Tuesday, December 3. 2019

Today's schedule is CDAB

C & D Blocks Environmental and Social Sciences - Today you start with Benton in room 145.With Benton the focus will be on Mountains, Ice and snow. Today you'll look at succession rates connected to ecosystems and energy flow (primary production and then also succession). To help:


Our topic for the next three weeks is mountains. With Young we'll ask "Why are Mountains Sacred?" and our focus this week will be on Mauna Kea. The mountain, called Mauna O Wakea by Native Hawaiians, is the tallest in the islands, and its summit, considered to be a wao akua, or “realm of the gods.” is considered most sacred in traditional Hawaiian culture. Mauna Kea is sacred because it is the piko, or umbilical cord that connects the Creator to the people of Hawai’i, it is the place where the sky god, Wakea, met with Papahānaumoku, the earth goddess, leading to the creation of the islands
Only the highest-ranking chiefs were historically believed to be fit to go there. There are other cultural sites on the mountain, including a sacred lake, significant burial sites and a historic quarry where stone tools were made. So why are we going to talk about Mauna Kea?

In April 2013, the Thirty Meter Telescope project was approved, which would be the largest telescope ever built and its location would be on top of Mauna Kea. Its construction on a “sacred landscape”, replete with endangered species, ecological concerns, and ongoing cultural practices, continues to be a hot topic of debate and protest. Indigenous activists continue to oppose its construction and are fighting for the protection of their most sacred mountain. From Smithsonian magazine

What is really at stake, however, is a conflict between two ways of knowing and being in the world. For many Native Hawaiians and other Indigenous peoples, sacredness is not merely a concept or label. It is a lived experience of oneness and connectedness with the natural and spiritual worlds. It is as common sense as believing in gravity. This experience is very much at odds with the everyday secular-humanist approach of Western thinking that emerged out of the Enlightenment, which sees no “magic” or “enchantment” in the world. And of course, seeing nature as inert facilitates both commercial exploitation and scientific exploration

Hmmm...there's that worldview argument thingy we've been focusing on in the course (yep, iiiiiiiit's baaaaaaaack!) So today we'll try to answer why mountains are sacred and find out why Mauna Kea is an example of a clash of worldviews. You'll have three things to read for me this week:

The Heart of the Hawaiian Peoples’ Arguments Against the Telescope on Mauna Kea By Doug Herman
Sacred Mountains Sources of Indigenous Revival and Sustenance by Edwin Bernbaum
A New Way for Stewardship of Mother Earth: Indigeneity by Doug Herman

and then this will help too:
Hundreds Continue to Gather at Mauna Kea by Chris Swartz
Indigenous Religious Traditions Sacred Land Project Mauna Kea




Tomorrow and Wednesday we'll work on some questions about Mauna Kea.

A Block Physical Geography -Today we will really make sense of the Coriolis force. Let's get this out of the way right now...No, toilets are not affected by the Coriolis force, but both meso (middle scale) and macro (large scale) scale weather patterns are.




After we will look at winds and pressure circulations. We'll understand where the permanent areas of high and low pressure are on the planet and figure out what that means for a macro-scale pressure gradient wind pattern. We'll try to understand what the Coriolis force is and see how it affects wind. We'll also talk about the Horse Latitudes, the Bermuda Triangle, and the Doldrums. You will need to complete question 1 from page 176 and questions 9 & 15 from page 177 of your Geosystems textbook.

Don't forget that every day we are going to start by looking at the synoptic forecast along with weather maps.
Data Streme
Envrionment Canada: Weather Office Comox

B Block Human Geography - Today we'll continue with the key question "Why Do Ethnicities Engage in Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide?" and our focus will be on Africa (Somalia and Darfur). Today we will watch Scream Bloody Murder from CNN about Rwanda...



and on Darfur...

The entire documentary can be found here

And we'll look at a few parts of "The Devil Came on Horseback"



And for Myanmar...





If there's time you may work on your week 14 questions. If you are interested, Daniel Goldhagen's ground-breaking documentary "Worse than War" is linked below. In his documentary he states, "By the most fundamental measure -- the number of people killed -- the perpetrators of mass murder since the beginning of the twentieth century have taken the lives of more people than have died in military conflict. So genocide is worse than war."

And your questions are:

1. Give the historical background of the two rival groups in Central Africa’s countries of Rwanda and Burundi. 
2. What is the situation in Rwanda and Burundi today? 
3. Why might the European colonial powers have preferred to place in leadership positions members of the minority Tutsis rather than members of the majority Hutus?