Apartment life

Living in NYC means you probably aren't in a house or have a yard, or a lot of room in general.  And being from California means you gotta suffer all this claustrophobia without your meds, at least not the premium shit.  And its relatively expensive.  Anyways have no fear cuz the internet is here, and I raked it out a bit.  Depending on what your situation is, you might find yourself wanting to do a little ganja farming, and for that here's the break down. 

If you do, you gotta keep it green and do it organically.  "Cannabis growers should feel an obligation to use a healthy, living soil to produce truly medicinal and connoisseur-quality pot" says Danny Danko of High Times. He further explains that, "pouring salts and chemicals onto a dead medium and then down the drain does unnecessary damage to your local environment, polluting rivers, lakes and oceans. One look at some of the results of chemical agribusiness runoff, such as the Salton Sea in Southern California, and you’ll see why nonorganic nutrients are never advisable: Rotting fish carcasses float on the salty foam of a dead sea, and the whole area reeks with a foul stench that’s clearly man-made." And if that's not reason enough to go green with it, Danko adds,"I've smoked plenty of decent chemically grown pot (and grown it in the past), but the same strains, grown organically, always win out in the final analysis."  

That being said, I found out that apparently this organic soil recipe by Subcool is dope and the correct one to use.  

An inconvenient truth

Jane M. Gaines in her article Political Mimesis brings up a very serious question. Do documentaries actually lead to social change? To be specific in her own words; “I am concerned with the question of what it might be that moves viewers to want to act” (89).  This question is problematic, which she addresses, such as what constitutes action? What is counted as change? How are these measured? And how do we measure the films impact, in relation to the political conditions of the audience?  It is interesting because there are so many documentaries about different social issues, environmental issues, political issues, health related issues, whatever else Micheal Moore thinks is wrong, and yet there are still a lot of problems.   

Gaines goes on to say that documentaries, or the form of film, is more effective because films often make their appeal through the senses to the senses, circumventing the intellect” (92).  Through sight and sound, the “realism works to align the viewer with a struggle that continues beyond the frame and into his or her real historical present” (93).  Sounds believable enough and she does cite Einstein.  Film documentarians then are able to frame an issue with the purpose of generating, or eliciting, a strong emotional response, which will potentially lead to activism.  There is a shock value to it, and then an empathetic response, which may then turn into either a sympathetic or apathetic retaliation.  

I think most documentaries now a days are not very successful in terms of communicating objectives.  It is easy to communicate that the oceans are beautiful and that littering is wrong, all you have to do is take a few shots with that expensive Nikon you got for your high-school graduation.  I watch a number of documentaries on Netflix, and I notice that most of these are usually less funded than blockbuster films have really good shots and are well produced.  I'm no film student, but Food, Inc. (2008) for example has beautiful shots, and they are well edited, and some even have animations that explain in detail, but with fun, the entire problematic process of the issue.  Food Inc, for example shows how farmers grow their corn, then the corn goes to the livestock farmers, to the chickens, to the cows, to the porks, and then these animals go to the slaughter house, and then through some process and it comes out as a hot dog.  Now see that was a long description, imagine watching it, and then an hour and a half more of it.  That is a bit exaggerated, as the whole thing is actually 93 minutes long.  Don’t get me wrong, Food Inc was a dope documentary and I learned a lot, but it hasn’t turned me organic or made me actively seek out locally grown food.  The problem I am getting at, is the documentary is too long, it is very thorough, and intriguing, and clear, but damn I get it. I think that in order for a documentary to be successful in generating social activism, it has to be short and almost pure shock, with very clear objectives, with bullet points of what has to be done and when.  I think a good example of an effective documentary, was the Kony 2012 one.  It generated a huge amount of publicity and a lot of people felt for the cause and even donated money….until they looked deeper into what was happening with the money, and the Hollywood scandal which lead to the movements quick...finish.  Regardless though, it was popular and raised awareness pretty well.  I even saw some posters up around the city, that red Kony 2012 one.   I give credit to how it was able really frame the issue to really create an emotional response, as well as being really well produced, and short enough for everyone to watch it fully (less than 30 min), keeping people’s attention and intrigue with various shock points.   I also believe that short youtube clips, with content that may or may not have been planned, may even act better than fully produced documentaries in creating a buzz for social change because they have the ability to go viral or gorilla.  What does that mean? Idk, but its controversial.  I point to the video of the when the Police pepper sprayed those OWS-ers over at UC Davis. It was shocking, and lead everybody to the same conclusion that what they were seeing was 1) real and 2) fucked.  That video pissed a lot of people off but that seems to be what was needed to start some action.  

It's been a while since I dug for bugs

Yo imma have to add this to my bug collection.  Asian Long-horned beetle is the name, killing trees is it's game.  Not really, its just laying its larvae that happen to burrow deep within the tree, either way its annoying and these things are invasive and causing a lot of forestation damage.   And if the forests go, where will people go camping.  Plus I bet they would look cool underneath a glass frame.   There's a whole website about these little insect terrorists asking: if you see something, say something. http://beetlebusters.info/where-is-it/new-york/  

Hey you vegetarians....I'm looking at you

I recently watched a Ted talk given by Stefano Mancuso titled "The Roots of Plant Intelligence" in which he makes the argument that plants are living creatures similar to insects and animals.  In his presentation he seeks to raise critical question about the mainstream notion that plants don't have intelligence.  He does so by providing evidence he collected such as comparative behavior when exposed to light as opposed to the absence of light, the way in which a plants roots grow and transmit signals to the rest of the plant- and how these observations seem similar to what is seen in animal behavior and animal brains.

This got me thinking about the idea of soil fertilization.  I wonder if the plants absorb or incorporate into their structure the neurons and axons that are in the soil from of all the dead species of animals, insects, fish, birds, dinosaurs, whatever, that have ever lived.  I then wonder if that is why certain plants contain chemicals that create a neurological change when ingested by humans or even other animals.  I then wonder if this then shapes our human evolutionary course seeing as they are a large part of our diet.  Anyways I think its pretty interesting, here check it out:

Sum it up for me

It seems like almost everybody today is advocating for or against something.  And why not? We are arguably more aware citizens, and we have more access to information.  We can see the social and economic and environmental injustices and we can start campaigns and social movements to try and advocate for policy change, raising awareness, a change in practice or a course of action, etc.

I was reading some more of my friend Robert Cox's book Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere and in his chapter "Advocacy campaigns and message constructions" he talks about the importance of a campaign's message- the critical construction and diction.  Cox states “A message is a phrase or sentence that concisely expresses a campaign’s objectives and the values at stake in the decision ...Short, compelling, and memorable; it accompanies all of a campaign’s communication materials (241). He goes on to say that in an advocacy campaign, messages "provide a frame for audiences’ understanding and reception of the details of its other informational materials. In developing such messages, campaigns often attempt to identify values and language that resonate with their base and persuadables- those sympathetic to their objectives but undecided” (241).  

Similar to a PR slogan for a political campaign, some environmental advocacy campaigns will have a more rhetorical messages than others. The message is constructed to not be the complete communication of the campaign, but serves a variety of other purposes. The message allows for the campaigns exposure and recognition of the issues the campaign is dealing with. A really well constructed and worded message might seek to strike an emotional chord with the viewing public while asking for a direct and specific action to be taken. This involves incorporating persuasion techniques and carefully selection diction, such as value loaded words and phrases.

For some reason the best exemplifying advocacy campaign message that I can think of when reading Cox's description of a message, is "Vote or Die" which is the campaign message of P. Diddy's Citizen Change. The Citizen Change campaign wanted to encourage young people to vote. The message, "Vote or Die" is simple, it calls to attention the campaign's values, it is compelling, memorable, and dramatic. It also creates a division of choice of stakes, one can either "vote" or one can "die". The slogan demands action and raises awareness at the same time.

How dope would it be...

to see Earth from space.

Trying to divide the french fries equally

Everyonce in a while I will hear a quote that really sticks with me for some reason or not.  Maybe it is the mindset I am in maybe its just a good quote. Whatever.  Back in high school, I remember hearing my history professor say “When asked who he liked facing more in war a single opponent or a coalition of different armies, Napoleon replied ‘a coalition because there is less coordination and more complications.”   

I think of this quote because when it comes to large complex issues such as global warming or social issues such as gay marriage or abortion, there is no clear cut solution or answer, rather a variety of opinions and fingers pointed in different directions on what the next step should be.

I think that Horst W. J. Rittel and Melvin M. Webber said it best in their article Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning, when they state “We have been learning to ask whether what we are doing is the right thing to do.  That is to say, we have been learning to ask questions about the outputs or actions and to pose problem statements in valuative framework.  We have been learning to see social process as the links tying open systems into large and interconnected networks of systems, such that outputs from one become inputs to others.  In that structural framework it has become less apparent where problem ceters lie and les apparent where and how we should intervene even if we do happen to know what aims we seek.”   Basically we think to much about the consequences of out solutions, over analyze what could go wrong and eventually end up not doing a thing.   

That last part was a cynical translation of what the two Berkley professors said, but not too far out of an opinion. I mean lets look at some examples.  Global warming.  It’s a big fuckin’ deal to many, a myth to others, and not a concern to the rest.  And to the people trying to slow, or even stop, global warming, there are many many many problems causing the Earthly phenomenon, yet what are the solutions? Don’t drive cars? Don’t burn gas? Stop manufacturing all products? Kill all the cows? Throw iron in the ocean?  These are all easier said than done.  For instance, we stop making drilling for oil, stop mining coal…and then what? The world economies come screeching to a holt due to the new transportation problems of not having any gasoline.  Solutions have implications, solving one problem and creating another. 

Lets look at some social issues to further this point.  Social inequality, something that couldn’t be more problematic to the citizens of the world.  Yet how do you solve it? Everyone donates 10,000 and it is equally distributed across the world? We heavily regulate financial markets and corporate responsibilities? These are too idealistic and won’t necessarily lead to results, moreover they are implicative.  By stating that these things are bad, we assign areas of blame for the problems we asses, and what is detrimental to me, might be beneficial to someone else.  It is all a matter of perspective. 

Social issues and environmental issues are multi dimensional and many different opinions can be said on how they should be handled.  And that could take a long time listening to everybody’s political vies and social responsibilities.  So I leave you with this….DO NOT LITTER!!!!! Its easy and relatively well agreed upon socially and culturally.  No one likes seeing a bunch of trash lying around on the streets.