Tracking Birds
Many animals do not leave tracks in easy to read substrates such as sand and mud. Some animals climb trees, swim under water, or fly in the air. Other animals burrow under the ground or slide across it on a mucous-lubricated peristaltic stomach-foot (snails and slugs). Are these animals impossible to track? I take a […]
“On Intelligence”
I recently listened to an audiobook format of Jeff Hawkins’ 2004 book “On Intelligence.” In this essay I will try to review some of the key concepts from the book. In a future essay I will relate these concepts directly to holistic tracking and awareness. Jeff Hawkins has focused much of his life on understanding […]
Culture: Definition and Function
“Culture refers to the learned, socially acquired traditions of thought and behavior found in human societies. It is a socially acquire lifestyle that includes patterned, repetitive ways of thinking, feeling, and acting.” –Marvin Harris and Orna Johnson 2003 If you were to take a person and peel away their clothes, food, tools, language, ideas, beliefs, […]
How Buckeye Changed Me…
Going to the Buckeye gathering for the first time in 2011 opened up a world for me. I thought I had a well-grounded, practical, relatively sustainable and resilient lifestyle and a broadly informed and well-rounded perspective on nature, culture, and the human experience. I had studied cultural anthropology, organic farming, and permaculture, I had traveled […]
Why learn primitive skills?
Your ancestors did not hop into their GPS-guided, climate controlled SUV’s and drive (while texting) to the nearest Wal-Mart to take care of their survival needs. They did not have heat, light, and water at the flick of a switch next to the refrigerator full of food. Your ancestors depended directly on their skills and […]
Knowledge as an obstacle to learning
With today’s omnipresent media it seems that the average person knows more than ever before in human history. Google searches, wikipedia articles, and countless online news sites make huge amounts of information available. This information bombards the modern person from all directions: TV screens at gas stations and checkout lines, 24 hour news channels, magazines, […]
Learning how to Learn
One of the “meta” topics that I’m most interested in is learning. Learning about new subjects and learning new skills is great but learning how to learn is even better. If you know how to learn in a more effective way you can apply this skill to the learning of any new material. This provides […]
Science Illustration
Here is an example of one of my illustrations. My diversity of interests, unique perspective, and holistic outlook have frequently complicated my search for a clearly defined career in today’s myopic and overspecialized world. I often lamented the fact that I could not pursue the multi-faceted life’s work of the renaissance man, such as Leonardo […]
The Green Revolution: Representations of Hunger and Agriculture in India
The Green Revolution: Representations of Hunger and Agriculture in India In the 1940s, the Rockefeller Foundation funded research in Mexico in the development of new “high-yielding varieties” of wheat that could produce more grain given certain conditions. This project caught the attention of the U.S. government and other funders, who pushed to expand similar agricultural […]
Diversity and Adaptation: Pastoral Nomads
Since the origins of pastoralism, different pastoral groups have used different strategies to survive. The economies, subsistence systems, and cultural identities of pastoralists are adaptive strategies that exist because of there ability to provide a livelihood for the people who practice them. Taking a cultural ecological perspective we will consider the culture of pastoralists as […]