All posts by Kyle Williams

Footprint

Footprints are an example of indexical representation

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WJT Mitchell  says so. There’s your bit of literary theory for the day.

By comparison to the American standard of having to use 5 earths, I use one entire earth less at 4. I am slightly below average. Though, conversely, I use one global acre more at 18 than the US average at 17. Personally, I’ve no idea how that works, but oh well.

I decided to maximize subway travel, electricity usage, and animal by-product consumption:

GRAPH

 

On the other side of things, I discovered that if I made a move to veganism as well as eating mostly fresh and locally grown products, I could reduce my impact by however much is worth .4 Earths. This seems like a half ridiculous measure but I guess we’re rolling with it. Generally speaking, though, I think a general shift toward more eco-friendly diets is one of the best and easiest ways to help the environment and ourselves (no, really, vegetarianism/veganism is not that difficult). And seeing a,s of the values that I tested, electricity has a huge impact on our eco footprint, it might be a good idea to just generally use less of it—and pay less for it in the process.

 

AMNH

Museums Are Like People Zoos, Right?

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Let’s all take a moment to appreciate the fact that part of what is contributing to our grade is our ability to people watch. The next step is getting paid for this sort of thing. Can anyone help me with that?

I spent my first fifteen minutes at the video display playing the same ten-minute video, “Life in the Balance,” on a loop. The video shows all of the majesties of nature for the first third, what human beings are doing to destroy that in the second third, and possible ways we can fix the problems presented in the third…uh, third. I started my watching officially at 11:30, after I’d already been standing there for around ten minutes watching the video through and figuring this display would be easier than any other in the hall because no one used it. A few minutes later a family of four showed up to stare at the screen for about forty seconds with incredibly bad timing because the children very much did not like bees and loudly made it known. (Then a family of three passed by and one of the children knocked into me with his shoulder, making me conclude children just don’t know how to walk.) Out of the 17 people that “interacted” (read: had even a solitary glance at it) with the display, that family of four actually stayed longer than most, who walked by with a solitary glance at the screen or paused in front of it for a few moments before continuing. Other long contenders were a young adult that stayed for three minutes to watch the solutions portion of the video then leaving at the end (the danger of video loops), and a single mother with her child who stayed for about four minutes, and only for one of those minutes did the child actually sit down (they left during the bit where the human impact on the world started). The female half of an elderly couple mad an apt comment during her momentary stay: “I don’t like to look.” Found poetry, maybe.

The second display I stayed at was the Resource Center, a through-way in the room that is a load of information presented all at once with numerous video loops and large infographic displays on pretty much everything to do with biodiversity and environmental degradation. Though many more people gave the section a glance, a selective few gave it any more than that: of the 37 people I counted that came through the display (plus 2 entire school classes, probably around 50 or 60 students, who didn’t pause except for the teacher to yell at them to keep hands held with their walking buddy), only a dozen stayed for any amount of time to read anything, and half of those were students forced to be there for an assignment (including Katie and company!). Of people not forced to be there, about four stayed for longer than a minute, though one notable person went through and read every display during the fifteen minutes I was there. Another read about half of them and just stood in front of the others texting. He gets a pale yellow star for trying. Also notable was an old man that walked through with his head down, mumbling to himself, then pausing at the population increase display and shouting things like “Yeah, that’s something.” He was my favorite. I named him Jim.

Though both displays did present a wealth of information (the resource center moreso, obviously), I think a lot of the problems with both of them came down to interactivity and marketing. The textual displays in the resource center got the most attention, second to the bigger-screened video displays lining the wall, whereas the smaller video displays were only used by students—I might guess that this is because everyone can read at whatever pace they want, but videos force the information unto us usually in time slower than we find necessary. The Life in the Balance display got nearly no attention at all­—I think the problem here is that no one wants to be forced through a video. I think that in the resource center this could be fixed by offering the smaller displays as interactive—touch screens, the ability to either watch the video or read a transcript for those that want the information they want to get from it quickly. For Life in the Balance, I’m not wholly sure there’s any fix to make people want to sit for ten minutes in a loud room to watch anything, but an offer of what the hell it is they’re watching might be nice—just a small plaque giving an overview might do the trick. The problem presented to museums, I think, is not in educating the public—there’s a huge amount of educative opportunity available at the museum—but educated people in a way that is engaging and entertaining, to educate those who aren’t expressly there to be educated but rather for an afternoon out. What the information needs is a marketing team. Which is the most depressing thing in the world, but, yaknow, blahblah Roland Barthes semiotics of consumerism blahblah millenials need to feel engaged and engaged in a way that seems both sincere and at their pace because we’ve been force-fed for so long blahblah theoritician statement blahblah Lonesome George was cool.

What is Science?

Wiley Wildfires

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In May, California caught fire again. Or maybe it’s more correct to say it kept burning. Wildfires have been a problem in California for as long as there were people that didn’t want them to occur, but they’ve only gotten worse in recent years. With the conditions of the land only getting worse and feeding larger, more devastating fires, science has a job to do and media has something to point and scream at.

The article I chose was “Fire Season Starts Early, and Fiercely,” published this May in the New York Times. In the article, the author discusses how conditions are getting worse, the fires are getting worse, and no one has any solutions because it’s not even clear what’s to really blame. Up until that last bit, the article was really well researched: experts from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and the state’s Natural Resources department were interviewed; statistics were used; there was a handy graph.

But the most mention the article does to the cause of the fires is the especially dry conditions, draught, and one expert saying that climate change was assuredly playing a factor. The article went on to say absolutely nothing because it offered no possible solutions—sort of playing the whole thing to be a twist of fate. Twists of fate, I might dare say, are not science (unless we’re talking about entropic determinism and physics, I guess). The problem with this article is that it wasn’t written to further any degree of understanding, but instead to garner attention with the drama that wildfires present. With the experts, the journalist gives equal time to California inhabitants discussing the consequences the fires have had on them personally; there is even a video that explains the science behind how fires work but not the reason the fires are getting any worse. So, why are the fires getting worse?

I’ve done some research and it seems to be a combination of human activity and climate change (well, insofar as climate change is another kind of human activity I guess; all in all we’re all at fault). Wildfires are a pretty natural process in the wild and can even be somewhat beneficial—the fire burns away the tree canopy and lets more sun in for other plants to grow, fertilizes the soil with wood ash (which is a fantastic fertilizer that also helps keep the soil at a neutral pH using carbonates that remain after wood burns), and some species of plants have become sort of dependent on forest fires to further their growth, a good example being the Jack Pine which releases seeds as its temperature rises so that even if the tree dies, new ones will take its place. But because fires have always been so near to human settlement (because human settlement is everywhere), the general view of wildfires was always to put them out immediately, which has led forests becoming overgrown with more small trees and ferns that will feed fires to make them that much larger. The additional dryness added by climate warming has, as it turns out, not helped at all. This video and its provided sources do a better job explaining the phenomenon:

So now the problem becomes my main crux with the article: what can we do about it? And now my problem becomes the same as the article’s, because I have very little of an idea. Somehow we need to find a way to fix climate change, know when to put out fires and when to let them burn for a little longer, and put more water and dampness into dry regions. Let’s call Captain Planet.

Bioblitz

Mammalian Murmurings

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I was part of the mammalian group at BioBlitz, which was much more of a “painstakingly observant to so little purpose” sort of affair than the more hands-on approach I noticed other groups taking, from collecting insect, moss and plant specimens to wading into the waters to observe fish—this, however, suited me pretty well, as I’m more of an observer than an active participator anyway, to the point of avoiding going off-trail for much of the time because I loath poison ivy (bad experience, hospital). And I really did enjoy observing the botanical garden; the entire area was beautiful, from forestry to waterfall, and I kept reciting pastoral lines to myself while walking around. Alas, my group didn’t get to see all too many mammals—as Allegra mentioned in her post, searching for mammals is frustrating (dare I say discouraging?) because they don’t much like people of any kind—but we did directly observe chipmunks (in fact, while the rest of the group was off-trail, I saw a few chipmunks playing and chasing on another, which was about as adorable as you’d imagine), a squirrel, and the evidence of a raccoon (vie scat and tracks). We also spent a large amount of time in search of the (evidently) extremely illusive muskrat—a mystical sort of being spoken of only in fairytales and environmental science classrooms—which still goes unfound.

A huge part of what the mammal group set out to do, however, was set traps for other mammals. We set two kinds of traps: IR Cameras and metal tunnel traps; the former I have absolutely no problem with; the latter, however, I worry about. I worry that those traps are traumatizing for the mice and chipmunks we were attempting to catch with them (a volunteer with our group shared this thought with me, which I appreciated because it gives me hope that I’m not just being ridiculous). Part of the beauty of nature, I think, is its inability to be truly captured (save for terrariums, but that’s another thing altogether, I suppose); attempting to do so for the sake of counting and examining animals makes us seem at least somewhat disingenuous about the cause of biodiversity, in my eyes. During the event, I observed more than my fair share of beautiful natural occurrences: a dragonfly sitting very docile on a leaf stem as our group took pictures and marveled at its size; a falcon sitting to roost atop a lamppost; a heron observing us observing it from across a lake and taking flight through the treetops with this enormous wingspan that I still can’t exactly place in a frame of reference with anything else. With all of these observations, I’m just not sure the metal cage traps were necessary—and possibly sending the wrong sort of message about biodiversity in New York.