Cool blog bro

In his book, Environmental Communications and the Public Sphere, Robert Cox does a pretty good job at explaining the adapting role and benefits of social media for gathering information about environmental issues in the twenty-first century. It is important to know about the relevancy of social media because whether it is individual advocacy or a more organized advocacy campaign, “in drawing attention to, criticizing, or mobilizing around a specific environmental problem, activist today rarely rely on one social media tool” (Cox, 192).

Because of social media, the means of environmental communication and advocacy have broadened and become more accessible.  Social media and social networks have allowed for a more lubricated means of spreading environmental information from news and journalistic site and creating buzz around trending issues.  Because of the easy of creating, uploading, and disseminating information online, there is much more citizen reporting and documenting, which means more ethical accountability for public and private institutions. 

Moreover, social networking has allowed for the forming of online communities and targeted special interest groups.  These groups may stay online, but they might also mobilize in person and take their advocacy to the streets; “today, environmental, climate, and social justice activists are using the full suite of social media in their organizing efforts” (Cox, 189).

I found it interesting when Cox discusses the ironic challenge of “efficient” media, that is “social media is clearly an efficient tool for targeting key groups by my be constrained by this very advantage” (Cox, 198).  What happens when communicating to a small committed group of people is that, only the people that care, care to search, learn, mobilize, or act.  “The challenge of social media, therefore, is that it may require a wider strategic repertoire of media, enabling activists to communicate beyond the choir when necessary” (Cox, 198).  

I think that differentiation, a steady flow of new content, and promotion of utility is necessary for a social media effort to attain the interests of the masses.  In a culture influenced by a capitalistic ideology, a source’s reinvention and/or innovation are perceived as desirable, or at least interesting, traits to consumers, think about how many of your “socially-conscious” friends bought the iPhone 4gs because it had a slight, hardly noticeably, difference to the identical looking 4g.  The marketing techniques used for the iPhone, can be translated to the services of a blog, or any online site.  It has to appear different from other competitors in the market a balance of both aesthetics and function; it has to keep providing updated material, that is to stay relevant and keep people interested; and it needs to be marketed to a perceptive lifestyle, that is it "may" improve one's lifestyle. 

Or if you want your blog to be successful, for a lot of people to read it, "take it seriously", and be spread around via social networking, all you have to do is work within the Google search ranking system, that is the more hits you get, the more hits you will get.  Generally only the top ten search results, the first page after entering in your search, is all that people pay attention too.  If you don’t feel like doing the footwork of shameless wallplugs on your friends’ facebook pages, twitter blasts, and spamming forums and youtube comments, then you can always just pay for key-word search rankings with Google Adwords.  With Adwords, you can pay a fee so that when people search for “benefits of guano as fertilizer” your site will seem legit with it when it pops up number one.   

  

Which one of you threw up on the carpet?

I have a general theory that in every apartment building in New York there lives at least one hoarder. I first hypothesized this when I was at a friend's place and a woman shouted at us for being too loud.  I remember she turned the lights on to do so, and I wasn't really paying attention to what she was saying but I noticed that there was a ton of junk piled around behind her. More than a normal amount, it looked like that shit on the TLC.

Mine has one too, and she lives one the first floor, right past the front door.  Opposite the guy who sings and plays guitar.  I've looked inside her apartment when I am walking past and her door happens to be open, this usually happens late at night when she is bringing more shit into her apartment. Just piles of junk from the floor to the roof.

The guy who lives in the building across the street, but in the window directly across from mine, is a hoarder-but not just any kind of hoarder...he's an animal hoarder!  Which I learned also has a tv-show about it on Animal Planet.  I discovered this because I've noticed that he feeds pigeons breadcrumbs or something from the window of his fire-escape, which he leaves wide-open, and sometimes I see multiple pigeons go in, and fly around inside.  I don't know what the deal is, but at night he closes his window, and the birds still be flying around inside.

Anyway, everybody always keeps that image of  the "crazy" old lady who owns like fifteen cats in the back of their mind, que: the cat lady from The Simpsons, but nobody really thinks about those people normally. The fact is this unique group of animal lovers exists, and they put up some big numbers. About 250,000 animals fall victim every year, and those are just the rescue cases, who knows how many more there are in Florida that go unreported.  Animal hoarding has a plethora of problems: there are a variety of health risks, there is the possibility of zoonosis, and more importantly it is a form of animal cruelty.  The animals are forced to live in cramped, over populated, often neglected, unsanitary conditions, which I can't imagine smell very pleasant either.

The problem of hoarding is a mental health issue characterized by delusional disorder, attachment disorder, and a serious case of OCD.  So becasue the hoarder is the source of the problem, I don't know what can be done for animal justice on this issue.  Maybe awareness and prevention are the way to go, I guess it might be one of those if you see something, say something kind of things.  Like if you notice an abundance of animal sounds coming from your neighbor's, and you are consistently overwhelmed with the smell of shit in the hall way....you might want to report it to your landlord.

And here I was watching the debate

I just found out that World Food Day was today.   The event sponsored by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, asks that we join and act together, friends, family, and neighbors, to end world hunger. This year's theme is "Agricultural Cooperatives: key to feeding the world".  There are a lot of different approaches to ending world  hunger, i dont know how many of them are good, but FAO believes that

"through group purchasing and marketing, farmers gain market power and get better prices on agricultural inputs and other necessities...cooperatives contribute to food security by helping small farmers and other producers access the information, tools and services they need.  This allows them to increase food production, market their goods and create jobs, improving their own livelihoods and increasing global food security"

I wonder what if a bunch of small farmers, that care about sustainable and eco-friendly farming methods, got together and started selling food they could get their food out of the farmers market and into the supermarkets.  What if all across the country this happened in small pockets and over time they spiderweb together, and people started enjoying this new produce because it was healthier and made them feel better, then maybe industrialized farming methods would be reevaluated and rethought as the public started catching on as these new co-ops started taking market share, and soon the public would have a higher standard for the flora and fauna that they eat.  Of course I am simplifying the issue, really you can just kinda throw up some stickers around your school to raise awareness and it'll kinda just solve itself.

It's always the pretty ones.

Two millenniums and some change ago,  Jesus married Mary Magdalene, then he died for our sins.  Fast forward to 1893 and methamphetamine makes its world debut in Japan.  In 1919 crystallized methamphetamine was synthesized by pharmacologist Akira Ogata via reduction of ephedrine using red phosphorus and iodine.  Eighty-nine years later and the shits been so perfected throughout the decades it gets a TV premier.

Effects include: euphoria, anxiety, increased alertness, increased energy, increased self-esteem, increased self-calories, increased excitation, increased irritability, increased aggression, excessive feelings of power, and paranoia.

Now earlier today I found out that crystal meth is bad for the environment!  How this escaped me I don't know, but apparently, and in this case appearance does actually matter, 26 year old, "model" Sara Barnes burned down a 3,500 year old bald cypress tree nicknamed "the Senator".  Barnes turned herself in to the Florida Police, admitting that she and a friend climbed into the tree with a friend and in an accidental meth smoking session, managed to burn down one of the world's oldest trees.

For her crime, Barnes got hit with a third degree felony, intentional burning of land, as well as possession of methamphetamine with the intent to sell and possession of drug paraphernalia by the Seminole County Sheriffs Office.

And I thought about it, because I think about stuff like this, and there isn't much difference between a tree and a person- trees can think just like you-so this is kinda like she murdered a really really old person.  That's not cool.