Language Lost

Neolithic Objects: Ancient Language, Engraved Stones found in Glozel (8000-10,000 BC)

10,000 years ago the population was between 5 and 10 million
Leading anthropologists estimate that nearly 12,000 languages (or more) were spoken at that time.

Today our population is 6.5 billion
Approximately 7,000 languages are spoken today

At this rate in 100 years from now, in the year 2108, only 2,500 languages may be spoken.

One language goes extinct every month.

In lecture you may have heard me comment on these facts: "While it is important, for the sake of biodiversity to have a variety of languages spoken, what about the fact that more people are communicating?" This may not be a fact at all- sadly, we are loosing many indigenous cultures.

What does this mean?
What do you think about this data and the potential future of lost languages?

It's Not My Bag!

Americans throw away one hundred billion polyethlene bags a year: They choke thosands of marine animals annually; the inks used to print all those smiley faces break down in landfills and create a toxic seep. Though plastic bags take up less than 4% of all landfill space (they're easily compressed), estimates on how long they take to decompose range from a hundred years to a thousand.


-From onearth. "It's Not My Bag, Baby!" by L.J. Williamson.

Treehugger: "Ban or No Ban: The Debate over Plastic Bags in LA" by Jeremy Elton Jacquot

World Is Green: "...Is there an Alternate Solution?" (Green Economics)

Culture Jamming

What did you think about this book? Write a mini-review.

or...

After reading it and discussing it in class, what is a concept that Lasn presents that still resonates with you?

How will you, or will you, Culture Jam?



Students from the University of Georgia were asked to do culture jamming projects for their finals, for a communications course, the projects are posted here: Consumer Culture Jammers

A poignant blog about Culture Jam: here

Adbusters: The Culture Jamming Headquarters

Potential Energy: Virtue of Position & Imaginative Futures

Image from Star Shadow Remote Observatory, New Mexico, USA
Horsehead Nebula, Orion's Belt

"Look deep into nature, then you will understand everything better." - Albert Einstein

Dear Artists,

You are creative problems solvers by design.

The reason you have been required to take this course is because you are attending one of the top 10 public Universities in the Nation. The environmental issues that have been presented to you will grow with intensity and this is no time to sit back and let others solve the problems for us, especially given our place in the world.

You are a part of an essential dialogue of the 21st Century.

You know the data- you have read the books (I hope), listened to the lectures, shared your ideas, and will hopefully continue to develop your own.

The "Green Movement" is the fastest growing and most essential movement in our history.

Innovative solutions combined with new modes of thinking, of reconstructing culture, will be the savior of our planetary crisis.

Let this be an open space for the imaginative-

Reflect on the change the education of this course has offered you.

Exponential Population Growth: Homo Sapiens

"We are the first generation to live on earth to witness a doubling of population in our lifetime. The babies born within the nest thirty hours of your reading this sentence will replace the 250,000 people lost in the tragic tsunami of December 26, 2004. Nearly 3 billion more people will join the current population of 6.6 billion within fifty years, and the world has yet to figure out how to take care of those already here."
-Paul Hawken
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw it Coming

In this course we have heard much about our exponential population growth. We have also heard undisputed data about our remaining natural resources...

What do you think about population projections for our species?

Do you think that the earth can healthfully sustain a population of more than 7 billion people?
What might this world look like? Be like?

How much more can the earth really give?

While it is haunting to think about a "collapse" in our cultural systems, the reality is that a collapse is a reoccurring conversation surfacing in leading academic communities and elsewhere. Please share your thoughts.

Learn More:
Population Growth over Human History
One Hundred Interesting Mathemaical Calculations: #5: Exponetial Growth and Human Populations
"We Have Passed Our Sustainability" (www.overpopulation.net)
The No Impact Man

Restoring Animal Corridors: The Importance of Biodiversity

1. A stream corridor connecting forest and native grass habitats
2. The Cabinet Mountains Wilderness, crucial to the long-term recovery of grizzly bears and other wildlife labeled as one of the most endangered wild lands in the U.S.

Today in Professor Trumpey's lecture we heard about the importance of biodiversity and efforts to restore corridors for animals.

Groups around the world are working to establish "wildlife highways" with varying degrees of success. "In North America, the Wildlands Project is pushing for a huge "Yellowstone-to-Yukon" wildlife corridor. In Central America, conservationists are slowly and sporadically working on the Meso-American Biological Corridor. The dream: A monkey should be able to go up a tree in Panama and not have to climb down till it reaches Mexico," (Windstar Wildlife Garden Weekly)

"The corridor idea is relatively new: conservationists once thought that [preserves were enough. But groups of animals isolated from their species become genetically homogeneous, and don't develop the diversity necessary to adapt to threats- especially that of climate change," (Brandon Keim in Corridors Help Animals Flee From Climate Change).

What are your thoughts on these animal corridors?
They appear in our landscape as green, peaceful and graceful efforts to restore the natural environment and a natural way of life (migration) for animals... what else?

How might artists be a part of these efforts?

How do you imagine these corridors expanding into our world?

How might they extend into our urban spaces?

Also feel free to use this space to respond to the lecture as a whole, focusing on the importance of biodiversity.

Read More:
Corridors for a Healthier Environment
Article: Earth Times, San Diego
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
North Carolina State University Corridor Research

Plastic Mass

After Professor Trumpey's lectures, you are well aware of the alternatives to using disposable bottles and hopefully are recycling the ones you do.

The advent of bottled water has sent our already wasteful consumer culture into pollution overdrive and it’s a tremendous task to put the brakes on the momentum of this waste.

Here is a list of plastic bottle fun facts that put the magnitude of this pollution into scope (from the green up-grader)

* Plastic bottles take 700 years to begin composting
* 90% of the cost of bottled water is due to the bottle itself
* 80% of plastic bottles are not recycled
* 38 million plastic bottles go to the dump per year in America from bottled water
not including soda
* 24 million gallons of oil are needed to produce a billion plastic bottles
* The average American consumes 167 bottles of water a year
* Bottling and shipping water is the least energy efficient method ever used to
supply water
* Bottled water is the second most popular beverage in the United States

Although it can be easy and convenient to pick up bottle beverage products the end cost to the environment is staggering. So be mindful when you drink… and remember, friends don’t let friends drink from disposables!

Quick tips:
Buy a stainless steel water container.
Check out SIGG
Reuse Glass bottles (such as Lipton's)and fill with your own beverage

Tin Ore Extraction: Congo, Africa

This is a short video, with beautiful photography, from a New York Times reporter about tin ore extraction, take a look.

The Cult We're In

Culture Jam: Black Friday

The images above were taken in the wee hours on 'Black Friday'. Ironic to me that one resembles a soup kitchen line...

The shopping day following Thanksgiving, known as 'Black Friday' was coined such after retail marketing encouraged consumers to shop for more and for longer hours and it was seen to have a very measurable economic effect. Arguably one of the busiest shopping days of the year, 'Black Friday' turns retailers bottom line from red to black (off the charts).

This day is a perfect example of how our popular culture feeds the consumer bingers we have become. Buy buy buy buy. The more we buy the more we waste, and more rubbish we make. More energy is consumed to make what we buy. More human rights are violated (How do you think Old Navy makes $5 T-Shirts?). Sadly enough, we should all know by now that more stuff does not equal more happiness, but we are addicted to consumerism.

Kalle Lasn, the King of culture jamming and ADbusters has called to our attention that America is "no longer a country but a million-dollar brand". How can we stop this consumer binge? We must look deep into the heart of the matter: what our culture is made of. Lasn has proposed that we adopt a 'Buy Nothing Day', in turn, we could all learn a thing or two about being resourceful and "making do" with what we already have.

What do you think about 'Black Friday' and what it says about our country?

What do you think about the fact that young N. Americas have the highest debt rates in history?
How is this connected to our culture and the tendency to buy buy buy?

Elaborate on 'Ecology of the Mind'...

What are you thoughts after reading 'Autumn' (Lasn, K., Culture Jam)?

If you plan to buy less- how and why? Propose a 'self plan'...

This is also open to any lingering thoughts you may have after discussion.

Practical Lessons

This week we finished Jared Diamond's COLLAPSE.

This section is open for your template posts and responses.

Respond to one of the following or with your own topic:

Why Do Some Societies Make Disastrous Decisions?

What were your thoughts after reading chapter 15,
"Big Businesses and the Environment: Different Conditions, Different Outcomes"?

Or what are you thoughts on the final chapter:
"The World as a Polder: What Does It All Mean to Us Today?"

Mid-Term Review

Midterm Study Guide

14 true/false questions on lecture material
2 short answer question on lecture material
2 short answer question on discussion material
1 essay question based on lecture material


Be able to discuss:
Environmental issues in Montana.
Main industries in Montana and how they have changed.
The relationship between logging, forest fires and environmentalism in Montana.

Aldo Leopold as father of wildlife management and the United States’ wilderness system.

What organic means.

Monsanto and how does it affects farmers in Mexico and India.

Collapse: Chapters 10-13

A few topics/terms you might want to review:
CAFO
Nitrogen
Cuba
The Lorax
Walmart
McDonalds
IWAC
IPAT
Haber-Bosch process

COLLAPSE...

How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
By Jared Diamond (Penguin Books, 2005)

This week we began to dig deep within this book. What are your thoughts about what you read and what we discussed in class about the Rwanda Genocide of 1994 and the links to the agricultural and land crisis the country was experiencing?

The Dominican Republic and Haiti?

China the "lurching giant"? and

The literal and non-literal mining of Australia?

These are very emotionally charged, real and difficult topics to discuss. You continue to inspire me with your dedication to the material and your personal abilities to speak your mind about these topics. Keep up the great work and have a wonderful Fall break.

Week Six: Group Projects

Please use this space to converse about your group projects.

1. Share your idea.

2. Discuss.

3. Search out team members if you do not have one(s).


My Best,
Ashley

Week Five: Our Contemporary World

This is the place-
A cyber space,
For
Your
Weekly
Statement.

Schedule With Leads

Section 004 Discussion Leaders

9/30 _______________________________________________

10/07 Melanie Conn: Collapse: Prologue-p.75
Kristina Kassem: “Nature at the Mall” (C-Tools)

10/14 Mathew Sanger: Collapse: Chapters 10 & 11
Brittany George: Collapse: Chapters 12 & 13

10/21 No Class: Fall Break Read Collapse 14-16

10/28 Karin Alpert: Collapse: Chapter 14
Caroline Aulis: Collapse: Chapter 15
Betsy Peters: Collapse: Chapter 16

11/04 Sydney Evans: ADbusters
Betsey Cordes: Culture Jam: Introduction
Kelsie Sovereign: Culture Jam: “AUTUMN”

11/11 Erin Murray: Culture Jam: “WINTER”
Emma Bunstead: Culture Jam: “WINTER”

11/18 Matt Hallock: Culture Jam: “SPRING”
Jordan Ruch: “Life in the Balance: Humanity and the Biodiversity Crisis”
(C-Tools)

11/25 No Discussion: Work Day Field Research Projects

12/02 Charles Covey-Brandt: Culture Jam: “SUMMER”
Open Slot__________________________________________

12/09 ALL SECTION MEMBERS: Closing Discussion Roundtable
Panel Co-Leader: Carolyn Wiedeman

Improved Reading Schedule

9/30 A Sand County Almanac

10/07 Collapse: Prologue-p.75
"Nature at the Mall" (C-Tools)
Observation Paper #2 Due

10/14 Collapse: Chapters 10-13

Fall Break Read: Collapse: Chapters 14-16

10/28 Collapse: Chapters 14-16

11/04 Culture Jam: Introduction & “AUTUMN”

11/11 Culture Jam: "WINTER"

11/18 Culture Jam: "SPRING"
"Life in the Balance: Humanity and the Biodiversity Crisis" (C-Tools)

11/25 Workday for Field Research Projects
My Space/My Home" Projects Due

11/26 NO LECTURE

12/02 Culture Jam: "SUMMER"
Field Research Projects Due

12/9 Closing Discussion Roundtable
Possible Group Project Feedback

12/12 Group Project Due

Thoughts and Improvements

After much consideration I have made some changes in our reading schedule.

I feel our discussions thus far have been productive but I am concerned with the lack of focus on the reading.
Perhaps Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac has been our all-natural sugar and Culture Jam and Collapse will be our spice.

I want to continue to hear your voices...

The next post will contain our new reading schedule, as well as a detailed schedule with the names of the discussion leaders for each week. “Open Slots” indicate a space for any of you who would like bonus points or if you missed a discussion.

I will now be providing a template for discussion leaders, which I will send to you in an email by the end of this week.

TAKE NOTICE:

• You must email me this template, filled out with your discussion questions and summary, by Monday @ 9PM, the evening prior to your lead.

Week Four: The Movie Powaqqatsi

Please reply with your thoughts and responses to the movie Powaqqatsi.

Also use this week's forum to post your ideas about your group project.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

Week Three: Your Second Post

(Green Roof. Vancouver, British Columbia)

This week all you need is a paragraph- and an image, but please feel free to write more if you are into it.

Enjoy your observation experience.
Its going to be a beautiful weekend,
and we live in a beautiful world.

Welcome! Your First Response.

We have our own cyber-space. This is where you will be posting your weekly response statements. See you all soon!

To post: click on comments, then copy and paster your 1-page word document and submit.

Easy as pie.

See you Soon.

-A.