I'm opening a thread for these topics so please comment if you have something to add to this discussion.  I apologize if one does exist and I just didn't see it.

Thanksgiving Break

- I think we should meet in person, meaning that we either should find a time on Tuesday that most people can make or we should simply have class on Wednesday.  I think having class on Wednesday would be the easiest option, but if we want to consider moving the class to Tuesday we could start a Doodle.  I will not be in a place where I can access internet after I leave campus so the online options for me would be difficult.  I also think that discussions would be more productive in person than online.  Meeting in-person would allow us all to bounce from person to person more easily than trying to go back and forth in this format.  Finally, this class is all about thinking ecologically which means thinking about how we are connected to eachother and the "natural" world around us.  I do not think Serendip (or any online forum) promotes that.  Blogs simply feel like big walls to me.  Or to give you a picture, blogs make me feel the same way that I feel when I'm listening to someone talk, but the head of the person in front of me is completely obscuring my view and no matter how much I move, I still can see the speaker.  I know I don't talk a lot in class (I never have.  I tend to process more slowly) and the blog does allow me to participate more, but I still do not see it as som

Blackout Poetry

Yangon, Myanmar (AP)
earthquake struck
feared
slowly,
extent unclear
response
lost
devastating
reported no
epicenter
collapsed
on state television

deaths
of the
clash
massacre
coldbloodedly
clash
looking for communication
holding up assault
wounded
clashes
cause
death
war
promised
deadly clashes

--------
among
possible violation of
process
Educational
a single poor
complaint offers
devastating
flaws
who can afford
to be a good
performance
further
discriminatory
including leadership....

--------
hurricane was
powerful
mighty
had
windows,
"There they go.
distressing. I grew up with those trees."
insulting
not yet
downed
memory

--------
the country
housing
two million units
black-listing
impossible for them to rent--
But many see no alternative.
"I could not let my children and my grandchildren starve."
squat-
squatting
squat
qui-
embarrassed
protesting
"shame on you"
The crowd
outnumbered police
But one day, he said, he got a call.

Today in class, we began by writing about how our families and their relationships to the earth have shaped us and our relationships with nature. I'm overly fond of my family history, so this was a really fun exercise for me. I started out by going on and on about a lot of different family members, but after writing in class, I realized that my mom has actually been the biggest influence on my relationship with nature. Having moved around a lot in the US, one of the constants has always been my mom. Of all of my family, her relationship to the earth has really shaped me the most. Don't get me wrong--my father and my mother have both instilled in me an appreciation of the beauty of nature. But the other aspects of my mom's relationship with nature, and her family's relationship with it, has molded my feelings the most.

Hi guys! I was reading through Offerings to Athena tonight looking for information on my topic and I just wanted to give a heads up to those pursuing topics revolving around race (both African/African American and Asian) that there are some specific sections in the text devoted specifically to each of those subjects. So, check it out! It's on reserve in Canaday. 

I was wondering after our conversation today in class if anyone has been inspired to action by any of our readings in class? I mean, I would assume that's what the authors would like to see is people transitioning from words to deeds, but I am interested to see if that is actually happening. If you haven't 'done' anything yet, do you plan to? If you haven't been inspired to affect change, why not? 

Carolyn Merchant’s ideas made me optimistic about the global ecological revolution needed for sustainability. Even though the notion was to be radical, it was not extreme at all, which I found really convincing and feasible. Merchant was fairly considerate about the normal living need of human’s. She did not proposed that people should stop using natural resources, but suggested that we should raise ecological consciousness and moderately fulfill our needs. “Vital need” is my term of the week. I love this term for a lot of reasons. With this term, I can feel that human-beings are not isolated from the non-human parts of the world. We depend on those other parts to survive. The term also set a standard for justified utilization of resources. However, how do people define “vital” differs.  For ancient mankind, “vital” purely meant survival of the species. Nowadays, people have developed need other than material resources. If traveling is one most important parts of life for someone, is the consumption fossil fuel justified as “vital”? The need for survival is met in a majority of the human population. How do we define “vital needs” in such circumstances? This is something perplexing to me when I was reading the article. But I did find some clues to this question in the article. Merchant mentioned we need to let nature reverse ecological damage. This may be a standard we could use when setting up the limit of exploitation of nature. However, human have to be able to think holistically when calculating the outcome of our actions. This requires ecological thinking.

An interesting paper (part 1 and part 2) was published yesterday in the journal Trends in Genetics by Gerald Crabtree that says humans are not as smart as we were thousands of years ago. With agriculture, cities, and less "survival of the fittest," deleterious mutations are surviving and being passed on, often combining with other mutations, producing cascading negative effects. 

Any thoughts on this? It seems in the last few thousand years that there have been some genius minds. But are they recognized because of our technological advances that allow us to spread ideas and cultivate theories? Were there super genius cavemen who just didn't have the advancements to be known today as pioneers of their time? I think its interesting to think of our external advancements as having potentially negative effects on what is going on internally. 

When we spoke about us imposing reading on the students of lower levels. An image came to mind, this is not it, but the idea is the same. 

http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/29132891.jpg

Marilyn Waring's work, Counting for Nothing, presents the role of women as an invaluable asset whose value needs to be imputed in the gross domestic product of the nation. Waring analyzes and criticizes different ways economists have attempted to measure women's domestic labor (household labor and production), such as measuring opportunity cost, but doesn't ever present her own suggestion for its measurement. That got me brainstorming; how do you place a value on women's domestic labor? We could argue that reproduction, or the act of raising a child is intangible capitol as an asset that cannot be physically measured. Waring also believes that imputing value on reproduction wouldn't be morally correct. However, almost every other part of women's household labor can be physically measured in the economy. First, I thought that measuring value at a per/hour salary rate would be the easiest way to calculate women's domestic product. However, I forgot to take into account the different level of skill it takes for a woman to do various jobs--it really varies from cleaning to cooking to maintenance, all of which correspond to different careers with different salaries in the economy. A little of topic (but isn't that what our Serendip postings are for? :))...this past weeks reading reminded me of a discussion my AP English class had senior year. We wanted to calculate what a human life was worth. First, we thought of life insurance, but then realized that was just people paying to have risk taken away from them.