I love being outside. Going out and playing spikeball or frisbee on the quad is an ideal excursion from my dorm. The tail end of summer makes for beautiful afternoons to enjoy before it gets cold out. However, nature just makes it annoying and hard to enjoy this sometimes.

For instance, this past week my friends and I went to go play spikeball on the quad and our mouths and ears were quickly filled with gnats buzzing all around. We could not stand still for more than five seconds without being swarmed. While we would normally hang out for at least an hour or two (schoolwork permitting) however these gnats quickly cut it down to maybe twenty minutes.

Nature is a beautiful thing with plenty of sights to see and experiences to enjoy. However, it can just be so annoying sometimes. Mosquitoes and gnats just come to ruin the fun. A perfectly good hike can instantly turn sour when these bugs come out to play.

Sculpture by Isaac Cordal in Berlin, Germany is called “Politicians Debating Global Warming”

During our discussion of diary of a citizen scientist on Wednesday, someone mentioned that they appreciated Russell’s enthusiasm for sharing her passion over beetles. After reading more of the book, that thought really stuck with me.

To put it bluntly, I am not a big fan of the book. Reading chapter after chapter about insects isn’t the most exciting thing, although I’m trying to enjoy it. However, I too appreciate Russell’s relentless passion for her little niche of nature.

Reading this book has got me thinking, do people think my love for nature is boring? Once more, this thought reenforces the idea that we all perceive nature differently. While I might not be enthralled by the discovery of new beetle species, I think it’s awesome that Russell can find excitement in something so different from the natural things that I find excitement in. And yet, our very diverse interests still fall under the same category of nature.

Along similar lines, I thought it was cool to hear everybody’s different observations of Sullivan Park. While we all drifted off to sit in different directions, we were all concentrated in a relatively small and aesthetically homogenous area. Yet we all saw different things and connected different trains of thought. It was very cool.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/environment/investigation-finds-exxon-ignored-its-own-early-climate-change-warnings/

Very interesting article. Check it out

Proud Mary, Rolling down the river. I figured I’d jump in on the river song posts while they were still relevant. The song I’m discussing is the Credence Clearwater Revival classic, Proud Mary.

The catchy guitar licks and John Fogerty’s unique vocals talks about getting away from the everyday bustle and taking a step back to slow down, and in this case, take a ride on the river boat Proud Mary.

Big Wheels keep on turning

Proud Mary Keep on burning,

Rolling on the River

The simple point of the song can be seen as message to take the time to step back and appreciate what there is around us. The Proud Mary, and the river for that matter, is going to keep on rolling.

The song reminds me a little of Living Like Weasels, when the lyrics talk about leaving a job in the city and not having seen the good side of it until he left for the river. The song drives home a point that you shouldn’t be wasting your time on something that doesn’t make you happy. The song suggests you should find your meaning in life and in this case the river is the calling. It’s going to keep moving forward and if you aren’t happy with where you are, get on the river and move forward with your life.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/05/wyoming_law_against_data_collection_protecting_ranchers_by_ignoring_the.html

My google search was “critique’s of citizen science.” I hypothesized that some professional scientists may have issues with the trustworthiness of numbers gathered by people who have nothing to lose, no tenure to gain, or no reputation to build. However, I discovered something much more frustrating and disappointing: Wyoming has made it illegal for anyone to “collect resource data” from any federal, state, or privately owned land with the intention of sharing it with the state or federal government.

The article further explains the implications of this law. It makes photography of natural spaces illegal, it makes pointing out an environmental disaster illegal, and it makes citizen science illegal. The article also quickly points to the E. coli outbreak in the water in many places in Wyoming as the reason for this law. It mentions that the abundance of E. coli is from ranching, a politically powerful industry in the state.

I routinely point to money in politics as the number one thing that needs to change to allow environmentally minded legislation take place. Big-ag lobbying within states has enacted laws such as this one in Wyoming, Ag-gag laws which make it a crime to video or photograph the inside of a factory farming operation, and has prevented California from enforcing water restrictions on Agriculture, the biggest water consumer in the state. Many people don’t realize how much of a chokehold industrial farming has on this country due to the fact that they can get these seemingly small laws passed within states without many people noticing.

If we don’t allow citizens to have a voice when it comes to the cleanliness of their own land, we’ve surely eliminated democracy. Furthermore, if a citizen cannot ask their government for help when their land has been ruined, or their water polluted, we’ve now allowed the interests of a few to jeopardize the health and happiness of the majority over generations. We cannot allow states to enact laws which only shove problems under the rug rather than addressing them.

Some people may look at the abandoned houses of Elkmont, Tennessee and see a classic example of human waste and excess. These perfectly functioning houses built with natural resources such as logs cut down from the local forest have been abandoned. They are no longer hospitable in the slightest, and people who may have lived there will now be using additional resources to build new houses in a new location. Instead of having natural forest there is now a ghost town serving no purpose other than entertaining tourists.

I actually found the abandoned houses beautiful and reassuring.

The houses look as though they are being swallowed back into the forest. The image comforted and reassured me because it made me confident of the fact that nature and wilderness would recover, irregardless of what humans do to the planet. There is a lot of worry with climate change that humans are going to permanently alter the planet and ruin it. This picture reminded me that while climate change could potentially make this planet inhospitable towards humans, nature will always adapt and survive. Nature will always reclaim its land.

While reading Diary of a Citizen Scientist I remember at one point I was reading a description of the beetles and their activity and I was like “wow, she is really anthropomorphizing these beetles”. Coincidentally enough, right after I having this thought I read the following paragraph, “Of course, this is shameless anthropomorphization, ascribing human qualities to non-human things. And I do feel a little ashamed, out of habit and cultural training. In truth, though, I am no longer convinced that ascribing human qualities to nonhuman things is all that bad. Maybe we don’t ascribe them enough” (Russell 39).

I had this thought because I have always learned anthropomorphizing is not a great thing to do. However, I cannot seem to remember the justifications behind why. I remember this has been mentioned in various discussions, but I do not know if we discussed exactly why it is a bad thing. Russell calling this idea into question makes me consider rethinking it. Out of curiosity I went looking for why the use of anthropomorphizing may be frowned upon or why it may be an acceptable thing to do:

“The stated enemy is the assumption that their cognitive processes mirror our own complicated mental analyses, instead of the preferred notion that lower species are purer examples of stimulus/response behaviors. If we were to assume that they’re like us in that regard, objective scientific findings might be muddled by dreaded subjectivity.”
http://thebark.com/content/real-problem-anthropomorphism

“We are simply applying things we’re familiar with, like emotions, to these things to help us understand our surroundings. It’s a lot easier to explain a prancing goat as being “happy” than it is to study the behavior further and determine that the dance is part of a mating ritual. Anthropomorphizing is the point at which human curiosity meets human laziness.”
http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/animals-happy1.htm

“Many researchers now recognize that we must be anthropomorphic when we discuss animal emotions but that if we do it carefully, what I call biocentric anthropomoprhism, we can still give due consideration to the animals’ point of view.”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/200906/anthropomorphic-double-talk-can-animals-be-happy-not-unhappy-no

“Anthropomorphism in and of itself is neither good nor bad. How it is used by humans to refer to actions or motivations of non-human animals, however, may range from the ridiculous to injurious. What follows are examples of classical vs. critical anthropomorphism (being the acceptable, reasonable type)”.
http://www.anapsid.org/ethology.html

From my research it would seem that some believe it is a bad thing as when we anthropomorphize we assume the thing of focus has the same emotions and/or cognitive ability, while others find it to be acceptable if used properly. I am curious to hear what others in the class and our Professors think about this concept of anthropomorphization? Is it a bad thing, and if so why do you think so? If it might not be such a bad thing, why do you think that?