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Hi guys! I was reading through Offerings to Athena tonight looking for information on my topic and I just wanted to give a heads up to those pursuing topics revolving around race (both African/African American and Asian) that there are some specific sections in the text devoted specifically to each of those subjects. So, check it out! It's on reserve in Canaday. 

I was wondering after our conversation today in class if anyone has been inspired to action by any of our readings in class? I mean, I would assume that's what the authors would like to see is people transitioning from words to deeds, but I am interested to see if that is actually happening. If you haven't 'done' anything yet, do you plan to? If you haven't been inspired to affect change, why not? 

Carolyn Merchant’s ideas made me optimistic about the global ecological revolution needed for sustainability. Even though the notion was to be radical, it was not extreme at all, which I found really convincing and feasible. Merchant was fairly considerate about the normal living need of human’s. She did not proposed that people should stop using natural resources, but suggested that we should raise ecological consciousness and moderately fulfill our needs. “Vital need” is my term of the week. I love this term for a lot of reasons. With this term, I can feel that human-beings are not isolated from the non-human parts of the world. We depend on those other parts to survive. The term also set a standard for justified utilization of resources. However, how do people define “vital” differs.  For ancient mankind, “vital” purely meant survival of the species. Nowadays, people have developed need other than material resources. If traveling is one most important parts of life for someone, is the consumption fossil fuel justified as “vital”? The need for survival is met in a majority of the human population. How do we define “vital needs” in such circumstances? This is something perplexing to me when I was reading the article. But I did find some clues to this question in the article. Merchant mentioned we need to let nature reverse ecological damage. This may be a standard we could use when setting up the limit of exploitation of nature. However, human have to be able to think holistically when calculating the outcome of our actions. This requires ecological thinking.

An interesting paper (part 1 and part 2) was published yesterday in the journal Trends in Genetics by Gerald Crabtree that says humans are not as smart as we were thousands of years ago. With agriculture, cities, and less "survival of the fittest," deleterious mutations are surviving and being passed on, often combining with other mutations, producing cascading negative effects. 

Any thoughts on this? It seems in the last few thousand years that there have been some genius minds. But are they recognized because of our technological advances that allow us to spread ideas and cultivate theories? Were there super genius cavemen who just didn't have the advancements to be known today as pioneers of their time? I think its interesting to think of our external advancements as having potentially negative effects on what is going on internally. 

When we spoke about us imposing reading on the students of lower levels. An image came to mind, this is not it, but the idea is the same. 

http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/29132891.jpg

Marilyn Waring's work, Counting for Nothing, presents the role of women as an invaluable asset whose value needs to be imputed in the gross domestic product of the nation. Waring analyzes and criticizes different ways economists have attempted to measure women's domestic labor (household labor and production), such as measuring opportunity cost, but doesn't ever present her own suggestion for its measurement. That got me brainstorming; how do you place a value on women's domestic labor? We could argue that reproduction, or the act of raising a child is intangible capitol as an asset that cannot be physically measured. Waring also believes that imputing value on reproduction wouldn't be morally correct. However, almost every other part of women's household labor can be physically measured in the economy. First, I thought that measuring value at a per/hour salary rate would be the easiest way to calculate women's domestic product. However, I forgot to take into account the different level of skill it takes for a woman to do various jobs--it really varies from cleaning to cooking to maintenance, all of which correspond to different careers with different salaries in the economy. A little of topic (but isn't that what our Serendip postings are for? :))...this past weeks reading reminded me of a discussion my AP English class had senior year. We wanted to calculate what a human life was worth. First, we thought of life insurance, but then realized that was just people paying to have risk taken away from them.

I wondered, after visiting the Cannery on Friday and discussing the level of privacy (or lack thereof) that the women feel there in terms of where they can find a silent moment for themselves. On the Bryn Mawr side, we discussed having semi-chaotic shared spaces, where roommates and friends keep us from having constant silence--which is often a good thing! But I do know that I often appreciate a little time to myself, a niche, if you will, where I can be silent and on my own, without those outside forces and people (which I usually enjoy and appreciate) coming into my space. I wonder how the women of the Cannery feel about this--would they like more "me" time, where they could be silent and alone? Is sacrificing that privilege just par for the course with being in prison? Of course, my "me" time doesn't take into account the time that I enjoy being silent with other people, so is that something of a substitute for alone time in the walls of a prison? Do group quiet activities like reading or praying take the place of a silent, solitary niche?

This was in an e-mail I received today! (from the Working Families Party)

...
But it’s really not about luck at all, and this is why we’re writing to the many WFP supporters who did not know Jessie or anyone else hurt in this hurricane. A few days ago, an environmental thinker and writer named Bill McKibben made a point worth repeating. 

It is time, he wrote, that we stop giving these storms the names of people, and start naming them after fossil fuel companies.

McKibben's point is that global warming makes normal storms into terrible ones, and terrible ones into killers. The oil and coal companies are the biggest contributors to the global warming that causes sea levels to rise and the waters to warm, which in turn boost the awesome, terrible power of a hurricane. They fund the lobbying and political campaigns that guarantee that we do nothing real to challenge climate change. And they fail to accept any responsibility for the death and destruction that result.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-11-07/women-winning-senate-races-will-set-record-in-january

I think this article is a good response to Marilyn Waring’s call for women to positions of power. So basically the feminist movement has been progressing positively. Not only can women now gain education and well-paid jobs but they are also take leadership roles to make changes. But the question is now whether this is just a short-term trend or it is the permanent equality we have reached, and how can we make sure that the rights women now have will not be taken all away again? Winona LaDuke has proposed “Seventh Generation Amendment” to protect the availability of natural resources for future generations, then perhaps there should also be another amendment to enhance the rights of women? Or are there already any?