Robert Polidori - he does not have a personal website, but I have listed some that will provide some visuals. He has several books that are very interesting. Edwynn Houk Gallery - Nicholas Metivier Gallery - Steidl books - the links provided displays work that examines the Chernobyl dead zones.
Eating Better Meat and Fish page 63 of the World Changing book. Since forever meat has been a huge part of man-kind it is curious as to why today so many people cut meat out of their diet. A lot of this has to do with the present day production of meat in this day in age. It has degreased from being a natural and everyday item to being a product that is overly produced. The whole idea of killing the animals that we eat has gone beyond a point of being "okay" for some people and some people are not able to accept it any more. This is why some people, such as myself have become vegetarians. It is shocking to some people the way animals are slaughtered and treated before they are slaughtered and i completly agree with it which is why i choose to be a vegetarian. My sister and mother are vegetarians as well and my other sister is a vegan. So overall, my household is very animal friendly, I would even consider us to be "animal lovers". Sustainable run ranches are hard to come by due to their expense which, is an issue especially now with the economy dwindling. It is crazy how our country is filled with so much farm land yet, at the same time their seems to be "a bleak future agriculturally." but, many believe that there is still hope and this path can be turned around. Animals are even leading to the polluting of our enviorment due to how they are feed chemicals therefore, these chemicals come out in their poop and this poop with chemicals leaks into the ground and then gets into the air and just overall adds to pollution. It is a wonder, yet, a believable wonder as to how the whole agricultural system has become so corrupted. -brynn kurlan
ReplyDeleteCraft it Yourself p.90
ReplyDeleteThis chapter is about the beauty of reinventing trash. As it was said in the chapter, making objects your self is a great experience. When those objects can actually be used beyond decoration (such as wall hangings and statues) a sense of proud self accomplishment is met. DIYers (do it yourselfers) are spoken about in high regard when it comes to manipulating mediums that have already lived out their life and are given a completely new reason in life. Not only are they getting a sense of accomplishment from giving something a new reason in life but they are keeping trash out of the landfills.
In TMPI this idea was explored in the class found objects. People made decorations and sculptors from broken, found or used up objects. I myself started out with creating a ceiling decoration from Styrofoam circles. Where it was neat to see something made from trash I got a more proud sense of being when I created something that I could use. Besides the Styrofoam decoration, I created a hair clip from found objects that I collected for the class. After the semester was over I then went on to create purses and a shirts from scraps of fabrics that I gathered from old torn up clothing. But at the time, I could only think about how awesome it was to save the environment by recycling. I did not notice how unique recycled art really was.
It is interesting and much more beautiful to see something created from recycled material. The Landry detergent bottle lamp on page 90 had more character to it then any lamp that I have seen on the market. What I found even more interesting is that the market has tried to mass produce this unique hand crafted feel in response to DIYers; however, they still cannot fully master a uniqueness when the object is still being mass produced in almost identical ways.
For some reason I never thought of DIYers as artists or people working with used objects. Before, DIY gave me a vision of a dad poorly creating a swing for his kids in attempt to save money and to have fun while doing so. At the same time, the swing would turn out crooked and bent nails would be coming out. Basically I would envision the episode of the Simpsons where Homer tries to build Bart a clown bed but it was so horrifying that Bart could not sleep when ever he was in the bed. Now I see a DIYer also as an artist at the Detroit Maker Fair trying to sell melted records. This chapter basically gave me a new understanding of DIY and how beautiful it really is.
This article discusses film and its impact on the global community. The author explains that as soon as a movie starts playing the viewer disconnects with him/herself and connects with the stories and images on the screen, as well as connects with the other viewers, a part from social differences. “Movies are an indispensible tool in this age of rapid globalization: they give us a window into the lives, histories, hopes, and dreams of other cultures,” describes the author. Films allow people to enter in to the lives of others and emotionally connect with the characters played. Today, less expensive tools, like consumer editing suites and digital cameras, make the filmmaking process for accessible and democratized. The power of film is no longer exclusively for the few upper class film-artists. Film is a powerful media that expresses different cultures and allows individuals to retain their identity through its representation.
ReplyDeleteI read the passages “Ecosystem Services” and “Biodiversity: How much nature is enough?” The second passage seems to have a misleading title, as it does not put a limit on conservation, but rather discusses why biodiversity is important and ways it currently is and should be conserved. One interesting article discussed making extinction more of a conscious thought in our society. It seems like it is rarely talked about, as it is something that makes us feel guilty about the way we consume and therefore it is reserved only for the scientific realm. I thought this related closely with “Culture Jam” as it looked to find ways to make it a mainstream topic. One way was to get a tattoo of a name of an extinct species in an obvious place so people would see the name and ask about it. It also would give the person a unique relationship with an animal no one will ever see again. I think this is a great way to get any message across to people you meet, if you are a person who likes tattoos. People like to look at tattoos on people they meet, and if there is a name then people will ask about it, striking up a conversation on conservation.
ReplyDeleteAnother passage that related to previous discussions was how war zones or nuclear hazard zones have become great wilderness areas, like in the area between North and South Korea, and areas of nuclear devastation like Chernobyl. These areas are so large and void of any human contact, so the biodiversity in the areas are very high for the region, often times providing habitat to endangered species. I feel the next step is observing the importance of these accidental wilderness parks and creating other large parks of similar design, without the hazard to humans. We have natural parks, but many of them are covered with tourists, which cause an unnatural disturbance to the area. Setting up areas of large tracks of land will allow any tourism to be sparse compared to the extent of the park, allowing for untouched areas providing refuge to a diverse set of species.
For this week’s World Changing response I read an article entitled Educating Girls and Empowering Women. This article went into detail on what is considered the best way to empower women and that is by education, of young women specifically. The education of young women has many clear benefits that are addressed in this article including leading a healthier life overall. The world’s goals to provide all young women with education are high goals but would make a huge in the lives of women in developing countries especially. The article also briefly discussed the benefits of women having access to a beauty salon and hairdressers. Relationships with hairdressers can provide an outlet for women to talk to someone who is not directly related to their personal lives about their issues. Women are comfortable enough to address their hairdressers about sensitive issues that they would normally keep to themselves. Because of this, social outreach programs are using hair salons as a way to discreetly educate women about their options.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I do not face the problem of fighting for my education, I can connect with the need to empower women. Before attending college, I had been brought up in a place where I did not face gender discrimination very often. Unfortunately, my major in college, has brought me face-to-face with many men who do not see women as their equals. I knew that my decision to be an engineer would put me in a field that was clearly dominated by men but I originally saw that as only a way to stand out. Now I realize that gender is still a problem in education even in highly developed areas. I still face discrimination from peers in classes and I am gradually learning that I will always have to prove myself. I hope that someday all women will be educated and seen as equals but who knows how long it will be before that day comes.
Lagos (pg. 279-281)
ReplyDeleteFor this World Changing Statement I chose to pick a story about the city of Lagos. I honestly did not even know such city existed. Even the book acknowledged that many people do not know much (if any) about this city. This city is the Nigerian megacity and was claimed to be well on its way to becoming one of the planet’s biggest city. The book continues on to describe the rugged city Laos was and the dangers of such a crowded city.
The excerpt that struck me was “…so much of the city has emerged in ad hoc neighborhoods that there is no way to even be certain of exactly how many people live there. Roads and houses spring up that have never seen a government official; maps are out-of-date before they’re even printed…” The reason why this statement struck me was because those words could not describe the city of Jakarta (the city I came from) even better. Little huts are built in the most “random places.” An example of this are houses can be found beside the sewers, under the highway, and any place where they think it would be enough for a place to sleep.
Another statement that the book said that struck me was when they had mentioned how the people in close by rural villages people came there for opportunities. Similar to Jakarta, most people (especially the women) dream about going to the city for a better future. Growing up I asked my parents “why do the people of the villages dream of going to Jakarta?” My parent told me because the earnings are higher and jobs are much more abundant than the villages. Having a “business-savy” personality is also the way that the people who live in poverty in Jakarta survived. Traffic jams are opportunities for a mobile market, with people walking past the cars selling food, toys, newspapers, magazines, etc. I find a lot of truth to the last sentence the article :megacities may still prove ti be one of the best levers we have for changing the world.
This week for my World Changing posting, I chose to write about the article called “Landscaping.” I found this article interesting and informative because, it had never really been brought to my attention until now. This article talks about how our lawns suck up water, fertilizer, pesticides, and money. It says that they take and take and never give back, so in other words we put all this time and effort and money into our lawns and it basically does nothing for us, we will always have to keep doing it the rest of our lives. This really was interesting to me because it’s true but I have never really thought about it. There are better ways to relate to the spaces outsider our housed that can mean long-term savings. Some ideas are to plant something productive like a garden and fill it with food. Also, those who think keeping a garden is takes up too much time and care are not limited. Even deserts and alpine areas have native grasses, shrubs, and glowers that will thrive on their own with a little water and sunlight. It says that a growing, though still small, number of Americans have torn up their lawns and planted native ground cover, shrubs, and trees, which not only need far less water and fertilizer than lawns, but also offer homes for passing songbirds, butterflies, even frogs. I do understand why many people would want to keep their lawns; it’s very simple and classic into keeping a nice looking living home. I know that I would personally not want to tear up my entire lawn, however; I would consider maybe having my backyard be turned into a garden and keeping my front lawn. I think this is a very interesting and an informing message I had never thought about.
ReplyDeleteFor this weeks world changing response I read Eating Better Meat and Fish. This section spoke about how large livestock farming and the massive fish farms destroy our environment. They cause air and water pollution, deforestation and depletion of fossil fuel resources. It talks about the best way to eat our food, making sure the source is ecologically friendly, humane and healthy. Factory farms dump a huge amount of animal waster into our waterways and soil every year, farm machinery emits a large amount of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere and cow flatulence adds abnormal quantities of methane. I was really shocked to learn about cow wastes being such a problem to the environment. If the cow waste is processed correctly it can be used as a power source instead of polluting our water. Central Vermont Public Service has been providing renewable energy through cow waste. Another major issue if saving fish for the future. There are laws that fisherman have to abide to so that they do not over fish or catch wrong fish. In order to help prevent extinction and overfishing we need to eat only the fish specifically harvested for us. Other ways to stay on top of what fishes we should and shouldn’t eat is Seafood Watch launched by the Monterey Bay Aquarium. This keeps us up to date on fish population and different solutions to help keep the sea populations up.
ReplyDeleteWorld changing 11/16
ReplyDeleteEducation and Literacy
Access to education is something that is very important in the world we live in today. With out literacy we cannot grow. In this chapter they talk about how important education and technology are these days. What first lead me to reading this chapter this week was a section on One Laptop Per Child section of the chapter. I remembered talking about the One Laptop Per Child Program earlier in the semester. Professor Trumpy spoke about how it wasn’t as helpful as something as simple as a mosquito net, which helps prevent malaria in poorer villages and countries. In this instance we should start small, with simple things like inexpensive nets, and then work our way up to laptops. What is the point of giving a laptop to a child when you could have more easily lengthened there lives just by giving them a mosquito net.
At the same time though, it was a very interesting concept. The One Laptop Per Child program found a way of creating a laptop for under one hundred dollars that doesn’t need an outlet. Instead of plugging it in to get battery power, there is a turn crank on the side. For every minute you turn the crank you get one hundred minutes of battery power. Which might not be as helpful for people suffering from Malaria, but it helpful for conserving energy. I think a laptop in which you use your own energy instead of a power outlet is a great idea. It would be nice to see this process worked with even further, so that we could use less electric energy and use a bit of our own instead.
Another thing that was talked about in this chapter was spreading knowledge through free online sources they talked about a few of them in this chapter, but the one that I found most interesting was World Cat. World Cat took different books, and educational material from over nine thousand different libraries, and put them all on the internet. It’s a search engine like Google, except the information is more trustworthy then the things we find today. Lots of times anyone can put something on the internet so its not always correct. World Cat eliminated this problem. World Cat is now trying to make it possible to view in multiple languages which I think will help us change the way we look at information in the future.
For this week's World Changing assignment I chose to read "The Future of Food" (67).
ReplyDeleteI find it greatly disturbing to find out just how much we as a society are ruining the topsoil we need so much to live. Massive amounts of farming drain the nutrients from the soil at a rate much faster than they can be replenished. Also, pumping the soil full of pesticides and other chemicals further ruins the topsoil for future farming.
The massive aquaculture farms are also very degrading to the environment. Having thousands of fish or other sea creatures living in one very tight, confined space creates concentrated areas of pollution. I feel that the only way this will end is if consumers as a whole learn how to scale back their consumption. Society must learn how to be less selfish, and how to eat sustainably
I chose to read the intro to the planet section on 473 to 480. Mostly because my family has instilled an awareness of the diversity of the earth since I was little. My grandma had the famous image of the earth from the moon hung above the stair well leading to my guest sleeping quarters. That placed me instantly on a sphere of rock in the blackness of the universe. Then cub scouts I felt was a good organization that helped bring nature and a mistrust of it (bugs and rodents you see). At any rate it’s good to see people still trying to come up with inventive ways to make rocks and sticks interesting. I have an idea about that. How about they teach kids the different ways other cultures view the land. Lets take the aborigines in Australia for example. NPR a while back had an interesting story on how they view time. Using a bunch of images of a person going from a young man to someone far older, the idea was to see how they felt that his life flowed. If I remember right it flows west to east. Always. To that little tribe time and the land was connected. And they always were aware of where they stood in relation to the four directions. It’s kind of too bad that we assume that every human shares the same connection and feelings with the land like we do. I feel it’s important not only to know how we place ourselves on this world. But how do other cultures place themselves as well.
ReplyDeleteFor the World Changing article I read “Thriving in a Bright Green Economy” and saw a surprising amount of connections to Culture Jam. This article promoted a variety of methods that I saw to be potentially far more effective than the ones suggested by Lasn. Instead of forcing corporations to change through rage tactics, it discussed how being an educated consumer who refuses to associate with bad business practices will eventually force companies into becoming more transparent and forming open, honest relationships with consumers. In this day and age, consumers have access to a growing amount of information being reported about corporations and as their knowledge builds so does the need for this ideal “transparency.” Refusing to do so along will turn people off to those companies unwilling to adjust to a new age in which consumers can educate themselves. In addition to this idea, sustainability of companies was discussed. The market favors businesses that will continue to make money in the future and to do so becoming sustainable in terms of resources is becoming a necessity. This article seems much more realistic to me because, although I would like to believe that concerned citizens would take action to change the face of consumerism in America, I know far too many people that would not be as aggressive as Lasn suggests. The idea of companies will take action themselves is also hard to believe but I think that a combination of these two methods could result in an effective and realistic approach that leaves me optimistic in regards to the state of our economy and culture.
ReplyDeleteThis week I read up on "Buying Better Food" (p53-56) in Worldchanging. When I went to Meijers over the weekend, I became aware that I was choosing organic produce over non-organic produce just because they sounded healthier, cleaner, and tastier, even though none of that may be true. And that got me thinking about the food that I eat as well as where it comes from. For some reason, to me the word "organic" carries with it connotations of local and home-grown, but that's just what the media has told me to think of that word. The real good stuff, I learned, comes straight from the growers. It's always such a luxury to go to the farmers market and buy real fresh stuff because it costs more than the bargain deals you find at Costco. But let's face it, the products you buy at Costco are cheaper for a reason! Buying fresh produce right from the person who grew them might put a bigger hole in your wallet, but if that's something you can afford, then it has clear benefits for the environment. The food you get won't be using up fossil fuels to be shipped around the world to get to you, and you'll be helping small local business by buying from farmers markets! It's tough to be a responsible produce-buyer as a college student, but buying better food is definitely something that should be considered more often!
ReplyDeleteBranding (page 393) is a topic we have looked into quite a bit, between the lectures and Lasn’s Culture Jam. In this chapter, the issues of brand’s influence on consumers is first addressed, looking into the power of the corporate world to influence the consumer’ choice. It argues that in recent decades our consumer society is ‘rendered helpless and unable to take control over our own lives. The fruit of a brand is blind desire.’ It argues as well that Branding should not be used to fuel our desire for acceptance, but rather to create ‘mental models for change.’ One company that the article discuses is Muji, a Japanese company that means “No brand, good product.” Muji’s main presumption is that customers don’t need ‘bells and whistles…they simply need useful, well made, efficient products-and that is just what Muji gives them.” I found this company particularly intriguing because as a consumer I personally don’t care where I get my products and goods, I simply want something that is quality, an aspect of goods that is becoming increasingly hard to find. There is something sweet in the blandness of this company, as if it seeks to actually put the customer first instead of putting the company first. On one point do I disagree with this article, and that is in its insistence that “consumers want brands to come form somewhere, and that, increasingly, they don’t want that somewhere to be the United States.” I have found in recent years people are supporting more and more locally grown/made products. I find that people actually are looking down on those who choose to not buy USA made products and not supporting their economy. Choose American made, but better than that, choose Michigan produced, and support your local economy.
ReplyDeleteOn the topic of non-violent protest, I believe that history has proven that on a small scale, it is much more effective than violent protest. I say that it is effective on a small scale, because there are times that war is necessary on a national level. It is unfair to say that all forms of violent protest are ineffective, since our nation would not exist without war. As far as social problems, and other issues that occur within a nation, non-violent protest is typically more effective. This is demonstrated by people such as Martin Luther King Jr. who used his oratory skills along with his religious faith to uplift his fellow African Americans and protest the discrimination, which was experienced by black people all the way up to the 1960’s. Other groups of African American, which used violent approaches to their protest were highly ineffective, and even made the discrimination that black people experienced become worse, due to the fact that they were violently lashing out at the white man. King was able to take the violence and discrimination that he and his peers experienced and combated it with faith and peace. This completely turned the violence that the whites had demonstrated toward the black people back onto the whites. Clearly in a situation such as protesting for civil rights, non-violent protest worked better than violence. Obviously, it would be ideal to completely rid the world of all violence, however, I do not believe that this will ever happen.
ReplyDeleteConserving Water:
ReplyDeleteIn this section of World Changing, the author talks about various ideas that would help with the conservation of water – or at least with making people aware of how much water they use on a daily basis. The first idea discussed is the use of low-flow showerheads and toilets, among other household fixtures. The author states that, “if every U.S. household installed low-flow fixtures and toilets, we would save approximately 5.4 billion gallons of water per day.” That is a ton of water we could be saving. Yes, low-flow showerheads may not seem as appealing, however, the only difference is that they blow more air through the showerhead than water (the air is meant to disperse the water as it comes out). Although it may not be as luxurious, it can still be very effective.
Low-flow toilets ran into the same sort of problem. They weren’t as effective in doing their job, as the environment wasn’t entirely a major a concern at the time, and so ordinary toilets of today came about. However, manufacturers have realized this and have managed to design low-flow toilets that work just as well as ordinary toilets.
Another idea the author discusses in this section is recycling showers. The way a recycling shower works is the water that goes down the drain is immediately taken back up, cleaned, heated, and spit back out. When I first read this I was grossed out. However, I did find it fascinating and I think if I really took the time to see and watch how one of these recycling showers work, I might change my mind.