11/21/11 Reading

The article about the Portland City Hall initiative highlights a survey conducted by hired company was part of a campaign to raise awareness about recycling and waste management. The telephone survey asked residents of Portland if they rented a room in their house to others, tried to repair broken items instead of replacing them, using cloth napkins instead of paper ones, shared tools with others instead of buying brand new ones, and shopped at second hand stores. While these questions seem to bounce around to many different subjects, they all focus on the ability to reuse or use recycled materials, and conserving energy. I believe that this survey did a very good job of highlighting many different kinds that ordinary citizens reduce, reuse, and recycle and really got people about their habits in order to save their environment.

Life's Pretty Good :)

To Whom It May Concern,
      While everyone is writing angry letters, mine is going to be fairly pleasant. I had been stressing out about my CH 101 test today, but that's over with so I have some sort of feeling of relief. Now I can concentrate on whether I want to do Winter Guard next semester or not. I've always wanted to do it, but didn't have the time/money in high school and now I'm fairly excited that I still have the opportunity to do it. And the best part is that it may even count as a PE credit!
       I'm also fairly excited for this weekend because I get to spend time with my family. My cousin is getting married on Saturday, so my dad is picking me up Friday afternoon to spend a whole two and a half days with them, including my dad's birthday (for which I got him and NC State baseball hat :) ). The only things that would make this weekend perfect would be a minimal amount of English homework and that NC State will destroy Boston College in football on Saturday!!
Sincerely,
Kaitlyn

"Education and the Proliferation of the New (Old) Concepts" Response

In the article "Education and the Proliferation of the New (Old) Concepts," the author Paul Theobald points out that we need to make a better effort in educating our citizens to get the most out of the ideas of agrarianism, the commons, no-growth economics, and the maximum wage that can help solve the world's problems. Theobald discusses the need to educate the common people so better ideas can be introduced to society about fixing the world's problems.  When discussing agrarianism, Theobald shows that we need to return to an agrarian world view because can help reduce the heating of the atmosphere, but we need to educate more people about it so that this global warming can be stopped. The author also introduces the ideas of no-growth economics, which is the idea that society should maintain equal levels of population and economic activity, and maximum wage . However, to be able to put these into play, we must educate the public about it and its benefits to our society. The problem with our society is that our education system is too dependent on training the workforce than it is on education for the sake of knowledge and being a good citizen. However, if we slowly start teaching society about these concepts, we will be able to repair our world.  

"Mapping Everyday" Response

The article "Mapping Everyday: Gender, Blackness, and Discourse in Urban Context" by Dr. Taylor analyzes how college students interpret their surrounding environment with respect to race, gender, and the issues surrounding these topics. Through these studies, Dr. Taylor discusses how these students see violence immersed in the media and how they interpret in their own lives. It is sad to think of how these students and others are so young, yet even they can recognize violence portrayed in the media and think it is wrong, when other people just tend to ignore it. But by pointing out these problems with society now, maybe that young generation can change these standards of our community in the future.

180 Degrees South

180 South is a very visually intriguing documentary. It follows the story of Jeff Johnson and his friends as they travel to Patagonia to climb to the top of a peak as inspired by Yvon Chouinard. Along the way, they see beautiful scenes of nature, meet interesting people, and talk with them to better understand the importance of preserving nature like Patagonia. While watching this documentary, I was completely in awe of the beautiful landscapes and mountain peaks, and I couldn't help but be very sympathetic to Jeff's cause. During the movie, Jeff Johnson kept bringing up the ideas of society to change nature to make it better suit our needs and how we need to stop that from continuing and reverse the process. Just the thought of someone destroying something as beautiful as Patagonia and all of its wildlife is a complete travesty. From watching 180 South, I have a newfound respect for nature and the measures that people take to keep it intact. 

"Indigenous Resistance" Response

In the article "Indigenous Resistance," author Michael Marker evaluates the indigenous people of the Coastal Salish region between the border of Washington State, USA and British Colombia, Canada and the efforts for assimilation over the years. Marker discusses the issue of Salish youth in public schooling situations. In the public schools of Washington State and the church-run schools of British Colombia, these indigenous youth faced enormous amounts of bullying and racism. There were boarding schools that were established specifically for the Coastal Salish youth, but when they closed, they faced these severe bullying issues. Parents were afraid to put their children into these public school situations and searched for alternative to avoid the trauma of the bullying in school, such as the residential schools that were also for the Coast Salish children. With a racism comparable to that of the racism against African Americans, the Coast Salish families actually wanted their children to be separated from the bullying problems of the public and church-led school systems of the United States and Canada.

Response to Butterfly Lessons

One claim that Elizabeth Kolber makes in Butterfly Lessons is that because of all the pollution playing into global warming, it is uncertain how this will affect the species of the world and we cannot know what the consequences will be. In the article, Kolber quotes Chris Thomas for the University of York, "If we are in the situation where a quarter of the terrestrial species might be at risk of extinction from climate change-people often use the phrase of being like canaries-if we've changed our biological system to such an extent, then we do have to get worried about whether the services that are provided by natural ecosystems are going to continue."
Butterfly Lessons is directly related to my project on Germany's power supply because they are trying to scale down the carbon dioxide emissions so we can know more certainly the fate of our fellow species on Earth. This reversal of energy sources can save many of the species on our planet from extinction.