Anyone else ready to go to a class where we can talk about Shaun of the Dead and The Book of Eli without being accused of wasting time?

Please enjoy!

Click on: Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow

Episode 908 (Original Air Date: Oct 19, 2005)

A GLOBAL WARMING STATE OF EMERGENCY is declared in South Park. The world’s largest beaver dam breaks and floods the adjacent town of Beaverton. As the victims wait for help to arrive, everyone in South Park tackles priority number one: who is to blame? Only Stan and Cartman know who’s really at fault.

Well, this is my idea— ethics.  I think the way we (Americans)  treat our little section of the world falls back on our ethics, or lack of.  Over time which we don’t have, we need to change our ethical view.

Ethics–a system of moral principles

If we start to raise our children with a different set of ethics that actually incorporated a positive worldview, things WOULD change.  We would raise our children not to immortalize people like Britney Spears, LeBron James, and Paris Hilton.  Instead they would know about Wangari Maathai and John Muir.  Images of pollution-free oceans and flourishing summer garden would fill our heads instead of Kate Gosselin getting voted off Dancing with the Stars. People would start to care about how we live.  Religion would change— everything would.

Patience, persistance, commitment– that is what Wangari believes.  The problem with that  idea–time.  Time is not our friend.  Will it be too late if we change our ethical view?  Will it be too late if we are patient, persistent, and stay committed?  For some ecosystems it will be too late.  An although by changing our ethics now we are only postponing the inevitable ending, it’s worth a try.

Now I know what you’re thinking. Why would anyone want the earth to die? Surely that would mean the death of all mankind dying with it. Well, I will tell you why. After much reading (thanks professor Ray) and discussion on what direction our planet is heading, I have determined that the conclusion is not good. Surely after all of the war, pollution, extinction, deprivation, death, global warming, natural disasters, (and the list goes on) the earth will be a ball of flames, born anew out of ashes, spinning without us. Although this may seem a bleak and out willful future, I believe it will ultimately do the earth more good to continue without us. Honestly, it’s no secret that we humans have done nothing to help restore the balance in the world. More accurately, we are almost always the cause of any bad thing happening on the planet, and sadly we do not seem to see the error of our ways.

Alan Weisman, the author of The World Without Us, gives us an astounding realization of our behaviors when he says “Every four days our population raises by 1 million. Since we really can’t grasp the effects of the numbers, we will crash and burn just like other species have done in the past.” It’s clear to see that from our own destructive ways we are harming the planet more every day. Would it be so much of a stretch to think that we humans could have one act of selflessness and ‘take on for team earth’? Surely we all know that the earth can go on without us. I would even venture to say that it will do quite better without human influence misguiding its path.

Well, from my perspective, when it’s all said and done, I want it to be over for us humans. Although I am eager to see just how many other share my opinion. Weisman seems to think that no matter what (even if the human race becomes extinct) we will never truly leave the earth alone. He ended his essay (which I will leave you with as well) with these last haunting lines. “Or even one day-long after we are gone, unbearably lonely for the beautiful world which we so foolishly banished ourselves- we, or our memories, might surf home abroad some comic electromagnetic waves to haunt our beloved earth.”

Like Solnit stated, the agreement that was discussed in Copenhagen suggested that we limit the temperature increase to about 7 degrees F.  Really? I mean, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that limiting 7 degrees will still destroy the environment. Although the temperature increase would be over time (by 2100), that 7-degree increase will kill the coral reefs, devastate farms, make the Amazon non-existent, and cause a slew of other problems.  Why can’t we make drastic changes now?  Make carpooling and recycle mandatory.  Limit the number of cars people can own. Force square footage limits on the houses people build…. I know this is just the tip of the iceberg for solutions, but something major needs to be done.

One of the comments a reader made on the Solnit article back in 2009 was about 9-11 and how  leaders across the world  “were all one, and would stand together against a common threat; yet tens of millions around the globe are now facing death by starvation and disease due to climate change, and those same governments can’t even agree to an agreement.”  Ding ding ding!!!!  Major disasters will continue to happen, people will continue to die, landscapes will perish until we just blow up.  The people who can really make a difference in the world—those who can make laws—need to do it now. Today.

Solnit said there are no superheroes but us….. superheroes aren’t real……

Charles continued through to the second chamber of the nursery, partitioned off by one revolving door immediately followed by another. As Charles passed into the gene nursery he stood and waited for his eyes to adjust. In the previous room the light was changing constantly but here it was a consistent low, red glow bathing everything in an ominous light. The sound was just as different. Where as the patternless, chaotic patter of rain filled the previous room, this one was filled with a deep throbbing. When Charles closed his eyes he always felt as though he was inside a giant bass drum. He opened the cabinet in the corner, donning gown and mask and gloves. Charles stood for a moment and gazed down the gene nursery, more like a wide corridor than a room. On each side of the room were vats, the size of trash cans, filled with a clear liquid. The vats nearest the door appeared to be empty but as he walked down the room the contents changed. A small dot, or speck for the first few vats, then larger and larger objects. As he progressed down the room, each vat was filled with a more recognizable shape. A fetal curl, the neck, bent as though in prayer, a thoughtless lump asking forgiveness for sins not yet enacted. Moving down the aisle, toes became distinct, ears, a nose, after a certain size umbilical cords tethered the fetuses to nourishment, which was precisely regulated. After passing to the rear of the chamber, he turned to the last vat. A fully formed human male, his DNA donated by healthy Government employees that had passed the genetic screening. He had Charles’s nose. And Dr. Daniel’s mouth.

Charles wheeled over a stool, locking it in place so that it wouldn’t skitter out from under him as he brought his fragile son into the world. Charles unclasped the grips holding the glass womb in place and manipulated the hinges attaching it vertically to the wall, extending its support arm like a boom, bringing the second to last human he knew for sure was alive to a rest, a few degree from horizontal. Opening a vent in the base of the container, the amniotic fluid began to flow into the drain in the floor, a torrential flood of viscous goo. As the last of the fluid drained out Charles gave the base a sharp twist, unlocking it with a wet click, letting it fall clattering to the floor. Instead of reaching in to grab the new-born, he simply let it slide slowly out of the tube that had been its home for the last nine months, the amniotic fluid turning the beaker into a slide. As the child’s weight settled into his hands, he pulled a rubber ear cleaner out of the cradle, squirting two quick burst of air at each nostril, and immediately this bundle of cells, this wet bag of miniature organs, tiny bones, and enormous potential, began to wail. Charles wrapped him in a blanket, and held him close. Leaning in to the baby’s ear, Charles chose his words very carefully.

“Hello Kael, my name is Charles. I’ve waited a long time to meet you. Welcome to the New Earth.”

Rebecca solnit’s article “Judgment Days in Copenhagen” portrays how a summit on climate change includes only the polluters and not the people affected by the pollution.  For example, she states how “Danish police became increasingly brutal as activists from everywhere, representing the poor, developing, and most affected nations, the Arctic, small farmers, indigenous nations, and the environment demonstrated” (Solnit 5). While inside only government and big business went through negotiations. Whose voice is not heard here? Solnit answers this question by clearly showing that it is the same people who have always been marginalized as governments and corporations work together to increase their profits. Solnit asks where are the heroes like Miles Dyson, in the movie Terminator 2, who recognize that he engineered the death of humanity with his creation of intelligent machines and so attempts to get rid of them for the benefit of humanity (Solnit 3). She cites how  Arnold Schwarzenegger was sent to the conference by the “Climate Action Reserve [which] is backed by Chevron and Shell” and suggests that Schwarzenegger is cyborg like advocating for lower greenhouse gas emissions but not so much as to affect industry profit. Solnit, then, suggest that there can be no real solution to climate change without considering the voices of those who are affected by it.

Punk heroine to the rescue! Beware of blondes and lipgloss

Well, I can’t find the actual comic strip to post… but I did get a kick out of the movie!

Just wanted to pass it on.

                In his book, Davies explains that, “Ironically, the richest and poorest landscapes in southern California are comparable in the frequency with which they experience incendiary disaster” (Davies 98). There are parallels between the two readings, especially in the manner how media generates fear.  In Delillo’s novel, for example, when the Gladney family fled from their homes because of The Air-Born Toxic Event, they  encountered a man carrying a TV set who was more concerned that their situation was not be televised then he was in fear of the disaster itself.  In a similar manner, Davies explains how Malibu, beach home of the stars, receives much media attention with its continual years of fire disasters while tenement fires in the downtown areas of Los Angeles receive little. Media then seems to determine public responses to disaster. If the characters in Delillo’s novel fear media representations of disaster then Davies’ book proclaims that media representations of disaster can have holocaust like affects. For example Davies often refers to tenement fires in downtown L.A as holocaust events in explaining that fire regulations and preventions are often ignored while massive rescue efforts carried out just a few miles away in Malibu.

                Furthermore, wealthy elites have used the media as a weapon against minorities, homeless, and environmental groups. In this manner, they are able to petition protected wild life habitat for the development while restricting access to others. If we have discussed the role of gated communities in novels such as Parable of the Sower we see here the beginning of such communities although like the holocaust minorities seem to be excluded from and targeted by the famous and wealthy.  

Here’s an interesting youtube clip on war and fear: