Research Methods: Humble Data - 2

Dr. Culhane rationalizes our education’s way of thinking as having “straight jacketed” us “into linear habits of thinking and production” such “that it is hard to create a culture of true scientific thinking”. Culhane reminds us “our education system was set up during the early transition from an agrarian to industrial economy at a time when Taylorization and a mechanistic “Fordist” assembly line view of manufacture prevailed.” (Culhane, 2019).

Allen Watt’s video titled “Conversations With Myself” deeply resonates with my thinking.  Watts takes ideas and forms from nature to compile a mental database about the world (Marshal, 2012).  He has a wonderfully relaxing, open way of communicating and his videos feel like home.  

In this particular video you can view HERE, we go with him on a thoughtful adventure contrasting Industrialization with Nature.  Watts proposes that geometry, straight lines and modern architecture, are the human mind’s way of “making sense” of the “squiggly lines” of nature.  It is all an attempt to over-simplify a system that we simply cannot understand.  Personally, entropy in nature makes more sense to me than order (If you feel the same way, I would love to hear from you and you thoughts as to why this is.).  I believe we, as humans, control so much less that we think we do.  Our species suffers from a pervasive narcissism.  We waste, we kill, we abuse, and we call ourselves evolved and superior to other living creatures that do far less harm than we do.  So, nature makes sense to me.  I trust it.  I respect it and admire it like a young child respects and admires their parent.  I trust it knows more than us and is capable of working in a system of cycles and balance that yes, we are far too simple to ever understand, let alone respect.  Although this video is from the 1970s, it feels to me like the beginning of an awakening to the harm we do in the name if industry, economics and development (all over-simplified failing systems, in my point of view). Please watch the clip.  It is wonderful, honest, comforting and refreshing. 

Let’s consider this: Why is entropy considered “disorganized” and why is disorganized generally viewed as a negative characteristic? 

Could it be because our minds can’t make sense of nature like they can make sense of a grid laid over a city? 

Whether we believe in God, a Higher Power, or Nature itself, we must at least agree that we were not capable of creating this world and therefore we are not as intelligent as the entity that created us. Just because we cannot understand all the intricacies of our planet does not give us any right to try to restrain it to a box in a grossly crude attempt to understand and manipulate it. 

This idea can be likened to an oil painting trying to manipulate the world of its artist.  What an arrogant little painting that would be!

To take this artist-and-painting analogy a bit further, lets imagine the painting is a blue monotone; a deep look at textures and shapes, but just one color.  The artist watches from outside the window as the painting rearranges the studio so that all the blues are neatly in a line and all the other colors are tossed in a heap in the corner. Despite all the painting’s good intentions, he only succeeds at messing up the artist’s studio.  The painting however, feels better.  He understands blue.  He understands the tiny world he created. He has no understood need for any other colors.  He is blissfully unaware that is it precisely the presence of all the other colors that make his monotone blue so interesting.

"Creation: my interpretation of The Beginning"

All the while the artist watches his creation from outside the window.  The artist wonders what would happen if the painted dared to imagine something bigger and step outside the studio.  How would he/could he process it all?

Now, on to measurement: I see research sometimes kind of like the artist and the painting.  We collect data to help us understand our world. I fully believe that research is a wonderful thing.  I believe our curiosity about our world is so deeply ingrained in us that is reflects the artist who made us.  We are wise to be true to that instinct and explore our amazing world, pushing the limits of what we “know” to be true.  But, we must beware of becoming so egotistical that we forget where we stand in it all and ignorantly throw out all the colors.

Culhane, T. H. (2019). Module 3 relational summary. Retrieved on February 28 from

https://usflearn.instructure.com/courses/1364257/discussion_topics/5235605?module_item_id=12670099

Marshal, C. (2012). Alan watts on why our minds and technology can’t grasp reality. Open Culture.  Retrieved on February 28, 2019 from

http://www.openculture.com/2012/04/alan_watts_on_why_our_minds_and_technology_cant_grasp_reality.html

Research Methods: Data Construction and Analysis - 1

Ecuadorian Shaman and snake head 

According to Erikson, there are two important points with regard to quantitative research.

First, data needs to be found: it is not just there staring us in the face. 

Secondly, patterns need to be found: we need to actually look for them.  

He then dives into how we find data and recognize each of those data points (datum) as patterns.  I enjoy working with people, psychology and social projects, so the identification of What amounts? (Quantitative) Vs. What kinds? (Qualitative) makes sense to me and opened my eyes as to why I have always leaned towards qualitative data (Erikson, 2004).

Wolcott (1990) gives us a great analogy in Writing Up Qualitative Research.  He likens writing to a wheelbarrow, asking that we look at the writing as a whole before we tighten it up, reminding us not to fill it up!  He asks if we have everything that we need and if we need everything that we have (Stevens, D., 2009). I like this analogy for its simplicity and, as a farmer/gardener I can appreciate the importance of a tight wheelbarrow.

Both quantitative and qualitative research have their strengths.  When thinking of the importance of qualitative, a TED talk I heard recently came to mind.   The talk was about the untouched tribes in the Amazon.  Due to the fact that numbers are not known, and that sensitivity to culture is of utmost importance, I believe that interest into the lives of these people should be through qualitative research.  One man, Plotkin, went to live with them and did just that.  Through his TED talk he urges us to think about these people and preserve their land and culture and not attempt to “reach” them all, yet he talks about them as a whole through his individual experiences with them (Plotkin, 2014).  

Lush Amazon Rainforest, 2012

Part of their uniqueness is that they are isolated from the “outside world”.  Plokin says that everything living has a unique purpose that is it good at, which is why it exists and has survived in nature's process of natural selection (Plotkin, 2014).  This got me thinking about the qualitative research that has been done with these tribes in the Amazon.  Much of what we know about them is from people who have gone and interacted with them.  I do not advocate for this personally, but it is better than trying to reach them all just to have numbers to report (likely on how quickly they--along with their land--are disappearing).  Plotkin's talk focused on the medicinal uses of Amazonian plants and how they were hunted by the pharmaceutical industry as a model for modern medicine.  More recently, the industry has moved into laboratories for the chemical search and creation of future drugs.  Plotkins argues that there are more plants in the Amazon that the indigenous tribes use as medicine, but the rest of the world has never heard of yet.

T'sachila leader sharing stories, Amazon region, Ecuador

When I was living in Ecuador, I was taken to visit a shaman for the 2012 New Year's celebration and offering to the gods.  It was eye-opening and so interesting to see.  I was also able to visit an endangered Amazonian tribe called the T'sachila.  I would have never been able to go alone, but a local co-work of mine invited me and I was happy to learn about them.  It was an amazing experience.  The leader, "Papa T'sachila" (pictured right) shared many stories with us, including how he regularly hunted leopards. I felt so much respect for them and their ancient culture.  I was humbled by their wisdom and thankful for a brief glimpse into their way of life.  Because of this single experience, I will always have respect and admiration for indigenous peoples all over the world.   I do not need to meet them all to understand then need for them to remain how they always have been. 

Sources

Erikson, F. (2004). Demystifying data analysis and construction. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 4, pp. 486-493. Wiley.

Plotkin, M. (2014). What the people of the amazon know that you don’t. TED Global. Retrieved on February 13, 2019 from https://www.ted.com/talks/mark_plotkin_what_the_people_of_the_amazon_know_that_you_don_t/up-next?language=en

Food, Water, Energy Nexus : Chickens - 2

The first three chickens.

Are they worth it? Yes.  Here is why.

1) They eat your kitchen food scraps--even meat, seafood and eggs!
2) Their manure the best form of high nitrogen natural fertilizer on God's green earth.
3) They eat bugs: mosquitos, flies, hornworms on tomato plants and basically anything that flies or moves and will fit in their beaks.

4) My personal favorite: they eat parasite larvae!
5) They eat ticks, fleas and fire ants!
6) They are surprisingly lovable (dare I say therapeutic?) to interact with and watch.
7) They are profitable.  I know a retired couple who made $30,000 last year raising and selling chickens.
8) I almost forgot. They also lay eggs.





Here is my personal story of how an unlikely family ended up with....30 (?) or so chickens.  I was raised on a farm and we always had a few chickens.  That all ended when I was a child and I have not had them since.  Flash forward 30 years to 2017, when we moved to a small five-acre farm.  I planted some trees, got a used chicken tractor from Craigslist and purchased three small hens as a 2017 Christmas present for my daughter, age 3.

Luna with Sploradora.

They were so cute, and so useful.  As chicks, they can go in your garden and pick off tiny pests without harming food and, of course, leave behind little drops of fertilizer as they work.  Then came the eggs and more chickens.  My daughter got really into being a "chicken mama" and I, being a homeschooler from way back, decided this was Science class and encouraged her.

Baby Coop, built 2/6/19

This morning, my daughter and I built a "baby coop" for the newest set of little chicks.  My now 4 year old little girl confidently uses hammers, screw guns, drills and a host of other tools.  She told me she thinks she could build a house someday, and I'm sure she could.  We planted a purple possum passion fruit vine on the sunniest side, which will climb the wire mesh and provide shade, beautiful flowers and amazing fruit. We will angle the roof slightly to give the passion fruit the heavy water it loves when it rains. 





As I mentioned, the chickens eat even parasite larvae, which is great, because they free-range during the day with the horses and decrease the parasites in the pastures: equestrian permaculture at its finest!


So, what are you waiting for?  Get some chickens and hatch your own.  You could have a smile as big as this girl in no time!

Luna with Sweetheart, her favorite chicken.

Food, Water, Energy Nexus : Being Attentive - 1

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The point that stands out to me the most is one that Professor Culhane made during the video about how food, water, or energy issues have historically been approached with each issue being viewed as it’s own entity—separate from everything else.  The coolest part is where he points out that not only is this way of seeing our planet’s issues flawed, but is actually damaging, because a lot of times making an improvement in one area will actually degrade another area.  For example, one way to increase crop yields might be to use more fertilizer and pesticides to successfully address food shortages, but if the chemicals pollute the water then are we really making a positive difference? Over all, we are not. We are just improving Food while damaging Water. 

 

Nature's natural cycles: waves rushing the coast of El Salvador.

I think the reason that this concept of individuality and incohesiveness resonates so deeply with me is because I feel like I was very involved in it but first saw it from a different angle. You see, I started traveling a lot along time ago and wanted to do something to make a difference in all of the issues that I was seeing related to poverty and suffering in the world. I started raising money until it became too much to do legally, so I started a nonprofit with a group of friends as a legal way to funnel money directly to where it was needed. During that process I was pushed and pushed to put my nonprofit in a category: Should it be health? Education? Hunger? Immigration? Human rights? Emergency relief? In the end we settled on water and ways for more people to access clean water. 

 

I thought a lot in Haiti. And the curiosity goes both ways.

That choice turned out to be one of the biggest lessons of my life so far.  Things were going well on the surface: the donors were lining up and money was coming in, the pictures looked good in the stories were happy. But I kept asking questions. Am I on the right track? Am I doing the most good that I can with what I have? Am I even doing more good than harm? Something was missing. I read books, books with titles like “when helping hurts” and “toxic charity”. While in Haiti I learned that there were literally over 10,000 other registered NPOs working on that island alone!  How was I any different? Why so many groups and so many causes but still so many problems all over the world? I decided that people are not really working together collaboratively to bring people and the planet out of  suffering. Instead, our current approach to change, charity and philanthropy is to pick a cause and promote it like it’s the most important and worthy of attention of all the causes (competition). Once I allowed myself to leave this train of thought and think freely I changed so many things about how I was approaching issues. It was then that I began to THINK about sustainably before I knew it was a degree major or even a subject.  This is one of the reasons why I enjoy my school so much: it’s wonderful to make changes in the world without it feeling like it’s in competition with others or like you have to define your cause until it fits someone else’s definition of what the world needs. 

 

Unsustainable agriculture hurts the most vulnerable first.

We need to all put or energy into pushing forward towards solutions and innovative ideas. It should NOT be “pick a cause”. All our issues are related and they are all worthy.  The right solutions have no negative repercussions! These are big, important issues requiring skills that only come from diversity and creativity that only comes from a unified passion for sustainable change. I’m here, braced for this class...intimidated and yet excited to face the biggest issues of our time with my eyes opening ever more to the complex nature of the food, water energy nexus. 

ZwRT “Carbon Cycle” - Waste Not, Want Not: Relational Summary 9

Our world is runs on cycles: Water, carbon, matter, life...what goes around comes around.

This is a LINK to a quick summary of the water and carbon cycles, which can be applied to many other elements and concepts on planet Earth.

Another great source is the book: The Carbon Farming Solution, by Eric Toesmeier.

TwXLB “Changes” - Waste Not, Want Not: Relational Summary 8

Inspired by the Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard and the Entropy Law, I have taken a good look at consumerism in general as well as my own consumption of Stuff.  I have asked myself what I could do better and why I buy what I buy. It has been interesting, eye-opening and definitely uncomfortable.  As I was reading about entropy as it relates to sustainability and petroleum products, I started researching plastics, specifically plastic grocery bags. It only takes a few minutes to realize how ridiculously unneeded the bags are and how harmful they can be. People tend to forget something exists if they cannot see it. A plastic bag might rip apart and break down in a few months to the point of not being an obvious eyesore on a landscape, yet none of the plastic really went away or disappeared. The plastic breaks down into something called micro plastics and they get into waterways, animals and living organisms and work their way up the food chain until we also consume them (not to mention they are in our soaps, shampoos and lotions, but that is entirely another story). What I want to think about here is how the breaking down and spreading out of particles is a different distribution of those particles but there is not any less of them. If we think about all of the plastic bags that were ever made still being in existence, it is staggering. Now we know better, so as the saying goes, we should do better.

I got called out last week for not doing enough to be sustainable. The person who called me out was the most unlikely one on the planet: my own boyfriend. Why is it so unlikely that he would call me out? Because he is not into the same things that I am when it comes to preserving the planet. It’s not that we don’t see eye to eye, it’s just all new concepts for him and it takes a lot to convince him that changes in behavior only are needed. He’s stubborn, set in his ways and does not like change. I mean he really does. Not. Like. Change.

Declining to use plastic bags even without reusable bags!

When I got the text message from him pictured in the photo, my jaw literally dropped and I almost fell out of my chair. Whatever it was that made him tell the cashier that on that specific day he didn’t want to use any more plastic bags, I will never now.  But I do know that if my boyfriend can learn to load all of his things in his vehicle without any bags, then surely anybody can do it. And I did promise to help him get some reusable bags to keep with him. But then he called me out…

 He said that just us refusing to use plastic bags was not enough. He said he could understand the need but would be a lot more motivated if I were making a bigger change then just my own habits.  Well, that motivated me to go home and start a Facebook page to inspire and encourage people to ban plastic bags from the grocery store. You can find a link to that pageHERE. I put some facts about plastic bags, such as the average length that  they are used as a matter of seconds yet it takes hundreds and hundreds of years for them to biodegrade. I sent out invites to a bunch of friends and asked people to share their stories. So far I have almost 20 people who follow the page and about five people who have committed to not using plastic bags anymore.

And I’ve been thinking how I could do more. There are a number of cities and states who have banned plastic bags and/or single use plastic.  Shouldn’t Florida be one of those? One of the reasons of plastic bags are so bad is because of the harm that they do to sealife. Shouldn’t a state that has such an immense coastline and is famous for its beaches be a leader in protecting its environment? I would love to help get laws passed to ban plastic bags, and ultimately single use plastics, from the whole state of Florida.  They are just not necessary. With a few changes in our behavior we can quite easily and quickly adjust to a different lifestyle that makes all the difference in the world to the animals, the sea life, the beautiful natural environment of Florida and it’s future generations.

 Research on how to go about banning plastic bags has helped me understand what has been successful in the past and how to start taking steps in the right direction. One thing that I’m going to try, partly in the name of sustainability but also partly due to my own curiosity, is to write a few letters to local businesses.  I had one success so far, at my own place of employment. When I talk to my manager about our place of work supporting sustainable agriculture it was easy to point out the hypocrisy of the amount of plastic bags that we went through. The management agreed to take all plastic bags out of the organization almost immediately.  Maybe because of this, I feel fairly confident calling out other “sustainable” business to do the same.  I’m not sure how well this would go over with other businesses, but if it takes a letter then I don’t really have much to lose by asking. I mean, why do they ask “Is plastic OK? when you check out at Publix? Why not say “Is paper ok?” Or “Do you need bags today?” Or even “Paper or plastic?”. By saying “Is plastic OK? they are automatically making plastic bags the default option for everybody.

Example letters, steps and guidance for cutting back on plastic bags!
https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/pft/2015/8/15/ban-the-bag-in-your-town

TwXLT "Consumption and Pessimistic Entropy" - Waste Not, Want Not: Relational Summary 7

Funny....kind of... :)

The chapter titled “Consumption” in the Story of Stuff gives a detailed sense of just how much we shop, buy…consume.  In 2004 we spent more on watches, shoes and jewelry than for higher education ($100 billion vs. $99 billion).  In 2003 the United States and Europe spent $17 billion on pet food, yet we could end hunger and malnutrition for just $19 billion. The comparative lists go on and on.  We want a two or three car garage to use most of it for storage.  Leonard continues to describe how shopping is viewed as some sort of right, and to challenge our rate of consumption has led her to be labeled by some as “Marx in a ponytail” and for Colin Beavan aka No Impact Man, who lived in NYC experimenting with a minimal-consumption lifestyle, to receive hate mail even including the threat of death.  She also mentions one of my favorite books, Walden, by Henry David Thoreau, and how he was called “unmanly” and “very wicked and heathenish”! (Leonard, 2010) What?! This blows my mind.  Who could insult this book and the way it leads you through the winding magic of nature?  It gives me peace I can only otherwise find out in, well, nature.

Fleissner and Hofkirchner’s paper titled “Entropy and Its Implications for Sustainability” is quite a bit more dense, diving into the physics of sustainability and the contradictions therein. One concept in particular though seemed to resonate with me since I have pondered about on my own before, not knowing it had a name. Georgescu's Law states that “…in a system like the Earth (nearly no exchange of matter with the environment) mechanical work cannot proceed at a constant rate forever, or, there is a law of increasing material entropy. This means that it is not possible to get back all the dissipated matter of, for instance, tires worn out by friction.” (1997). 

This "disorder" makes sense to me.  Nature rules. 

This is very interesting to me, personally.  I would like to know exactly what he means by “get back”, but I would tend to agree with him on the basic (pessimistic?) concept.  I do not believe that people or the planet (in the future as far as we can see it) are capable of returning matter “back” to a natural state, near its source location, as a way to reverse our damage.  I do believe that if humans were to cease to exist the planet would eventually, probably, breakdown and recycle all our messes so that nature could thrive again.  But for the sake of our current reality (a world with humans) I would agree with Georgescu-Roegen: we are doing irreversible damage.  As I have said before, I’ve been told I may be a bit of a pessimist but I would rather make changes now than push our planet any further down a path of doom.  We know we cannot continue to function indefinitely like we are functioning now. Too many companies are using finite resources as if they were infinite.

I found an interesting review of Georgescu-Roegen that refers to him as a “genius pessimist and a philosopher of process”.  The author states that he was a complex character who believed in the inevitable running down of the economic process.  This is what I have always held true and believe to my core; if we are not living in harmony with nature, we are destined to fail.  How could anyone think that that a society that depends on nature, yet is built on the exploitation nature, could survive?  I learned that Georgescu-Roegen and I have our perceived pessimism in common and I gained respect for him because he did not just stay safely in one field.  Georgescu-Roegen was a mathematician and economist who dared to enter the field of physics, and then bring all three studies together.  That is incredible to me and I appreciate his efforts and contributions to the study of sustainability.  We need a wake up call.

Sources

Fleissner, P. & Hofkirchner, W. (1997). Entropy and Its Implications for Sustainability. Implications and Applications of Bioeconomics. Retrieved from https://igw.tuwien.ac.at/igw/menschen/hofkirchner/papers/infoconcept/entropy/entropy.htm

Sers, M. (2017). Georgescu-Roegen: The genius pessimist and the philosopher of process. Economics for the Anthropocene. Retrieved on December 24, 2018 from

https://e4a-net.org/2017/03/29/georgescu-roegen-the-genius-pessimist-and-the-philosopher-of-process-by-martin-sers/

The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-and a Vision for Change

Annie Leonard / Free Press (publication:2010-03-09)
Read "Consumption"