TECBlogging

The World's Worst Industrial Disaster - Precis

2010-05-04T04:25:00.000-07:00

The World's Worst Industrial Disaster is about the industrial disaster that happened in Bhopal in 1984. 15,000 people died by deadly methyl isocyanate gas from the manufacture of the pesticide, Sevin. The deadly gas affected not only human beings, but the water, the soil, the plants and animals, and even in the breast milk of nursing mothers. Today, a large number of people are still suffering from the effects of disaster.

This article reminds me of the industrial disaster that happened in Japan, in 1950s. In 1950s, Minamata disease happened. A factory dumped untreated water waste to river. Because of the water waste, the ocean and the fish around the area was polluted. The people who ate the poisoned fish fot the disease, and thousands of people died. Even now, a lot of people are still suffering from the effects.

Environmental pollution seems as if it happens in only certain places; however, we do not have a certain borderline for the environment as we do nations. That means environmental pollution could be spread through out world. For example, I read the news on internet which said that some pollution that is caused in China came to Japan by the westerlies, a kind of wind.

In all nations, pollution is often made in a process of development and industrialization. We have tried to make a lot of things to live easily; such as cars, factories, and so on, but we also have made various pollutions in exchange for our comfortableness.

"Pollution likely affects over a billion people around the world, with millions poisoned and killed each year. The World Health Organization estimates that 25 perscent of all deaths in the developing world are directly attributable to environmental factor" (Pollution Facts)

I believe that we are still making a lot of toxic things while producing produts even though a lot of people are experiencing scary diseases from pollution. Pollution affects not only one place, but the world. We must grapple with the problem of the pollution, and we have to find a solution as soon as possible.

What is EcoArt?

2010-05-04T00:08:00.000-07:00

What Is EcoArt?
Some notes on how environmental issues combine with art

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbMEemyS9aw Eco art parade 2009 (Eagle)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCjOjArzf7o Eco Art village Israel 2008-part2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGQgfyew-0c Eco Art Project by Nataly Cnyrim kimmel

What is Eco-Art?

Eco-art is a fresh movement led by artists seeking to explore, address and heal our relationship to Nature. Our work has an agenda, it is activist and can make a difference. We use the spectrum of artistic tools, media and materials to bridge community and often collaborate with non artist partners. Our work remediates polluted sites, creates awareness of regional and global crises, engages local citizens in community issues, protects fragile ecologies and encourages changed or improved behavior.

Eco-art is not the Land Art of Robert Smithson or Michael Heizer; the landscape is not a canvas to be bulldozed or cut up for an outside-of-the-gallery aesthetic. Eco-art is created in harmony with the ecosystem with sensitivity to its environmental impact, implications, choice of materials and outcomes. Eco-art is Ana Mendietta's Silueta Series, Mel Chin's Revival Field, Newton & Helen Meyer Harrison's Future Garden Part 1: The Endangered Meadows of Europe.

From the Greenmuseum's website, a definition that I agree with:

In a general sense, [Eco-art] is art that helps improve our relationship with the natural world. There is no definition set in stone. This living worldwide movement is growing and changing as you read this. Much environmental art is ephemeral, designed for a particular place (site-specific) and involves collaborations between artists and others such as scientists, educators and community groups.
See "A Brief Introduction" by Clive Adams of the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World.
Some environmental art:
Interprets nature, creating artworks that inform us about nature and its processes, or about environmental problems we face
Is concerned with environmental forces and materials, creating artworks affected or powered by wind, water, lightning, even earthquakes
Re-envisions our relationship to nature, proposing through their work new ways for us to co-exist with our environment
Reclaims and remediates damaged environments, restoring ecosystems in artistic and often aesthetic ways

An artist statement:

In our modern world advanced by technology, experience of the real is often mediated by the virtual: television, movies or email. With the globalization of economies, widespread and ferocious industrialization, rapidity of communication and commerce and the shift to hypo-real lifestyles, the very nature of our lives have changed. Work entails the exchange of information. Leisure is often sedentary and indoor. And agriculture is managed by a distant corporation. Nature has become an abstract concept; something that we see through a car window, passing at 55 mph.

Society has become disconnected from Nature—the very source of life. The ecosystem that we rely upon for our survival, we poison without second thought. As cultural disconnection from Nature continues to develop, it has become imperative that Nature in art and art in Nature provide a connection to the power and meaning of life. By re-instilling a respect for all life (which does not necessitate an avoidance of death, but an honoring of all life that we consume) and respect for the earth’s resources (which means using fully that which we take and not taking more than we need), we can reestablish a harmonious relationship to Nature and enjoy lives of greater comfort, peace and health.

It has been the responsibility of artists to mirror society, to challenge accepted thinking and to provide a critical voice. I intend works such as Nature Viewers, Found Poster Series and Nature: a Five Mile Drive, to challenge our relationship to Nature and its resources. I challenge us to take responsibility for our actions, regardless of comfort and convenience, because we must. In these works, Nature is the medium conceptually and physically. By creating art that places the body in a new, sensual relationship to the work, Eco-artists re-insert the body into Nature, seeking to reestablish Man as part of Nature—no longer removed from it. Through my work, I ask for recognition of your own physical presence and connection to the land, our complicity in these specific situations and our interconnectivity to the entirety of life. While this can be appreciated through documentation of my own and other Eco-artists’ work, I encourage you to also explore the work of Nature in Nature with the sun on your face and the wind at your back.

Tim Gaudreau

http://www.wake-up.ws/eco-art.html

"The Death of Enviormentalism" -precis

2010-05-03T16:26:00.000-07:00

The controversially titled article Death of the Environment, is a result of 25 interviews with environmental leaders by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus. The two authors discuss how current environmentalist are loosing momentum toward saving the environment amid political interest, the need to reframe is crucial in order to attract popular support. The text begins by listing the number of influential environmental laws that were achieved in the 60’s and 70’s. Shellenberger and Nordhaus then contrast our current environmental movement and the lack of wins we have experienced. The first noted problems are the ways in which the environment is treated as a “thing” to be protected, and how the three-part strategic framework for environmental policy making hasn’t changed in almost 40 years:

1) Define a problem (e.g global warming) as ‘environmental'

2) Craft a technical remedy (e.g., cap-and-trade).

3) Sell the technical proposal to legislators through a variety of tactics, such as lobbying. Third-party allies, research reports, advertising, and public relations.

Environmental leaders use a set of tactics that focus more on better wording and imagery to reframe global warming, by not using words like warming or change. Thus, trying to find solution through propaganda strategies, alliances, and technological advancements (e.g. Hybrid cars and fluorescent lights), leading to the conclusion that our problem should be structured as environmental. What needs to change is how environmentalist can benefit non-environmentalist instead of the other way around.

Currently, there is a distinct separation between the environment and humans. The environment is regarded as a separate "thing" from humans who are superior from the “natural world.” However, the dichotomy, which the authors note, is that global warming is a human-made phenomenon and hundreds of millions of humans may be killed over the next century due to global warming issues. This mentality creates the illusion that as humans, as environmentalist, we are representatives and defenders of this “thing” instead of a part of the environment.

A legislative defeat can be seen as a win or loss, depending on the increase or decrease of the “movement’s power, energy, and influence over the long-term.” Rio, CAFÉ, and McCain-Leiberman were seen as losses due to the environmentalist belief that the win would only occur if the legislation was successful. In order for the defeat to be considered a win some sort of momentum needs to be created to secure future legislation to pass. Shellenberger and Nordhaus end by claiming that the movement has become a failure coasting on decades-old successes, the void of new ideas, made complacent by easy funding, narrowly defining and environmental problems. If environmentalist want to be more than a special interest group they must restructure the proposals to offer the American people an expansive, inspiring, values-based vision.

Precis on "The Coming Resource Wars"

2010-04-26T23:55:00.000-07:00

Article by Michael T. Klare

It seems like we may never be able to give peace a chance. Just as political correctness has become old hat and tolerance becomes a condition of living in this global village, just as soon as technology has given us the most impressive entertainment ever, it seems we humans are being reduced back to our former primitive state of fighting over food and water. According to British Defense Secretary John Reid, it's official: the era of resource wars is upon us. With global warming, increasing population and consumption up to record levels, the bounty of the earth is becoming scarce and can be likened to the booty of pirates of old. The article focuses not on the popular conception that the human role in altering the planet's basic climate system is the only problem but that there is a trend to think farther into the social implications the shortage of resources will have in future conflicts. And as environmental problems persist, natural disasters make very clear the limits in which we are able to aid those in need. In the face of such calamity, Reid says, we have two choices: we can rely on our military power to secure a degree of advantage in the global struggle over resources, or we can work towards reducing the risk of CCC, or in other words, Cataclysmic Climate Change. He believes there are many in the United States who would tout the superiority of the military power but such instruments become ineffectual when an inconclusive war in Iraq or a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina strikes. In addition, the threat of nuclear power looms on the horizon as countries scramble to claim what resources they can. This article appeals to everyone and especially world leaders who have the power to direct the power of their countries. I wholeheartedly agree with Reid that ultimately, "our only hope of a safe and secure future lies in substantially reducing our emissions of greenhouses gases and working with the rest of the world to slow the pace of global climate change.

Precis by Brett Tapia

What was up with Korten?

2010-04-26T23:40:00.000-07:00

By Norman Chernick

When I began watching the Democracy Now video I was excited to see what horrible reality was going to be revealed and instead what we got was a kind of lame Marx "wanna be", David Korten. From his presentation to his ideas I couldn't give him much respect in part because he was not giving it to us.

I mention his presentation because it really put me off especially in comparison to Amy Goodman and Barak Obama who came off as serious and sincere, while Korten overly smiley, shifty, and nervous. He coughed at really important parts of his interview which gave me the impression that he was 'freaking out' inside his head or avoiding something. However, I don't want to dwell on this, what he says is what really confused me to why Dale had us watch this.

Firstly he wants us to do away with Wall street and replace it with main st. What does that even mean? What is Main street and how is that not directly imbedded in wall street? Wall street for anybody who doesn't know is the financial sector of our economy any country with banks has to have a financial sector so that the banks can do things with the money we store in them so they can invest it back in the economy. I don't see any reality in getting rid of 'Wall St.'

I see a reality in tuff regulations on it, which is what caused all of the phantom profit.

Korten reels through hot terms like a politician: military industrial complex, "bad for the family", main st., wall st. I felt like my intelligence was compromised as if he was propagandizing even though I agree with a lot of what he said.

"People have 10 times more conversations a day who shop at farmers markets."

What a terrible statistic to throw out there its just so questionable and probably based mostly in that people who shop at farmers markets probably have more leisure time and don't watch as much TV.

another statement he made was that the world cheered when wall street fell. I don't think the people that lost their jobs all over the world cheered, Its not like it affected wall streets power it just affected all the people it supports' power.

He also proposed to somehow end the existence of suburbs because they are bad for families. Does he not realize that people are autonomous and that we live in a democracy, because I certainly don't when I rant against the suburbs.

He also didn't really discuss the environment instead I now know he used to live on 14th st. Union Sq. and shop at farmers markets.

Whenever the reporters asked him questions about possible faults in his ideas he just answered with an attack on Wall st. it was actually strange how he maneuvered those answers like a politician would.

I expect a lot from intellectuals because they spend their time thinking and coming up with new ideas, he should be a little more reasonable, sensible, and insightful. It almost seems as if he hasn't thought his ideas through enough, they come off as based in emotion and not in moving ideas around and finding fault in ones ideas and re-structuring them. Yet I think he has thought his ideas through and they are based in research and thought but he doesn't present them in that way. His ideas were not complex enough for me to take it as a hypothetical theory attempt at solving problems instead it was his self absorption overflowing because he is stating this radical program.

That was my initial response to watching this interview. I watched the interview again and I realize how much of what he says I agree with, but I have just heard it so much that him saying it seems 'lame'. What did I learn from this interview? Nothing really everything is pretty standard left wing oratory and I think that is was put me off so much, why am I watching this?

The reason I watch politicians speak is to see which of my views they agree with its exciting to see them express them or not. However, with this guy he just says what my basic values are and then adds some crazy idea about destroying the financial sector and replacing it with family banks that will trade with Japan. This guy is not going to implement this, he is not giving me any new ideas to push or to question my own, it sounds like fox news except the opposite side of the poll. (is that it?....)

"The Long Emergency" Precis

2010-04-26T12:40:00.000-07:00

In “The Long Emergency”, James Howard Kunstler envisions a near-future collapse of American life as we currently know it. The piece almost reads like the setup to a science fiction novel. This isn’t surprising considering the bulk of Kunstler’s writing career has consisted of fiction writing, and his most recent offerings have been set in a post-oil world such as the one described in “The Long Emergency”. However, Kunstler is not alone in his visions. If you research the subject of peak-oil, you’ll come across many stories similar to Kunstler’s. You’ll also come across many peak-oil charts, statistics, and official studies/reports, including the Hirsch Report (officially titled Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, and Risk Management), a 2005 study conducted for the US Department of Energy. The results of the report put forth a very similar scenario to Kunstler’s, albeit a lot less stylized.

After reading “The Long Emergency”, it is apparent that Kunstler seems to have a burning dislike for the American lifestyle that was once called The American Dream. He sprinkles some heavy doses of sarcasm throughout the piece, and it is no surprise that he has accumulated many opponents throughout his recent career. In “Short Solutions to the Long Emergency”, Charles Bensinger, co-founder of Renewable Energy Partners of New Mexico, argues that Kunstler has “failed to do his homework regarding the potential of renewable energy, biofuels, energy efficiency and smart-growth policies to eliminate our need for fossil fuels over the next three decades”. You can read the entire piece here: http://www.greeninstitute.net/node/430.

Also, you can check out this Kunstler-hating blog: http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/, which is dedicated to “Debunking peak oil hype with facts and figures, and exposing the agendas behind peak oil”. It’s quite entertaining, seeing as many of their arguments consist of bashing Kunstler’s ability to accurately predict the future.

Only time will tell how accurate Kunstler’s predictions actually are. One thing is for sure: peak-oil is not your typical the-apocolypse-is-coming-soon-and-we're-all-going-to-die-conspiracy theory type of deal. If you want the hard, unbiased facts, then look no further. I think we all owe it to ourselves to expand our knowledge about this subject. Personally, Kunstler rubs me the wrong way for some reason, but I have to admit, there seems to be fewer and fewer ways around at least some kind of version of the “The Long Emergency”.

- Jon Thomas

2010-04-25T12:09:00.001-07:00

Economic Frustration: A response to

David Korten’s “Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth”

In David Korten’s interview with Democracy Now! he argues that if we continue down our path of consumption, economic instability, and urban sprawl we will lose our sense of community, relationships, and health. Not only will we be losing our biosphere, we will lose our humanity.

Right away in the interview Korten has given us the first step to recovery, acceptance. He is asking the government to address that the system has failed, and it is time to try something new. He goes on to say that not only has this system failed to give us financial stability, it has also negatively affected our environment and social communities, by destroying our ecosystems and keeping the bottom end communities deprived.

Throughout the interview Korten suggests ways to reform our economic standing, as well as bringing up imperative environmental issues he does not feel are being discussed in congress. He proposes building our economic system to support families, education, small businesses, and sustainability by re-directing the funding coming from the government, as well as transforming Wall Street into Main Street.

I full heartedly agree with what Korten has offered in this interview. He is a brilliant man, writing wonderful books, bringing up critical issues. But when I read this (and many of the other articles throughout the semester) I could not suppress my enormous frustration that I know this, the people reading/watching Democracy Now! know this, and the people he is targeting even know this. So what do we do? I am not sure that what we need to do is convince those in power that there is a problem. They are smart, they must know there is a problem, but what they have to do is give up a lot (lifestyle, money, etc.) in order to fix the problems, and that is the hard part.

Korten is asking his government, colleagues, and country to re-think our society’s way of life, there seems to be a call to action behind his words. Not only does it seem a daunting dream, it seems an almost impossible one. How can we get people mobilized? He is asking us to give up much of what we have, and alter the rest. How do we do that? Statistics have been crammed down peoples’ throats, photographs of landfills bombard the media, wallets are emptying at the pump, and celebrities are inspiring us to eat organically. What else can we do to inspire our government to re-direct the billions of dollars being spent on Industrial Agriculture subsidies, new highways, war, and other harmful endeavors?

Creating a sustainable lifestyle and society may look like we’re moving backwards to many people. We have evolved and created Industrial technologies that provide abundance and convenience, so how do we go back to being without them? It is like giving someone, who has been fishing with their hands a net, and then asking them not to use it. We need to think of it as our society being so evolved we know we could use these Industrial technologies, but shouldn’t.

So Refreshing!!!

2010-04-24T10:50:00.000-07:00

ever since this pepsi campaign hit the television/computer screens of america,

i haven't been able to stop thinking about it. at first i chose to ignore it,

but now i'm going to take a closer look at this ad campaign for my report.

i've always been anti-pepsi, it's all about coke anyways.

p.s.

this is the project i want to pitch to pepsi

REFRESH THIS:

Question for Final

2010-04-22T16:57:00.000-07:00

How long should our quotes be? Mine are generally passages that I thought were relevant to the topic...is that ok? Because my final is going to end up being REALLY long if I continue this. (I'm only 5 definitions in and I'm already taking up a page) Also is there any specific formating for the Final?

Are these people crazy? Or not?

2010-04-22T09:18:00.000-07:00

I’ll be doing my report on the artists Rachel Dutton and Rob Olds. The only information I can find about them is in the book Conversations Before The End Of Time by Suzi Gablik. Here are some excerpts from the book:

“Rachel Dutton and her husband, Rob Olds, were visionary sculptors until they decided to give up making art a few years ago from a sense of environmental emergency. Dutton’s work, constructed from hay, mud and papier-mâché shaped around an armature, was like a hallucinatory dream-memory of our atavistic link with the animal world, evoking a pretechnological, more spiritual era when humans could merge their consciousness with animals and harmonize with nature. Olds’s works – I recall seeing a couple of homeless men hovering around a garbage can, all made from a lavalike substance that suggested the ruins of Pompeii – were like terrifying holograms of the coming environmental and social anarchy… Homesteading in a remote part of New Mexico, they had slowly altered their physical reality by progressively shedding their dependence on twentieth-century technologies, and devoting themselves instead to a simple, circumscribed life, attending to the daily matters of sustaining a desert existence and enjoying their activity as artists.

“Then came the letter. It stated that they were giving up everything, selling their land and studios, and using whatever money they had for a lengthy series of courses, in order to learn tracking and wilderness survival skills from a man called Tom Brown, Jr., in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey… By the time they had written me, they had already given away or destroyed all their sculptures and drawings, to release the energy bound up in the forms, and had canceled their forthcoming shows…

“When he was a boy, Brown was taught ancient survival practices, like how to make bows, clubs and arrowheads, and how to trap, track and stalk by an old Apache warrior and scout called “Grandfather,” who was born in the 1880s. Brown had started his tracking school in order to instruct people about how to survive without modern technological civilization, because of the vision of its destruction that Grandfather had received during a vision quest some time during the 1920s – much of which has already become reality. Part of Grandfather’s vision was composed of this message: “Earth is dying. The destruction of man is close, so very close, and we must all work to change that part of destruction.” There would be four warnings, or signs, which if heeded would offer humanity a chance to learn the lessons and, by changing its ways, alter its probable future. The first two warnings are famine and a disease born of monkeys, drugs and sex that will destroy mankind from the inside. The third warning is in the form of holes in the sky that cannot be healed. If at this point the decision to change has not been made, all will be lost. Then will ensue the final vision of destruction: the sky turns blood red, and all is poisoned. During this time, the earth will heal itself and man will die.

…

“Rob Olds: We went through a whole series of changes just cleaning up the actual physical living of our life. We turned off our refrigerator two and a half years ago, because refrigerators are monuments to ill-usage of energy on the planet. It’s made out of chemicals that hurt the ozone. It’s designed primarily for products of extractive agriculture; it’s for dairy products, it’s for meat, it’s for the kind of vegetables that are raised and shipped on trucks. And it’s all quite recent.

…

“Rachel Dutton: Living on the prairie, in the context of the larger nature that has nothing to do with culture, we slowly started living life as an art. It’s as if washing dishes, if done with presence, is as much of an art form as painting a picture or making a sculpture.

“Suzi Gablik: Did your desire to make the kind of art objects you had made before simply dwindle, and die out in you?

“RD: It just faded away.

“RO: Actually, when we were first on the Rio Grande, we walked down to the river and when I stopped there, I immediately thought, “I’m never going to carve another piece of sculpture again.”

…

“SG: Let’s swing around to my generic question for these conversations, “How do we live, then, in a time of decline, or maybe even collapse, and what role does art have?”

“RD: None.

“RO: None. None.

“RD: For me personally, making art was a powerful act, but it was a powerful act because I had no other access to anything more powerful. I had no access to making a daily life of prayer. If you can live your daily life as a prayer, it is inherently more powerful than going to your studio.

…

“RD: We went to a lot of trouble to get rid of toxic things in our environment. We still have a car – that’s a tough one. We got rid of the refrigerator. We got rid of the camera. We gave it away, because we didn’t want to use photochemicals anymore to promote ourselves. That’s the end of your art career right there, if you have no more camera.

…

“RO: The basic plan is to sell the house, and pay off the mortgage; and then we’re going to just live someplace as simply as we can… We’ve also realized that you don’t need all this stuff that we live with today. You don’t need to have a mortgage, to have a house that keeps you warm; you don’t need to have this infrastructure in order to have food. There is enough food in the wild to feed us if we are able to live with the earth…

…

“RO: Hunter-gatherers are the apex of human civilization. We need to go back to that point. All else is a bastardization and a plague. We can’t assume what is comfortable for society, pick and choose. You’ve got to do it all the way, or not at all. Or we die.”

The actual interview is obviously much longer. If you want to read the whole thing there is a copy in the library or I can make a photocopy for you.

What's So Smart About "Smart Choices"?

2010-04-19T17:07:00.000-07:00

We’ve all seen the “Smart Choices” label on the front of what seems like every product at the conventional supermarket, but what does the label entail? According to the many major food corporations that have adopted the Smart Choices label and attached it to their products, the symbol stands to identify quality food products that are, essentially, tasty yet healthy (or at least suggests that the product is a healthier choice).

From the viewpoint of those behind the labeling scheme, they see the Smart Choices logo as a way of guiding consumer’s choices towards the products that are the lesser of the nutritional evils. One of the designers offers a scenario in which the Smart Choices logo is working productively, “You’re rushing around, you’re trying to think about healthy eating for your kids, and you have a choice between a doughnut and a cereal. So Froot Loops is a better choice.”

At what point have our breakfast choices ever been limited to Froot Loops or doughnuts? The label has no significance whatsoever, considering it is applied to products that contain “caffeine, food dyes, the preservative BHA, artificial sweeteners, and other additives that are suspected of causing or have been shown to cause adverse reproductive, behavioral, or gastrointestinal effects or cancer.”

The creators of the Smart Choices label can afford to stay in business because major corporations including Coca-Cola, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Kraft, and PepsiCo are throwing money in sums of up to $100,000 annually in order to have the Smart Choices label privileges. The label is then applied liberally, because the more items the Smart Choice program certifies, the more money it earns. This gives me all the more incentive to read labels and know what they truly represent.

Green Burials

2010-04-19T17:03:00.000-07:00

Will be presenting on this tomorrow!

Some links:

http://www.greenburials.org/index.htm

http://www.greenburialcouncil.org/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTzQ0GOelHk <-----video

Some things to consider:

1. What are the differences (and possibly benefits) of green burial vs. (green) cremation.

2. How does green burial benefit the earth, or is it another 'green' marketing tool.

Vegetarian is the new Prius

2010-04-19T08:16:00.000-07:00

Jordan Bogash

In the article Vegetarian is the new Prius by Kathy Freston, the basic argument is that people are buying greener cars such as the prius and the next step to a greener planet is going vegetarian. She uses the metaphor vegetarian is the new prius, like its the new cool thing to do even name dropping Leonardo DiCaprio saying even he drives prius and is a vegetarian. which personally I dont care what Leo is doing. But Kathy Freston does write about alarming information with such facts such as animal agriculture accounts for 9% of our carbon dioxide emissions, it emits 37% of our methane, and a whopping 65% of our nitrous oxide, it makes sence to go vegitarian.

I think the intended audiance is towards hip meat eaters. My first objection to everyone going vegitarian is that humans are supposed to eat meat. But with alarming facts on animal argiculter destroying or planet, a compromise would make more sence for all the meat eaters to cut back rather then cutting meat out of their diet complety. Kathy Freston gives examples of how America is opening up to vegitarian foods such as Burger King offering delicious veggie burgers and supermarket refrigerators are lined with heart-healthy creamy soymilk and tasty veggie deli slices. With that stated I think kathy freston is saying it that going vegitarian is the cool new thing to save the enviroment. I think she could have done a better job getting her point across by saying cut back on the meat or are planet is doomed. Rather then throwing this trendy celebrity talk all through out her article.

You never let me down, Japan.

2010-04-18T17:47:00.000-07:00

Japan invests in space solar energy!!!

Not that it's going to happen anytime soon, or continued funding for the project will last that long, but Japan is investing in space solar energy.

In a nutshell, putting little satellites into space that collects the energy from the sun and then ZAPPING it down to earth with LASERS/ MICROWAVES. Here's the link:

http://www.physorg.com/news176879161.html

Activism made easy

2010-04-18T14:18:00.000-07:00

So I googled the Union of Concerned Scientists after seeing it mentioned in the Paul Roberts article. Yes, they have a butterfly logo but they do make it super easy to e-mail your congress(wo)men about issues that are happening - right now - in the government. I for one feel totally empowered by the bright orange TAKE ACTION buttons. Click here for a list of things upon which you can TAKE ACTION.

And for those of you who, like me until about 20 minutes ago, had no idea how congress actually does shit, they break it down in a very comprehensible way . The link to THOMAS at the bottom is useful as well if you're interested in reading the minutes of congressional hearings.

Roots of Change

2010-04-14T12:33:00.000-07:00

Organization I mentioned in class yesterday morning.

2010-04-12T18:50:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

I am giving a report on the Transition Network movement. Here are some links to become familiar with what the movement is all about:

Wikipedia site:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_Towns

Official Websites:

http://transitionculture.org/

http://www.transitionnetwork.org/

Interview with Transition Network founder, Rob Hopkins:

http://www.urbanitebaltimore.com/sub.cfm?ArticleID=1032&IssueID=64&SectionID=4

Critique of the movement from worldchanging.com:

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/010672.html

- Jon

Aquaponics!

2010-04-12T12:12:00.000-07:00

This week my report will be about Aquaponics, a symbiotic environment of plants and fish. This cross between hydroponics and fish-farming is a recirculating system that yields incredibly high crop results using less than half the water normally used on farms.

Aquaponics is a sustainable way to grown food, it is especially effective in locations where the soil is bad and water is scarce. It is a way to provide local and organic food year-round.

Here are some things to look at before next class:

This is a farmer’s youtube channel documenting his own Aquaponics greenhouse. I suggest looking at the winter update as well (located to the right of the video).

http://www.youtube.com/user/web4deb

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wS3sej53gx0

http://yesmagazine.org/issues/food-for-everyone/growing-power-in-an-urban-food-desert

http://civileats.com/2009/12/03/inventing-the-suburban-farm/

And some things to ponder:

How can we best use this system to serve our society?

Although this new type of agriculture cuts back on water, foreign fertilizers and the use of machines powered by oil, it uses a lot of energy and man power. Is this an acceptable trade off?

THE DESTRUCTIVE NATURE OF OUR BOUNTIFUL HARVEST PRECIS

2010-04-12T10:47:00.000-07:00

Article by Malcolm G. Scully

Precis by Reggie Gay

This article operates under the assumption that, although agriculture is largely beneficial, it’s brutalizing nature has played a large role in the fall of civilizations throughout history. Wes Jackson, founder of the environmental studies program at Cal State University Sacramento in the 1970s, is the key figure in the article. He proposes that there is a “problem of agriculture,” despite increasing productivity and the “success of the green revolution.” He claims that the economic success of industrial agriculture has lead us to believe that there is no problem, but that the chemical requirements (dependence on fossil fuels, pesticides, and fertilizers) are unsupportable. A good metaphor to the agricultural situations might be an athlete on steroids: chemicals heighten productivity, but degrade the body. His solution is what he calls “natural systems agriculture:” creating a system that mimics native ecosystems. But is it a good way to think about agriculture? To pretend that it is working on a deeper, more cooperative level because it “mimics nature?” The effect is creating something that looks like nature, but is necessarily not. Jackson says, “We must make this subject as complicated as it is,” and I think his system is not a bad solution, but I don’t think it takes into account the affect of the scale of industrial agriculture in tandem with its use of chemicals. Four “basic biological questions” are presented that address crop yields and natural vs. artificial fertilizers and pesticides, but not how a man-made ecosystem is replacing a natural one. An alternative solution presented in the article is the use of biotechnology. Jackson is not against the idea of biotechnology, but it’s affect of enabling corporations to “turn DNA into capital” and possibly degrading a crop’s genome. He suggests that all the issues and stakes are subtle, and in fact unfathomable, but that we need a breakthrough in agriculture that makes the unknowable knowable.

Precis for "Breadbasket of Democracy"

2010-04-11T12:36:00.000-07:00

The article Breadbasket of Democracy is a story about the effects of corporate run farming on local farms in North Dakota. The Monsanto corporation embedded itself in several branches of the agricultural industry in North Dakota such as genetically engineered seeds and other products. A few general problems arose by the presence of the Monsanto corporation. First, their genetically made seeds needed to be cared for with herbicides that only Monsanto made and this forces the farmers who were interested in the new competitive farming (or who had been bought out) to not only use corporate seeds but also herbicides. Also, they created their products and required that all of their genetically engineered seeds (in the case of the article, the seeds were wheat) receive a patent so that they could control its growth and use. The article described the term "brownbagging", which is when someone knowingly or unknowingly uses patented seeds in their crops. Using patented seeds occurs either when they are harvested from a first generation of crops made from seeds bought from Monsanto or when they are placed in the crop without having purchased the seed due to thievery or simply wind carrying pollen. So, by the standards of the Monsanto corporation a farm can steal patented seeds without even doing it on purpose.

Todd Leake, a local farmer in North Dakota, claimed that growing wheat had been in his family for 120 years. Leake, being forced to do many of the things described above, took a stand against Monsanto and all corporate run farms. He expressed a set of concerns such as, in the 1990s several overseas markets rejected genetically engineered food from the U.S. and he feared this would once again occur and crumble the prices and overall business. He created a group of other concerned farmers and they fought it out in court and were able to ban Monsanto's control over North Dakota farms. There does not seem to be a specified thesis of this article but the underlying message seems to be (at least from Leake's side of things) that growing any kind of food or crop is a human right and requirement and should not be infringed upon by any other human. This message speaks to all demographics that are not clouded by corporate business.

Sean Haywood

WWOOF

2010-04-10T18:39:00.000-07:00

In Lisa Hamilton's Let's grow a new crop of farmers, she writes:

"Imagine, for instance, a program that puts interns on farms — an AmeriCorps for agriculture. In this “AgriCorps,” participants would learn the skills of farming and experience the lifestyle; hosts would receive valuable labor to bolster their businesses."

And I thought of WWOOF, World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. This is an organization that does just what Hamilton wants, it provides internships on hundreds of farms all over the world.

It's pretty sweet...

http://www.wwoof.org/

Polluting Biodiversity

2010-04-05T11:23:00.000-07:00

This week I would like to report on the topic of genetic pollution caused in part by genetically engineered organisms (GE) which have entered into the ecosystem. Throughout history humans have have relied on the biodiversity of nature along with complex systems of agriculture to accommodate for various challenges such as pests, disease and climate change. With the introduction of GE organisms into the ecosystem the vast diversity of life forms has become threatened with mutation and destruction, leaving both the environment and the humans that inhabit it vulnerable to devastation.

Some articles to take a look at before class tomorrow:

What is Genetic Pollution and How is it Affecting our Food, Economy and Environment?

Understanding Genetic Pollution

Mounting Evidence of Genetic Pollution in GE Crops

Monsanto, Genetic Pollution and Monopolism

-Graham Austin

Futurology Against Environmentalism

2010-04-04T20:53:00.000-07:00

There are lots of futurological texts we can choose from among the many I've assigned for Tuesday morning. Give me a sense of what you are tending to respond to the most... The strange short story The Gentle Seduction? The Viridian design-aesthetic-environmentalist movement? The geo-engineering stuff? The digital utopianism stuff? It's all awfully intriguing in a bonkers sort of way, and definitely it connects to last week's capitalism materialism. Also, here in the Bay Area we are ground zero for some of these flavors of techno-utopianism. What are you most intrigued by, provoked by, annoyed by, inspired by, eager to discuss? If we converge on a few texts here on the blog in advance we'll have a better sense of where the conversation is likely to go Tuesday morning...

Satire!

2010-04-04T18:36:00.000-07:00

This week I will be initiating a discussion on the role of satire in the green movement.

Sarcastic commentary on going green comes in many forms, ranging from attacks on the movement itself to derisive imitation of corporate advertising. Despite the humor in these satirical bits of media I've linked below, I assume most of our laughter leaves behind a bitter taste - "it's funny because it's true." But it's also depressing, which begs the basic question I'd like to address on Tuesday: does satire of the environmental movement ultimately encourage or placate potential, current, or unlikely supporters? If we find that it breeds complacency, should we, as concerned Earth-lovers (or however you define yourself), add satirical articles/ads/commercials to our ever-lengthening shit list of things to take down a peg? If we find that they are powerful tools for disseminating information, do we then perhaps make The Onion our finest - and only - news source?

Making Your Block Greener - an "Infographic" from The Onion highlighting various problems with urban gardening, touching on the larger issues of urbanization, gentrification, and bigotry as they apply to environmentalism.

Simple Tips For A Greener House - an "Interactive Slideshow" from The Onion . This graphic satirizes the quick'n'easy tips for being the greenest neighbor on your suburban block.

How Are Corporations Going Green? - another "Infographic" from The Onion pointing out that despite their best but rather transparent efforts, companies like Exxon and McDonald's have absolutely no business saying they're "green." At best, their attempts are laughable.

A couple more: Green Products, I'm Doing My Inconsequential Part For The Environment.

But let's move onto the videos!

A user video from Current TV introduces the term Eco-tistical: "an adjective used to describe someone who is more concerned about looking like they're concerned about the environment, than actually being concerned about the environment." While not exactly satirical, this dude points out plenty of blatant hypocrisies on the American social circuit among politicians and celebrities, while echoing our discussion early on in the semester about that jackass in the Audi from the SuperBowl commercial.

Green Bras and Recycled Dildos - from Current TV again, sarcastically glorifying "innovative" green products.

And finally, two more directly satirical videos directed at corporate "greenwashing."

Taco Bell's New Green Menu Takes No Ingredients From Nature - from The Onion.

This one does a rather, in my humble opinion, hilarious job of dissing the myriad of ads put out by energy companies that attempt to gloss over the fact that they are a company that produces energy. Kind of like that time Phillip Morris went schizo and created Altria to prevent consumers from associating the company's "healthier" products like Kraft foods and Miller Genuine Draft from cigarettes.

Report

2010-04-04T14:21:00.000-07:00

Tuesday-after-next I'll be reporting on a study in a recent edition of the journal, Psychological Science titled, Do Green Products Make Us Better People?

A sample from their abstract:

"Building on recent research on behavioral priming and moral regulation, we found that mere exposure to green products and the purchase of such products lead to markedly different behavioral consequences. In line with the halo associated with green consumerism, results showed that people act more altruistically after mere exposure to green products than after mere exposure to conventional products. However, people act less altruistically and are more likely to cheat and steal after purchasing green products than after purchasing conventional products."

Frozen Fish Reel In Wind Power

2010-04-04T11:03:00.000-07:00

Frozen fish help reel in Germany's wind power

What is Greenwashing & Why is it a Problem?

2010-04-02T20:12:00.000-07:00

Greenwashing, by Melissa Whellams and Chris MacDonald

A Precis by Allie Moran

According to the piece by Melissa Whellams and Chris MacDonald, from businessethics.ca, the term ‘greenwashing’ refers to the efforts of corporations to represent themselves to consumers and policy makers as being environmentally friendly by way of misleading advertising and branding, as well as larger corporate activities such as, “certain instances of environmental reporting, event sponsorship, distribution of educational materials, and the creation of front groups”. The writers explain that greenwashing techniques are often employed by companies not only as a way of marketing to new demographics of eco-minded consumers, but also as a way of covering up or downplaying said company’s larger ecological wrong-doings. In other words, the goal of corporate greenwashing is to win over, and profit from, green oriented consumers by convincing them that a specific company is environmentally responsible, without said company actually having to be environmentally responsible.

After initially defining the term Whellams and MacDonald ask, “What’s wrong with greenwashing?” and go on to elucidate the three major issues they have with the use of greenwashing techniques. These three sections also read as something of a timeline for the process and ramifications of greenwashing. The first issue they expand on is the fact that greenwashing is misleading; which they explain is a problem because it makes companies and corporations, many of which have terrible track records when it comes to environmentalism, appear to be responsible and environmentally conscious. The writers acknowledge that not all environmental advertising is greenwashing, but fall short of suggesting how one might go about separating good advertisements from the bad.

The second issue they outline is that greenwashing has the potential to create complacency on the part of both consumers and regulators. Whellams and MacDonald assert that if whole industries begin to get away with greenwashing, consumers will simply take corporate advertising at face value and make purchases accordingly, thereby furthering the detriment to the earth that is taking place at the hands of these corporations. Ultimately, this would result in smug consumers and corporations as well as an industry predicated by the illusion of sustainability, rather than sustainability itself.

Lastly, Whellams and MacDonald suggest that greenwashing may also give rise to cynicism within the marketplace and make consumers doubtful of even the most genuine portrayals of corporate responsibility toward the environment. So, rather than seeking out and supporting well-meaning and sincere companies, consumers will shy away from or become critical of all companies within an industry. Whellams and MacDonald then allude to the fact that this will ultimately harm companies who actually are eco-friendly, and end the paper by exclaiming, “Thus well-meaning companies, companies committed to responsible behaviour with regard to the environment, have every reason to be critical of companies that greenwash.”

Overall, the piece made a number of interesting and valuable points, but it also seemed to have a palpable level of bias. It’s pretty clear that the intended audience of this piece is a person/group that is more tuned into or invested in the ecological aspects of this topic, rather than someone who is looking at greenwashing techniques within a socioeconimic framework.

For one thing, it seems that they completely neglected to consider greenwashing’s position within the much larger context of corporate advertising and marketing. That is to say, that it functions in the same way, and with the same intentions, as any other marketing scheme. It should pretty much go without saying that all companies, whether small businesses or huge corporations, are founded on the goal of making money. For this very reason, the use of misleading advertising has been common practice for decades, if not centuries. This doesn’t nullify the blame and criticism pointed at companies that greenwash, it is totally unethical, but how bad is it really when you compare it to other misleading advertisements? How is greenwashing more underhanded or more offensive to consumers than weight loss drugs, stretchmark creams, penis enlargers, get rich quick schemes, or even psychics? I suppose one could go out on a limb and argue that it’s implied in the text that greenwashing is worse because it affects the planet, not just consumers, but if that is the stance that Whellams and MacDonald are taking it doesn’t seem too much to ask for them to expand on this facet of their argument, as it’s a pretty pivotal aspect of the topic as a whole.

The writers also appeared to have overlooked the importance of consumer responsibility while exploring this topic. It’s arguable that the third concern they discuss, consumer skepticism, is actually both reasonable and productive. By making purchases based on research, comparison-shopping, and a healthy dose of common sense (rather than whatever they said on that hybrid SUV commercial), a hesitant or disillusioned consumer could fairly easily wade through the bullshit and feel empowered by the ability to support companies they deem responsible and trustworthy. On a larger scale, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that this type of consumer awareness could affect the overall use of unethical and deceptive practices such as greenwashing, because it would display to corporations that consumers quite literally aren’t “buying it”. Since the number one goal of corporations is to make money, it would be in their best interest to change their product so that it’s palatable for the growing demographic of eco-consumers, or at the very least, to find a way of advertising to these consumers that isn’t so objectionable.

green music

2010-04-02T16:33:00.000-07:00

if this class ever had a theme song, this would most likely be it:

http://www.zshare.net/audio/743634031ec7dd1a/

Don't Forget

2010-03-29T16:56:00.000-07:00

If you haven't given a report yet the time remaining to do so is dwindling -- we can do three tomorrow at the beginning of class. Just provide a link to your campaign or artists or whatever before class or just after so we can explore more on our own. Also: precises about essays we've read or are reading still need to be posted. Don't put this stuff off, you have more time now than you will as the end of term draws closer.

On a different note, any initial impressions of the Natural Capitalism or Greenwashing materials?

Manufactured Demand and Bottled Water

2010-03-28T09:20:00.000-07:00

overpopulation

2010-03-23T09:13:00.001-07:00

Here is the link to the organization i am doing my presentation on

http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.aboutus.html

its the self-proclaimed world leading think tank fighting overpopulation. (UK based)

Thomas Chung

Your Keywords Final Exam

2010-03-22T19:28:00.000-07:00

There are well over a hundred keywords listed below from among the many more terms we have taken up or will take up over the course of our readings and conversations this term.

For your Final you are to create three categories (conceptual, practical, figurative, whatever) entirely of your own choosing and design, and then subsume under each of these categories a number of keywords from the list below which seem to you to be related to one another in a significant or useful way through each of your chosen categories and in respect to your sense of the overall subject of our course together. "Green" is not a Keyword in the list -- but your own idiosyncratic inhabitation of Greenness, your own sense of what Greenness most importantly consists will likely emerge in the Final taken as a whole.

For each keyword you choose, provide a clear and concise definition of the term (nothing more than a sentence, at most two) in your own words, and then follow that definition with a quotation from one of the assigned texts from our syllabus. The quotation should be one that is especially illuminating for the definition you have made in some way: the quotation can be a definition that yours is a variation of, the quotation can be an example or illustration that supports your definition, the quotation can provide an analogy or figure or frame that inspired your definition, the quotation can even be something that seemed so wrongheaded to you that it provoked your definition as a kind of protest or intervention.

Your final must provide definitions and quotations for at least thirty-six keywords but no more than forty. None of your categories can contain fewer than seven keywords and none can contain more than sixteen keywords.

Each of your categories should have a title and a general explanatory paragraph (and I do mean a paragraph, not an essay) indicating what you take the category to delineate.

You can hand the final in to me personally at any time starting from April 27 to the end of term (you won't have a real sense of the range of the course until we move through the Permaculture and Green Eats readings, so don't try to complete the final before tackling those readings as well as the others before them), but I ask that you send it to me as a Word-readable attachment in an e-mail if you cannot place a hard copy directly into my hands on our last meeting or whenever. Think about when your other finals and projects are scheduled and when any other papers are due and fit this final Keyword Project into your schedule in a way that best suits your own situation. If you have time to get this done early rather than last minute, by all means do so. You should give yourself a good few days to do this work, since scouting through passages and notes across the whole term often yields unexpected syntheses that lead to revisions of your initial categorizations and keyword groupings. I hope this exercise is an enlightening and enjoyable one for you all rather than a drudgery. Be experimental, exploratory, earnest about it and you are almost sure to get incomparably more benefit from it.

If you have questions, always feel free to post them in Comments, e-mail them to me, raise them in class, or talk to me before or after class.

Here are the Keywords I'm having you choose from:

Access-to-Knowledge (a2k)
Agriculture
Agroforestry
Alienation
Anthropocene
Appropriate Technology
Atmosphere
Biodegradable
Biodiversity
Biomimicry
Biopiracy
Biosphere
Biosphere II
Cap and Trade
Climate Change
Climate Refugees
Climax Ecosystem
Co-evolution
Commons
Common Sense
Commonwealth
Consensus Science
Consent
Conservation
Consumer
Cradle-to-Cradle
Creative Commons
Custom
Deep Ecology
Democracy
Denial
Depletion
Design
Development
Downcycling
Ecology
Ecofeminism
Ecosocialism
Ecosystem
Ecosystemic Services
Eco-Village
Edible Landscaping
Enclosure
Endangered Species
Energy Descent
Environmental Justice Movement
Environmental Racism
Exoticism
Externality
Farmers Market
Feral
Finitude
Footprint
Futurism
Gaia
Genome
Geoengineering
Globalization
Greenwashing
Hierarchy
Immateralism
Indigeneity
Industrial Agriculture
Industrialism
Input Intensive
Instrumental Rationality
Integrated Pest Management
Intentional Community
Intellectual Property
Investment
Irrigation
Leapfrogging
Limit
Local
Localvore
Luddism
Militarism
Monoculture
Native
Nature
Natural Capital
Need
Niche
One Size Fits All
Organic
Pandemic
Parks
Patriarchy
Peak Oil
Peer-to-Peer (p2p)
Permaculture
Planetary
Poison
Political Ecology
Pollution
Polyculture
Post-Scarcity
Precautionary Principle
Predator
Primitivism
Public Good
Recycling
Renewable
Resilience
Resource Descent
Salination
Scientificity
Seed Saving
Seed Sharing
Slow Food
Slum
Small Is Beautiful
Smart Grid
Social Ecology
Sublimity
Sustainability
Symbiosis
Technical Metabolism
Technofix,
Toxicity
Triple Bottom Line
Urban Agriculture
Vegetarianism
Viridian
Wilderness

Reports Tomorrow?

2010-03-22T19:23:00.000-07:00

There should be three at least, otherwise some folks are going to take a real hit in the final grading because I'm not losing the whole final day to everybody just doing perfunctory reports everybody put off for no discernible reason. No more than three or four reports each meeting from here to the end. First to declare intention to report or post a link to the object of the report, first served.

The US Patent System Legalizes Theft and Biopiracy Precis by Chris Corrente

2010-03-22T09:34:00.000-07:00

News-flash: United States interests are wrongfully laying claim to the innovations and materials of other cultures.
Well, there's certainly no historical precedent for that!

In this article, a very rational, common sense, and legally considered perspective is offered on why "biopiracy" is an unethical and undesireable phenomenon. Essentially, biopiracy is a continued form of colonialism.

The problems with allowing corporations to patent substances already recognized by other culture are numerous. There are the obvious ethical quandaries involved in exploiting the resources of other nations, but ethics, unfortunately, are not the grounds from which corporate and governmental influences base their decisions.

The article also points out that legally speaking, bio-piracy is allowed to go on, but a change in US patent should occur.

In US patent law, innovations of other countries are not protected under the "prior art" clause. If an idea is new to the US, it is considered new.

The idea behind patent law is that creative individuals should be protected and rewarded for their innovations. The article points out that patent laws were originally molded so that the fledgling US could borrow industrial innovations from the British. now, with the US as the imperialist power, these laws are being used to allow US corporations to lay claim to the innovations of less powerful, or at least less protective and monopolist cultures.

The laws are set up so that the US can pirate innovations from other countries, then ferociously defend them as their own. This endangers the diverse knowledge systems of indigenous cultures. There are many instances of biopiracy happening right now, and the continued trend of allowing US interests to claim as their own the innovations of other cultures sets a dangerous precedent for the future, clearing the way for the powerful to deny indigenous cultures of that which they have always depended on, and possibly blocking access to new innovations from which they could benefit.

6 Most Half-Assed Attempts at Corporate Greenwashing

2010-03-15T10:54:00.000-07:00

via Cracked.

Tinkered With the Sylaabus...

2010-03-08T20:57:00.000-08:00

It should reflect the nudging forward I had to do to make up for that sick day. Some weeks have crazy anounts of stuff in them, and I'll probably remove some of it by the time we get there. By the way, how many precises and reports are on the menu for tomorrow morning? See you all soon!

2010-03-07T23:54:00.000-08:00

these articles came to mind while I was doing the readings and I thought I'd share. Largely on the topic of land use displacing/disadvantaging the inhabitants. The Boston globe links are mostly pictures.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/11/25th_anniversary_of_the_bhopal.html
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/05/indigenous_brazilians_protest.html
http://www.viceland.com/int/v16n5/htdocs/plowboys-and-indians-873.php

-thomas

2010-03-02T17:47:00.000-08:00

I know I mentioned Dirt! The Movie in an earlier post, but I just realized that Wangari Maathai (the woman Norman talked about in class) as well as Vandana Shiva (who was interviewed in one of our most recent readings) are both profiled in the film. It's worth checking out, if only to learn a bit more about these two inspirational activists.

If it makes you money, it can't be that bad.

2010-03-01T23:19:00.000-08:00

Here is an article about all of the wonderful economic opportunities that the melting ice caps will create. Included in this frozen goldmine is an estimated 90 million barrels of oil, which we obviously could never live without! And experts say it could begin to become available as soon as 2013!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100301/sc_afp/chinaarcticbusinessenvironmentresearch

My favorite part is when the journalist phrases what is at stake as "the arctic riches".

Mommy, What is ecofeminism?

2010-03-01T17:11:00.000-08:00

Ecofeminism By: Rosemary Radford Reuther
Precis by: Thomas Chung

According to Rosemary Reuther Ecofeminism is the union of the deep ecology movement with feminism. Deep ecology examines the psychological and ethical patterns of why humans destroy nature. Feminism is concerned with transforming the patriarical socio-economic system we currently live in because it is at the expense of women. Many feminists compare the domination of women to the domination of nature by man (or, men). That is part of the essential connection between feminism and ecology. The author asks for a solution from the ecofeminist movement to strive for, which is similar to our questions in class about the green movement at large.

Reuther then goes on to summarize deep ecology into 8 key points:
1. The flourishing of human and non-human life on Earth has intrinsic value beyond human benefit.
2.Diversity of life is a good thing.
3.Humans have no right to hurt this diversity except to sustain themselves
4.Present human interference into nature is excessive and the situation is getting worse
5. Non human life requires less humans.
6. Political policy must change in order to save nature.
7.Life quality must go down in order to make positive change, good news is you can replace it with appreciating life.
8. If you believe these rules you must participate in their manifestations (or womanifestations).

Reuther then admits to not being competent enough to make the necessary changes, she explains she is more into the history of culture. She then explains that she will trace connections between the domination of women and the domination of nature. Then she says she will offer a possible cultural alternative.

Pre-Hebraic roots:
Anthropological studies have suggested that the identification of women with nature is ancient and widespread. It implies that nature is separate from man. In early society men had more leisure time because their roles were less time consuming than women’s. Hunting took less time than raising kids, picking poisonous berries and sewing revealing loincloths. Because babies came from women’s bodies and life came from the Earth, the two were likened. Patriarchy increased when farming became prevalent and land became owned. Plow agriculture placed women into a role of property because men became put into a mindset of ownership over nature therefore women too since they were seen as closer to nature.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, Calvinists began to claim that nature was not holy it was depraved. Then during the scientific revolution and Newtons time nature became inert mass to be wielded by man. This further hurt the status of women due to the nature/women connection.

In recent times population increase due to longer lifespans and lower mortality rates for infants is outrunning the food supply. The gap between the rich and the poor grow wider. “Population explosion, exhaustion of natural resources, pollution and state violence are the four horsemen of the new global apocalypse. The critical question of both justice and survival is how to pull back from this disastrous course and remake our relations with each other and with the
earth." After this quote the author goes on to explain how our social ideas should be changed.

One element to creating an eco-feminist ethic is reshaping the dualistic concept of soulless natural matter and transcendent male consciousness. Nature runs fine without us. Humans are parasites right now. Humans must recognize their dependence on the Earth. Mutual interdependence replaces hierarchies between groups. Men need to take on more feminine roles like child care and cleaning the toilet. The sense of self in relation to the life cycle must be rethought as well. We are creating immortal garbage that must be recyclable either by us or the Earth.

It seems that Ruether believes the place to start in ecology and feminism is with ideology. She calls for a transformation of the Christian God into something closer to Mother Earth. She believes we must wake up and see that the Earth sustains us. She believes that during the Enlightenment the idea of male transcendental consciousness separating from nature hurt both mans relationship with women and with nature since the two were linked during the time of man taking up the plow. However, no solution is given to how these necessary ideological shifts should be made manifest. Perhaps the author is just stating what she believes to be a fact of how we must change in thought to save ourselves.

Tom

Green belt movement

2010-03-01T17:03:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow I (Norman) will be presenting Wangari Maathai and especially her founding of the greenbelt movement but her other work as well. She is a leader in environmentalism and an inspiration to grass roots movements especially in the developing world. She is especially important to feminist theory in general. Here are some videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5GX6JktJZg

watching her acceptance ceremony and speech at the nobel peace prize awards I hope with fill your heart with warmth as much as it did mine... tear:

http://nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=708&view=1

Nobel Peace Prize press release awarding her the prize:

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2004/press.html

Presentation speech:

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2004/presentation-speech.html

Hello --

2010-03-01T09:28:00.000-08:00

I'm feeling better -- for tomorrow we'll just do everything we were going to do last week. I'll find some way of shaving two weeks into one later on in the syllabus. Everybody who was prepared to do reports and so on, tomorrow we're a go. If a couple more of you want to join in on the report/precis bandwagon, by all means, the more the merrier.

FLU BUG

2010-02-22T13:52:00.001-08:00

Howdy, Gang, Dale here. I've been battling a flu bug all weekend and find it worse rather than better today, so, since our class meets so early I've just decided to cancel tomorrow's class in advance. Otherwise, I fear too many of you won't hear about it in time to know not to come onto campus quite so early or what have you. Please let other folks know about this among your friends in case you think they may not check the blog. We'll nudge the syllabus around, don't worry. Treat this week's assignments as next week's instead, for now. I'll figure out where to go from there. Hope all are well, d

Precis for Dark Vibrations: ecofeminism and the democracy of creation

2010-02-22T11:14:00.000-08:00

While I feel like I generally understand the three main points of Keller's lecture, I don't think I was the audience intended for this reading without first having extensive knowledge of what is ecofeminism. Or for that matter, what dominion, oscillating gender roles, and the Creator all have to do with ~~power dynamics~~ human/nonhuman roles in nature.

Let me first begin with the three main points of the lecture.

* Cosmos/chaos--Basically your pastor has been lying to you. God never 'creates' out of 'nothingness' (which in turn is actually CHAOS). Yeah sure, he made the 'heavens' (which are of course intangible) and "as in the beginning elohim was creating the heaven and earth, the earth was tohuvabohu darkness was upon the face of the deep, the tehom, and the ruach elohim was pulsing on the face of the waters." The vibration occurs before the speech or word, before 'Let there be Light." The spirit of the 'earth' is already synchronized with the Creator and a co-creation exists. This is the human/nonhuman world and "Creation," not "Nature" is the biblical concept.
* Subjects/objects-- Biblical theology is used as the groundwork of understanding denaturalization (what is called "natural" in human behavior is culturally constructed) and the patriarchal hierarchy of the "natural" command of things. "Nature" is designed around two centers--culture and nature. "Indeed it is this metaphysics that divides reality fundamentally into human subjects and their objects, to which count all the nonhuman things." There is the "natural law" of things that is constantly brought up in Christianity--that man was made of the earth in God's vision, the extinction of entire species is a "natural" order, the roles of the "female" vision is a "natural" command. The created encode themselves with a democratic vision of becoming.
* Created sexed themselves--Well, with the good old help of Christianity of course. It's interesting to note how often Christianity uses terms such as "natural law" and "nature" and how gender roles are just "natural" processes. Our gender roles are linked with the nonhuman world, and are a bi-product of the 'sin' of nature. Even the Earth is forced into this dynamic--Mother Nature. "...Nature itself is not after all the problem, for ecological politics, but the unmarked males who need it to be a Her--sometimes fixed, sometimes fickle. This is the premise of ecofeminism: that out species has treated the earth like a "women"--to be alternatively taken for granted like mom or romanticized like a fresh love, exploited when convenient, discarded when used up, and demonized when like a monster of chaos she/it storms out of bounds."

Those are general points made in each section that somewhat summarize her argument.

Some questions to think about:

1. Keller states that feminists should not content themselves with the mere declaration that Nature is socially constructed and further, that to deconstruct nature we would dissociate ourselves from the nonhuman world around us. What then, do you think connects us to the biological and sexual components of nonhumans?

2. How do you feel like the role of the Creator (God) versus the Creation (Nature) has affected the human relationship towards Nature?

Precis on Unnatural Passions? Notes Toward a Queer Ecology

2010-02-21T22:33:00.000-08:00

by luke baldwin

There are a couple key objectives in Unnatural Passions, the main one being to validate the term “queer ecology” as a legitimate expression and practice. Sandilands argues that queers have the ability to have a “queer ecological sensibility” by focusing on the dimensions of their experience in the queer community and using the “resulting emotional resonances and conceptual links” as a way to perceive nature differently. She gives examples and histories of both ecofeminism and queer ecology in hopes for substantiation. There are moments of both clarity and assumptions that left me feeling both excited and under-whelmed. But nonetheless an interesting argument is given that allows for our understanding of nature to be questioned.

One observation this is made through this “queer ecological” perception is that sexist and racist ideals have been imposed onto nature/landscape, mainly spaces such as national parks such as Yellowstone and Banff which both at the time of creation were inhabited by aboriginal populations. Whether this is fact or an assumption, I’m not entirely sure.

The rest of the essay is in sections, the first of which focuses on the biological/evolutionary narrative which compares heterosexual acts which function as a means for the continuation of the species, to non-heterosexual acts as either aberrant or as an indirect part of the hetero-reproductive process. The second section focuses on queer environments, which discusses the idea that the artificiality of cities is somehow linked to homosexuality. And the final section talks about the representation of queers in pop culture as being consumers and how they can counteract that. Each argument has a counterargument, but each statement brings up interesting and important topics for discussion.

Quotes:

“… sexism and racism are systemic forms of oppression that negatively influence human beings’ relationships with the natural world.”

“Parks were born from a gendered and racialized view of nature, and were also used to impose a gendered and racialized view of nature, and were also used to impose gendered and racialized relations on nature. In turn, parks supported and extended racialized and class ideals of masculinity, and literally erased aboriginal peoples from the landscape, with fairly disastrous results for all concerned, including nature.”

“Heterosexual reproduction was the only form of sexual activity leading directly to the continuation of a species from one generation to the next; thus, logically, other sexual activities must be either aberrant or, at best, indirectly part of the heterosexual reproductive process.”

Topics for discussion:

Are class-, race-, and gender-specific views of nature being imposed on the landscape? Or is this just an assumption?

Is any sexual activity that doesn’t lead directly to the continuation of a species indirectly part of the heterosexual reproductive process, or are these activities aberrant?

Can only queers be queer ecologists?

Presentation for Tuesday

2010-02-21T22:19:00.000-08:00

I'll be playing some video which is closely related to the readings.

All you need to do is bring yourself to class.

Aquaponics

2010-02-21T19:31:00.001-08:00

NYT Article: The Spotless Garden

It uses far less water than traditional farming methods and if you are adept at constructing things it would be a relatively cheap DIY project. Difficult and likely not condoned by your landlord, setting up an aquaponic system in your apartment might not be the best idea, however. Still, the people building these things are examples of regular folks getting creative and working towards a more sustainable way of feeding ourselves.

Dirt! The Movie

2010-02-20T18:53:00.001-08:00

If you're into preachy documentaries with cheesy animated sequences that anthropomorphize dirt, watch Dirt! The Movie.

Seriously. It'll be great.

more More MORE

2010-02-20T14:34:00.000-08:00

I need to be seeing more links for reports, more precises, more discussion on this blog. Get on it, people.

Can Condoms Help Save Polar Bears?

2010-02-19T17:17:00.000-08:00

Via NYTimes Green Inc. Blog

In Honor Of This Week's Readings

2010-02-16T16:38:00.000-08:00

From Seventeen, May 1970. From a Kotex ad.

I just saw this little double entendre online today and thought I'd share it.

global warming is bull shit (says fox news)

2010-02-16T15:49:00.001-08:00

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/02/15/world-warming-say-scientists/

xxxreportxxx: Vegan Eco Straightedge Metalcore!!!

2010-02-16T01:16:00.000-08:00

I will talk about vegan eco straightedge metalcore, sometimes called hardline. It's a movement that I encountered in high school when I would attend all ages concerts. It's interesting that there are as many metal and hardcore music niches as there are environmental value systems.

A young vegan straightedger talks about what the movement means to her.

Ian MacKaye of Minor Threat was criticized for popularizing the straightedge lifestyle, but emphasized that he was only encouraging young people to think for themselves before engaging in self-destructive behavior.

Vegan eco straightedge kids use eco styling gel, duh.

I'll bring music to class and lyrics so people can get a feel for what the artists are doing here.

Architecture for Humanity

2010-02-15T23:14:00.000-08:00

You've all had a chance to navigate the Architecture for Humanity site -- anybody want to do a report on it to start us off? Seems like a gimme to me.

Green Urbanity

2010-02-15T18:45:00.000-08:00

Lots of stuff to read for tomorrow morning, especially the Mike Davis stuff, but be sure to click on the Arcosanti, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Architecture for Humanity stuff, much of which is beautiful, provocative, weird, and full of stuff to play around with... Hope your weekends were good.

Precis for "Broadacre City Plan" by Frank Lloyd Wright

2010-02-15T14:40:00.000-08:00

Frank Lloyd Wrights "Broadacre City" model (1935) propositioned an alternative urban plan that sought to decentralize power through the implementation of agrarian like democracy and individual freedom. Wright's model purposed the partition and ownership of one acre lots for all its citizens, enabling them to build shelter and grow food for a self sustainable lifestyle. By eliminating a recognizable metropolitan center Wright hoped to blur the distinction between urban/rural environments thus dissolving the destructive habits inherent of capital production. The model includes an economic plan which eliminates the concept of "rent" and implements a banknote that devalues annually at a fixed rate, encouraging spending and preventing hoarding. Wright believed that with the implementation of his model we could overcome problems of "poverty and class conflict" by creating a world of "stability, prosperity, and love" through the promotion of education, diversity, and the apportioning of abundance. Wrights model for "Broadacre City" questions the ways in which traditional urban plans limit the individual within society. Given the conventional language and theory behind "Broadacre City," Wrights design is modeled for every individual with a willingness to rethink his/her way of living.

"The new city will be nowhere, yet everywhere."
-Frank Lloyd Wright

SEE ALSO:

http://www.dkolb.org/sprawlingplaces/thenewci/wright_1.html

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=13&ved=0CC8QFjAM&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpontilly2007.files.wordpress.com%2F2007%2F09%2Fbroadacrecity.pdf&ei=CLd5S8ibK4LusgOR_anLCA&usg=AFQjCNEp-GuslKiaAF40xzd89vxi_OPEFQ

-Graham Austin

Why arcologies are awesome and yet unlikely to happen anytime soon

2010-02-14T21:43:00.000-08:00

Arcologies (a word derived from 'architecture' and 'ecology') are mega-structures designed to house large populations within a small physical area as a response to the environmental and ecological problems associated with urban sprawl. These sustainable structures would eliminate the need for automobiles, thus reducing pollution and demand for fossil fuels. Because arcologies occupy such a relatively small acreage, the surrounding land could be used for agriculture and recreation within immediate reach. The health, environmental, and social benefits to be had from the arcology are numerous and I personally would totally love living in one. However, I see two major roadblocks on the road to a country dotted with things that might look like this:

First, we have the whole weirdness factor. Popular in science fiction and computer games the arcology risks being perceived as a nerdy, futuristic, sci-fi pipe dream. For example, the Shimizu TRY 2004 Mega-City Pyramid, an enormous structure proposed to house 750,000 people off the coast of Tokyo, can't even be built with materials currently available. In the video/computer game SimCity 2000, the arcologies blast off into space to float around or colonize other planets. The arcology shows up in what one might deem decidely 'nerdy' avenues of popular culture (check out the wikipedia article on arcologies for a long list of references). Which is to say they're relatively unpopular. Even if Miley Cyrus started playing RPGs and reading scifi, the need to consolidate populations into enormous buildings doesn't feel very pressing. Sure, they look awesome in movies set in a post-apocalyptic world, but this only further encourages the view that they are impossible for contemporary technology and unnecessary.

Then again, Italian architect Paolo Soleri has founded the Arcosanti project and is currently building an arcology in Arizona that will house 5,000 people. The reviews on yelp.com are lukewarm and report a general air of "datedness" and somewhat lackluster maintenance of the site and its hotel rooms. By contrast, the Arcosanti website is rather convincing of the project's awesomeness and the benefits of living in an automobile-free super house. It had me convinced, and while I am a bit of a nerd, it seemed at first that convincing the rest of society to live in an arcology might not be that hard. Then I read Mike Davis' article on Dubai, which brings us to the second obstacle.

The Arcosanti ideals as revealed through the website and its description of arcology theory in general don't exactly account for the potential dangers of consolidating several thousand people in one big building. If the location was chosen poorly like so many of our disaster-prone urban centers (like the one in which you currently reside) the results would be catastrophic. If some deranged resident decided to concoct a poisonous gas in his LEED-certified suite he or she could release it into the building's ventilation system and kill everyone. Then there's that whole terrorism thing.

Happily, most of the problems I came up with from more benign, prank-like acts of wanton behavior to the more serious nuking of several thousand citizens housed in an easily-targeted structure, can be avoided with careful planning, organization, and some effort on our government's part to make everyone like us. Sadly, achieving those goals and getting funding to build arcologies seems about as possible as convincing non-sci-fi geeks to live in one.

London Super Tower, Moscow Crystal Island,

Weekend Prep

2010-02-13T11:45:00.000-08:00

Go ahead and print up the readings for Tuesday morning -- And if you're writing precises, go ahead and post them to the blog -- And if you are giving reports, go ahead and post links to the blog for us to look into in advance... Let's get this show on the road, people! Hope you're having a good weekend...

Onion article

2010-02-07T21:06:00.000-08:00

I ran across this article from The Onion - 'How Bad For The Environment Can Throwing Away One Plastic Bottle Be?' 30 Million People Wonder last month and bookmarked it just so I could share it with our class. Really, I am that on top of my academic game.

This Week --

2010-02-06T18:06:00.000-08:00

I'm expecting two in-class reports and at least one precis on an assigned text for this week. If it doesn't happen by your initiative it will happen from now on as a direct result instead of the heavy-hand of my dictatorial vengeance. Hulk smash!

Tomorrow Morning --

2010-02-01T21:14:00.000-08:00

There's an enormous amount of material we can explore tomorrow, but I do want to make sure everybody has read the two short Curtis White pieces. I realize that Thoreau and Emerson are the big guns assigned this week, but those are also enormously long and deep pieces, and I suspect all of you who have managed to read them will nonetheless bring very different perspectives to them. Let's start with the White pieces because they are contemporary in their language and concerns (and are also tapping into transcendentalist themes from the older pieces), and be sure to read the very short, very lovely Aldo Leopold pieces as well. The Land Ethic is one of the most influential works in the whole Green canon. See you all tomorrow morning, d

My Report in class

2010-02-01T14:20:00.000-08:00

I will be presenting an artist by the name of Amy Balkin on Tuesday. this is a link to one of her many websites and the main project that I will be discussing Tuesday. www.thisisthepublicdomain.org also
www.publicsmog.org
Sean Haywood

Reports and Precises

2010-01-31T21:01:00.000-08:00

I just want to make sure everybody remembers that one of the expectations for the class is that everybody will give a report at some point in the term telling us about some activist campaign or interesting resource or about the work of an interesting artist that connects up in some way to the concerns we are reading and talking about in the course.

In order for this to work, there should probably be two or three reports at the beginning of each class meeting. Reports rarely take more than five minutes or so, but there is a Q and A component that sometimes goes longer if folks are really interested for some reason. You should post a link to the blog enabling us to explore the campaign or artist's work on our own, ideally before you give your report, but afterward is also fine.

If you want to report on an organization or campaign, be sure you are able to talk about how and why you think they are doing something especially unique or interesting or problematic, since there are a lot of essentially vapid and interchangeable "green-ish" sites out there...

Also, remember that everybody is expected to write a precis and publish it on the blog about one of our assigned texts at some point. There are lots of good ones coming up this week, so don't pass up a fine opportunity.

If anybody has questions about the precis, about the report, about logging onto the blog, e-mail me or ask me about it when class begins Tuesday. Hope everybody is having a good weekend.

hey everyone

2010-01-28T08:57:00.001-08:00

my art show made the sf chronicle today.

(this is the last time i'll spam)

please check it out: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2010/01/28/NST51BL0P1.DTL&o=0

-gerald

Co-facilitating Discussions and Writing a Precis

2010-01-23T22:32:00.000-08:00

One of the key assignments for our course will be your co-facilitation of class discussion of one of the assigned texts.

This assignment also requires that you generate a précis of the text you are taking responsibility for. This precis should provide a point of departure for your contribution to the discussion in class, and you should publish it to the blog at least a day before class to give everybody a chance to think about the text in the terms that interest you.

Think of this precis as a basic paraphrase of the argumentative content of a text.

Here is a broad and informal guide for a precis, consisting of questions you should always ask of a text as you are reading it, and again after you have finished reading it. Don't treat this as an ironclad template, but as a rough guide to producing a precis -- knowing that a truly fine and useful précis need not necessarily satisfy all of these suggestions.

A precis should try to answer fairly basic questions such as:

1. What, in your own words, is the basic gist of the argument?

2. To what audience is it pitched primarily? (Do you see yourself as part of that intended audience, and how does your answer impact your reading of the argument?) Does it anticipate and respond to possible objections?

3. What do you think are the argument's stakes in general? To what end is the argument made?

a. To call assumptions into question?
b. To change convictions?
c. To alter conduct?
d. To find acceptable compromises between contending positions?

4. Does it have an explicit thesis? If not, could you provide one in your own words for it?

5. What are the reasons and evidence offered up in the argument to support what you take to be its primary end? What crucial or questionable warrants (unstated assumptions the argument takes to be shared by its audience, often general attitudes of a political, moral, social, cultural nature) does the argument seem to depend on? Are any of these reasons, evidences, or warrants questionable in your view? Do they support one another or introduce tensions under closer scrutiny?

6. What, if any, kind of argumentative work is being done by metaphors and other figurative language in the piece? Do the metaphors collaborate to paint a consistent picture, or do they clash with one another? What impact does this have on their argumentative force?

7. Are there key terms in the piece that seem to have idiosyncratic definitions, or whose usages seem to change over the course of the argument?

As you see, a piece that interrogates a text from these angles of view will yield something between a general book report and a close reading, but one that focuses on the argumentative force of a text. For the purposes of our class, such a precis succeeds if it manages

(1) to convey the basic flavor of the argument and
(2) provides a good point of departure for a class discussion.

Needless to say, in our course it will always be in point to direct our attention to the interplay of the discourses of nature we have been elaborating, to point out the ways in which argumentative strategies, assumptions, problems, figures, frames recur in the piece under discussion in variations familiar from earlier texts, and so on.

Syllabus, Green Theories, Practices, Idenities, Spring 2010

2010-01-18T20:52:00.001-08:00

Green Theories, Green Practices, Green Identities
Spring 2010

Tuesdays, 9-11.45 AM, Studio 18 Chestnut
Instructor: Dale Carrico; dcarrico@sfai.edu; dalec@berkeley.edu
Course Site: http://tecblogging.blogspot.com/

Provisional Grade Breakdown:
Att/Part 25%; Co-facilitation/Precis 15%; In-Class Report 15%; Final Exam: 45%

Provisional Schedule of Classes

Week One | January 19 | Introductions

September 1 -- Personal Introductions

Week Two | January 26 | An Inconvenient Truth

September 3 -- Screening: "An Inconvenient Truth"

Week Three | February 2 | Green Idols and Precursors

Curtis White, The Idols of Environmentalism
Curtis White, The Ecology of Work
Aldo Leopold, The Land Ethic
Aldo Leopold, Thinking Like a Mountain
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature
Henry David Thoreau Walden

Week Four | February 9 | Deep Ecology and Deep Economy

Arne Naess, The Shallow and the Deep
Arne Naess and George SessionsDeep Ecology Platform
Alan Drengson, Deep Ecology Movement
Church of Deep Ecology
Murray Bookchin, Social Ecology Versus Deep Ecology
Bill McKibben, Reversal of Fortune
An Interview with E. F. Schumacher

Week Five | February 16 | Political Ecology, Green Urbanity

Mike Davis, Slum Ecology
Mike Davis and Anthony Fontenot Twenty-five Questions about the Murder of the Big Easy
Mike Davis, Sinister Paradise: Does the Road to the Future End at Dubai?
David Biello, Eco-Cities: Urban Planning for the Future
Frank Lloyd Wright, A City for the Future
Frank Lloyd Wright, Broadacre City Project
Frank Lloyd Wright, Broadacre City Plan
Paolo Soleri, Arcosanti
LEED
Architecture for Humanity: Completed Projects
Architecture 2030

Week Six | February 23 | canceled die to illness...

Week Seven | March 2 | Eco-feminism

Cathleen McGuire and Colleen McGuire, Ecofeminist Visions
Rosemary Radford Reuther, Ecofeminism
Catherine Keller, Dark Vibrations: Ecofeminism and the Democracy of Creation
Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands, Unnatural Passions: Notes Toward a Queer Ecology
UNIFEM, Women, Climate Change, and Refugees
Interview with Vandana Shiva

Week Eight | March 9 | Environmental Justice Critique

The Rio Declaration
The Johannesburg Declaration
EPA Environmental Justice FAQ
About the Environmental Justice Foundation
Ludovic Blain, Ain't I An Environmentalist?
Robert D. Bullard, Ph.D., Poverty, Pollution, and Environmental Racism
Lisa Campbell Salazar, National Parks and Environmental RacismEco-socialism and Social Ecology

Week Nine | March 16 | Spring Break

Week Ten | March 23 | Ecosocialism and Biopiracy

An Ecosocialist Manifesto by Joel Kovel and Michael Lowy
Joel Kovel, Why Ecosocialism Today?
Common Voice, Ecosocialism
James O'Conner: Selling Nature
James Boyle, Enclosing the Genome
Vandana Shiva, The US Patent System Legalizes Theft and Biopiracy
Richard Stallman, Biopiracy or Bioprivateering?

Week Eleven | March 30 | Natural Capitalism and Greenwashing

Paul Hawken: Natural Capitalism
A Roadmap for Natural Capitalism, Amory Lovins, Hunter Lovins, Paul Hawken
OpenPolitics Critiques of Paul Hawken and Natural Capitalism
Balancing Act
About Triplepundit
What Is Greenwashing?
How Greenwashing Works
Greenwashing Index
Peter Barnes: Capitalism, 3.0

Introduction
Time to Upgrade
A Short History of Capitalism
The Limits of Government
The Limits of Privatization
Reinventing the Commons
Trusteeship of Creation
Universal Birthrights
Sharing Culture
Building the Commons Sector
What You Can Do

Cap and Trade Musical Chairs
Cap-and-Trade More Effective than Carbon Tax
Carry on Polluting
Did Environmentalists Get Played on Cap and Trade?

Week Twelve | April 6 | Bright Green or Dim? Sustainable Technoculture and Techno-Utopian Futurology

Bruce Sterling, Viridian Design Speech
Bruce Sterling, Manifesto of January 3, 2000
Bruce Sterling, Viridian Principles
Bruce Sterling, Last Viridian Note
Grist on Worldchanging's Bright Green Principles (read the Comments!)
Worldchanging Geoengineering Retrospective
Time Magazine on Geoengineering
Lifeboat Foundation "ClimateShield"
National Geographic, Toxic Computer
When 1st Life Meets 2nd Life
Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, The California Ideology
Jedediah Purdy The God of the Digerati
Marc Stiegler, The Gentle Seduction
John Zerzan, Technology
John Zerzan, Why Primitivism?
Kirkpatrick Sale, Lessons from the Luddites

Week Thirteen | April 13 | From Agriculture to Polyculture

John Zerzan, Agriculture
Malcome Scully, The Destructive Nature of Our Bountiful Harvests
Wes Jackson and Wendell Berry, A 50-Year Farm Bill
Lisa Hamilton, Let's grow a new crop of farmers
Ted Nace, Breadbasket of Democracy
Seeds of Resistance
Dale Allen Pfeiffer, Eating Fossil Fuels
Al Gore, Introduction to Rachel Carson's Silent Spring
Permaculture Design Principles, Online Interactive Presentation
Permaculture 101, Short Video Presentations
Introduction to Permaculture: Concepts and Resources, Online Compendium

Week Fourteen | April 20 | Green Eats

Jill Richardson, Organic White House Garden Puts Some Conventional Panties in a Twist (Follow the links and read the comments)
Kathy Freston, Vegetarian Is the New Prius
Clara Jeffrey, Michael Pollan Fixes Dinner
Claudia Deutsch, Trying to Connect the Dinner Plate to Climate Change
David Rogers, On PETA's Latest Campaign
Jane Liaw, Food Miles Are Less Important to Environment Than Food Choices
Jack Kloppenberg, Sharon Lerzberg, Kathryn De Master, Tasting Food, Tasting Sustainability
Cornell University, Factsheet: Consumer Concerns About Pesticides in Food
Paul Roberts, Organic and Local Is So 2008
Jim Hightower, Food Industry Is Now Calling Junk Food Healthy
Brian Howard, Meaningful Labels
Marc Abrahams, Food for Thought
Anna Lenzer, Spin the Bottle
Saul Landau, Reagan and Bottled Water

Week Fifteen | April 27 | Extracting Ourselves From Extraction

Michael T. Klare, The Coming Resource Wars
BBC: World Water Crisis
The Coming Water Wars: Demography and Water Resources
The Coming Water Wars: Chart
Kate Kelland, Antibiotics Overuse Threatens Medicine
David Korten on Democracy Now From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth
Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency
Howard Kunstler, A Five Part Online Video Exploration: The Long Emergency
Chris Vernon, Agriculture Meets Peak Oil

Week Sixteen | May 6 | Toxic World and Green Ethos

Ten Worst Anthropogenic and Natural Environmental Disasters
What Happened at Bhopal?
Learn More
Pollution Facts
Worst Polluted Places (2007)
Worst Pollution Problems (2008)
12 Cases of Cleanup and Success (2009)
Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, The Death of Environmentalism
Bruno Latour, "It's Development, Stupid!" Or: How to Modernize Modernization
George Lakoff, How We Talk About the Environment Has Everything to Do With Whether We Will Save It

Hand In Take Home Keywords Final

GENERAL OBJECTIVES:

1. Interrogate the discourses of "nature," as registers of materiality, worldliness, scientificity, wilderness, sublimity, insecurity, grace, and consider the ways in which these different (sometimes outright contradictory) registers function in argument and in identification as supplements, complements, resolutions, dissolutions, contraries, paradoxes, and so on.

2. Survey a host of "green" discourses, from transcendentalism, deep ecology, social ecology, urban gardening and green cities, permaculture, to eco-feminism, eco-socialism, environmental justice critique, natural capitalism, anti-civilizational discourse and anarcho-luddism -- identify both continuities and discontinuities in their assumptions, aspirations, figurations, frames, gestures.

3. Consider "environmentalisms" as more than argumentative claims, but as sites of subculture and style, identification and dis-identification, practices of education, agitation, and organization stratified by race, sex-gender, class, nationality.

4. Treat "greenness" as a site through which to think more generally about relations of theory and practice, political engagement, critical thinking, and art practices, as well as to think about political engagement and efficacy under contemporary conditions.

5. Acquaint students with hundreds of "Keywords" connected to various Green practices, theories, communities, strategies (eg, abrasion, biomimesis, cradle-to-cradle, downcycling, externality, financialization, greenwashing, etc.).

6. Embed these discourses within an STS (science and technology studies) framework, emphasizing publicity/historicity of objects/subjects, actor-network formulations of actant/associate agency, and strong critique (via Arendt, Latour, and Haraway) of triumphalist-emancipatory narratives of technoscientific-sociopolitical progress.

MURKETING

2009-04-30T09:44:00.000-07:00

A Sousveillance Pedestrian on the Oakland B.A.R.T. (Bay Area Rapid Transit): A Discussion on Forums Created by Sousveillors

2009-04-10T21:30:00.000-07:00

Sousveillance is described in an article by Steve Mann, who coined the term, as an inverse to surveillance. Mann quotes it as, “a means to balance the increasing (and increasingly one-sided) surveillance.” The etymology of this term is described in Wikipedia as this;

"Sousveillance" stems from the contrasting French words sur, meaning "above", and sous, meaning "below", i.e. "surveillance" denotes the "eye-in-the-sky" watching from above, whereas "sousveillance" denotes bringing the camera or other means of observation down to human level, either physically (mounting cameras on people rather than on buildings), or hierarchically (ordinary people doing the watching, rather than higher authorities or architectures doing the watching).

This clash between surveillance and sousveillance appears in the media daily as citizens have felt the right and need to document their lives. With technological advances in digital cameras and cell phones with video capabilities, the pedestrian can capture any event within seconds thereby testing the limitations of surveillance.

The importance of the pedestrian sousveillor is very important as a tool for critiques on surveillance. One focus of critique is in the role of law enforcement and of whom they are protecting. This is a question that stems from the role of the establishment and how much political control it characterizes. Do the police subscribe to methods in which law enforcement is used to create a vision of political control that is not protecting the rights of the people? Also, have such methods of political control been mediated by other factors such as media? It is true that rumors of police destroying video evidence during protests and lying under oath have taken place. It is also true that people were specifically hired to take footage of actions in their favor. How deep can the law go to uphold a vision of control?

On New Years day of 2009, in Oakland, California, the fatal shooting of an unarmed man, Oscar Grant, was seen through the eyes of many people. The unfortunate event hit the internet immediately and soon became the outrage of many people. Some responded angrily as riots broke out all over the Oakland area. Dialogues of mistaken procedure and murder coursed through the transit system for weeks. But, this would not have been such a heavy topic for conversation without the key participation of a pedestrian onlooker. The brutality of the footage shows how a critical moment becomes so when many variables are not in control. In a moment a shot is fired, followed by the police officer’s moment of confusion, and then everyone else’s hysteria.

Unfortunately, accidents happen all the time. This wasn’t even the first BART shooting.

On Nov. 15, 1992, BART officer Fred Crabtree shot and killed Jerrold Hall in the back of the head with a 12-gauge shotgun. Hall and another Black male friend were standing at a bus stop near a BART entrance in Hayward, and were approached because they fit the description of two men accused of robbery. BART cleared the officer, but in 1996, he committed suicide by hanging. (Muhammad, Sacramento Observer [02/05/09]).

The above event poses an important question: Is video sousveillance necessary to expose a corruption that would have taken place? Without this major piece of evidence police officer Johannes Mesherle could have been acquitted of all charges. The cycle of cover-ups may have already been spinning before the department realized that few thousands had already seen and analyzed the footage. Some of them already noticed that Mesherle had a moment of confusion after he fatally shot Oscar Grant.

It is important to understand that cases like these are not necessarily right or wrong. The officer who shot Grant is only the first to come. The bigger picture that comes from this situation is that something was interrupted. The outcome of the tragedy may have gone in a different route. This is speculative, but from previously mentioned circumstances of Officer Fred Crabtree and Jerrold Hall, it is quite possible. The actual outcome was the open debate as to whether police murder is the same as any other murder. And this forum was finally opened up to a bigger population by the invention of modern digital recording devices, i.e. cell phones and digital cameras.

Now this is a small example of many of these debates arising all over the world. We have all heard or seen the photos from Abu Ghirab and the prisoners. Although the images captured are somewhat horrifying to watch, sousveillance and the participation of commoners to act is a necessary and democratic way of opening forums and debates questioning society’s needs of repair. It is a useful way for becoming more democratic about the ways in which we understand situations and take closer looks at institutions that govern our perspectives and visions. It is nice to say, I heard an interesting debate today on public transit. People seemed so fired up about whether a police officer had mistakenly pulled the wrong weapon to incapacitate a man. The discussion led to the debate of whether police as humanity’s enforcement should be held accountable for accidental murder. More and more people joined in. Overall much better than watching individuals stare off into space, avoiding eye contact while their soul melts away into the dreary hum-drum of their life.

Project Description

Sousveillance Pedestrian Camera-Phone and Police Issue Taser/Glock Cut-outs is my answer to a situation that happened on New Years Day of 2009, where a man was unnecessarily shot. It used as a mockery of the conduct of aggressive police tactics and to symbolize an event through iconery. Each cut-out represent an act and weapon used by both sides of this picture: one, a symbol of justice and a debateable force of control, and two, a democratizing symbol of an oppositional sousveillor.

These tools are free to print and cutout if desired and is hoped to be available in more than one place. I hope it is not too heavy handed. Thanks.

When tragedy strikes. Fruitvale BART shooting of unarmed man caught on video.

2009-04-09T20:15:00.000-07:00

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=oakland+shooting+cop&oe=UTF-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wv&ei=s-7bSfTlM5eyMaXYnOEN&oi=property_suggestions&resnum=0&ct=property-revision&cd=1#

2009-04-09T20:01:00.000-07:00

David Korten "The Great Turning" video mix

2009-01-28T00:18:00.000-08:00

Donna Harraway

2008-12-11T09:01:00.003-08:00

Hey everyone, I know this probably doesn’t do much good now, but here is my Donna Harraway Precies

In this beautiful am amazing essay Donna Harraway expands many of her other most famous concepts, especially those mobilized by the cyborg and on the proliferation of hybrids.

She begins this with a discussion of “nature”`stating that it is a “commonplace and a powerfully discursive construction.” Harraway is attempting to work through a model and understanding of nature (and really existence, especially embodiment,) which is not caught in the unproductive crosshairs of Modernist or postmodernism, arguing (after Latour,) that we have “never been modern.”

She movingly describes bodies as material semiotic generative nodes” which materialize in social interaction among humans and non-humans, including machines and other instruments.

She introduces, and later in the article, fleshes out a model based on the human-immune system, writing: “So while the late-twentieth century immune system, for example, is a construct of an elaborate apparatus of bodily production, neither the immune system nor any other of biology’s world-changing bodies-like viruses or an ecosystem – is a ghostly fantasy.

Movingly, Harraway discusses the corporeality of theory, that it is necessarily material, bodily, and literal.

Using a semiotic grid of A. Real Space: Earth; B. Out Space: The Extraterrestrial; Not B. Inner Space: The Biomedical Body; and Not A. Virtual Space: SF, Harraway’s essay weaves through close readings of technological advertisements, t-shirt logos, and space chimp narratives to flesh out her thesis on nature, artificiality, embodiment and technology.

Whether it is a read contrasting the relationship of fetuses to mother’s bodies to Amazonian inhabitants to the Amazon jungle (who is speaking thus?) and the assumptions from which such arguments are made or an unpacking of the misogynist- racist-imperialist under girding of a photograph of Jane Goodall holding hands with a monkey (the chimp touches her, anointing her as science to speak for it, nature, wrapped un in complex (and very visible) histories of miscegenation.)

One of the most lovely stretches (beside its entirety) is Harraway’s personal tale about the intervention and controversy of Surrogate Other’s, their infiltration into a government testing site (using a floral-print polyester snake-worm with “lovely dragon eyes,”) and the unpacking of the semantics, and images of their name and shirts (describing the world as an amniotic sac and mother simultaneously, the kind of descriptive “monstrous” hybrids, the spaces of the margins, that Harraway works.

Finally at the end emerges her discussion of the cyborg reading in the Lynn Randolph painting Cyborg (1989) “the full circle of the noisey semiotic square, finding it a rainbow of political semiology for wily transnational techno science studies as cultural studies.”

I am interested an always very moved at her reads of visual imagery, like ads, and the extreme importance it carries for her theoretically and politically, what, as cultural produces do we make of her reads and its implications for our practice.

Donna Harraway

2008-12-11T09:01:00.001-08:00

CLIPART COMICS

2008-12-11T07:00:00.000-08:00

Final Project by Peter Max Lawrence
http://petermaxlawrence.com/PWP/CLIPARTCOMICS/01/0101_00.html

Locative media and the city

2008-12-10T22:38:00.000-08:00

Ran across this, and it peaked my interest.

"...locative and mobile media and how they relate to urban culture and questions of identity...“MySpace urbanism” – the condition of cities saturated with media networks, where physical space is intersected with layers of personalised, spatial orientation."

Reminds me of the Debord, the Situationists and their exploration of psychogeographies.

Final Project!!!!

2008-12-10T19:01:00.000-08:00

Hi Everybody!! For my final project I did some illustrations for "Maneki Neko", by Bruce Sterling...Also, at the bottom is an advertisement of my take on the Pokkecon mentioned in the story.....Please Enjoy!! Good luck with finals everybody!

My site BAMTRON.COM

2008-12-10T15:49:00.000-08:00

Recently I have been really interested in HTML or the Internet as a tool and medium. I have some issues with using the web as a space to show one's work but still see the practicality or inescapable accessibility. The artist websites I have seen use it like a business card, usually really cut and dry information with strict parameters. What you don't see a lot is artists approaching it from the another angle and treating it like they would their work. Seems simple enough but it was really hard for me to throw out my impulses to make my site "readable" and "understandable." I feel that this attempt is a step in the right direction because it's a compromise between conveying information effectively while still keeping my conceptual ideas in tact.

Please check it out, feedback appreciated:

www.bamtron.com

Garfield minus Garfield

2008-12-10T13:34:00.000-08:00

http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/

For my presentation

2008-12-09T19:30:00.000-08:00

Good Evening everyone.
On Thursday we will be participating in the show Let's Paint TV with artist John Kilduff! A live webcast from www.stickam.com
We will be tuning into his show at 11 or as close to that time as we can.
Check out his website!
http://letspainttv.com/

Here's a cool video of John in action!
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/4c8244ff76/mr-lets-paint-get-a-pie-s-in-his-face-from-letspainttv

Facebook and the Social Dynamics of Privacy

2008-12-07T11:18:00.000-08:00

Clay Shirky posted on Boing Boing, an article by James Grimmelmann entitled Facebook and the Social Dynamics of Privacy. Thought someone might be interested.

The drug war...

2008-12-06T16:11:00.000-08:00

more reports from more failed war...

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2008/12/03/einstein-insanity-and-the-war-on-drugs/

eye see you!

2008-12-06T13:10:00.000-08:00

Film maker implants camera into eye...

http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/12/eye-spy-filmmak.html

James Boyle's "The Public Domain"

2008-12-04T16:15:00.000-08:00

Oh, and James Boyle has a new book out called The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind. Boing Boing has more here. Free download here.

Benkler on Infrastructure Investment

2008-12-04T15:43:00.000-08:00

Ran across this article by Yochai Benkler about investing in information infrastructure.

Ubuntu Studio

2008-12-04T11:10:00.000-08:00

Since we talked about it, this is the open source operating system of creative apps, Ubuntu Studio.

Update: For those interested, there is also artsoftware.org which has a large resource of open source art focused software. And the list of software that you install with Ubuntu Studio (if you don't want to install a new OS) is here. Of note on that list are GIMP, Blender and Audacity. I am also big fan of Pure Data (or PD) which is the open source Max/MSP, which was written by Miller Puckett, the original author of Max/MSP (and the MSP in Max/MSP).

A couple of other projects to mention are Processing and it's hardware sister project, Arduino. If anyone is interested, Chris Palmer teaches a class here on Arduino called Activating Objects (which I happen to TA. Funny how that works, huh?)

Enjoy!!

Just thought this would be appropriate....

2008-12-04T02:02:00.000-08:00

....any ladies out there need $7,000?

Bring Me My Philips Mental Jacket

2008-12-04T01:23:00.000-08:00

In the article Bring Me My Philips Mental Jacket Slavoj Žižek takes a stab at tackling the complicated issue of bioethics and ends where we normally do, with more questions than answers. He begins with concerns of manipulating the human body and turning it into a nonhuman being, and in turn completely obliterating nature as we know it. This seems to be a recurring idea, and one of the most significant arguments in the article. Mr. Žižek simply cannot fathom a world where bioengineering is in practice. In fact he doesn’t have any positive feedback at all, and much of his argument seems to be fear based. He tends to hold on to the traditional definitions of life as we know it, and brings to light the issue of morality vs. not knowing. One of the reasons for arguing against not knowing is because in many cases science dispels many myths of past generations. Particularly of an argument which he brings up, the conflict between made and spontaneous, the more we learn in science the more we realize there is less and less spontaneity that we thought. I’m not arguing for bioethics, he makes good points, such as worrying about major corporations controlling the actions of humans through chip implants. But his fear tends to overbear his legitimate concerns and is distracting from many of the good points he makes.

Lessig Launches Open Transition Principles for Obama

2008-12-03T23:21:00.000-08:00

Lawrence Lessig, who wrote 'Code is Law' from our second week of readings this term, is teaming up with some folks from Moveon.org and others to present a set of principals for Obama's "open transition."

"President-elect Obama has made a very clear commitment to changing the way government works with its citizens. To this end, we offer these three principles to guide the transition in its objective to build upon the very best of the Internet to produce the very best for government."
http://www.open-government.us/

Its nice to know people are organizing in opposition to Legal Barriers that aim to prevent Sharing, but i did find one sentence in the opening paragraph a little telling of a certain "faith" in the Internet as the best fucking shit in the world.

I learned about the site on Slashdot.com where there is a good discussion on the topic in the comments box.

Laptops 4 children in developing countries

2008-12-03T18:46:00.000-08:00

We have often discussed in class the issues of technology and the internet addressability. Here is an interesting organization that working with that issue. http://laptop.org.
I have some issues with organization manly hat it is sold through amazon but it is worth why to check out

TECHSPLOITATION

2008-12-02T01:37:00.000-08:00

So the ol’ in and out is really just “a massive genetic engineering project known as patriarchy”? Huh? Annalee Newitz sarcastically, but also in all seriousness, argues in her article TECHSPLOITATION: Breeding the Future that so called “natural” breeding has lost anything natural about it because it has been skewed by the dominating patriarchal elite to control what kind of babies will be produced by women who have been handpicked. She also states that this hierarchy isn’t all that different or any worse than genetic engineering because it also uses the selecting processes doctors would use to create their perfect human species. So what’s all the hoopla about?

Her concern about this entire mess isn’t the means which life is brought into the world, but rather the problem of overpopulation. It’s a rather touchy subject- we wouldn’t be in such a global crisis for resources and space if there were less people in the world and we could consume and exist in a less devastating way. This is something I assume we have all thought about in reading this article and the reasons for the endurance of overpopulation are rather bleak for obvious reasons. 1) It’s little too late to deal with overpopulation immediately because the people who have been born can’t be unborn. 2) The people who intentionally or accidentally participate in producing babies believe, for the most part, in the fundamental right for two consenting adults to create life whenever they want to. Mandatory population control isn’t all that appealing, because it’s seen as a loss of the freedom of choice. In China, for example, the one child policy was implemented in 1979. Only 35% of the population is subjected to this policy and has been estimated to have prevented 250 million births. Some benefits have been economic growth, decreased environmental impact and better health care services. Some criticisms are that it has had effects on the female population, has created more abortions and infanticides, more abandoned and orphaned children and has created a “Four-two-one” problem in which the single child is put in a position to take care of both parents and four grandparents.

Newitz's solution seems like a reasonable one- to eliminate the stigma surrounding people who choose not to reproduce and to actually thank them for ridding us of the awful brats! More people could and should make a conscious decision, instead of a selfish or unconscious one, to do their part in saving our species. Some questions that arise from this are: How do you convince people to care about the survival of earth when they currently are doing nothing to resolve easy problems? Especially if they are not in a position to care. Is it selfish to have a lot of children? What is a reasonable number? And what would the solution be to eliminate peoples illogical, but instinctual desire to have children? Some solutions, all of which I can see immediate problems with but like the idea of, are to perhaps buy a permit to have a child, take a test to prove parental ability, be drawn in a lottery, be assigned a timeline with marked potential procreation periods so that not too many people are born at once, or share multiple children with multiple families.

"One-child policy." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 1 Dec 2008, 16:47 UTC. 2 Dec 2008

Keywords Wiki

2008-12-02T00:09:00.001-08:00

We set up a wiki to collaborate on the keywords project. You can help collaborate at http://tecblog.pbwiki.com/

Making Art and Culture Thrive in a Hybrid Economy

2008-12-01T09:31:00.000-08:00

Making Art and Culture Thrive in a Hybrid Economy -- Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig believes heavy-handed enforcement of intellectual property rights may quash creativity and innovation. He joins us to discuss his new book titled, "Remix: Making Art and Culture Thrive in the Hybrid Economy."

88.5 fm

http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R812011000

FINAL

2008-12-01T09:12:00.001-08:00

Many of you will be presenting original work connected to the themes of our course on the last day as your final project. Please remember that together with this presentation you should hand in a short description of the project and its connection to a text or texts from our class that I can use as a reference in assessing your work.

Those of you who would rather not do such a presentation are welcome to produce a short (5pp.) final essay responding to the following prompt:

What is the shape and what might be the significance of a transformation from a mass mediated public sphere into more p2p networked public sphere? Choose any two texts from the course to describe how, in your own view, the emerging peer-to-peer networked public sphere differs most significantly from the mass mediated public sphere that preceded it.

I have no expectation at all about how sweeping, how deep, how hopeful, how fragile, how illusory you have come to believe this transformation truly is, nor do I have any expectation about what each of you will finally decide the significance of this transformation truly amounts to.

Berube

2008-12-01T09:04:00.000-08:00

Well, I've looked all over the place, but to no avail. When Berube migrated his site some of the essays available on the old site vanished down the memory hole and the beautiful essay I assigned for Thursday is among them. I cannot find it anywhere else. Unless somebody has had luck finding it through some other route I suppose we'll have to confine our discussion to the remaining three pieces Thurs. The essay became the basis for a wonderful book by the same title that I recommend to your attention. Hope your holiday went well and that everybody is working on their keywords assignment. Word about the final forthcoming in my next post.

new york times article on leaving a digital trail and privacy.

2008-11-30T17:21:00.000-08:00

if you guys are interested...

i thought it was pretty relevant.

ny times article

A Thanksgiving Prayer

2008-11-27T10:13:00.001-08:00

"You always were a headache, and you always were a bore." William Burroughs gives thanks. Director Gus Van Sant helps out.

Keywords!

2008-11-22T10:13:00.000-08:00

1. accountability
2. basic income guarantee
3. body
4. California Ideology
5. canon
6. code
7. commons
8. control
9. credential
10. crypto-anarchy
11. culture
12. cybernetic totalism
13. cyberspace
14. democracy
15. digital
16. elite
17. end-to-end principle (e2e)
18. enframing
19. enhancement
20. filtering
21. finitude
22. free software
23. industrial model
24. linking
25. mass culture
26. media
27. neoliberalism
28. Netroots
29. objectivity
30. open source
31. panopticon
32. peer to peer (p2p)
33. popular
34. post-humanist
35. privacy
36. private property
37. professional
38. propaganda
39. public
40. publication
41. public good
42. reductionism
43. representative
44. retro-futurism
45. secrecy
46. sousveillance
47. spontaneous order
48. techno-utopianism
49. transparency
50. -- WILD CARD: Good for one term I've failed to include in the list.

Choose thirty Keywords from this list. Organize your chosen Keywords into three separate, conceptually connected, sets. You can use any criteria that seems useful to you to organize these sets. The only rule is that no resulting set can contain fewer than six Keywords.

Each set should have a title or heading that indicates the criteria governing inclusion into that set. Once you have organized your three sets in this way, briefly define each one of the Keywords you have included in each set in your own words. Ideally, your definitions should be as clear and as concise as possible. These definitions should be a matter of a sentence or two, NOT a paragraph or two. They are definitions, not essays or explanations. It should be clear from your definitions why each of the Keywords in each of the three sets are conceptually connected to each other, but it is also crucial that no terms within a set are to be treated as synonymous, and that your definitions distinguish Keywords from one another (even if the resulting distinctions are sometimes matters of nuance).

Once you have defined all these Keywords, provide a short quotation (feel free to edit and prune to keep your chosen citations properly pithy) from one of the texts we have read this term to accompany your definition. The quotation you choose can be a definition you found helpful in crafting your own definition, it can be an example or illustration you found especially clarifying, it can a matter of contextualization, framing, or history that you found illuminating, it can even be something you disagreed with so strongly it helped you understand better what you really think yourself.

Obviously, there are endless ways of organizing these sets, defining their Keywords, distinguishing them from one another, and connecting them up to the texts we have read. What matters here is that you follow the rules of the exercise, not that you arrive at some single "right answer" you may think I have in mind.

2008-11-19T12:23:00.000-08:00

Hey yawl,
I'm going to do my report tomorrow on Richard Kamler. He is a local artist who uses his art to challange current affairs, and believes that art is a powerfull tool to bring social change. His work can be placed in New Genras catigories, but can be very inspirering for all young active artist who are interested in staying active in political issues. Kamler has won many awards,including the Adaline Kent Award from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1996. Kamler is well know for his work with his collaboration with inmates of the San Francisco County Jail. Along side many other pieces wich we some might have hurd of, and we can descuss. If you get a chance to check out his web site it very intersting and easy to view. see you in the morning.
Rachel
http://www.richardkamler.org/buffalo.html
here is his artist statement for you to get an understanding...
RICHARD KAMLER
"For the past 30 years, that idea has driven me towards the practice of art engaged in worldly affairs. It has driven me towards an understanding that art is as much a part of our life as is the air we breathe and the water we drink. That art is an agent for social change. It is our fuel and our glue."

I practice art to communicate.
I practice art to make the world a better place.
I practice art because it is the most meaningful thing I can think of doing.
I practice art to come to the table and engage in dialogue.
I practice art to have fun.
I practice art to be part of the global community of artists and to participate in our common and creative struggle for freedom.
I practice art because I sing while I’m doing it.
I practice art to respect my grandfather’s request when he screamed at me to show him the face I had before I was born.
I practice art to have ONE un-edited activity for the full swimming of my imagination.
I practice art to say YES!

Unleash Your Inner Cyborg and Sousveillance!

2008-11-19T11:53:00.000-08:00

Sousveillance, By Steve Mann

Sousveillance is the opposite of surveillance and means watchful vigilance from underneath or undersight. In other words, filming as opposed to being filmed. Putting the surveillance back in the hands of the people.

Mann starts off this paper by defining the true causes of terror. He believes that terrorism arises from the larger operating system that initiates the surveillance. Not from the individual who gets out of line. These closed looped operating systems such as powerful governments have no checks and balances unlike the lower end operations that create feedback. And what we need to do is look at these systems that “operate without scrutiny” (Mann). What Mann is saying here is not too radical. We need to question the government. Hey that's a great idea!

Mann then points out that citizens' rights to record the activity of these large and powerful operating systems are being taken away. This can be seen on the micro level in department stores or corporate spaces, where there are tons of planted cameras hidden from plain view. In these places the customer or citizen is prohibited to take pictures or film. This basically makes these spaces or systems totalitarian regimes that rely on secrecy and high surveillance. Liberal democracy relies on the opposite. High surveillance equals high terror.

That is where Mann offers sousveillance as a solution. He argues that it creates a feedback for these closed off operations. A feedback that is necessary to restore order, balance, and freedom. Those large operations that encourage sousveillance will actually benefit from decreased acts of violence and terror. Sousveillance makes everyone happy! He argues that while this may increase surveillance, it actually destroys the monopoly on surveillance, democratizing surveillance. My question is how do you put out fire? By fighting fire with fire? NOT. I think there has to be a better way.

I start to doubt Mann's argument even more when he begins to describe the ways in which we should carry out sousveillance. “I'm not suggesting that the cameras be mounted on the floor...I am suggesting that the cameras be mounted on people in low places.” (Mann). He kinda beats you over the head with his explanation of not “literally” but “figuratively.” Yeah, we get it, not on the floor, on low people.

Like this fashionable EXISTech personable security necklace:

He also describes a “simple experiment” in which you go into a regime and ask them “Hey Regime, why ya got all those gosh darn surveillance cameras around?” They will respond with “Only criminals ask those questions!” Then you should take a picture of this official and “observe reaction.” Oh yeah and don't forget to bring your friends along to prevent an “eruption of violence.” This guy is kind of nuts.

There is also World Sousveillance Day: Operation Python aka December 24 (the biggest shopping day of the year) where you have to take a picture (with your camera phone) of all the cashiers you encounter. This will help to prevent your cashier from running your credit card twice. Seriously do it. Biggest shopping day of the year, don't get charged twice.

You know she was totally going to rip you off on that latte if you didn't take a picture of her:

While I definitely think that we should be aware of the totalitarian oppression in closed loop operations, I don't necessarily think that giving them a taste of their own medicine is the answer. Surveillance destroys trust. We need to create systems of feedback and balance that encourage trust.

sorry this is so late!!!

2008-11-18T23:35:00.000-08:00

“Three cheers for the Surveillance Society!”

David Brin believes that ever increasing Surveillance technology is inevitable and that ultimately, it will be an increasing benefit. I agree that in some ways, society could benefit from this technology. However, who will benefit depends on who’s hands it is in.

Holding those with power accountable is a necessary safeguard. Ideas such as chipping everything in our lives so we can locate lost or stolen property, missing children and “criminals” could as easily be abused as be used for the common good. What is to stop “Big Brother” from tracking down dissenting or questioning voices? We live within a capitalist society and this is the context that we must use when looking into the future. How can we assume that power will be in the hands of the people? Why is Brin so sure that surveillance technology will be used to serve the collective good? Maybe the collective he is talking about isn’t the same as the one I am thinking of. If tracking criminals is good, who defines the criminal behavior to be punished? Do we impose implants on corporate criminals in the same way we would to those committing crimes due to poverty? And unfortunately our current un-just “justice” system does not instill the hope that the purpose of our prison industrial complex will be dissolved though “chipping”. Brin praises the RFID technology systems for their convenience as a social benefit. This form of automation, like almost all corporate devised “advancements” will result in the deskilling and displacing of working peoples and jobs.

Not surprising many of the jobs eliminated due to “labor savers” (or self checkouts) have been union positions, Brin says “Does that sound simultaneously creepy and useful?” The question is, Useful to whom and at what cost?

Brin also uses the example of medical information. Is it more likely that universal access to ones medical information would result in insurance companies cherry picking who they will insure than the paramedics downloading the medical history of an average guy having a heart attack? Employers could also use medical information to discriminate.

Brin states, “In the short term, expanded powers of vision may embolden tyrants. But over the long run, these systems could help to empower citizens and enhance mutual trust.” I don’t agree that constantly surveilling each other equals “mutual trust”.

Orwell said “the moral to be drawn from this nightmare situation is a simple one: Don’t let it happen- It depends on you”.

While Brin might feel that what Orwell is saying we should stop technology, I see it as a recognition that we need to hold each other and ourselves accountable and make sure that technology serves the people not “Big Brother”.