I took on the challenge of restoring these eight wood herb boxes that the cafeteria uses. Tomatoes, peppers, green onions, and arugula were already present in the boxes and I needed to improve the fortification system that allowed small animals to eat all the greens.
After ten hours of clearing leaves, planting new herbs and produce, revitalizing old ones, and building cages to prevent animal destruction these boxes are ready to survive on their own. at the ready access of the chef if he wishes to utilize fresh free herbs.
The book and film Guns, Germs, Steel by Diamond, is a very interesting way to look at how humans have evolved. He tries to figure out why white people have more “cargo” than other cultures, especially New Guyenne where he was asked this question. Diamond does research on ancient humans and notices that they were simple hunter and gathers traveling when food becomes scarce. Only when the first humans started to control nature by growing food and herding animals to have a dependable meat supply did people have free time. Diamond finally came up with that depending on your geographic location in the world it determined what could grow and be raised productively and how nutrias the food will be. The population could grow and people were allowed to create new things and learn how to harness the power of fire to smelt all kinds of materials, especially metals.
Upon going back to the Bay Area for the holidays I read an article in the local newspaper called “The New Farmers, shaping future of food” and it related to my field of studies. Due to the last twenty years of decline in land regulations in the area of San Mateo county, 28 year old Tony Cozzolino has started his own farm and is followed by other youth getting into the industry. Tony and his family sell their produce all around the bay area directly to restaurants and the public making connections and relationships with the community. Organizations that have protected and preserved open space have started to see “the long-term benefit from regenerative agriculture as an acceptable use of the land.” Now small farmers are able to open up their own farms now that regulations have been abolished and the demand for high-quality fresh produce in the area is in high demand.
raspberry and rosemary in the ground ready to face the elements of winter for three weeks with out human assistance. Well see if they are there next quarter.
Couple hours later with a pick and shovel the ground is ready to plant raspberries, rosemary and sugar cane. At first these plants will need to be watered and taken care of but eventually they will be part of the surrounding environment and will not require human assistance.
Half way through cleaning up behind Los Olivos getting it ready to plant herbs and food that will one day be sustainable by them selves.
The interview of Chilean economist, Manfred Max-Neef on Barefoot Economics was published on Democracy Now. He explains that to understand poverty you can’t simple study about it in school or listen to peoples first hand experiences with poverty. No you must live in third world poverty for some while to feel and witness what poverty truly is. Looking at it from the outside does not do the same justice as looking at it on the inside. You can’t study everything about love and say you understand it, only when you fall in love you know what the word means and appreciate what you have. Manfred finds that in poverty there is an enormous amount of creativity, you have to find ways to survive with what little you have or you will die. He also speaks upon that people need to bring consumption closer to production. It doesn’t make sense to ship something across the world just because it’s cheaper, these economist don’t put nature into the equation of price.
David Korten gives a speech based on his book The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community. Corporation economic models produced devastating consequences for people of the world while the top 20 percent of the world get all the benefits and profit. Decision making based on short term return to money rather than focusing on the long term wellbeing of people and living things on the planet needs to change. We need to focus on a new birth of earth community with an understanding a responsibility to other people and our nature. Life values need to be in place over financial values. How could somebody making millions of dollars and not stop and think about how they are killing the planet or exploiting people. In 1950’s there was an annual average of 24 major disasters in the world and in the first five years of the 21st century there was 350 weather related natural disasters. We need to start becoming self-reliant and not relying on food and energy that comes from so far away. Our change will come from self-organization and the great turn will follow.
In Warsaw Poland the United Nations held a conference called COP19 on November 18-22, 2013 to discuss the climate change. There was very minimal international media at this meeting but Democracy Now, an independent news broadcaster covered the whole week. I watched an interview of Scientist calling for radical economic overhaul to Avert Climate Crisis “We have to consume less.” If the people of the world don’t consume less in the next few years a temperature growth of about 2 degrees Celsius will alter the world’s ecosystems and cause dramatic climate change that everyone will not be fit to survive. We are at the thresh hold and about to go over locking in global warming effects for the future generations. The typhoon Haiyan that just hit the Philippine Islands was the biggest recorded typhoon to ever hit land and many scientists say it is due to raised average temperature of the world. Short term change is needed now to reduce energy consumption and carbon pollution before we go over the thresh hold of no return. We missed the window for gradual change and radical de-growth is all that can be done at this point.
Back to Reality by Jacobs, Jane discusses the response of economists and government as their economy begins to fail they go back to the drawing board. Instead of using the same old concepts in different combinations to try and solve the problem again, we need to pay attention to the reality of it before we become lost in the fog of our own making. For example when a city replaces its imports with its own production there is lose in sales, but a gain in equivalent value of new export work. Cities will grow by replacing its imports. Not all import-replacements are creative ideas that are beneficial to the economy and environment at same time. In Japanese cities they are using solar heating to solve the issue of importing fossil fuels. By not depending on an import a city can expand and grow through new production and manufacture helping to develop the city.
The documentary RIP! A Remix Manifesto is very interesting and edgy clip about how a DJ has mixed and mashed about twenty songs together to make one new song. Copy right laws see the internet as a public library. A source of ideas and intellectual properties and they want to make money off it limiting people to information. The internet was essentially created for a world wide spread of information but now there is a block on what you can copy from other people’s ideas. Their ideas! They discussed how cancer could be cured and a world-wide vaccine could be produced but there is a copy right on the research forcing scientist to go around this technique that actually works. If you completely copied and stole some ones idea and called it yours that wouldn’t be fair to them and I could understand why people would be mad. The original creator should be getting the credit that you are receiving. To take parts and pieces of many different ideas and mash it up into one is fair game. People have been doing this kind of thinking and inventing since the dawn of mankind. So why now has this become illegal and stopping valid research from being conducted.
Late November and early December in Seattle Washington 1999 the Worlds Trade Organization (WTO) held a meeting to discuss current world topics. A documentary was released covering the view of the protesters during this time call Battle in Seattle. These protestors were very smart and knew that to stop the meeting from happening and show their ideas they would have to use non-violent ways to block off the streets to keep the members from getting to the convention. By forcing the police to use harmful tactics to disperse the crowds it turned the situation into an all-out riot and ciaos hit the streets for a couple days and nights. Of course in all peaceful protests there are some bad apples that like to destroy things and the media focused on the destruction as the original intent of the protestors. Eventually the WTO had to call off its meetings because no one could get to the convention hall and some people couldn’t even get back into their hotels. One of the biggest messages that got across the film was that “when are we going to put peoples’ lives first before profit?”
After reading The Warren Harding Error I learned that the world is too complex now for just linear thinking and that we need to interweave ourselves as a piece of nature. Ray Anderson the CEO of Interface Inc. realized that it was his job as a fortune 500 business to reduce his waste consumption from all his factories. Someone with his kind of power in the world’s economy can play a big effect on how others can see it. He saw the bigger picture and wanted to be less waste full, and to his astonishment with a small investment in waste reduction he saved over four times the money he spent. Ray changed his worldview and the impact of his industry on it, and slowly his values changed and so did his company by giving back to the earth more than they took. Ray is part of the core group of cultural creative with a leading-edge thinking that helped guide his decisions to green values.
Dan Pink’s video on motivation and Drive has some results that were surprising to me. When it comes to rudimentary cognitive skill tests the students at MIT when given a larger reward to fulfill the tasks performed poorer than those with a small reward. This seems all backwards to me that people wouldn’t be better when given a higher incentive to think harder. These students weren’t applying themselves harder when money was on the line. The motivation wasn’t there to encourage the students to outperform each other just because they were making more money. They probably didn’t care as much to the results because they knew how much the reward was already going to be. To pay you employees just enough to keep money off their minds while they work is the best way to give them an incentive to be productive and seek out new and improved ideas for the company. People have always done better in activities that they and not being forced to do and enjoy the work at hand.
rs450bassett 