I knew Rachel, and I knew her writing — she would be the paper's world-class fancy-pants ninja, freeing me up to do what I really dig.

I struggle (emphasis on struggle) to write about food in a way that is clear and free of pretense. My concerns typically run like this: Is this food delicious? Is this food delicious for the money I'm paying? Is this food delicious in some kind of new way?

So when you read "A la Carte," you're not going to get much sensual purple prose, or references to big-name chefs. (Although, to be fair to Rachel, she often beat selected bits of purple prose out of my MNMO stuff, so you won't see much of it in her column, either.)

What you will get, I hope, is writing that takes you somewhere new, gets you out of your neighborhood and/or comfort zone, and occasionally cracks you up. You'll get writing that is a critical celebration of that which can get overlooked in the bold-faced name / big restaurant group-driven food coverage that, necessarily, can sometimes dominate the media discourse.

And I'm going to shoot for honest writing, and look for your comments to keep me on the straight and narrow. I have biases as a diner, and if I'm not exposing them to you in my prose, I hope to be correcting for them behind the scenes. I don't want "A La Carte" to be an uncritical cheerleader; while I've had some life-changing meals in neighborhood restaurants, I've also had some crummy ones, and I won't ever knowingly peddle you a false bill of goods just because it makes a good story.

In conclusion, and with real feeling: Please — please, please, please — email me (jim@flakmag.com) with your ideas. This column will not succeed unless I'm able to keep an ear to the ground and ferret out the hidden gems that this city conceals and treasures by the dozen. If you're a chef and you've changed your menu, email me. If you're a diner with a favorite little place — or even just a favorite appetizer, or dessert somewhere — email me. If you're a purveyor offering something special that's being overlooked, email me. If you're a waiter or waitress, a PR flack, a talented home cook, whatever — email me.

And, when in doubt, eat somewhere new.

Posted by James Norton at February 20, 2008 11:04 AM | Comments (4)

 

The Dish on Dish

Filed under: Food

Sometimes the truth sounds too much like an Onion headline: Food Critic's Parents Celebrate Valentine's Day at Pearson's. When I found out that Mom and Dad spent the most romantic evening of the year at a place known for its 1970s decor, Cadilac-driving clientele, and lutefisk suppers, I knew I had my work cut out for me.

As the new Dish columnist, my goal is to help you make decisions on how to spend your dining dollars. When reviewing restaurants, I will always visit three times, sample a range of items across the menu, and give you an honest assessment of how well the restaurant delivers on its promises---not just on the meal itself, but the entire experience, from making the reservation to paying the check. Think of it this way: I spend City Pages' money on lousy meals so you don't have to.

A la Carte columnist James Norton and I will also be interviewing chefs, servers, artisan food-makers, and purveyors to give you more insight into issues and trends affecting how you grocery shop and dine. If you know things you think we'd like to know about---new restaurants, unusual ingredients, people or places overlooked and underappreciated---please, by all means, write and let us know.

With your help, we believe that as knowlegable, scrupulous critics, we can encourage restaurateurs to raise the bar, and challenge them not to just deliver good value, but surprise and delight us. Of course, what pleases us may not please you: Tastes are always, to some extent, subjective. If you disagree, you don't have to heed our advice. Though, next February 14, let's hope my parents do. ---Rachel Hutton, rhutton@citypages.com

Posted by Rachel Hutton at February 20, 2008 9:51 AM | Comments (9)

 

Greg Marshall: 20 Years of Putting Cameras on Animals

Filed under: 3 Questions

Marine biologist Greg Marshall was scuba diving in Belize in 1986 when he saw a small fish hitching a ride from a shark simply by sucking onto its back. Marshall was inspired by what that smaller fish would get to witness by being attached to the shark and began working on a camera system that could attach to an animal and record everything the animal saw. His invention, the Crittercam, has evolved much since it was first deployed in 1987, and nature film fans and researchers continue to be dazzled by what the cameras capture. Marshall will speak on Thursday at the State Theatre about his work with the Crittercam.

Rodney the emperor penguin, equipped with a National Geographic Crittercam, gets ready to dive beneath the Antarctic ice. More Crittercam images of penguins, lions and seals in the slideshow.

City Pages: Explain to me a little about how the Crittercam works.
Greg Marshall: There are two types: the marine and the terrestrial incarnation. Most of the work we've done to date has been with the marine system. It is a system that incorporates all the video, audio, and environmental and geospatial data recording in the system. So you have to recover the system in order to get the data back since we're not able to transmit under water. So what that means is that not only does the housing have to contain all these components, it has to be rugged enough to go down to a thousand meters deep, then after it comes off the animal float back to the surface for recovery. That means we have to make the system slightly positively buoyant, very streamlined so it slips through the water easily. Then when it's sitting at the surface, a radio antenna pops out and transmits a signal, and we can triangulate on that signal and go out and pick the system up where ever it happens to be floating. From that point you can download the video, which is nowadays on flash memory, not on videotape any longer. We pre-program the system to come off at a certain time or under specific environmental conditions. For example, we know that these systems are certified for 1,000 meters, so if the animal goes to 1,000 the on board computer detects that and sends a signal then to abort the mission and release the system. And most of the deployments with a suction cup attachment mechanism, so the release is mediated by opening a valve in the suction cup, so it floods with water and releases.

There are two versions of the terrestrial system. One is much akin to the marine system in that all the data is recorded and we recover it after the deployment. The other is a video transmission system that is real time, so we can be three miles away observing what the animal is doing in real time. Those systems are totally remotely controlled, so we can get the video and audio and data transmission from up to three miles, and from five miles we can totally remotely control and interrogate the system. So by the end of the deployment, not only have we turned the system on and off during the deployment to sample behavior over time because those systems can transmit 25 or so hours of video, also at the end, we send a signal to release the entire collar from the animal, it drops off and sends a signal to us to pick it up.

CP: The Crittercam can go as deep as 3,000 feet? Can you see anything that deep?
GM: We've resolved that in a different way. In some of the systems we have on board image intensification capabilities, so we can amplify the available light 50,000 times. Even in very low light we can resolve and image. In other cases we also include a series of headlights within the system so we can project light into the water to be able to see what the animals are seeing. In all cases we're careful to do whatever we can to not change the animals' behavior because, after all, we are doing this for research and if we're changing their behavior, what's the point? So we work hard to engineer problems like that out. In a case like this with a headlight, we've tested a number of different systems and we're pretty confident that the animals we're working with can't see the color of the spectrum of the light we're using. So we're using a near infrared light that they're probably not adapted to in any case because red light absorbs so quickly into the water. So we're not affecting their behavior.

CP: What other sort of atmosphere difficulties do you face?
GM: Well obviously pressure is a huge challenge and light is a challenge. But predominantly I think in all cases the biggest challenge is to ensure that whatever we're deploying on the animal is appropriate for the animal and the research question. And that's always a challenge because it's easier for us to design and build bigger systems, it's easier for us to design and build boxier systems that don't take streamlining into consideration. We spend a lot of time and energy engineering the systems to be appropriate for the animal and the question we're trying to answer.

CP: Can you reuse the Crittercam after your retrieve them?
GM: Yeah whenever we can. Absolutely. I would imagine we've reused each system ten to 20 times. Now with these new systems, I imagine we'll reuse them, I'm hoping we can reuse them 30-50 times because they're much smaller, more robust, and we've tried to make them as universal as possible.

CP: What sort of data, besides video and audio, are gathered?
GM: We have on board temperature transducers, pressure transducers, light level meters to measure ambient light, we're measuring the accelerometry of the animal in three axis, we're measuring magnetometry- the compass direction the animal is moving in- the speed of the animal. By virtue of all of those things, when we reconstruct all those data sets, we're able to get a very coherent sense of how the animals are moving through and using their environment.

CP: What animal that you have you not been able to study with a Crittercam that you would like to?
GM: To date the systems have been too large, in my mind, to work with dolphins. I think dolphin behavior in society that is just so interesting that it's going to be absolutely fascinating for the first time to be able to work with them with our newest generation system. These new systems are 2.25 inches in diameter, and now I think for the first time appropriate for an animal the size of a dolphin and as energetic as a dolphin.

CP: I read that you were experimenting with a Crittercam you can place on birds.
GM: Yeah, that's the smallest of the terrestrial incarnations. The cameras and transmitters are quite small. So with a battery that's appropriate for the bird to carry we can do effective bird deployments. The challenge is in finding an interesting research question, everything we do is based on a research question, that you can resolve in an hour or two of transmission. That's sort of the limitation of those systems, they are only transmitting as long as the battery that animal can carry lasts, and that's a fairly small battery load.

CP: You've been recording animals with Crittercams for 20 years now, does it ever get mundane or routine? Or do you find yourself constantly learning new things?

GM: It really is the latter. We're constantly improving our capabilities, we're constantly working with new animals, and we even learn from animals we've worked with over years. We did years of work with harbor seals in Nova Scotia off the coast of Canada, and every year we learn something new. We're amazed to see behaviors that we hadn't seen before and hadn't anticipated before. It really helped us construct a whole new sense of what they're doing during the mating season, how they're feeding, what they're feeding on, and where. To paraphrase a friend and colleague, the great thing about Crittercam is that it shows you things you don't know you don't know. And that proves to be the case with most of the animals we work with. We really don't know what these animals are doing out there. We're surprised all the time.

CP: That leads to my next question. Obviously, your cameras have revealed a lot about how animals live outside of human sight, and we know so much more because of Crittercams. But do you ever worry that the cameras spoil a little of the nature's mystery?
GM: I know, it's a great question and important issue. On the one hand, yes, I mean mystery is wonderful and the mysteries of these animals is part of what inspires me to explore them and their relationship their environment. On the other hand, and I think in today's world more importantly, their world is changing so much, and the stresses they feel in their environments are changing so rapidly that in order for us to effectively understand what their basic needs are, their basic biology, we've got to be out there trying to understand them better so we can affect better conservation measures. A large part of what we do is in fact conservation biology the object is to understand these animals better to affect more effective management of the resources that they need.

CP: How many animals on any given day are outfitted with cameras around the world?
GM: We're on the verge of making it a daily event. Historically we’ve had to build these things one-off, basically designing each system and building each system as a unique unit. So historically we've had in our possession only somewhere between five and maybe 10 at any given time. Within the next month or month and a half, we're going to completing our next generation system which can be mass produced for the first time. We expect in the next year to build let's say a hundred to start off with and in the next two years maybe 500 of them. So then I'll be able to give you a better answer because then we'll have 30 projects going on at any given time around the world and we'll be able to say 'yeah, there are 50 systems deployed and tomorrow there will be 70 systems deployed.'

CP: When editing penguin tape, it is really boring to watch the video when they're standing on land, since the camera is pointed straight up, or is there always something to see?
GM: Yeah, good question, it's interesting, we use a saltwater switch, so the system turns off when they're on land and back on when they're in water, that's all controlled by the computer.

See Greg Marshall will discuss his work and innovations with Crittercam at the State Theatre Thursday. Go to www.hennepinthredistrict.org or call 612.373.5600 for more information.

Posted by Ben Palosaari at February 20, 2008 9:00 AM | Comments (0)

 

Extended Interview: Greg Laden Discusses Evolution and Cuisine

Filed under: Q&A

When imagining catalysts to evolution, or things that enabled great strides for our ancestors, fire or the invention of the wheel may spring to mind. But what about cooking? University of Minnesota anthropology professor Greg Laden postulates that cooking and cuisine played a crucial role in human physical and social development. He took a moment from his schedule to chat with City Pages.

CP: You believe that cooking played a crucial role in human evolution and human interaction. Can you briefly explain your logic behind this?

GL: It's a little hard to explain, because when you think about things that happened millions of years ago, people want to hear a story. The history of agriculture, for example, how did someone first figure out that if they plant something it would grow? People often want to relate it to a story: Og the caveman was walking along and he saw a seed and a week later there were sprouts, and he figured it out. But of course we can't describe those events. You're going to get into trouble, because you're either giving Og too much credit or too little. We can't go back two million years ago and describe this in correct terms that people who are not specialists can really relate to without it becoming a story. So, human beings are the nearest living relatives to chimpanzees. The last common ancestor between humans and chimps was very much like a chimpanzee. The chimps haven't changed a lot; humans have. When chimps encounter food, unless there is a lot of food at one place, they avoid each other. Males are dominant over food. Every time a male comes along, they will take the food. Humans don't do that; we share. How do you explain how that came about? When you have food that can be rendered edible, usually you have to bring that back to a place where there's fire, a central place. The ability to cook and share food is related to what allows humans to sit down and not fight over food; the ability that allows humans to be something else that chimps can't. Humans have the capacity to negotiate social contracts.

CP: Do you feel that these ancient gender roles of men being hunters while women cooked and protected food that was in the immediate area, are still at play today? Will these roles shift as we move forward in time?

GL: I think that in modern U.S. society, some people are very comfortable with gender roles. For example, some time ago I cooked a big meal for friends. A colleague of my wife at the time, an older, feminist professor, said that my then-wife had done a great job cooking the meal. My then-wife said, "Well, Greg did all the cooking." The colleague then said, "Yeah, right" with a wink. It was impossible for her to believe that I had cooked the meal. Our society is very much in transition. Some members have no problem with men cooking, while others won't believe it. The fact that it might be related to our evolutionary history, that women might be trading food for protection, it's not like all the people with the female gene to cook and the male gene to not cook are dying off. It is entirely a social construction. The thing is, it's been a social construction for two million years.

CP: So why food? How did it play a dominant role in social development?

GL: In order to cook food, you have to have this capacity to have social contracts. You can’t bring food into a shared environment without contracts, because it would be stolen by dominant males. Humans, compared to different primates, aren’t that different in size. When that changed must be connected to social structure. The other thing that is important is that our ancestors where very dimorphic, but very little. One day new hominids show up and they have the following differences: they’re way bigger (modern in human size), and their teeth get smaller. How to do you explain the reduction in body size? They’re consuming a much higher quality food, food that is rich in calories. These early hominids also spread into various habitats. This is all explained with the cooking of food. It’s higher quality, and easy to chew. Yes, you can eat raw lettuce, but you can’t eat uncooked wheat or raw potatoes. One thing I think is important: human beings have had an enormously wide range of diets. We’re adapted to eat a wide range of food.

CP: I take it you’re not a fan of the modern raw food movement, or fragmented eating schedules in families?

GL: Well, with raw food-only diets, it’s fine, as long as you don’t do this with your children. Large brains require a huge amount of growth. What we think we need to eat isn’t always what we actually need. In a natural environment, the amount of fat you get in a week is a fraction to what a typical American gets in one day. We don’t have a mechanism that limits how much we take in. In natural history, we never had to do that. That’s an effect on our evolutionary history as well. Having a social contract to share food is the same contract that allows us to have relatively monogamous relationships. That’s rare in primates.

CP: Are there other species that mirror our eating patterns of sharing, gathering, and hunting?

GL: Bonobo chimps do share food, but it’s food for sex. A male will be carrying a piece of sugar cane, the two will engage in erotic interactions, and when they’re done; it’s subtle, but the female will have the sugar cane. But if food is rare, they won’t share.

CP: Have you heard any interesting reactions to your cooking theory?

GL: Well, some people have heard this theory and think that it means that traditional family values go back two million years. That's probably Ann Coulter's wet dream. To prove a family structure of males hunting and females cooking, there are a million reasons that that is not correct. Human beings are chimpanzees with an additional brain area that is constantly telling us, "Don't be a chimp!" With a mammal brain, you can add functions, but you have to kill other functions. You don't get to "turn off" functions, you have to repress them. To have a capacity to form relationships that allow us not to go over and take the sandwich out of someone's hand (which a chimp would do), you have to have the capacity to form bonds. Humans live in a social network. We have constant opportunity for reproduction; we're not solitary. Because of our social contract we repress sexual desires, but still form social bonds. We have a complicated relationship system, and as a result we have a wide range of gender and social orientation patterns. The relationship is a very powerful source.

Come see Greg Laden discuss evolution, cuisine, and romance tonight as part of the Café Scientifique lectures.

Posted by Jessica Armbruster at February 19, 2008 12:52 PM | Comments (0)

 

A naked, crashing, crying kind of gravity

Filed under: Theater

The presidential aspirations of Hillary Clinton have forced an American conversation about gender. But where that conversation is loudest--among the talking heads on the major television news networks--it is also the most inane. And it is without gravity. Could such a primal thing as the relationship between gender and power really be handled with any integrity on television, in short segments and interrupted by ads hawking beer, cereal and luxury vehicles?

Romeo Castellucci knows something of gravity--the naked, crashing, crying kind. And for three days last week he gave gravity to every person who bought a seat at the Walker’s McGuire Theater.

Photo: Steirischerherbst/Manninger

The program for Hey Girl! warned of “nudity and simulated violence.” On opening night, two women sat waiting for the show and wondering they were in for. “I don’t know,” one said to the other, “but it’s going to be loud and awesome.” Hey Girl!, Castellucci’s portrayal of the grace and horrors of womanhood, was both of those things.

Photo: Steirischerherbst/Manninger

More significantly, with barely a word spoken, Hey Girl! was the conversation America is not having about gender and power. That conversation begins with a question: How do we define Woman?

Castellucci suggests an answer in the shaved pubic areas of Hey Girl!’s two lead performers. From the theater seats the women appear sexless below below their breasts. But nothing about Hey Girl! is sexless. And what might have seemed a Barbie-like gender ambiguity in any other context is something far more sinister here: it is the long echo of Aristotle’s assertion that the “the female is, as it were, a mutilated male.”

Is this what the pundits mean when, pulling from the bottomless bag of English adjectives, they pick “shrill” to describe Hillary Clinton? Is “shrill” what is left when the “male” qualities are stripped away and the female politician stands naked before her audience?

Photo: Steirischerherbst/Manninger

Castellucci, of course, did not intend a commentary on America’s presidential competition. But his is a kind of theater where, in his words, “the viewer is confronted with questions that automatically feed a debate.”

Hey Girl! is 80 minutes of visceral, hypnotic theater--where a woman emerges from flesh-colored goo, perfume boils on sword, and a laser bores into a woman’s head. There is exploding glass, ear-splitting static, decapitation, and a naked woman painted silver. All of this in service of an abstract narrative that has a young woman alternately whispering, convulsing, and asserting her way through the sometimes beautiful, sometimes terrible, always powerful symbols of womanhood and women’s experience in the world. “She will need to harden herself,” Castellucci writes of the two nameless women in his piece. “Half Joan of Arc, half Juliet, she will be torn between the desire to fight for her freedom and a powerlessness that condemns her to wait to be saved.”

Photo: Steirischerherbst/Manninger

Hey Girl! is a universe inhabited by two nameless women--one white and one black. The white woman is born naked from ethereal goo at the start of the performance. The black woman walks on stage a half-hour later, crying under a giant mask of the white woman’s face. She is stripped naked--gently--by the white woman and placed in chains. Her birth is less graceful. It comes when the white woman releases her from her chains. There is an ancient arrogance here: the notion that some are born free and others are gifted their freedom. If you can call Castellucci a feminist, he succeeds in Hey Girl! where the early stages of feminism failed: he refuses to isolate the struggles of gender from the struggles of race--and our presidential contest comes tumbling onto Castellucci’s stage once more.

But he intended something more than a meditation on what he calls the “slavery, violence and servitude that still too often afflict women.” Of his main character, he says: “This anonymous girl, so far from being an icon of feminism, represents all of mankind. She is just someone hidden behind the archeology of the feminine form.”

It is easy to forget that this world of enormous gravity--this meditation on the “slavery, violence and servitude,” of women’s experience--is the construction of a man: a visual artist from Italy. But perhaps, as a man, he is uniquely qualified for the task. When Jack Holland, author of the seminal Misogyny: The World’s Oldest Prejudice, was asked why a man should attempt a study of Misogyny, he shot back: “Why not? It was invented by men.”

Posted by Jeff Severns Guntzel at February 19, 2008 9:38 AM | Comments (0)

 

Over the Weekend: 2/15-2/17

Filed under: Over the Weekend

If you read our interview with Romeo Castellucci, you know we were expecting tremendous things from the famed Italian artist. Jeff Severns Guntzel says his show "Hey Girl" delivered and then some during its run at the Walker this weekend.

Meanwhile, outside, Powderhorn Park saw local creatives making sleds from cardboard, wood and frozen peas (?) for an afternoon rally that was part sledding, part art.

Some were large, some were small, and all the art sleds can be seen in the slideshow with photos by Tony Nelson.

Musically, an infestation of Super Furry Animals was spotted all over town, from the Electric Fetus to the Varsity. The Welsh band used celery as an instrument and made it morphin' time, all of which we have photographic evidence of. James Tran captured this gentleman outside the show, and remarkably enough, he is neither a member of the band (though their costumes were staggering as well) nor a show-goer. He's just a dude walking around Dinkytown in a bear suit.

Hello, Sunshine: come inside the show, you'll fit right in. If you don't believe us, check out the slideshow.

Over at the Entry, three buzzed-about local acts showed their stuff. None, so far as we are aware, dressed in furry costumes. Desiree Weber reports.

KOZA, ROMANTICA, ALARMISTS: LOCAL BOYS MAKE GOOD

Saturday night’s show at the 7th St. Entry featured Chris Koza, Romantica and The Alarmists –- local acts that have risen to acclaim over the last two years. The house was packed even before the opener took the stage. To a cynic, it was a night of grown-up boys living out their rock and roll fantasies. But who can blame them – with adoring local fans, and some family thrown in, the crowd was even more amped up than Koza and his “90 cups of coffee.”

The Alarmists were one of three local acts at the Entry on Saturday. More photos by Daniel Corrigan here.

Chris Koza kicked things off right with an upbeat mix of equal parts acoustic and electric guitar, with the occasional harmonica thrown in for flavor. His indie rock sensibilities shine through on songs like “Adjust” and “Redwood Skyline,” off his new(est) EP A Friend of a Friend. His versatility is on display in songs like “Morning Moon,” which channels a Cash-like bass part, or the title track from his last full-length “Patterns,” which holds closer to a sound reminiscent of Iron & Wine. With a new angle on commonplace soundscapes, Koza proves himself accessible without ever succumbing to clichés – refreshing, upbeat indie rock the way it’s supposed to be.

Next up, Romantica.

Headed up by Irish lad Ben Kyle, Romantica fits squarely in the alt-country genre, for better or worse. Songs off their latest release America dominated the set, ranging from melancholy songs of lead-singer introspection to more upbeat songs that sound like things you’ve heard before – Ryan Adams and Jeff Tweedy, to name two. While they say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, they also say that variety – or in this case originality – is the spice of life. Perhaps their inevitably romantic view of the world is best described in lyrics from “On My Mind,” which predictably declare that “love can make it right.” Their literalist lyrics invoke images we’ve seen before and while the tunes may be catchy, it’s certainly not a new strain.

The Alarmists finally took the stage and rocked the house but good. Fronted by Eric Lovold, the infectious energy of this quintet was apparent even from the first riffs, if not the bobbing heads of Ryan McMillan (guitar/vocals), Jorge Raasch (keys), Derek Jackson (drums) and Tony Najm (bass). Ranging in influence from indie-pop to brit-rock, their songs often feature dueling guitar parts with consistent bass/drum backing. In fact, despite being planted behind walls of sound, The Alarmists put the brilliance of uniform drum/bass downbeats on display and made sure that everyone knew when to tap their feet. Songs like “Light a Smoke,” which features an eerie synth loop, prove a strong backbone goes a long way to making a song interesting. The set also featured soon-to-be-released songs like “Rhyme & Reason” and “You’re Right” – available only in mp3 form. While the subtlety and (relative) nuance of some of their songs from The Ghost and the Hired Gun was lost somewhere around volume 11, the crafty lyrics and sheer exuberance made The Alarmists hard to tune out.
--Desiree Weber

Posted by Jeff Shaw at February 18, 2008 5:47 AM | Comments (0)

 

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