Schedule

For the semester in Brad's class, our main focus was to create a group project dealing with the environment, or to be more specific, environmental issues. My group consisted of 4 classmates and myself. (Joseph Tran, Catherine Ma Ai Poirier, Marie-Joelle Gingras, Sophie Girard) We came up with the idea of touching a little bit of everything, creating beautiful man made boxes and exposing environmental problems to the society. Here is the link for our group project:

http://avenue4.net/cart411/

Including the schedule for the semester:


Week 01
Creation of the team
Katherine Lauriault, Joseph Tran, Catherine Ma Ai Poirier, Marie-Joelle Gingras, Sophie Girard

Week 02
Brainstorming & team discussion

Week 03
Concept brainstorming session
This is when we thought of the idea of bringing a bit of everything to create one project

Week 04
In class Presentation & local reservation
The local was perfect for our particular needs since we wanted our project to be in the dark. We were able to find a local which had black walls, which was great for us. This gave us the opportunity to close the lights and leave the exploring for our curious audience.

Week 05
Thanksgiving

Week 06
Midterm Presentation of ideas
Project redirection: have the plexi boxes on the ground rather than hanging on the ceiling Growing vegetation
We started to change our ideas for our project to be accessible in price and for the ceiling!

Week 07
Buying materials
Materials which include: The plastic balls hanging from the ceiling, the plexi-glass, the lights, the flash-lights, the rice, oil, thread, metal wires, electric cord, the dolls, the batteries.. etc

Week 08
Building boxes and other needed constructions

Week 09
Building boxes and other needed constructions

Week 10
Building boxes and other needed constructions

Week 11
Building boxes and other needed constructions

Week 12
First assembling in dark room

Week 13
Last testing, placing boxes
Printing text descriptions

Week 14
Final presentation

October 17th 2011, Mike Davis, “Catastrophic Economics: The Predators of New Orleans.”

In this article one may learn about hurricane Katrina in August of 2005. Katrina turned into a category 1 hurricane near Miami, missing the city of New Orleans by 55km. It damaged approx. 90% of the levee systems in the east. They nicknamed the area that had flooded "Lake George." The United states Governement allowed huge firms like hailburton, the Shaw group and Blackwater Security to move in so quickly. The mayor was accused of not being responsible of taking good care of the city. The articles shows both sides of the government, the black and the white.

Here is a quote from the article, "No disaster in American history has been so accurately predicted in advance." It was Hurricane Betsy in 1965 that started technological advancements. Katrina was politically influenced, and New Orleans was a black majority and democratically ruled.

When the water flooded New Orleans and its suburbs, it was hard to reach someone on the phone for help. Emergency command was put out of operation early in the emergency by a shortage of diesel to run its backup generator for two days, Nagin and his aides could not reach outside the area. A lot of homeless individuals had no where to live and they were not able to afford to rent or buy.

Public Opinion
Katrina + Iraq occupation
= failure of government

-Unrealizable, unsustainable economic promises
-Social engineering and future electorate
-Lowering ecological and economical obstacles for selected businesses

October 3rd 2011, Felix Guattari, “Remaking Social Practices.”

September 26, 2011: Bruno Latour. "A Plea for the Earthly Sciences."

In this particular article Latour discusses James Lovelock's book 'The Revenge
of Gaia'. (The Gaia hypothisis "proposes that all organisms and their inorganic surroundings on Earth are closely integrated to form a single and self-regulating complex system, maintaining the conditions for life on the planet.")-Wikepedia Latour does not approve that Lovelock did not talk about the fundementals of human revolution agaisnt the Gaia. He believes many important aspects about our near future was left out by Lovelock; as Lovelock says 2050 will be the end of civilization which Latour abrutly states that it is not possible that it can happen that fast.

We must be ecologically and socially concered. There is a fast dissapearence of “nature” & “society” as Latour suggests in his text. He points out "I have proposed to say that all matters of fact have become matters of concern." In other words we must be the change to our own mishaps. It is up to earthlings as he refers to us, to be the change and not to wait for the change to just come to us.

This text seems in a way, frustrated and loud in a way to be heard. Latour mentions near the end "Who are you really, Earthlings, to believe that you are the ones adding relations by the
sheer symbolic order of your mind, by the projective power of your brain, by the sheer
intensity of your social schemes, to a world entirely devoid of meaning, of relations, of
connections?!" Thus another way to tell humans to wake up.. and smell the coffee!

Article Brainstorming

As a homework assignment we had to start finding articles related to the keystone pipeline XL. This is a controversial topic that is being debated over and over. This project would connect a vast unconventional oil patch in Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast. This one project would essentially eliminate oil imports from the Middle East. Is would also create 100,000 jobs and strengthen our relationship with a close ally and trading partner. But for all the positive this project may create, the negative aspects are never far behind. There is great concern with the harm that would be caused to the environment. Hundreds of Americans have opposed to the pipeline project. So here's what I came up with that could be interesting:

http://resourceinvestingnews.com/22551-analysts-expect-keystone-xl-pipeline-approval.html

Consensus among many oil analysts, on the other hand, is that the Keystone XL pipeline is likely heading towards approval after overcoming a key final ...

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/editorials/keystone-xl-pipeline----key-to-prosperity/article2169363/

The opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline, who equate their White House sit-ins with the civil rights battles of the 1960s, are drawing a false moral ...

http://www.tarsandsaction.org/spread-the-word/key-facts-keystone-xl/

Access to the USGC [US Gulf Coast] via the Keystone XL Pipeline is expected to strengthen Canadian crude oil pricing in [the Midwest] by removing this ...