Fast Growing Vegetables
I’ve been meaning to update my cold climate permaculture site. In
preparation for this I did a search around the internt to see if any new
sites or information had popped up. In the process, I came across
this site, which specializes in
fast growing vegetables that can grow in cold, high altitude climates.
Neat.
posted at: 16:15 |
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What to leave out of your resume
Yes, it’s that time of year again. The time when my seasonal, academic job
is nearing its end, and I need to find employment over the summer months,
at least. This time, I’ve decided that I’m going to bite the bullet, and
really take the time to make up a resume I can use more generally. Can you
tell I’m starting to feel like I’m nearing the end of my degree :)? My
biggest dilemma is what to leave out of the resume. Not because I have any
dark secrets, but because I tend to have a lot of details and activities,
extending back into the dark ages, and I never know what to do with them.
I’m also afraid to leave ‘holes’ in my resume, and tend to include too
much in order to avoid this. I thought
this page was helpful in that respect. It gives some advice on what is
relevant and what is not so relevant in a resume.
posted at: 12:19 |
path: /living |
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Tent I Want
This is the camping
shelter that I want. It’s a 2 person, 2 pound Tarptent.
posted at: 12:44 |
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Creme Puffs
Everything you ever wanted to know about creme puffs-
right here.
posted at: 09:39 |
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5 Colours a day
Hey- I love this idea
of trying to eat each of five colours of fruits and vegetables a day. How
fun! So far today, due to eating a bowl of chicken soup, I have eaten: a
white vegetable (potato), a green vegetable (celery), a red vegetable
(tomato) and an orange vegetable (carrot). Yay for me! But I have not yet
eaten a purple fruit or vegetable. Quick! Must go get some grape juice!
I encountered this idea on a neat website that is about making life
organized,
productive and efficient.
posted at: 17:19 |
path: /living |
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More on motivating people
I know I keep returning to this motivation kick on my blog. I guess you
might say I’m motivated to think about motivation. Heh.
Here’s a
tongue in cheek article about motivation in the workplace that does
mention some more serious books about motivation at the end of the
article.
posted at: 12:13 |
path: /living |
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Motivated Humans
Warning: More long ramblings
I seem to be in an essay writing mode at the moment. Normally I would
think this is because I’m avoiding working on my thesis, but I’ve worked
on my thesis quite a bit, so who knows.
What with all of this talk of academia and motivation, and food-care, I got to thinking about how different political viewpoints tend to have different ideas of how people actually work, psychologically (this then made me want to go and make a mult-agent model, but I’m putting that aside for the time being). In particular, people have various ideas about what motivates people.
For example, some people take the view that people will mainly be motivated if they don’t have their basic needs met. So, if you don’t have a guarantee of food, clothing, housing, medical care, that sort of thing, you will be motivated to work hard. If, on the other hand, you have all of your basic needs met, you will be left with no motivation. I’m not sure what will happen then- I guess the prediction in this case is that you will just sit around and do nothing.
Another example is the view that people are mainly motivated to do things for themselves, and not for other people. Thus, if you left them alone, they would just take care of themselves. In this case, you would further predict that you would need laws to make sure that people helped others, once their own needs had been met.
I think these are both somewhat corse-grained approaches. First of all, the assumption that all humans are the same with respect to what will motivate them is up for debate. Also I think it would be good to consider both what effect other factors can have on motivation and also on whether or not motivation is necessarily connected with other things, like happiness and consideration for others.
My own suspicion is that if you took a bunch of people, and met their basic requirements, some of them would sit around and do nothing, but a majority of them would still want to do something more than sit around. I’m not sure what they would do, but I think they would do something. Actually, I’m kind of curious as to what humans really would do in that situation. Similarly, I suspect that, even without laws, at least some people would try to help out and improve or enrich the lives of other people around them, even if they received no direct reward for doing so.
I also suspect that it is quite possible for people to be motivated, but not happy or content. For example, if you know that not working will mean you end up starving or homeless, you might work hard, but you also might not feel too relaxed and happy. You might instead end up with a society of hard working, unhappy people. But maybe not- maybe some people would still be quite happy in this situation, because they would feel that they were successfully looking after their own well-fare.
Who knows? given that these are all just ad-hoc ideas, off the top of
everyone’s heads, you’ve got to wonder what is actually the case with
humans. At least- I sure do. And I would be surprised if there weren’t
various
theories of motivation, along with experiments on motivation that we
could be using to give us a more sophisticated understanding of the
situation.
posted at: 12:00 |
path: /living |
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Food Care
In Canada we have health-care, which is universal access to free medical
care. So why don’t we have food-care, which would be universal access to
free food? It seems to me that food is just as important and basic as
medical care. Wait a minute- maybe this is a practical decision. Maybe
food-care would cost way more than medical care. Or maybe- you give
everyone free food and they won’t want to be productive members of
society, but give everyone free medical care and they will be more
productive members of society. Hmmmm. Just wondering.
Edited to add: Oops- in my excitement, I totally forgot to add a link.
Here’s someone who
is going on a big rant about health-care and how ridiculous it is. He tries to illustrate this by imagining
how ridiculous it would be to have food-care. The thing is, my understanding
is that the idea of health-care is that basic medical needs are paid for by the government, but if you want something above this, you need to pay. This person
seems to be suggesting that this is not the case, because he is going on and on about how awful it would be if the government dictated what we could all eat and that then we would run out of steak and never get to eat good food. So I think his scenario isn’t all that convincing.
posted at: 13:48 |
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Academic Enthusiasm
Warning: Long personal entry. Feel free to skip.
I’ve always had a challenging relationship with schooling and academia. On the one hand, these institutes supported my genuine passion for learning and gave me access to knowledgable people. On the other hand, I perceived these institutes to be competitive, elitist, strictly regulated and convention bound. Without trying to say that these qualities are all inherently negative, it is the case that these aren’t qualities that I personally tend to seek out when I’m looking to engage in a particular activity.
I’ve come face to face with this dilemma again, because I recently went to some environmental activism conferences and had a great time. People were passionate, enthusiastic, encouraging and inclusive. The subject matter was very meaningful to me personally. Thinking aobut it today, I realized that, among other things, I am feeling cynical about acadmia. According to answers.com, the primary definition of the word cynical is: “Believing or showing the belief that people are motivated chiefly by base or selfish concerns; skeptical of the motives of others…”. In this blog entry I want to challenge this belief. Where is this belief coming from? Is it really fair or accurate?
Let’s see. As I’ve said above, one of my turn offs with respect to academia is that it is exclusive and, I believe, elitist. It’s pretty hard to argue against the first label. Academia excludes people from various things (entrance to university, entrance to graduate programs, access to funding, access to tenure) based on various measures of intelligence and ability. As well, academia is- or maybe I should be more circumspect and say that people in academia often are- arguably elitist, which is to say that they “[despise] people or things regarded as inferior, especially because of social or intellectual pretensions”. Thus it displays elitism: “The belief that certain persons or members of certain classes or groups deserve favored treatment by virtue of their perceived superiority, as in intellect, social status, or financial resources”. The key word there is ‘deserve’, which is quite different from actually just getting the favoured treatment.
Now, I understand that the argument for exclusion is that there is a scarcity of resources and support. Certain people can make best use of the limited resources and support, so those are the people who should have access to them. This, in turn, is most beneficial to society as a whole. And how do we make sure that only the best users have access? We test them, and we make them compete with each other for the available support and resources, whatever they may be. This seems like a pretty straightforward, utilitarian system.
I also understand several other things. First of all, these exclusionary practices don’t necessarily need to lead to people being elitist. Mind you, I do think it very strongly encourages people to feel elitist. That’s because its easy to think that the fact that we have a scarcity of resources, and thus resort to competitive behaviours, means that those who are chosen or who win are inherently better or more worthy human beings than those who are not.
Second I understand that it’s possible that, given our scarcity of resources, this is a system that works okay for our society. I’m fairly equal opportunity with respect to various social systems. Most systems have their pros and cons. And, I should add, I have no interest at all in condemning or criticizing people who thrive in and enjoy this system. I think that is perfectly okay, too. There are lots of people who are happy with academia as it is, and I don’t begrudge them that.
My real issue is that this is simply not the sort of system that tends to most fully motivate me. The more intensely competitive the situation gets- to put it bluntly, the more I really have to work as hard as I can to actively compete, and the higher the stakes are if I lose- the less motivation I seem to feel. Who knows, maybe it’s as simple as “If I can’t win for sure, I don’t want to play.” Or maybe it’s a simple as “I’m lazy. before I could compete easily, but now that I have to work too hard, I don’t want to play”. I’m certainly willing to give those two options their due. Competitive Jen and Lazy Jen should not be denied! However, I don’t think it’s that simple. I have a long history of doing competitive things that I suck at, simply because I love to do those things. Any sports activity you care to name comes to mind. I also have a long history of putting significant energy into things that are completely voluntary, again, because I love to do those things.
I think the problem for me comes when the message is “If you don’t win, then you won’t be allowed to play at all, and we’ll decide you are worth less than us.” This is quite different from a situation where, if you lose, well, you lose, but then you can play again and nobody sweats too much about it- a situation where the other players don’t decide that you are an inferior human being, and therefore don’t deserve as much in life as them.
I think that this is actually the big road block for me, as well as the source of my cynism. In fact, to re-phrase my second quote above, I think what is going on in my head is: “Now that it is more challenging for me to compete, there is more likelyhood that I will fail, and then people will de-value me.” Ooh! That further suggests to me that the real problem is that *I* am, in fact, harbouring elitist sentiments somewhere, and will actually de-value myself, which would probably be much worse than just other people de-valuing me. Aha! projection! Freud and Jung would be proud! If that’s the case, then perhaps my motivation will increase if I decide to have respect for myself even if I compete and fail. Hmmm. Something to think about.
So- I have no great wrap up or conclusion here, but I feel I have dented my cynicism perhaps a little bit. Whatever else is the case, all of this is why I tend to like looking at sites like the one for The society for amateur scientists. This makes me feel happy. No matter which way you cut it, I just like the idea of people doing something because they want to do it and it is meaningful to them. Check it out!
posted at: 13:47 |
path: /living |
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Salsa Soup
Another common leftover in our house- salsa. Fortunately, you can also use
salsa
to make soup.
posted at: 17:56 |
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Solar Thermal Mass
I’m trying to understand the physics of earthship design, compared to
conventional house design. In particular I’m trying to understand why, in
earthships, windows add heat to the house, whereas in conventional houses
windows let out the heat. I know it has to do with the thermal mass of the
house materials. So what I really want to understand is the balance you
need to attain when building a structure so that the temperature of the
structure stays above zero. Here’s some info on the
topic.
posted at: 17:09 |
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Save the planet- make soup
As I was saying, when I go to events and meet lots of people all sorts of
ideas get generated in my brain, each with greater or lesser degrees of
wackiness or outlandishness. Something I was thinking about in my personal
life is that I would really like to decrease the amount of food that I
throw out. The average North American throws out about 25% of the food
they buy, and I certainly meet or surpasse that number. One thing that I
think might work in this regard is making soup every several days, and
using up everything I can think of that is currently in my fridge by
putting it in the soup (or soups). Also, I think I could chuck stuff in
the freezer before it goes bad, and then use that for soup too.
One of the items that tends to get thrown out around here is bread. Colin
and I just can’t eat it fast enough to through a whole loaf before it goes
bad. This is particularly the case with me, since I am uber-picky about
the freshness of my bread. So, this led me to wonder if you could make
soup out of bread. And the answer is
yes.
I’m really curious to know what this would be like, but I think it would
actually be good, since the bread is basically fully incoporated into the
soup. I expect it gives the soup a nice smooth texture. And I say this as
someone who is not a cracker or crouton person.
posted at: 15:42 |
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Retrofit Earthships
One of the reason I think the earthship technology is appealing is that it
can reduce costs by decreasing or eliminating many of the utility costs
associated with owning a home. The building that incorporates the
technologies essentially becomes a self-sustaining system. Here’s some
interesting info on retro-fitting existing houses. I do think the authors
address an important point when they take on the issue of changing the
look of the house. I disagree with their conclusion, however, which is
essentially, “get over it”. I think it should be quite possible to do
retrofits which will not clash with existing aesthetic sensibilities-
indeed, which will be actively appealing to existing aesthetic
sensibilities.
posted at: 15:30 |
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Environmental Ideas
I’ve just come back from 2 and 1/2 days of intense environmental action,
and my head is bursting with ideas. It feel great! I need to start
updating my website asap! One of the things that really blew my mind was a
talk by a woman who, with her husband, had built a house
in Ontario that did not require heating. You read that right- they do not
heat their house, and the temperature inside dips to no lower than 15
degrees celsius, even when the weather outside goes to -30 degrees.
They are
using a technology or concept I have know about for a long time-
the
earthship concept- which is the idea that you can build houses out of
dirt filled tires. These houses have sufficient mass to absorb heat from
the sun during the day and then re-emit it at night, keeping the house at
a constant temperature, but I had no idea they would work in Northern
Climates. Thinking about this has really started to turn my ideas about what
it is possible to do with insulating in houses on their head.
posted at: 14:45 |
path: /living |
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International Space Station
I’m not sure how I missed the fact that we now have
an
international space station. Expedition 12 is going on at the moment,
and there will be a space walk on Friday. So there you go.
posted at: 18:11 |
path: /living |
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Layers of the Atmosphere
Here
is a super cool drawing of the layers of the atmosphere.
posted at: 15:33 |
path: /living |
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Rideau River Organizations
A big list of
organizations working to keep the Rideau River in good shape.
posted at: 09:12 |
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All material copyrighted by Jen Schellinck. All rights reserved.