There a lot of lecture halls at Drexel, and the vast majority are sub-par. Disque 108 has less legroom than United Economy. Bossone Auditorium has writing surface flip-outs the size of a postage stamp. Curtis 341 and 342 have a climate-control system repurposed from the tropical bird exhibit at the Philadelphia Zoo.

But amongst all our lecture halls, one stands out: Curtis 231. Not only is it an incredible accomplishment in mediocrity, it is unique in that it is also a genuine danger to life and limb.

First and foremost, Curtis 231 is not in Curtis Hall, it is in Randell Hall. Some bizarre partitioning in that area has left the firewall conspicuously and quite possibly illegally broken, and the interior decor would suggest it is Curtis Hall, but a cursory glance at a floorplan reveals the obvious: It’s in Randell.

All right, so it’s signed wrong, what else? Well there’s mediocre climate control, half-baked design (Risers? Really?) and exposed ducting and water pipes, really just about the standard you expect from a room in the buildings attached to Main. What’s unique about this one? Movable desks. Many of them.

So everyone sits wherever they want and no defined aisles or rows are created. More than once I have sat down in a seat, moved slightly, and it has tumbled off of one of the risers. Even more frequently than that, I’ve entered Curtis 231, seen dozens of free seats, but they were behind an impenetrable wall of recently-moved and occupied desks and admitted defeat and left.

I’d like to point out that this is also a genuine fire hazard. Should a crowded Curtis 231 have to be evacuated during an emergency, especially one that happens in or near the room (exploding light fixture, Bakken crude oil train derails and catches fire on the very-close-by West Philadelphia Elevated, whatever) there will be a confused stampede and dozens of deaths from trampling and being gored on upturned desks. I would be surprised if any more than the first “row” (if you could call it that) get out of there alive and unscathed.

I call upon students: boycott Curtis 231. Lecture attendance grades aren’t worth your life. The professor is probably going to put the slides online anyway.
If you do absolutely have to go into Curtis 231, probably for an exam, come prepared. Wake up (and shake off the cold) with an Irish Coffee.

Ingredients:

2 ounces Jameson Irish Whiskey or, if you have it, Tullamore Dew
8 ounces hot coffee. (or however much fills the glass almost to the top.)
1 teaspoon sugar (essential!)
1.5 ounces heavy cream (or, for the aggressive version, Bailey’s)

Directions:

Heat coffee and whiskey and add sugar. (The sugar is essential or the cream will not layer properly.) Stir, then add cream slowly to form a layer. Serve hot, and drink through a straw in an Irish coffee glass, or failing that, a thick universal wine glass.

Or, if you’re on your way to the exam already, a Wawa 12-ounce coffee cup will do nicely.

The post The hazards of Curtis 231 appeared first on The Triangle.

Already fall is upon us. As the editor-in-chief of The Triangle for the fall and winter terms, I would like to welcome professors, staff, and upperclassmen back to Drexel. As for the incoming freshmen, you did it, you came to Drexel University. Maybe it was for the co-op program. Maybe it was for the dynamic and vibrant city. Maybe you came here because you heard Drexel was an up-and-coming modern kind of go-getter school, or you read in the US News and World Report that Drexel is ranked number whatever in the “Schools that are good or something” list. Whatever your reason is for coming to Drexel, you’re here and we’re happy to have you.

Drexel is a thriving university you should be proud of attending. We had a professor make it into the Guinness Book of World Record. Another discovered one of the largest dinosaurs known. We’re actively involved in bettering the surrounding neighborhoods, and there are even classes that let you drink beer and wine for real course credit!

There are hundreds of student organizations to join, and if you can’t find what you’re looking for, you have the option to start your own organization. There are no excuses not to be active on campus, whether it’s being a member of an event planning committee or writing articles for The Triangle. Get involved in something that you enjoy and make incredible friends along the way.

Throughout your life I’m sure people have spoken frequently about something called the “Real World.” Precise interpretations vary, but the Real World is generally implied to be some higher plane of existence that through intense academic study you will one day rise to and make your fortune.

This theme is consistent: In middle school, they told you, “They won’t tolerate this kind of behavior in high school!” In high school, “They won’t tolerate this kind of work in college!” And, in other colleges, “You can’t expect to get a job in the Real World with grades
like this!”

The path was clear and well-defined: maintain a high GPA, learn all you can, join an honor society, get into a high-ranking college, and you too can graduate with Latin honors, and then ascend to the Real World. But we all know it takes more than a decent college transcript and diploma to get your dream job.

Which is why you chose a different path. You came to Drexel. The campus is a construction site. The food is mediocre. The classes and ten-week terms are hard. But the opportunities for professional advancement and career development are endless; this is why you’re at Drexel.

You will graduate with one year and six months of experience in your field of choice, probably paid, which very few people outside of Drexel can claim. You can learn what you like and dislike about your field before you earn your degree, and learn what working environments you like and dislike.

You will make connections with important people in your industry. You will learn to write a resume, handle a job interview, and behave professionally in a professional environment with other professionals. Even if you are not in a co-op program, the experiences and opportunities you will find at Drexel are still invaluable to your future career.

That being said, you’re here for four or five years. Make the most of your education.

Also, welcome to Philadelphia. If you’re new to the area, here is a quick guide to how to survive the city: the best cheesesteak is at John’s Roast Pork at the corner of Snyder and Weccacoe avenues. Get it with sharp provolone and onions. Your instincts are correct: Cheez Whiz is in fact
disgusting.

Don’t say “thing,” use instead “jawn.” Don’t say “sub” or “grinder” or “po’boy,” use instead “hoagie.” It’s pronounced “Pash-yunk” not “Passy-unk,” and “wooder” not “water.” If you want to go to a place, biking is the fastest way to get there, unless it’s next to a subway and so is your originating point. Sneakers strung over a telephone wire does not mark gang territory or indicate that someone was killed in that area, as your parents have no doubt read. It instead is simply what you do with worn-out sneakers.

University City is, on the whole, very safe, even after dark. The same cannot be said about the area around Temple University, especially after dark. If you have business there, have a safe route home planned out ahead of time.

Here is an even quicker guide to University City: the most important building is at the southwest corner of 36th and Chestnut streets. It contains the Wawa. If you’re not from the area, Wawa is like a cleaner 7-Eleven with a deli and better coffee. The second-most important building is at 33rd and Chestnut Streets; MacAlister Hall contains the offices of The Triangle, in room 3010. Come to our first meeting on Monday, Sept. 22 at 6:30 p.m. and get involved!

Justin Roczniak is the op-ed editor of The Triangle. He can be contacted at justin.roczniak@thetriangle.org.

The post Welcome to Drexel, Philadelphia and UCity appeared first on The Triangle.

As the days roll on and the details slowly emerge in the wake of the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by on-duty police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, it is important that we don’t lose sight of the issue at the root of recent events.

Let’s start with a couple of facts: Michael Brown, 18, was unarmed when he was shot and killed by Wilson, and Brown was shot six times in total — including a fatal shot to the top of his head. The remaining information surrounding the events of Aug. 9 are significantly less clear.

Some of the witnesses say Brown was shot after a verbal altercation with his hands up in a sign of surrender, while others say he was shot after attacking the officer and reaching for his gun. Brown purportedly shoved the officer back in his patrol car after the officer got out to insist he and a friend get out of the street. Brown’s friend, Dorian Johnson, 22, said the officer pulled his car so close to them and opened the door so aggressively that it rebounded off them and knocked the officer back into his car.

The media covered the situation as Ferguson began to look more like a war zone in the developing world than a suburb in the American heartland. To some, the kneejerk reaction to protest might seem strange. For the record, it is now fairly well-established that the protests organized by Ferguson residents during the day are largely peaceful, while arrest records show that the riots and looting that are happening at night are sometimes instigated by people from outside the Ferguson-St. Louis area, some from places as far as New York and California.

The coverage of the violent clashes between police and protesters has slightly overshadowed an important conversation about race and police brutality in America. When the police department released surveillance footage that allegedly shows Michael Brown stealing cigars from a convenience store not long before his death, the department was highly and rightly criticized for releasing it, and the decision to do so was described as character assassination.

When it was later made clear that Wilson was not aware of the theft before he stopped the young men, it became clear that this unsolicited and unrelated information was an effort to paint a picture. Every aspect of the coverage of this story has painted a picture, and so far that picture has been a stereotype.

It was only after the social media collective colloquially dubbed “Black Twitter” called media outlets on their portrayal of Brown that anyone addressed the use of suggestive photographs pulled from social media sites to paint images of young black men as thugs, regardless of the reality of their lives. The use of images that include obscure hand gestures — meant to elude to gang connections whether real or not — neglects the equally accessible images of black high school and college graduates, volunteers and military servicemen.

You might be inclined to ask, “Why fault the news outlets for using the materials teens make available?” That question is like the tail of the comet as it passes the sun: it’s obvious, but not the source of the true curiosity. Why, in 2014, are young black men and women still subject to a completely different set of rules than those set down for their white counterparts?

Teenagers are stupid, subject to capricious impulses, and still developing the ability to make rational judgments. There’s a reason that students are inundated with reminders to clean up their social media accounts before applying for jobs and internships. Those messages are not targeted to black students because it is a truth universally accepted that teenagers will put themselves at risk for all kinds of exposure.

Yet, somehow, when a young white man from the suburbs goes on a shooting rampage in an elementary school or a suburban movie theater, it’s a tragic tale of mental illness. When an unarmed teenager is killed by a white man, it’s an example of hyper-aggressive thug culture. Who had the gun? It is a well-documented fact that a mentally ill white man with a gun has significantly more agency in American culture than a black kid with a bag of Skittles or a pocketful of cigars. Especially in death, young black men are denied the most basic form of respect: the chance to speak for themselves.

After killing six people and then himself, Elliot Rodger’s hate-fueled misogynistic rant was replayed constantly. The man that video manifesto depicted was angry, profane and violently sexist. It was not the image of a loving or troubled little boy, but it was the image he wanted the world to see. Elliot Rodger got the chance to tell the world who he was. Why doesn’t Michael Brown get the same chance?

We still don’t know the full story of what happened that afternoon in Missouri, and yet we continue to make judgments based on incomplete information. We continue to extrapolate from the other stories of black thugs disrespecting authority that the media spoon-feeds us forgetting that at the heart of this story is an 18-year-old, who was days away from starting college.

We forget that an unarmed person was shot dead, with six holes in his body. Six bullets? We forget that cops are trying to protect the American public from itself in the wake of a population that doesn’t trust them, and we forget that mistrust was well earned. Not all cops are going to abuse their power, but that allowance has to go both ways: not all black men are going to fight.

Brionne Powell is a sophomore political science major at Drexel University. She can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

The post Post-mortem persecution appeared first on The Triangle.

New Orleans is typically framed as a city of massive inequality, inadequate natural disaster preparedness, deep-seated institutional racism, obesity and low property values. Generally, a lot of people think it shouldn’t exist. “Why build a city below sea level?” they ask. “A single hurricane could undo all our progress in days,” they say, along with, “FEMA death trailers killed millions! Wake up sheeple and Google Ron Paul 2016!”

These people are really just bitter, though, because New Orleans actually has everything figured out, and they just don’t want to acknowledge it. You can drink on the street legally, for instance. People understand what spicy food is — some if it is even seafood! Unlike in Philadelphia, their trolleys run in the median, so they don’t block the whole street. And somehow, on the day of Mardi Gras, if you give girls beads, they show you their boobs. (Granted, this is a huge devaluation from the time when beads would buy you the whole island of Manhattan.) New Orleans, in short, is one cool place.

New Orleans’ own Abita Brewing Co. isn’t terribly well known north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Its root beers are available at Beck’s Cajun Cafe (located conveniently at both 30th Street Station and Reading Terminal Market), but it wasn’t until recently that I found out they made regular beer as well as root beer. So I picked up a bottle of Abita Turbodog, an English brown ale, at The Corner Foodery on 17th and Sansom for something like $3 a bottle.

Brown ales are typified by their brown color. It’s not one of the more complicated styles. Some of the more popular examples include Newcastle Brown Ale, Newcastle Brown Ale and Newcastle Brown Ale.

Poured into a pint glass, you can see that it’s very dark brown in color, almost black. Notes of chocolate and toffee are present in the aroma and in the taste too. There’s also a pleasant toasty flavor, typical of the English brown ale style. Make no mistake, this is a solid brown ale. It’s about 5.6 percent ABV, slightly higher than a typical brown ale, but definitely still sessionable. I could have easily had three more.

What exactly makes Turbodog “turbo,” though, is beyond me. In fact, I would say that its main defining quality is that it is better than Newcastle Brown Ale. However, that isn’t saying much, since Newcastle Brown Ale is the Bono of beers: very popular, not very challenging or interesting (or flavorful), and yet, for some reason, you just keep coming back for more each time a new album is released. (How albums translate to brewing in this metaphor is left as an exercise to the reader.)

That being said, the brown ale is not a well-loved or terribly popular beer style. We have Indian pale ales, barleywines, pale ales, stouts, imperial stouts, porters and whatnot out the wazoo these days, but the humble brown ale is seldom even thought of as a distinct style, let alone included in microbreweries’ beer portfolios. This chocolaty, toffee-like beer really is in that regard unique, and for an English session beer like itself to come out of predominately French and generally hard-partying New Orleans is, well, unexpected. Turbodog is a beer in an uncommon style which is objectively better than its mass-market rival, and that’s enough with so few of them on the market.

The post Abita Brewing Co. offers alternative to Newcastle appeared first on The Triangle.

The Israel Defense Forces launched Operation Protective Edge against Hamas with the mission to weaken the terrorist group’s ability to attack Israeli citizens July 8. In the three weeks since the operation began, I have heard and read numerous reports of Israel’s inhumane actions against the Palestinians and its “disproportionate” response to Hamas’ rocket attacks. This leaves me wondering if people around the world, Americans in particular, know the difference between Hamas and Palestinians.

Hamas is a terrorist organization. It is recognized as such by the United States, Canada and the European Union. After Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2007 with the hope of exchanging land for peace, Hamas gained control and has been firing rockets at Israel ever since. The Palestinians are the innocent civilians living in poverty at the hands of Hamas. Israel is at war with Hamas — not with the Palestinians.
The misconception that Israel responds with force disproportional to Hamas’ attacks is widely thrown around by the media. In an interview with CNN in 2009, then-New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg summarized the situation perfectly:

“Proportionalism is for theoreticians. The real word is governments have a responsibility to protect their citizens with everything they have. … There’s no such thing as proportional response to terrorism.”

The loss of life on both sides is horrific. But it is clear that both sides are handling the deaths very differently. The conflict was sparked in part by the abduction and murder of three Israeli teenagers by Palestinian extremists, and by the revenge murder of a Palestinian teenager by Israeli citizens. Israel condemned the murder of the Palestinian teen and has since arrested three Israelis as suspects. Hamas publicly praised the abductors of the Israeli teens.

In a war in which Hamas is taking no precautions to protect Palestinians, Israel is taking many. Before every aerial attack, the IDF drops leaflets over civilian homes, warning them to leave the area. In addition to this method, the IDF drops empty shells on the rooftops (roof knocking) of targeted buildings and calls homes in target zones, warning residents to leave.

Hamas has released public messages telling citizens to remain in their homes despite these warnings. They fire rockets at Israel from cemeteries, schools, hospitals, playgrounds, homes and mosques with the explicit intent of preventing the IDF from attacking them. Hamas released a statement saying they are “committed to drown Israel in Gaza Strip mud.” These are the terrorists responsible for “governing” the Palestinian Gaza residents.

To put Israel’s precautionary measures into perspective, at the time of the July 17 Malaysia Airlines disaster in Ukraine, more souls were lost in the crash alone than were lost on both sides in the entirety of Operation Protective Edge.

Hamas has shown no desire for de-escalation either. On July 15, Israel stopped all air strikes for six hours, in accordance with an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire. Hamas refused the deal, and fired 50 more rockets at Israel. On July 17, Israel agreed to a United Nations humanitarian window so aid could be brought to Gazans. Rockets continued to be fired into Israel — allegedly by Hamas. On July 20, during a temporary ceasefire for Red Cross efforts in the northwest border town of Shuja’iya, IDF soldiers continued to come under attack. On July 26, Israel agreed to a Hamas-proposed humanitarian window. When Israel wanted to extend it, Hamas resumed attacking.

As the total count of Hamas rockets fired at Israel climbs to nearly 2,700 since the start of the conflict, Israel is doing what Hamas is failing to do — protecting civilians. Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system has successfully thwarted a significant number of the rockets fired from Gaza. And although Hamas has not killed as many Israelis due to the Iron Dome system, they have still attempted to kill civilians 2,700 times. And by the way, more than 200 Hamas rockets fired at Israel have actually landed in Gaza.

Furthermore, in the past three weeks, Israel has delivered more than 1,000 trucks with food, fuel and medical supplies to Palestinian civilians. The IDF also set up a field hospital at the Erez border crossing to treat wounded Palestinians.

Now the operation has shifted to destroying Hamas’ terror tunnels. They are used for smuggling weapons and terrorists across Gaza’s borders. Despite eliminating more than 250 terrorists and thousands of terror sites, the IDF will not be able to successfully prevent further attacks without ending this threat to its borders.

Thirty-two terror tunnels have been discovered so far. At an approximate cost of $3 million to build each tunnel, Hamas has spent an estimated $96 million on this terrorist infrastructure. This is money that should have been used to buy supplies and machines to build public infrastructure such as roads and parks or protective bomb shelters. Rather than building up Gaza, Hamas has focused all of its resources on destroying Israel.

This corruption has marked Hamas even before its command began seven years ago. While its officials are living luxurious lives, the unemployment rate in Gaza is 41 percent. Khaled Mashal, the Hamas leader, has been living in a Qatar hotel during the fighting. Using the border restrictions to its advantage, Hamas overcharges for basic goods smuggled into Gaza. Even Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said in 2012 that “800 millionaires and 1,600 near-millionaires control the tunnels at the expense of both Egyptian and Palestinian national interests.” Gazans will always live in poverty while Hamas continues to rule.

So, during the next news report you hear criticizing Israel for disregarding human life, remember all that Israel does to protect innocent people — and all that Hamas does not. Remember that the purpose of this operation is to root out the evil that has terrorized the area for the majority of the past decade.

I return to Bloomberg’s interview and highlight an example he gave to bring the conflict home to Americans:

“If you’re in your apartment, and an emotionally disturbed person is banging on the door screaming, ‘I’m going to come through this door and kill you,’ do you want [the New York Police Department] to respond with one police officer, which is proportional, or with all the resources at our command?”

I choose the latter.

Josh Dienstman is a biomedical engineering major at Drexel University. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

The post Hamas is to blame, not Israel appeared first on The Triangle.

The most recent trend in craft brewing is the so-called “session” beer. These are beers you can kick back four or five of in an evening and not even feel it. Trendy breweries across the country are turning out 3.4 percent ABV ordinary bitters, 3.8 percent Berliner weisses, 2.4 percent traditional saisons, and 3.7 percent Irish dry stouts.

Trendy breweries say that craft beer is something that should be enjoyed over a whole evening and the flavor should take precedence over the alcohol. These light-on-alcohol but (ostensibly) heavy-on-flavor beers are becoming very popular with hip young people who buy the latest in trendy craft beer.

Weyerbacher Brewing Co. is not a trendy brewery.

Weyerbacher’s Double Simcoe Indian pale ale clocks in at 9 percent. Their “Tiny” imperial stout is 11.8 percent. Their smallest year-round brew is the Verboten Belgian pale ale, at 5.9 percent, which is still .9 percent bigger than any standard pale ale. But their flagship, the beer that they’re known best for, is the Blithering Idiot barleywine.

Barleywines are big beers. They were invented in England in the 18th century when it became very difficult to import wine from France on account of an 18th century rivalry (and occasional war) between the two countries at the time. (Historians usually refer to this as the “Second Hundred Years’ War”, but that’s a lot of syllables right there, so let’s avoid saying that.)

These beers were brewed to the strength of wine, because the aristocracy did not have time to drink session beers, what with their busy leisure schedule. Watered-down versions of this same style became what we now call the “bitter,” which we hear so much about from Lord of the Doctor-Sherlock-Harry-Who-Potter-Torchwood-Father-Ted-Rings and other imported television. Bitters can range from 6 percent for an “extra special” bitter to 3.4 percent for an “ordinary” bitter.

Blithering Idiot, though, is not watered down. It is a full-fledged barleywine, which will knock you off your feet and off a third floor balcony into speeding traffic with its 11.1 percent ABV.

Purchased from Local 44 bottle shop; I think it was four dollars per 12-ounce bottle. It had sat in my fridge for two months, but with a beer this big, who cares? Poured into a tulip glass, about five minutes after a four-mile bike ride on one of the hottest days of the year. (Kids, bicycle commuting is overrated.)

The glass had a deep copper hue, almost red. Very little head initially, but quickly developed into a full, rich foam which threatened to overflow the glass. With a slightly thick mouthfeel, this is a malt-bomb with heavy notes of caramel and especially of booze. The aroma is also pretty well-dominated by booze, but not in an unpleasant way.

The booze flavor becomes more pronounced as the beer warms, as does the caramel, resulting in an almost rummy taste. It’s heavy, too. You will spend at least an hour on a glass, so bring a book. (Ideally something easy to read, like “Thomas the Tank Engine” or “Winnie the Pooh” or the USA Today.)

Verdict? This is a solid barleywine, one by which others may be judged.

Now, some of you may be asking, “Justin, why did you review Blithering Idiot? Matt Hartshorn reviewed it already in 2012, and again in 2013!” Well, I’ll tell you the reason. I had a deadline to meet, and there was this and Yuengling in my fridge. And you know what? It’s just that good. This beer can stand in for three ordinary beers. Go get one today.

The post Weyerbacher Brewing Co. makes a hearty barleywine appeared first on The Triangle.

Have you ever wanted to own your own country? When I was 12, it was my goal to eventually build an enclosed ecosystem inside of a dome in Antarctica and build a model society. Why Antarctica? The isolated, inhospitable and legally ill-defined territory made it the perfect site for someone looking to establish themselves without much international politicking.

While I have long since abandoned my dream, an Abingdon, Va., man named Jeremiah Heaton has taken up the cause. He recently appeared in such esteemed papers as The Washington Post and The Daily Telegraph for planting a flag in the desert expanse between Egypt and Sudan. Like much of the Egyptian-Sudanese border, the region is arid, sparsely populated and politically insignificant to either government, which — by Heaton’s reckoning — gives him every right to lay claim to it.

The story behind Heaton’s land grab is touching; he promised his daughter that she could be a real princess and, not wanting to renege on his promise, claimed a territory over which to declare himself king. While this makes for a pleasant dinner conversation, the real-world implications of his ambitions are startling.

Rather than even attempting to purchase the territory, Heaton argues that its classification as “terra nullius” (no state is asserting a legitimate claim to it) means that it is his for the taking. He further points out that the act of planting a flag in the soil and claiming the land is legitimate and has been used for thousands of years.

To be a bit more accurate, this method of claiming land has been legitimated for thousands of years, most recently by rich, white men. Heaton claims that his land grab was an act of love for his daughter, Emily, to fulfill her desire to be a princess. While there is no doubt that Heaton loves his own child, his actions betray a stunning lack of interest, concern and respect for the residents of the land he’s claiming. While the nomadic Bedouin tribes that reside in his new “kingdom” do not identify with any nation-state or hold formal land deeds to their grazing grounds, they are nonetheless affected by Heaton’s actions.

For people like Jeremiah Heaton, “colonialism” is an ugly word used to describe the actions of their ancestors as they ravaged the continents of Africa, Asia and the Americas. It is a systematic, large-scale assault on native peoples with the sole intent of making a fast buck. Therefore (obviously), Heaton is not a colonialist because he’s only claiming a small territory out of love.

The reality of the situation is that for many early colonists (the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay, the Spanish missions across Central and South America, the Happy Valley settlement in Kenya), love, enlightenment and peace were the bywords of white invasion. The idea that these emotions could only be satisfied by entering and settling foreign lands rather than in their own homes fueled colonial endeavors well into the 20th century.

It is truly unfortunate that Heaton cannot understand why keeping a promise to his daughter presents such a grave violation of the rights of the Bedouin people. But fortunately for them, bureaucracy will prevail. Though he did not pay for the land he has claimed, Heaton did state that he will seek recognition from Egypt, Sudan, and eventually the African Union and the United Nations. Given both international bodies’ history of addressing colonialism, it is unlikely they will be sympathetic to a white man from Virginia who “just loves his daughter.”

The post The new colonialism appeared first on The Triangle.

It was a dull summer weekend. The living room was unbelievably hot, the roof deck scalded your feet the moment you set foot on it and the daytime television was best left unmentioned. My roommates and I went for our standby channel-of-last-resort, Tango Traffic Philadelphia, to watch the seven-hour Oslo-Bergen railway YouTube video. Then my roommate, Mel, asked, “You want to go to Delaware?” The rest is history.

So we went to Delaware from Pennsylvania to pick up beer made in New Jersey. The beer I am reviewing tonight is Exit 4, from Flying Fish Brewing.

Exit 4 (New Jerseyish for “region”) is brewed in Cherry Hill Township (New Jerseyish for “town”) in Burlington County (New Jerseyish for “Bucks County, but with a functioning education system”), N.J. It is a Belgian tripel, brewed in America, which, if you were following the World Cup, should leave you with mixed emotions. It also weighs in at 9.5 percent ABV.

Flying Fish, of course, is the local brewery that likes to keep its distance. Like Victory’s weird half-brother, it hangs out in the New Jersey suburbs, producing excellent beers that simply go unnoticed because let’s face it, it’s (ugh) New Jersey. Also, Flying Fish is easy to confuse with Dogfish, a Delaware brewery, and Bonefish, a Florida-based national chain restaurant. Despite this, its beers are fairly easy to find on tap around the Philadelphia region.

Today’s beer, Exit 4, is named for Exit 4 of the New Jersey Turnpike, one of the great achievements of New Jersey-kind and one of the “Seven Wonders” of New Jersey, up there with the Linden Cogeneration Plant, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Rapid Transit, and Atlantic City.

Alright, let’s get to the review. Purchased at Total Wine, Claymont, Del. (Remember kids, transporting liquor across state lines is illegal.) Poured into a tulip glass, the color was a deep gold, hazy at first but cleared rapidly. The smell was incredible: what hits you first is the hop aroma, very atypical for a Belgian-style beer. It’s not just hoppy, it’s hoppy in a very peculiarly American way. Citrus notes abound. The taste was very similar, but with a faint but noticeable alcohol taste. At 9.5 percent, I would expect so. I drank most of it on the deck with the roommates on a Monday night, talking about effective 401(k) and individual retirement account strategies, because we are old people.

I noticed, as the glass slowly drained, that I was giving notably worse investment advice. By the time I was halfway through, I said, “Apple stock just split 6-for-1, invest today!” though they had actually split 7-for-1, and a full month earlier. Five sips later: “Take your money out of Comcast, antitrust law will get them someday!” though that’s specious at best and straight-up naive at worst. By the end of the night I was raving, “Invest in gold today!” and thank God that was rock-bottom, or I would have started extolling the virtues of bitcoins.

Clearly, this is an effective beer.

I bought it from the “build your own six-pack” section of Total Wine. I do not believe that it is sold in cases at University City Beverage, so those seeking an efficient beer should stick with malt liquor or its craft beer cousin and our good local friend, Golden Monkey. However, I for one, as a former Golden Monkey fan, shall be seeking out Exit 4 at all future times and beer distributors, because it quite simply blows the Victory Brewing option out of the water. Golden Monkey simply cannot compare with this uniquely American Belgian tripel.

Exit 4 is a hoppy, dense and heavy Belgian tripel with a noticeable American flair. To blend two nations’ styles doesn’t make sense and is completely irrational, and the product is beautiful and intoxicating. Enjoy one today, but please be responsible, and don’t log on to E-Trade while you are doing so.

The post Flying Fish Brewing’s Exit 4 is a beer of contradictions appeared first on The Triangle.

The case said “Tastes Good” on the side. I couldn’t let a claim like that go untested, so I bought the last case of Yuengling Bock Beer from University City Beverage.

Yuengling Bock is brewed in the traditional German bock style. In general, bocks are dark, malty and sweet beers that aren’t highly hopped. Bocks run the gamut for alcohol by volume, from the 5 percent maibock, which is a nice, friendly springtime beer, to the freeze-distilled, 14 percent ABV eisbock, which was invented by Bavarian monks after they realized their religious vows didn’t expressly forbid them from getting wasted.

Yuengling, of course, makes the lager we all know and love. It has been there as long as anyone can remember, on tap at local bars and restaurants, proudly categorized as “domestic” next to Miller Light and Budweiser. It’s approachable, affordable, and American. They enjoy strong sales amongst all demographics: hipsters, western Pennsylvania coal miners, rich Republicans who own boats, Ivy League professors, the homeless, members of the clergy, and it’s even available in 40s for the high school kids!

Having what is objectively the best domestic macrobrew on the market is apparently not good enough for them, though, and they’ve made their entry into the craft beer market with this new(ish) seasonal bock, the Summer Wheat beer (review coming soon), and the Oktoberfest beer (review coming whenever that beer comes out).

The Bock went out of production sometime in the 1970s, and was brought back in 2010 so that Yuengling could pretend to be a trendy new craft brewery for their 180th anniversary. The labeling is based on packaging from 1941.

“Shut up and talk about the beer!” I hear you say. Fine.

Poured into a pint glass from a brown bottle, because someone at Yuengling finally realized green bottles are a stupid idea.

What hits you first is that it tastes a lot like Yuengling Lager. It also smells a lot like Yuengling Lager. And it’s only slightly darker than Yuengling Lager.

I decided that, for scientific purposes, I needed a side-by-side comparison, so I poured a glass of lager (pint glass, poured a copper color, from a can because it was cheaper than a bottle) and compared the taste. By then I had finished the first glass of bock, so I poured a second glass to make sure I could do a proper comparison. Then I looked in my fridge and realized that the beer collection was now uneven, so I had another lager to balance it out, for aesthetic purposes.

Indeed, once you’re three beers in, they do taste very similar. So does any other malt-based beverage with bubbles, in fact. I will say though, that the bock is slightly more malt-forward, and is definitely three or four shades darker. I will also say that it is the most drinkable bock I have had — you could easily throw back three or four of these on a lazy afternoon and not really notice. It doesn’t scream “malt!” in your face like a heavy German bock would, it’s much more subtly sweet.

This isn’t a beer that you use to show off how much more cultured you are for enjoying your expensive, imported, not-labeled-in-English, I-had-to-go-to-Delaware-to-find-this, monks-have-brewed-it-the-same-way-for-800-years, pretentious European beer. This is a beer that you buy because you said “Hey, I want a nice sipping beer that’s like Yuengling Lager, but isn’t Yuengling Lager, because I already have 12 cases of that sitting in my fridge.” My only real gripe about it is that it doesn’t come in cans, which are still the future of beer packaging. Otherwise, it is a solid, good-time drinking beer.

Price is probably like 25 bucks a case at University City Beverage or something; I didn’t check. I also bought the last case there so you probably should look somewhere else for it. Or wait until next year, because they’ve already moved on to making the Summer Wheat.

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Recently, I read an enlightening Time article about Annette Bosworth, a woman running for South Dakota’s Republican nomination in the upcoming Senate election. While Bosworth would not be the first female senator from South Dakota (South Dakotans elected their first female senator in 1938), her campaign is unique for another reason.

In a recent press conference, Bosworth employed local artists to decorate her conference room with the abusive, disrespectful and misogynistic language used against her on the Internet. Although attacking women online is all too common in this day and age, what struck me about Bosworth’s case is that her attackers were primarily Democrats.

Democrats have long run on a platform of gender equality and, more recently, feminism. With prominent feminists speaking out against hateful language, street harassment and treating female politicians with the same respect as their male counterparts, Bosworth reveals a glaring hypocrisy in the American leftwing ideology. For mainstream feminists in the U.S., feminism has long operated as a club.

To be a feminist, a woman needed to do or be certain things (white, heterosexual, middle class, non-Muslim, etc.). However, feminism has also operated as a club to beat down competing notions of gender equality. It is fair to characterize the Republican Party as being bad with women. What is not fair is to brand all women in the Republican Party as being bad people. And yet, Bosworth reminds us that because of her socioeconomic views, her womanhood is totally fair game for attack.

Why does this matter? Why should be we worried about Republican women, who are obviously choosing to be part of a party that does not like them? Republican women have made strides in places and policies where Democrats have failed. The only female governors of Alaska, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah were Republicans. In fact, of the 35 women to ever be state governors, 15 were Republican. And it was a Republican woman — Sen. Margaret Chase Smith, Maine — who dared defy Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis., in her “Declaration of Conscience” address.

For me, Chase Smith embodied many of the values that stand at the forefront of modern feminist ideas. Her Declaration of Conscience roundly denounced McCarthy’s rabid search for Communists in the U.S. by arguing that holding an unpopular belief was a constitutional right. She fought for the freedom of independent thought, an idea that seems almost absent from modern feminists’ politics. Feminism endorses “the right to choose.” That is, the right to choose whether to seek an abortion or birth control. But what about the right to choose to wear a hijab? Or the right to choose to be a housewife? Or — God forbid — the right to enter into an arranged marriage?

Women who engage in these activities are not considered “feminist” by the women who currently dictate mainstream feminism in the U.S., just as Betty Friedan did not consider working-class black women as feminists. Like any large ideology, feminism becomes an endorsement of the preferences of the top of the feminist food chain, at the detriment of those women further down the line.

So what is feminism really about? What should it stand for? Feminism is about empowering women. It’s about removing the inherent, gender-based biases in our legal system, our economy, and our language at large. It’s about guaranteeing that women can do or be whatever they choose. As such, the Democratic Party has supported various laws over time to accomplish this goal, like no-fault divorce, pay equality, strengthened sexual harassment laws, increased access to abortion, etc. While it is true that there are some Republicans who do not support these values, Republican women tend to be more moderate than their male counterparts. This is a major reason that they struggle to get elected in an increasingly extremist Republican primary climate.

If feminists want to support strong, independent women achieving their goals, then they need to decide what those “goals” should be. By tying “women’s rights” to the Democratic Party platform, feminists are cutting off a vital and growing group of women from realizing their own aspirations.

Let me be crystal clear: the Republican Party of the United States has a proven record of problems with women. Whether it’s former Missouri Rep. Todd Akin’s, “legitimate rape” comments, or women like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann flaunting their ultra-conservative credentials, the American public does not positively associate women with the Republican Party. However, using a few bad examples to justify a stereotype is still stereotyping.

Making a blanket accusation that women who identify as “Republican” are inherently antifeminist is, in itself, a form of discrimination. If we are truly committed to normalizing women’s roles in all aspects of our society, then we need to stop slut-shaming them for voting conservative. We need to support women in the Republican Party, because they (and only they) can make the party friendly to women. A truly woman-affirming ideology does not discriminate on the basis of race, or class, or political orientation. If we want to call ourselves “feminists,” it’s time we start acting like it.

Richard Furstein is a senior anthropology major at Drexel University. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

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