10. Final Impressions

• What are your final Impressions of Colloquium?

Made by a leftist who didn't have a good idea of how to introduce people to subjects.  Also, WAY too biased at times.

• What changes would you make to the course?

1) Less leftism.  As a Moderate-Aligned activist, I fight all extremes.  Over the course of the course, I found alot of things which were agreeable, like the information on global resources.  At the same time though, I occasionally would come across one of the very things I'd fought so hard against, mainly because it was based in irrational, incorrect, or inconsiderate viewpoints.  Because of the levels of bias, I have a prediction that many of the students will have a negative response to alot of the material as it dawns on them how radical it was, which is a huge problem when you're trying to convince people of real problems.

2) Less writing.  Academics are stupid: Academic rigor has been shown to be the biggest threat to our nation's intelligence.  Telling people to read something and then write about it in the way that I was seeing is literally damaging to the intellect: it teaches against critical evaluation of material, and is inappropriate for such a biased curriculum.  This material would be better introduced through a casual environment, without the huge mass of essays being read and written, so that students are more encouraged to think and explore the material on their own, without being bombarded by it.

• What suggestions for activities or field trips do you have?

The FGCU campus.  Not the trails, but the actual buildings: the newer stuff is LEED certified, which is pretty relevant to the course.

9. Field Trip # 5 – Urban Fort Myers

• What were your impressions of the downtown area?

    Being from Fort Lauderdale, it was very easy for me to start feeling at home there when I first moved here: it's a VERY small downtown area, and it doesn't have any big buildings, but it has a few places with that "tucked away" feeling, where you can go hang out for a while without hearing the cars.  It's pretty too: it has alot of really nivce architecture which has been taken good care of over the years.  Most importantly, there are plenty of local restaurants and shops to try out and meet cool people at.  My favorite one is the Cigar Bar, which has smoke, booze, music, and fancy chairs.

• What impacted you the most during the field experience?

    Well...  Most of the stuff there was stuff I'd already seen.  I've been to the Edison home, and I've hung out with Ron and Scottm, who are 60+ residents of Fort Myers I know from Occupy.  They've always been eager to point out some interesting historical fact, like my favorite one: the story about the bricks on the road, which were laid when the town was young, paved over, and then fixed after they were rediscovered under the pavement.  You can see a picture of Fort Myers way back then in the window of Toot's Dollar Store, the "home of the $1 beer".

• How would you redesign Fort Myers and encourage more community engagement?

    I'd probably widen the alleyways a bit and make more plazas like the one with Morgan House.  Also, more little green spaces to break it up, like Centennial Park and the Courthouse, where Occupy has met in the past.  At the same time, there are already some cool things in downtown Fort Myers, like the old theater.  If people were interested in becoming "engaged", they could look into the things that already exist, like Food Not Bombs, and the drum circle, both of which meet on Sunday nights in Centennial park.

7. Future of Food

• After watching the documentary "Future of Food," research your own favorite food or snack. What is it?

I'll go with Curry.  That's a sort of heavily-spiced sauce with tons of veggies boiled in.

• Where does it come from?

I'm pretty sure it's oriental.  It's a poor-people's dish of sorts, and can be made from kitchen scraps.  It's usually served over a bed of something like rice and lentils.

• What are all the ingredients?

Well, there are 3 parts: spices, a liquid base, and veggies.  I just use pre-made spice-cubes from the store, as it would be hard to get that much spice in the right quantities otherwise.  I prefer coconut-milk as a base.  And I can use any veggies, but I prefer sweet-potatoes, cauliflower, carrots, and beans.

• Where were the different ingredients grown?

    It depends on where you get them, but veggies are pretty hardy: it's very possible to make it from locally grown ingredients.  The and coconut milk I like to use the most is made from Florida coconuts. (I know some farmers through occupy)  The veggies are store bought from Sweetbay, which has control policies on their vegetables which I find acceptable.  As for the spices, those are from all sorts of places, but once again: they can be grown here easily.

• Are there any genetically modified ingredients?

    I don't know.  There's probably some GMO veggies making their way in through Sweetbay, but they're on the low-risk-factor list generally, and a small enough portion of the meal that it's not really a big deal.

• How far did your food travel to get to your plate?  How much fossil fuels went into producing your food?

    Well, considering the fact that we have a national economy, probably from all over the country.  What many lefties don't understand is that food is usually grown in places where it is most efficient, like oranges in Florida and potatoes in Idaho.  That's not necessarily a bad thing either: think about how much of a burden trying to grow large quantities of almonds would put on the everglades.

    Consider how food-supply chains work: large trucks are sent around to local pickup points, and go to the train station when full.  A train takes the food around the country, where it is unloaded back onto trucks, to local storage and distribution centers within a relatively short distance from the grocery stores where they are eventually trucked to.  In the end, it's a few gallons of gas per truckload.  Considering how much food is on one of these trucks, that's not enough that I'm particularly worried.

    Lefties have a tendency to overdramatize the effect of a bit of gas on the environment, but the fact is that gas costs money, and companies are constantly trying to minimize its usage and waste.  A much larger problem is the consumption of meat, which uses animals that take TONS of food, water, and space to feed and grow.  If you notice, curry is an entirely vegan food, meaning ALL the food that was grown for it went directly to the plate, meaning it actually fed me, instead of feeding an animal being raised for slaughter.  Think about that: a single animal eats about as much food as a person, and it takes several years before it's slaughtered for food.  This means that one day's worth of meat is the equivalent of one month of veggies.

    That's some food for thought...

4. Sense of Place - Your Neighborhood

• Sense of place is understanding the environment around you, your comfort zone, where you feel most at home.

Three places I feel most at home:
1) Those dingy bars and clubs where you'd expect to see some wacky punk or rap show, or get beaten up by the guy with the torn up clothing and studded-leather belt. (that would be me... Not that I beat people up...)  I grew up around places like this, where people are friendly and open with each other, and everyone just wants to have a good time.
2) The uncharted wilderness, surrounded by trees so far that you can't see the road when you climb one of them.  It's nice to run out there and get away from things.
3) My bedroom, which is decorated with both of those concepts in mind.  Also, my computer is here.

• Take a walking trip around your neighborhood.

    I do this every night, if you'd call my apartment complex a neighborhood.  I used to live in the freshman dorms, so I'll talk about that too.

• Observe special environmental features, green design, sustainable aspects, species, wildlife etc.  What sustainable or ecological features do you notice?

    Well, there are some cool owls and falcons around my apartment complex.  It's actually pretty naturey when you walk around it: there's a big lake in the middle which is surrounded by native plants.  Actually, the area it's built on is a big scrub habitat: I can tell from the sandy ground and the burn-proof plants.  The scrub is also visible in the area surrounding it, where it's mostly overgrown brush on undeveloped land, which blocks the view of the nearby highway quite nicely.

    The freshman dorms were, of course, built with LEED certification in mind, so they're pretty eco-friendly.  They're also surrounded by the mostly-pristine FGCU campus preserve, where I used to walk around all the time.  I've seen alot of cool animals out there, including:
- Possums
- North American Raccoons (with cubs!)
- Crab Eating Raccoons (that's a different species, they are smaller and cuter and live in wetlands)
- Coyotes
- Deer
- Hogs
- Armadillos
And all sorts of wacky birds.

Post #1 Redone: Entering Expectations

• What are your initial expectations of Colloquium, feelings?

    As a veteran activist, I've seen alot of Environmentalist media already.  I'm also aware of the concepts of Environmental Sustainability as a business major.  I didn't really expect to see anything unexpected in Colloquim.

• Consider the following: Briefly describe any experience you have with exploring wilderness areas here or in other regions.

    I love taking walks in the wilderness, especially the mostly-untamed areas, and even more so if I can run off the paths for a bit.  I know most of the campus trails pretty well too, and have a good bit of local-ecology knowledge from over the years.
 

• Describe your relationship with the natural world.

• Describe any anxieties or reservations you have about this class.

    I had heard alot of bad things about this class.  The only good thing I'd heard was that the field-trips were fun.  Other than that, I'd heard that there was alot of writing and alot of biased material, and that some of the teachers weren't very good at their job.  The main concern I had was that the writing would get really obnoxious...

• What are your personal goals for this class?

     Well... To see what I might be able to learn from it in general, and to pass it so that I didn't have to retake it?  I probably wouldn't have chosen to take this class if it wasn't required, because quite simply, there is no material that you can't just go learn easily and for free...

• Describe how this class might be an important component to your education, major or life experiences.

     I thought it might reinforce what I already knew from a few years of prior experience, and maybe give me some new perspectives on things.

ECHO Global Farm and Research

     Our last trip in Colloquium was to the ECHO Global Farm and Research Center, which does research and experimentation with farming permaculture techniques to provide help to the third world.  This is both Environmentally and Socially sustainable, because the techniques which are presented are more environmentally friendly than the old ones, and their use helps people in less developed countries.

• What are your impressions of ECHO field trip?

      I think ECHO is really cool and I want to do service learning there.  I think their mission is neat, and I like the fact that the do research which has a clear, real world application to it.

• What is your experience growing plants or gardening?

      I've grown a few plants before.  It really isn't that hard: plant 'em, maintain 'em, and harvest when ready.

• Could you grow any of your own food like many people around the world have to do?

      Yes.  Given farmland, plantables, and time, I could probably scrape some together.  Actually, I've been planning on getting some cultures for edible mushrooms (like the kind you find in the store) and growing them in a plastic box in my apartment.  The drawback, though, is that using a global economy to get your food gives you alot of 1) reliability, 2) variety, and 3) ease of access.

Have pictures!

These are Rocket Stoves, one of my favorite applications or thermodynamic physics.  It is a super-eficient wood-furnace which can burn very clean fires at high heat with very little wood.

Apparently there were problems with smoke-inhalation from normal open wood-fire cooking in 3rd world countries.  ECHO designed some Rocket Stoves which could be easily supplied to them to fix this problem.  Not only do the furnaces give off very little smoke, they also require much less wood than normal fires.  

What wasn't explained that I felt would be interesting is how these things work.  Basically, the burn-chamber has a high, heavily insulated chimney, meaning it gets really hot inside and burns the wood more fully.  Actually, it burns the wood so efficiently that it INCINERATES the smoke and ash, making the final exhaust mostly carbon-dioxide and water-vapor.  Thus, the Rocket Stove is about 90%  efficient when it comes to burning wood, compared to the typical 25% of a normal wood stove.

A greater, yet unrelated design based on this design is the Rocket Mass Heater, a super-efficient house-warming system which burns scrap-wood to heat a large area in very cold climates.  It is very popular with permaculture enthusiasts and backyard-engineers in the northern US and Canada.  Here's a picture.

Have some extra pictures now!

Chapin Drip irrigation Bucket: 1 meter high, 100 feet of gradual irrigation.

Bamboo is Fun!

 Bananas are a Herb.

This pond has edible fish in it, fed by algae growth, which is fed by duck crap.  Ducks are edible too.  Note that the pond is relatively clean, probably from all the algae filtering the water and all the fish eating the algae...

Chaya: it's good for you, unless you eat it raw, in which case it's Cyanide.

Gooooaaaaat.

Worm farm which farms "red wrigglers", a good soil aerator and rejuvenator.  The bucket collects "worm juice", the nutrient-rich run-off from the farm for fertilizing plants.

Rice Paddy.  Rice is best grown in an are which is only flooded most of the time and at a certain depth. It's delicious, nutritious, and easy to grow.

This is a Turken, a hearty bird which is good for cleaning the soil and fertilizing it with droppings.

"Wick Garden", set up for urban environments: can be made on solid rock using trash.  All it takes is carpet to root in, a slow-drip bucket to keep it moist, and a covering to protect the roots.

Oh, and here are some low-cost home water filters.

Walking on the FGCU Campus.

      Our second class trip was to the campus nature preserve, which I have alot of personal experience with.  The trails span the entirety of the campus nature preserve, and, as I explained in class, have 2 loops through every section of the preserve along with crossroads.  The trails are simple and undeveloped, which keeps them from being very intrusive, but also means that they are very susceptible to flooding and downed trees.

      The FGCU nature preserve is an example of untouched everglades environment, and is also a great place to take a really long walk (like, over an hour).  I've seen quite a few interesting animals out there, and have a few pieces of amber-wood lying around because I'm a terrible person. (Amber-wood is wood from the still-standing base of a dead tree, which is saturated with tree-sap and becomes hard and flammable, making it good for use as tools, weapons, or firewood)  There are boars, deer, and coyotes out there, though many lame people will deny this.

      I learned a few things about the stuff out there that I didn't know already, like that the fire that I've always noticed near the dorms actually happened in 2003, and that the burnt wood has just stayed there for this long.  I wonder why it hasn't fallen apart yet...


I'm so incredibly sick right now that I can write no more.  I'll probably come back to this when I feel better...

In the meantime, have ponies interpreting what the class will be like after I come in sick anyway:

Those ponies!