Final Post

Well its been an interesting journey from the beginning of this school year to now; however, I do feel myself growing up in a gradual sense. I feel like my choices were made well and that I have learned a lot of new things about myself and the world around me. I already have switched majors once and hopefully I have found where I need to be.
College is a wonderful time in my life and I am learning to find my niches in this large community. I am excited to see where the next 4 years lead me and how it all ends up. Maybe I will come back and read this blog to see how I have truly transformed.

Sustainability on Campus

So my last paper was about recycling on campus and today in a meeting with people from throughout the sustainability office on campus I learned a few things about campus. We have now diverted almost 50% of all of wastes from a landfill to new recycled uses. Last year there were no recycling bins on campus and this year we have over 100 strategically placed along with trashcans. However because there are some many trashcans left progress is not as good as it could be. The goal of 60% diversion is set for 2015 and it should definitely be achievable.
A few things to do are make supplies used around campus better packaged to cut down on un-recyclable wastes. Also just educating students to fully think about their choices on campus and make sustainable options available throughout campus including some of the franchises on campus.

11/11/11

Wishing is useless. On the eve of the momentous occasion of 11/11/11 11:11(am or pm), I feel like making a wish at that time is just the same as any moment around the clock, useless. Because wishes make us hopeful for something which either means: it will become a goal and we will strive for it, it will become forgotten in the next 30 seconds, or it will lead to a hopeful longing of something that can never happen. Thinking back on wishes I have made, I realized none of them have come true and I haven’t gotten anywhere because of them either. Why is our human race so persistent on a cause that can never be satisfied? From our childhood, we are told to make wishes on stars at night and from then on it just becomes a habit. But, why? Why can we not teach our children to be grateful for themselves, the food they eat, or the earth surrounding them? We really are setting children up for a lifetime of disappointment which seems pretty pathetic. Maybe I am just a cynical person in the making because none of mine have ever come true, but I can’t be the only one. Nor would I want to be. To have the things I wished for would make me a materialized, romantic who gets her heart broken a million times. The only wishes that have ever come true are those I have done for myself, which means they aren’t wishes at all but more like personal goals. Wishes can also be linked to the superhuman being in the sky, because isn’t “God” the one that grants wishes. The whole idea seems pretty skewed to me, I would rather just enjoy the stars and treat each moment like a gem than sit and wish for things that 95% of the time will never come true. Well, at least with the 5% I don’t sound like too much of a cynic.

180 Degrees South

So after watching this movie, my drive to conserve open spaces and explore the world has just been heightened. Patagonia is just one area of the earth with untouched beauty on the brink of globalization. The only way to conserve these areas is by buying them. For a few years now my goal in life has been to get a degree and make a substantial amount of money so that I can buy the rights to land right here in America, stopping the spread of urban sprawl to those places which it has not yet touched. Before this movie, it didnt even occur to me to do this with land throughout the world.
Ironically, I believe it will also be my love of rock climbing that drives me to travel the world in search of new land to buy. This movie is inspirational to say the least and to me if private owners held more conservation area then the land might be taken care of better.

Indigenous Education

The mystery of the people of the New World could have been solved a long time ago if the original Americans and some today that feel the only way to have a great country is if we deny there was ever something here before us. In the article "Indigenous Resistance and Racist Schooling on the Borders of Empires: Coast Salish Cultural Survival" by Michael Marker, we grasp just a small notion of what happened in the 60s and 70s that diminished the already scarce knowledge of the indigenous people of the North American continent. It is shameful that a nation built on free beliefs and religion could have tried their hardest to keep Native Americans from teaching and showing their ancestries about the culture. From outlawing ceremonies to requiring children to attend public schools, we have weeded out much of the knowledge of the wonderful land before the settlers.
It is because of this, the severity of the mass epidemic that killed most of the people on the continent will never be recovered and Native Americans will shun out everyone from their culture but themselves, a terrible fate for a once peaceful community.

Butterfly Lessons

"as the climate of the continent had changed, life had rearranged itself." -Elizabeth Kolber

Our earth has been through many different climate changes since the dinosaur age came to an end; each one seems to affect the animals and plants in the same way each time. As observed in the article "Butterfly Lessons", insect's patterns in particular are the easiest to either trace the flight patterns or in a mosquito's case when it goes dormant for the winter.

She also presents the idea that we live in a very different world than we did 20,000 years ago and now things like non-native species being introduced is very common and hazardous to the ecosystems around us.

Learning from animals

Our problems with predicting natural disasters and climate change could all be solved if we just paid more attention to the animals.

A bold statement but one that has been observed true multiple times.
Elephants started charging inland before the 2004 tsunami in southeast Asia; birds go quite before an earthquake happens in San Francisco; butterflies migrate patterns change as the planet warms and cools.
Every time something happens like this however, humans decided they need better technology to predict things like this, when really all they would have to do is pay attention. People who are lazy need technology. People who are wise listen to the world around them. If plants and animals are so inferior to the human race as many say, how can they have knowledge of these disasters before even our best technology?

Why not spend more effort looking and learning from the environment than destroying it in our attempt to recreate it?

Thinking Differently

In the field of Biomimicry, people are creating new innovative technologies by taking inspiration from the natural world. But by doing this, scientists have become even more touchy on the theories of where it came from. Intelligent Design is the theory that the earth and surrounding universe were created by a superior intelligent being. However, scientists will not recognize this theory as a true scientific theory even though there is evidence and as much scientific inquiry to back it up. Many claim that is too specific to one religion, however, many religions believe that the earth was created by their deity. Creationists are to blame for this controversy because without their extremist views that deny many scientific claims Intelligent Design would have been backed up in the Supreme Court trial by many other notable scientists.

Denial of Opression

These past few weeks on the news it has been Occupy Wall Street this and Occupy Wall Street that but depending on your few it is either wall street is an issue or it isn't. Now to be fair there are a few CEOs of billion dollar companies that reap ridiculous benefits and got their out of their own hard work and dedication. HOWEVER! Many CEOs have done NO work for their companies own a ridiculous amount of stuff and don't think twice about what they have that other people don't.

Those who believe that all CEOs have worked hard in their lives to get there are in denial. Denial about rich people's workmanship, Denial about their own mediocrity, Denial about what they can achieve in this day and age.

People who say that Wall Street isn't an issue are either working for wall Street or they are in denial. No one wants to say that our government is corrupt (and it has been since the end of Nixon's Presidency),  that politicians and big business owners care only about themselves, their money, and their campaign for reelection.


We are all in denial. We all try to rearrange our thoughts so that we don't have to worry about the nation, the environment, the world,we just have to worry about our facebook posts and what we are going to eat at dinner.

So it is no wonder that half of the country still doesn't know or care about what Occupy Wall Street means or what they are standing for. Life in America has become a life of denial and that is why we have fallen behind the rest of the world and why we are never happy.

And on that note, I am going to go outside, enjoy the trees and life around me, and soak up every minute of happiness for myself so that I don't become another mindless drone of consumerism.

Graded In Class Assignment

Themes of Luther Standing Bear statement:
- Native Americans did not see the land as something to be conquered but yet a "parent" who one could give and take necessary items for life.
- Animals and plants has just the same amount of right to grow and thrive as man does
- The Native American culture only dies when the ideas and traditions have died within the community


Chief Seattle Speech:
- The only way for their traditions to survive was to accept the protection and restrictions that the Governor was proposing.
- The red man's god and the white man's god can not be one in the same because God was not fighting for the rights of the red man.
- The Native Americans could not fight the fact that their numbers were dwindling and so they had to accept their fate.

Because the Chief Seattle Speech was not recorded and published the same year it was spoken, many translations or versions have been produced. The authentic version was lost to the winds of time as the words left Chief Seattle's mouth, however many have tried to copy and reinvent this speech even it means completely contradicting the true meaning. The American Indian Quarterly Journal wrote about this authenticity issue in an article called "Contemporary Reinvention of Chief Seattle: Variant Texts of Chief Seattle's 1854 Speech. It explains that even as recently as 1992 writers have tried to republish this speech in many different ways. The first published version however was in 1887 almost 30 years afterwards by Dr. Smith, a man who did not even speak the same language as Seattle.

To read more from this article: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1185598?seq=1

Seattle 1854

"I will not dwell on, nor mourn over, our untimely decay, nor reproach my paleface brothers with hastening it, as we too may have been somewhat to blame." -Chief Seattle 1854

In the pre-wartime America, the Native American populations were almost extinct except for the last few tribes on the western coast. During this year the governor of Washington state brought a treaty that was to be given to one of these tribes. When Chief Seattle was greeted by the governor he gave a very eloquent speech to his people about his thoughts on the treaty and the fate of his people.  This speech was one of the last from the great chiefs of the the Northwest Coast Indians although its authenticity is a very questionable. It was written down by a man who did not speak the language and was published 33 years after the actual speech was given.  Since then many publications of the variations of this speech have emerged, even with some of them completely contradicting themselves. 

But who is to say what the original truly sounded like? I think it is a matter for each person to decide for themselves. 

http://www.chiefseattle.com/history/chiefseattle/speech/speech.htm <-- the "original" speech

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1185598?seq=1 <--- a book describing the controversy of authenticy.

Exploring the natural world and what it has to offer technology

a flower that inspired a new drill and the way a shark moves which inspired different research methods

Shark skin actually inspired a new line of swimming equipment that reduces friction in the water.

This building in Zimbabwe actually mimics the ventialation system of a termite mound.

Queing

This week I was notified that there was an internship available on campus and I began to think of how students come to college to form lines. You must get in a line to have your ID made, you have to get in a line to get tickets to the football game, you have to stand in line to get your food, to graduate, to take classes. Lines, lines, lines, lines. But who decided that straight lines are the best or that lines were the best way to wait for something. In nature barely anything is in a line except if we make it that way. So naturally our mindset is going to be that of a line, instead of a circle like everything else. Things we make go from production -> to consumer -> to waste, that's it, we do not think any further than that. However, if we thought in forms of circles we would complete the loop and make our waste problems part of the past. Now I am not saying that you should constantly be told to be in a circle around campus or while waiting in line to get food but if we as humans figured out a way to reincorporate ourselves without always being in lines I believe that we would start thinking in whole different ways.

Taking Religion into Account

Breathing the air, eating the food, and drinking the water from this earth is something we all have to do; every being on the planet does, so why are humans supposedly exempt from giving back and taking care of the world we live in? Saying that it is someone's "God given right" to pollute, destroy and conquer is just a way for the insecure male-dominated society to justify what they are doing. A woman has never ruled a civilization and said "we must conquer all the land around us for the use of our people." Though there are few women rulers to base that opinion off of, it still seems to say something about a male-dominated world. Religion, morals, and faith should not have anything to do with the fact that humans are destroying our Earth before our very eyes. If one is so-called "Godly", "Religious" than they should be just as prone to saving the planet as someone without a religion. As a person who thinks that religion is the most hypocritical philosophy that exists, I am just as willing to get my hands dirty to help those that need it. This fight shouldn't be about religion, race or geographical location because we are all affected whether we choose to believe it or not. People can ignore climate change all they want but ignoring landfills, polluted water and dying animals is like ignoring an elephant in your living room.

The First Wave of Inspiration

I first became very interested in the field of biomimicry after watching this ted video of Michael Pawlyn and his amazing work. I viewed this video back in February 2011 and the field has "blossomed" in a matter of a few months. All of the work done by Pawlyn and his team is exquisite and the first of its kind. He also invokes a new way of thinking for Americans and many other countries around the world.