Class reflection

I actually loved the class in the end. It sucks that we have to take it by requirement but that being said it beats having to take another business elective. I think the setting of the campus is excellent for the course because once you get out of the class you are still on a preserve which helps you identify and become one with nature. I think Professor Davis did a excellent job and was enthusiastic about the subjects she covered. I think the Florida school system should adopt a class that exposes kids at younger ages to the idea of sustainability because with our youth following these principles learned in this class our future looks sustainable.

Sense of Place

When talking to my grandparents about sustainability I got a kick out of it because my grandpa wanted nothing to do with it and my grandma was all about it and talking him into it. By the end of the discussion my grandpa decided that it wouldn't be that bad having a recycling can next to the garbage.

I see this green revolution similar to the computer revolution because as a child born in 1983 I came along when computers were just being made available to the public school system and as I entered high school we were required to start typing and software courses. Fast forward twelve years and my mother who is a first grade teacher has a computer lab in her class and all the kids are internet literate. On top of that my thirteen year old brother everything but a computer programmer. Why? Because of two reasons computers being made more affordable and introduction to using them at a young age. When relating that to the green revolution, one can understand the outstanding costs involved with green technology due to the significant costs of research and development. Such as was the case with computers in the early years. Once the high priced products become main-stream and in greater demand, the market price will adjust accordingly. That being said computers did not really become main-stream items until students who used them as youths in school and were able to realize the potential there then apply it to their craft. This to me means these two instances work hand in hand. As the world’s youth becomes aware of their global through education in the schools, eventually become consumers themselves, who in turn

Canoe field trip

This was the best in school college experience I have ever encountered. I thought this was the best representation of what the school has to offer but that being said I was able to fish on the field trip which will always win my heart. I also had never eaten a oyster up to that point and I was amazed that we could pull them right out of the water, cut the back off, and throw it down the gullet. The ability to get in the mangroves and see what type of wildlife that environment give us, the students. Because as students that are in the green movement, we seldom get the opportunity to revel in it. On top of all that, it is rewarding to see how the actions we take are actually preserving what we are trying and the effort is not all-for-nothing.

downtown

I did enjoy aspects of downtown When able I want to move and live in the apartments above the stores. I never have been in a setting like that so I really think it would be fun to be so close to everything.I really loved the fountain of three friends Edison, Ford, Firestone. I enjoyed seeing the garden of palm trees. I saw palms from Cuba, New Guinea, Madagascar, and even from the Dominican Republic. I really enjoyed seeing the giant alternative history mosaic it was quite vast and with how the mosaic represented the history of Fort Myers.The mosaic impacted me the most. I enjoyed the museum and would make the trip back despite items being a replica of the original ones.

Electricity Usage

4-23-2010 Energy Consumption 7 kw

5:50 - 11:00 FM radio

5:55 Shower- uses water pump in well and hot water heater

6:10 Breakfast- open fridge that runs twenty four hours and use toaster for waffles

6:45-11:00 School work- using computer

11:30-4:45 work- twenty miles round trip 1.25 gallons of gas used

5:15 dinner- using microwave to heat up hot pocket

6:30-9:30 T.V- watch a forty two inch plasma

* Air conditioning ran @72 degrees the whole 24 hours while readings were calculated

Carbon output of the car I own 11.0

I try to eliminate any unnecessary energy usage around me but I find it hard to eliminate all waste. After reflection I think I can improve on my consumption while at work by raising the air conditioner so it is not running without cause.

Corkscrew Swamp

My visit to the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary was not with a group but alone. By not traveling with a group of forty people who scare away the wildlife, I was able to encounter a more diverse group of wildlife along my walk. The species of wildlife seen included alligators, cardinals, bass, and various species of bugs, some of whom bit me up because I did not wear insect repellent. As a resident of the area I found it comforting that we have preserved so much cypress forest. After watching a television show called Ax-Men, I realize how valuable these cypress trees that are four feet plus in diameter to high-end furniture designers. I look forward to bringing my niece and nephew down to the sanctuary when they come for visit next time so they too can view alligators in a swamp setting.

Well apparently I consume about 13.7 earths if everyone lived like me and that was with me lying about consumption so I guess, watch Haiti here we come lol. No, seriously these things are absurd to me I can't believe those results, what does this test want a African who is starving to and takes public transportation like it's going out of style. That's insane, I would like to shake the mans hand who only needs one earth because according to that he is a much better man then me, about 13.7 times better to be precise. So I dunno it makes me think about being more conscience about trash and stuff but just because my car isn't fuel efficient and the bank wont loan money I guess I should depend on the county bus to get me there. That's not being a responsible worker. Of course we all want green things because bottom line their performance costs less to attain then old outdated models. I not changing anything I'm riding this bad boy out for what is worth and i will let the lord be my judge on if I was green enough for his planet.

Food Evaluation

Food intake for one day 3-16-2010

2:30 am - fried chicken from 7-Eleven and taco taquitos- cardboard/paper container used approximately 20-30 plastic ketchup and mayonaise package.

5:00 am - threw up no liqour or anything but chicken and taquitos causing me to run and waste a bunch of water cleaning it up quite eerie might I add

5:15-11:30 am -ten bottles of water

12:30 pm - pizza puff from corner gas station and soda- wax plastic paper and 44 oz styrafoam cup directly in trash

6:00 - 10:00 pm - drinking my dinner -a lime, tequila, rum, plastic 24oz coke, and three tall man jones 16 oz beers in metal cans.

Evaluation: For the amount of exercise put out in a day by me I might say I am over eating but I do nothing so I require very little fuel. For instance you can keep filling up your gas tank just so that is is always full but all your doing is increasing the cars weight which actually decreases the performance in M.P.G. My options really this day was to maybe to use used beer cans, empty coke, and styrafoam for all my water intake the next day. That being said I can't drink my tap water where I live so I would have been not saving anything because I would have opened a bottled water and poured it into a empty beer which is just insane on many levels. On my liquor I go sustainable because I buy in bulk leaving me really never killing a bottle due just volume which is keeping our landfills cleaner.

Estero Bay

This field trip was quite unique in that it was so informational plus I think I will try it as a new fishing spot. In the most simplest terms if the the Caloosa Indians lived there, then the fishing is unbelievable more then likely. By this I mean they were a society based on the sea for their food so the fact they could have moved up and down the coast of florida and choose that island tells me that those indians knew what time it was and it would be stupid to go fishing somewhere else. Also it was interesting how the land was acquired through the 20/20 program because that is something in itself that is really special. I quoited Warren Buffet before and I will again when he says, " business is in business for business." If we want to take land away from big corp then we need to speak their language in dollars not sense. In St. Petersburg, Florida, I live next to a historical park called, Heritage Village. There you can go on a tour of the grounds and experience old Florida living. I believe it is important to keep up with our past because if anything it keeps us from hopefully making the same mistakes.

Water

I see water as a natural resource, the same as oil. If a person is allowed to take oil from a area why can't they take water. Wouldn't, Zephyerhills, whom divert water that floats to the surface in the form of natural springs, bottle it and sell it for profit be guilty of the same accusations made in the article. Now just because T. Boone Pickens is in Texas where the aquafer is deeper and therefore prob requires drilling for a well does that differentiate him from Zephyrhills who actually are able to cut costs because nature brings the water to the surface. I saw a documentary on the history of drinking water and it was nuts. People have been drinking bottled water for hundreds of years and that is becasue until the early nineteen hundreds chlorine the chemical in the liquid form was just developed. This gave the ability to purify water running through city pipes for citizens for drinking purposes. Before this people depended the well itself to filter the water which was perfected by the romans thousands of years ago. When studying the dark ages in school they always said this is when people forgot about writing and literature and the thing the never mentioned is people forgot the technology from the romans on how to properly construct wells using sand as a filter. So in the dark ages when kings ran enclosed towns the people living on top of each other developed disease and contaminated the water. So this lead to making beer a every meal requirement because the alcohol in the beer actually kills disease. The lowest peasants were relegated to drinking water and it was seen as a symbol of low status to drink water because one could got sick from it. So for us to pick and choose who can rape and pillage our natural resources seems a bit too much for me.

Food

In the movie "Future of Food," it discussed and showed how we as humans have been genetically altering plants for the last thirty years from a point of view skewed towards it's negative affects. This is just insane to me, as a dork who watches educational learning constantly, I really would have to say humans have been on a quest to alter plants and to preserve food ever since the first one was born. Corn is a gift to us from our ancestors of Mexico who carefully selected certain phenotypes with special characteristics from their fields and through cross breeding of these already different specimens they were able to create hybrid plants that we recognize as corn today. Corn's lineage is one that began at the hands of man, and now this movie is going to say we can't genetically alter something that was genetically altered a thousand years ago. That's ignorant and a ill prepared argument. The mass population might not know the facts I just laid out, but I do, and anyone else can that wants to find out if I am full of it can look it up themselves via Google. I just can't stand someone who's an idiot and can't realize their house is glass but keeps throwing stones. What are they the police of plant genetics? Do they realize that one kernel of corn is broken down into seven different substances that all are used in everyday life and more then likely found in the very same medium used to broadcast their messages of ignorance. Yes, steroids, in livestock has had negative effects on society's health. But where do we win, do we not have humongous animals for the fact we get more meat cheaper and more people can eat if it is cheaper. So do we have hungry people who can't afford good food or do we relatively safe food and no one hungry. Catch - 22, pick your poison type deal.

Parent of corn teosinte

Echo

When taking the field trip to ECHO and learning about how significantly that little facility has been able to affect lives across the world was amazing. The fun started immediately when I stepped off the bus because I saw the pond. Being a angler, I could identify bass slamming things on top of the water and all were of good size. This was worth the drive from the get go. Then learning how third world culture's dehydrate food and create their own fuel source from animal compost were quite amazing. Living in the states we take for granted the idea of running water. Hell, on campus we have some of the most cleanest water in the area delivered through our water faucet and we all drink bottled water. But I don't feel guilty because America is not the only one doing this, thats why these are called third world countries. When a nation reaches a certain point of prosperity its population takes things for granted and this happens in nature too. A true example of this on the most simplest terms are these bait fish called grunts, or better known as "snook candy." In Ft. Myers if you can catch a grunt you are guaranteed a snook down here because they can't resist them due to grunt scarcity here. In, St. Pete, they give them to you when you buy bait fish and thats because they're so plentiful it doesn't mean crap to snook. This being said no way in hell, if the snook could speak, would Ft. Myers snook start crying and complaining about how St. Pete snook are glutenous and start a movement because they take grunts for granted, no they would swim their ass up to St. Pete and eat some grunts! Animals are migratory unless they are able to manipulate the environment for their sustainability.

journal 3

Walking the trails brought me back to when I was growing up in Illinois where I was such a outdoors man I never left home without my pocket knife. While growing up in Illinois as a young man my family was all about getting out in the wilderness and hiking trails. My uncle who owns 40 acres of wildlife refuge in central Illinois has five different trails that run through his woods. As we walked in the woods that is all that I kept thinking of. I even thought that as a kid I would have been going from tree to tree in that bad boy because thats what we used to do in Illinois, no joke, I would start at the top of one side of the tree line and boom scurry across the the canopies and be on the other side of the woods before you knew it. This trip I think has regenerated my love for the woods and all that was going through my mind was that I wanted to walk along the Appalachian Trail one day and walk in Yosemite National Forrest. I love our nature on campus and am proud of how beautiful it is and I know that whenever I come back to this campus later in life I can always be proud of how it is in a sense more natural.

Journal 2

The neighborhood I live in is not especially something you could label as green design. I live in a pretty crappy area of San Carlos where it is pretty low class. If by green design you mean they did not rip up the ground to install sewage and city water then I am in the heart of the the green movement. And I guess one could say the community is green because the same people walk up and down the street all day. Given the fact that the cops frequently stop and search these individuals throughout the day leads me to believe the are selling drugs. So in essence one could say that in my community the drug dealers are going green by not cruising in their cars selling their product. As far as the wildlife in the neighborhood I have never seen a wild animal. The closest thing that I have to wildlife is the empty lot across the street that has never been developed that is home to about twenty cats. This actually blew my mind because I didn't think cat's colonized like that I thought they where more antisocial. When I leave and drive to my old neighbor hood I feel like I am at at one with nature due to the natural preserve in the back of the gated complex. Here I love to fish all day long and be one with nature which is a nice break from my new environment.

journal 1

As a student attending Florida Gulf Coast University I am required to take a class that specializes in maintaining the natural habitats on earth and especially in south Florida. At first I thought this was just another scheme to get a dollar out of the student because I had no idea what we would be doing in this class that would benefit me. After speaking to a few of my friends they told me that this class was all about global warming and all that rhetoric. This kind of got me feeling uneasy because I can't stand that subject, my belief is yes we need to clean up our earth but we cannot stop a process such as glaciers melting. Science has proven that there have been times when the earth was covered by oceans, how did this occur? Did the dinosaur's not have the right governors on their S.U.V.'s, I mean come on.I heard a scientist say that when a volcano erupts the greenhouse gas emitted is more pollutant then all the vehicles on earth has ever emitted. So being in opposition to what this class will be teaching us I do not have a closed mind because in order to strengthen my argument on global warming I find it necessary to fully understand the other sides point of view, this give me a tactical advantages when debating.