Minutes for March 5, 2009 by Brad

Class started at 9:35 a.m.
18 students present
Proposals
∙Proposals should be done in reality and not hypothetically
∙Think about the methodology
∙Think about scientific abstraction
Meth(ic)od
∙Is the ethic of what you’re doing
∙What is ethics?
∙morals
∙values
∙Benefit yourself or others
∙Golden Rule: Do on to others as you would have done onto you
10 Commandments
∙Do not steal
∙Do not covet thy neighbor
∙Honor thy mother and father
∙Do not kill(would you kill in a certain situation, depends on your ethics)
∙Do not lie(only way out is restitution)
∙Adultery
Reading—Train situation
∙Kill 5 people or kill 1 by a flip of a switch
∙Push a giant onto the tracks
∙Switches separate or distance us from the issue
∙Society has been making larger and larger switches, making things less direct
Human Hierarchy
∙Certain things have less value than others
∙The lower you are on the structure the more you are devalued-- less important
Professor Wagner says he was abducted by aliens
∙But he really wasn’t, a laser hit his eye by a helicopter
∙This is known as the tetrahedron effect
Ending message
∙What is the ethic of your project?—Think
Class ended at 10:47a.m.

Minutes for March 3, 2009 by Laura

Class started at 9:34 am

Minutes from last class were read, and passed with amendments.
Attendence -- not taken

Kinesthetics- a sense mediated by receptors located in muscles, tendons, and joints and stimulated by bodily movements and tensions; sensory experience derived from this sense. *

Proposals
Went around the room, and discussed our proposal topic
Discussed improvements, areas to focus on, and next step
Some topics included: environmental poetry, Montezuma land management, invasive cray fish in Maryland, management of new state parks in East Aurora, grant for project funding in Russia, invasive species grant for Great Lakes, energy efficient buildings using energy people make from working out, banning high fructose corn syrup, crop land soil erosion costs, discharge regulation on Troy area from paper mill, cartoons in daily orange, and sustainable seafood.

Due next class
Read Methodology handout
Read chapter 3
Class ended at 10:40 am
Reference
*http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kinesthetic

Minutes February 24, 2009 by Nick

Class started at 9:29 a.m. “Sometimes you are the windshield,
Everyone was present and sometimes you are the bug…”
-M.C. Carpenter
Class Topics:
• Assignments due were to have read chapter four, and to have prepared a “heart felt” response to a question pertaining to a given article
• Due next class was read about proposals online (which we all seemed to have trouble finding), and to start on chapter three of Science and Society

Some Initial Concerns:
• Weltenshuang-“world view”→scientific world should bridge gap with social world
• Our book tries to convey different ideas/theories within the scientific world, but addresses to the all

Articles/Questions Addressed by Students:
• 3 people addressed Leopold→ as well as the whole class has experienced a dying pet or animal, at one point or another
-1lb of coal lights a house lamp per week
• 1 person addressed “Ice Memory”→ talked of uncertainty of climatic events, erratic until present
-Was the establishment of Iceland luck, or just Vikings? Erik the Red 1150 ad→ Parents fled Norway
• 5 people answered questions for “Warm, Warmer, Warmest”
-Addressed feedback loops→Any change in the environment leading to additional and enhanced changes in that system is the result of a positive feedback mechanism(1)
-Most of us are a part of the current positive one
-Present connections, think in the here and now→ would this reasoning help?
-Would anyone give up the luxuries (security) they have?
-Not going to get rid of hardcore conservatives any time soon (brainwashing?)
• 0 people addressed “Frankenfoods”
-Forced farming→ Who does it benefit?
-Monsanto or “Monster Manipulators”
-Do we even need chickens anymore?
• 2 individuals answered for “Easter Island”
-Small Earth in a sense→ May be what is happening to our present world today (on a larger scale but still do not realize it)
-Who will become a cannibal?
-Retrospect→ life expectancy, political figures/structures
• The rest of us did “Earth Without People”
-Visual article, able to “emotionally engage”→World needs more DMZ’s
Class terminated after getting Proposal Handout
10:45 a.m.
1) Carpenter, M.C. “The Bug”. Available online: http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/
current/lectures/samson/feedback_mechanisms/index.html