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Monocultures of the Mind: Perspectives on Biodiversity and Biotechnology by Vandana Shiva
“The universal/local dichotomy is misplaced when applied to the western and indigenous traditions of knowledge, because the western is a local tradition which has been spread world wide through intellectual colonisation”
Is there a role for biotechnology (genetic engineering, synthetic chemicals, etc) in the heterogeneous and natural systems within ecology?
Hundreds of plastic bottles — partially filled with colored water — have a new life as the cover of a parking canopy.
Designer Garth Britzman, of Lincoln, Nebraska, suspended the bottles at slightly different heights so the bottoms form an undulating curve.
Wow.
(via Colossal)
Creative expressions of art from the preconceived notion of “trash”
"UC San Diego Forges a Sustainable Future."
Look, there I am! Shout out to UCSD’s commitment to sustainability, but there is still a long way to go, especially above&beyond green tech and numbers.
A Complete Guide to "Hipster Racism"
A long time ago (not really!), it was socially acceptable to own people. Then it wasn’t, but it was socially acceptable to murder people if they looked at your wife. Then it wasn’t! Yay! But it was still okay to say that people whose skin color you didn’t like weren’t allowed to be around you. And so on. Eventually we arrived at the point (now) where it’s socially unacceptable in mainstream culture for white people to say denigrating things about people of other races. But just because the behavior has been suppressed, that doesn’t mean people’s prejudices have simply disappeared. And white people haaaaaate being told what to do in our own country (fun fact: not actually “ours”)! So racism went underground. Sure, you can’t say racist things anymore, but you can pretend to say them! Which, it turns out, is pretty much the exact same thing. There are a couple of strains of “ironic racism” making the rounds right now, and a couple of typical defenses.
Jon Stewart. Fox News. War on Women vs War on Christmas.
hilarious because it’s all too true.
On 29 March 2012, the University of California Board of Regents met to discuss the future of education in the U.C. system. Although theoretically representing the needs of students, the regents are all actually corporate executives and preside over the destruction of the higher educational system. Seeking to avoid students as much as possible, they scheduled their meeting during Spring Break and chose a location that was out of the way. Then they simply cut off the last four scheduled student and parent speakers and called in the riot police when they complained.
Today, the majority of my ESYS103 (Environmental challenges and solutions) section, which is filled with mostly Environmental Systems or Environmental Engineering students, had NO CLUE what the Keystone Pipeline XL is.
You know, that controversial issue that’s been a hot topic of political debates for months now… that proposed plan that would make oil conglomerates (like the Koch brothers) incredibly rich (even more so than now) and cut through midwest aquifers, freshwater supply, an earthquake zone, endangered habitats, and thousands of communities that would be affected by oil spills. Those who think tar sands, a very very dirty form of crude oil that is incredibly expensive to extract (thus raising gas prices), is an energy solution to our “foreign oil crisis” (wait, isn’t Canada a different country?) think only in the interest of corporate greed. And by the way, even Obama rejected this plan! For now at least.
In any case, how did the majority of (supposedly) most environmentally-aware students on campus (assuming one’s major indicates her/his interests and life..) NOT know about this??? What does this indicate about our current social-media-loving, consumerist generation?
Weapon of Mass Instruction
Built from a welded frame atop a 1979 Ford Falcon, Raul Lemesoff drives around the streets of Buenos Aires distributing free books to anybody who wants to be assaulted with some serious learnin’.
(via: make / laughingsquid)
A mobile library (art car) that’s helping to foster an interest in both reading and sharing books in Argentina? Auto-reblog for Unconsumption’s celebration of book-things during National Library Week.
so this is what we were looking for all this time!
"Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all others."
Emma Goldman, from Howard Zinn’s A Power Governments Cannot Suppress.
(really really great read, by the way!)
