All posts by Devin R Dougherty

If Only We Could All Carpool

December 12, 2014 Devin R Dougherty 1 Comment

It would take 3.9 Earths if everybody lived the way I do. I’m pretty proud of that number (I guess) since the average for people in the USA is 5 Earths. Woohoo, go me! Although, the amount of acres I used is slightly above average, I had 17.4 and the average is 17. Not bad.

I think the main thing is I don’t drive, I carpool with my girlfriend whenever I go anywhere, and to get to school I use the bus (public transit). Since my footprint changed the most drastically altering the transportation, I would say that’s probably the main thing. There’s simply too many people driving their cars here, endless traffic. The maximization of my diet proved to be both scary and unsurprising. I wish I could eat more meats and fruits and vegetables, but I can’t do both in order to help the planet. But it’s bad for my health to eat all this cheap processed food that I eat. I recycle quite a bit, so the recycling might not do as much as I had hoped. I’m going to need to recycle more. The graph below shows the maximization data, with the scale on the left referring to the amount of Earths required to sustain my lifestyle.

I think we need to create better and more reliable public transportation. I think that should be the start. The LIRR for example should keep prices low, not increase, and more people should be riding the trains. Down with single drivers driving cars! Carpool people!

AMNH

The American Museum of Attention Deficit Disorder

December 12, 2014 Devin R Dougherty 1 Comment

Please note that I love the museum of natural history and the title is not criticizing the museum, it is criticizing some people who visit it. Simply going to a museum does not make one more socially conscious or cultured. I was disappointed in the lack of reading and discussing at the exhibits I observed.

At the “Sustaining the Forest” exhibit, I tallied about 24 people who interacted in some way with the exhibit or took a moment to even glance at it. 8 of them just looked at it, another 10 to 11 were doing a project on it and were either silently reading the pictures or talking about something completely different. Occasionally they asked “what’s the answer to number…?” meaning they didn’t really try taking in anything here. However, one student started talking to another student about how her aunt worked in forest recovery or something, I couldn’t hear well. The remaining 5 people were 2 who read most of what was in the exhibit to themselves and the other 3 were a foreign family that started talking to each other and reading. They stayed for a while too. I really wish I could have understood them because if so, that would just strengthen my hypothesis that American children just can’t pay attention to anything for more than a second (Assuming the family didn’t identify as American, which they might have. I don’t want to jump to conclusions about anybody). In the case of this exhibit, the museum might be partially to blame. The lighting wasn’t great and there’s too much mixed media in the room, too many different kinds of exhibits. I read the exhibit afterwards and I don’t think they could have put it together any better, but at the very least the lighting has to change.

I went over to the Coral Reefs exhibit afterwards in the ocean biodiversity room. I found similar results as before. 37 people interacted with it. 4 of them glanced at it and ignored it. 11 interacted in some small way (briefly watching the film above, slowing their walk to look at the picture, or read for a second). Then, again, I found a few more foreign families talking about the exhibit. One child pointed to everything and started talking about it to the parents, who tried hurrying him along, but he wasn’t having it. He was fascinated. Then I saw an American family watching the film for a while, starting and ending their discussion with “pretty!” Lastly there were two women who were about to start talking about it, but I think they noticed me eavesdropping and they got freaked out and walked away. My bad. This room is great, and the exhibit is great, but unfortunately the whale takes precedence in this room. Everybody goes in here for the whale, and everything else kind of just feels small after seeing it.

I want to give some advice. If you’re going to the AMNH to be more cultured and aware, limit yourself to two rooms for your whole visit. You’ll learn a lot more that way, and the feeling of letting the entirety of a world wash over you must feel amazing. Also, if you’re bringing children, put your hand over their heads to keep them from running around. I know they want to see the whale, but lead them up to it, and talk to them about something. Don’t make the trip a chore or a homeschooling adventure, make it fun!

What is Science?

Concerning a Case Against GMOs

October 17, 2014 Devin R Dougherty 1 Comment

Carole Bartolotto tells us in her article for The Huffington Post that GMOs have not been proven safe in humans. In her quest to educate the public, she cites two studies supporting GMOs (one of which she insults the validity of because of the source’s past work), and none specifically against GMOs. She builds up a claim that GMOs could be unsafe to humans since we only have animal tests, and that in the past (in the case of artificial sweeteners), these tests were shown to be uncorrelated to human responses.

It is unclear what she wants to convey to her audience. Does she want to ban or label GMOs? Her combative writing about artificial sweeteners and “diet” foods (which makes up most of her article) makes it seem like she wants to ban them, or at least unable to be served to humans. However, her final statement is “we need GMO labeling so we can do the epidemiological studies that are essential to determine their risk.” I ask, don’t we need controlled epidemiological studies in order to test their validity? We can’t simply slap a sticker on something and watch people eat, so in the meantime, deterring people from eating anything not labelled as “organic” is unprofessional.

The person writing this article dismisses the only statements supporting GMOs (and the only two statements actually about GMOs in her article) entirely. She introduces the viewpoint that some scientists “Some scientists are quite emphatic about this…” and then ends any discussion that does not adhere to her views about the subject, which, by the way, she does not even have. Her entire argument is based around a poor agreement between animal and human toxicology tests. Granted, she gives evidence to back up this claim, but, she has no evidence supporting the opposite (ironic, considering her stance that we do not yet know anything about GMOs).

Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carole-bartolotto/have-genetically-modified_b_5597751.html

Bioblitz

Bioblitz reflection

September 12, 2014 Devin R Dougherty Leave a comment

First off, Bioblitz was a lot more fun than I anticipated. I befriended some good people from other schools and went back on the bus to see my friends from Brooklyn. I was in the fish group in session A. Unfortunately, we did not catch many fish. Our net came up empty more times than not. I don’t know if it was because of the time of day, because of the wedding right near the water, the proximity to the waterfall, or the depth of the water; but I did realize that we were dealing with a very sensitive environment. We caught five fish, four of which were tiny (darters and baby sunfish), and one young large-mouth bass, which was still small, but less so.

The way we retrieved the fish was fun, we walked into the water with waders, and tried cornering the fish between a net and the ground above water. The ground underwater was rocky and unstable and uncomfortable on my feet, but I’m glad I experienced it.

I was really hoping to see more in my group, but while walking to my group’s area, I noticed beautiful birds, trees, landscapes, small mammals, and more. On the way back I even saw a bat. I realized that the preservation of this world is so important. There are areas of the park that have been untouched by the botanical gardens for years, only installing pathways through them, and going through these areas was eye-opening to me. A single step into this place could disrupt a creature’s habitat, thus disrupting the whole ecosystem. It’s incredible.