I was honestly so amazed at all the things that Professor McClure is planning to do. I didn’t think much of Antarctica. I thought it was just a cold ice land but after watching this Skype call my whole perspective has changed. I think it is so unique that he is making music from ice and the sounds that he also makes such as those that come from his steps he takes in the snow. He seems to be doing what he loves and having an awesome time as well which is great. During the Skype call you can see that he is truly passionate about his research and music.
I really think Professor McClure is brave for setting out on such a dangerous expedition. Although many don’t perceive it as a dangerous place, the Professor McClure mentions how is it almost impossible to see anything around at times. He mentions that one wrong turn one will be lost instantly. He also left his comfort zone to pursue his passion which I think is admirable and something that I could never do. I am excited to see the end product of his research now that especially now that I know how much work he is putting into this project.
The Heart of the Antarctic, Appendix I wasabout all the unique organisms the research team saw while exploring the Antarctic. The climate was extremely cold so, one can imagine how surprised the researchers were to find several single celled organisms living in these temperatures. It is amazing that these organisms have adapted to such extreme conditions.
This article got me to think about how certain animals can adapt to there environment no matter what it is. There are some organisms that can live in the extreme cold, as mentioned in the article. However, there are certain shrimps that can live in extreme heat near vents deep in the ocean. There are also organisms that can give in extreme salinity. After reading about all these adaptations, I started to wonder if humans lived in extreme conditions, how would we adapt?
Why do certain organisms adapt faster and better to radiation while other do not, and is it possible to make the organisms that are less prone to adaptation, to adapt faster to radiation?
Meehan Crist tries her first float. During the float, one’s sense slowly start to fade out. Whats interesting is that after Crist’s sensations were gone, she was able to connect with her own body a lot more. Crist said after her session ended her sense were extremely heightened. Although sensory deprivation is slowly making a come back, when it was first discovered it was considered taboo. Sensory derivation had such negative connotation because of the fact that it was used as a torture method. Sensory deprivation wasn’t directly the torture, however, it was the over stimulation that came after.
This article definitely reminded me about an article i read about night terrors. Night terror is a kind of sleeping disorder in which the person mind is conscious; however, the person has no control over their own body. From what I read, the body is tricked into sleeping because the body gives our cues such as an itch and it expects a response. However if it doesn’t it believes the mind is asleep and will shut down. After that the mind can run wild bring out the worst nightmare a person can have into life and the person can do nothing but suffer through it until it passes. This article definitely made me respect how complex the mind is.
In her essay “Whisper of the Wild”, Kim Tingley walks through the extreme weather and terrain of Denali National Park in order to find a spot where only natural sounds can be heard. She mentions how natural sound is a natural resource that is diminishing ,just like timber and oil, because of human interactions. This was one of the few spots on earth where no human sounds can be heard for even a couple of minutes. This article made me wonder if there are any other unique natural resources such as natural sounds.
This article was about how although two countries are under constant conflict, they can come together to help one another. Therefore the title of the article “Land Divided, Coast United” Although physically and politically they are divided in many way, both Israel and Gaza are able to give a helping hand and even be give some leeways to certain border laws when it comes to the coast which is shared by all the people of .
One question I had while reading this article was, why couldn’t the government of Israel make and sell a sewage plant to Gaza? It would mean Israel wouldn’t have to worry about people from Gaza using the duel-use tools in order to try and infiltrate Israel and they could make a profit by selling the plant.
This article is about how there are many great scientific revolutions in the world, however sometimes its at the cost of innocent bystanders. The testing site for the nuclear bombs in Nevada which cause severe radiation levels to rise to a level in which the zones were classified as uninhabitable. This cause the women of the local Mormon clan to have severe side effects mostly in the form of breast cancer. Yet even after the harm that these testings have caused to these innocent people, the government refuse any wrong doing and therefore is not willing to give compensation for the harm done.
The article mentions only really mentions the effects caused to the women of the clan, so i was wondering what happened to the men? The radiation must have had an equally harmful effect to both sexes. I find that the governments actions to ignore the causes that the radiation caused to the people of the Mormon clan to be almost identical to what major chemical companies are doing to the environment.
This article is about why certain animals that are domesticated, such as dogs and goats, look at humans with the unmistakeable “puppy dog eyes”. These researchers conducted a simple experiment by putting food in a container with a lid and making the goat open it. Once the goats were successfully able to do that the researchers made the lid unremovable. When humans were looking at the goat, the goat would almost immediately look at the researchers when it was not able to remove the lid. The researching team suggest that many animals will exhibit similar behavior only after spending significant amounts of times with humans.I think this is an effective public-facing article because it is short and captivating. The writer is able to remove all the complex scientific terms that would be in a typical scientific article and made it so that people without a scientific background could enjoy the article and learn something.
My essay is about how Haraway would think that my object, The Greek Tree, is the perfect example of something that is breaking the boundaries. In her essay, A Cyborg Manifesto Haraway, talks about the importance of fractured identities and how we should not be classified into one category instead we should accept all the small parts that make us who we are.
I think that skeptics might say that the writing on the tree isn’t part of its identity because it was actually the identity of the people who actually wrote it. So what? In the end I think of The Greek Tree as the Suny Geneseo Community and that means every single student contribute some part to this school and that what I think this is all about.
