Hello!

If you’re actually been staying up-to-date with blog, I’m sorry I flooded it with posts today.  This has been for a class of mine as stated in the first post.  The blog for me has served multiple purposes:

1) sorta needed it for the class 😀

2) to help future students

3) maybe to educate those who followed over from my previous blog of misadventures in China!

4) a place to put my thoughts

That last one didn’t really happen. I didn’t keep up with this as much as I should have. I figured I was going to write more about my final semester at U of I (read point 2 above) regardless, this is the end of my undergraduate.  It’s been frustrating at times, sure.  Mostly though it’s been great! I’ve made a lot of life-long friends here, united by fantastic experiences!

For those who need a reference in the future to gather when this all takes place: Stephen Colbert just had his last Report last night.  Pretty cool right? It’s almost like I’m “graduating with him” in a sense (I am). Right? (Yes, totally, that’s how I’ll tell others! good thinking!)

Anywho, I graduate tomorrow and if folks are super interested in following me sporadically later in my life and career, you should my blog at weebly.com under a similar handle.  The link is below and I look forward to attracting an incredibly small viewership!

Overall, this semester’s been packed and fun (and productive if you can believe it!) This writing class has been great too! I’ve never had an “English” teacher (for all intents and purposes) who appreciated how I wrote and gave me feed back on my content.  Plenty would give me feedback on the content of what I wrote as well as criticize how I said it.  It really took a lot of fun out of the whole deal.  When I took up blogging a little over a year ago I saw it as a chance to expand my abilities and express myself.  I’ll always take criticism of what I’m writing about (as well as the grammar and spelling but that seems rare given my style and my own mother’s indoctrinating me with correct grammar :-p)

Seriously, the grades and feedback I have received have been very encouraging to me with this class and I’m incredibly thankful I took it!

This is Dustin, signing off.

Follow the next post (that’s definitely gonna happen because… well, graduation’s a big thing right?) at http://nachuan.weebly.com

For my eleventh birthday our family decided to take a ride on the boat in the Illinois River at the time the East Peoria Boat Club wasn’t much, just a few docks on site with a camper to boat ratio close to one (more people seemed to live there than owned boats). As we walked down the dock something in the water caught my eye, a small painted turtle! Taking my age into consideration I felt near invincible on my birthdays as many kids should.  When I picked him up (probably a “him”) it was something special.  I’d felt like I’d caught and saved this guy from the harsh elements of nature.  I knew I could give him a home and when I asked my parents if I could keep him it was hard for them to refuse as I’d had hermit crabs before and their tank would be easy to repurpose.  All I needed was a filter for the little dude.  That’s what I named him, Dude. (Hey I was eleven)

Of all the turtles one can find in Illinois, painted turtles are one of the few species native to the Prairie State.  It’s also not uncommon for kids like me (or adults probably) to take in wild species for use as domestic pets. The painted turtle is a simple little guy who’s highly adaptable as one of the many omnivorous turtles out there.  Even with illegal capture (such as how I acquired “Dude”) the painted turtle populations show no signs of threat as they can live in a wide range of habitats. (“Chrysemys Picta”)

Another common species found in Illinois is Red-Eared Slider made popular by the animated cartoon, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as they have recently announced the characters to be Red-Eared Sliders. These surprisingly are not native to Illinois and are a highly invasive species.  Sale of a Red-Eared Slider is prohibited in Florida because they inter-mate with local populations. (“Red-Eared Slider”)

I bring this up because of the coming holiday season.  If you or someone you know is looking for a turtle as a pet, get them a Painted Turtle!  While slightly less popular than the Red-Eared Sliders, these guys are just as cute! Both species have the same olive-shaped heads and small spherical eyes. Similarly they share the same adaptable diet and due to their relative size, tank clean up is also easy.  Larger differences are mostly aesthetics. Sliders are known to have red markings where their ears look like they should be.  Painted Turtles do however feature more varying colors on their skin and lie flatter than Sliders do.  Luckily for us in Illinois we have two subspecies of the Painted Turtle, the midland painted and the slightly more exotic, western painted.  While most subspecies have a yellow underbelly, the western painted features an intermixed blend of red, yellow, and green kaleidoscopic colors. (“Painted Turtles”)

After a few months I also adopted another painted turtle from my uncle by the name of Lazy.  He and Dude would become the best of tank mates, especially when I upgraded their tank-size.  In the larger environment, Dude was able to surpass Lazy in size and I was overjoyed to see the two getting along.  One day I decided I’d find a way to get them live-fish as a means of them “earning” their food.  A quick trip to the local lake provided more than I needed and I was re-assured of their natural instincts they caught their prey.  It may have taken them a few hours to realize what was going on, but they both eventually caught dinner for themselves! (Lazy also displayed behavioral patterns fitting for one of his namesake)

This was a good interaction to witness as I would soon have to release them both into the wild upon my impending move out of the country.  The day I released them to that same local lake was a sad one, but I knew at least Dude would make it.  I haven’t had a turtle since but as soon as I get new tank you can guess what turtles I’ll be getting!  They’re great pets for kids as long as you wash your hands after and are both incredibly cute and hardy creatures. Check them out the next spring in a pond or lake near you! They’re easy to spot basking in the sun’s rays in on a beautiful spring or summer afternoon.

I look out on a cloudy day.  It’s slightly chilly and the air smells of impending rain. Still I can’t help but notice how beautiful a sight it is to see the south end of campus marked by the southern bell tower on the far end who’s faithfully updated me on how much class remains throughout my years at the University of Illinois (UIUC).  It’s only fitting that I’m viewing it through the glass window of the campus’s newest structure, the Electrical and Computer Engineering building (ECE). If I’d transferred in as a Computer Science major, the ECE building located on the north side of campus might have been my new home in my last semester the university as opposed to the area around the bell tower where I’ve attended so many classes before.

Our tour guide, Anket Jiain is an attending graduate student in Electrical Engineering and has taken us to the fourth floor to check out the building’s classrooms.  He points out the ledge just outside the classroom that has empty metal stands right now that reflect the location more photovoltaic solar panels will be placed.  The panels in this location will be available to students that are interested to examine, tweak, and run all sorts of other tests with in the pursuit of higher, self-guided learning.

As you first enter the ECE building, the lobby is large and spacious with desks organized on the main floor with students silently working.  All of rooms on the first floor are housed with large window walls.  You’re naturally drawn to the room ahead bathed in yellow tint.  That’s the ECE’s integrated circuit fabrication lab donated by Intel.  The room on your right side features a sizable amount of workstations and was donated by Texas Instruments. On the opposite side however, there’s large slanted wooden panels right behind the window that obstruct your vision of seating area inside Grainger Auditorium. (Jiain)

The auditorium doesn’t look like much but like everything in the ECE building, lots of thought has gone into its design.  The wooden panels for example are slanted to better project the speaker’s voice throughout the room and the very seats students and audience members sit in have their own means of passive air-circulation within each unit according to Anket. The lighting in the room, like all of the building, features large strips of light emitting diodes (LEDs) to offer a slightly softer glow than fluorescent bulbs.  The LEDs offer more than just paying homage to Nick Holonyak who has a patent on their invention; they’re also a significant part in the ECE building’s strive for net-zero energy. (Nick)

As Anket explains, net-zero is a measurement of energy generation and usage over the span of a year.  That’s important considering Illinois’s temperate climate and full four seasons. With passive water-cooling beams in the floors and solar panels on the roofs the message of the ECE building starts to become clear. (Jiain) It seems though that just making the building isn’t enough.  In reflection of alumni such as Holonyak and in keeping with true University of Illinois spirit, one must exude and live in the culture of sustainability. (Nick)

The entire building encourages innovation!  The open labs in the top floor have workbenches that students can request and apply to use for year-long senior projects.  The tiles on the outside are made with terracotta to allow for efficient heat transfer and insulation.  On the basement level there are showers for students and faculty to use that encourages the use of bicycles as a mode of travel. The floors you walk on are made of recycled glass, and when it’s all said and done, the building’s modern style keep it looking just as much a part of the university as Lincoln or Davenport Hall.  The only difference is it’s the nation’s largest net-zero energy building, at twenty times bigger than the runner up. (ECE ILLINOIS)

As the newest addition to the University of Illinois campus at Urbana-Champaign, from incoming freshmen to visiting international students, the engineers who have the privilege of taking class in the ECE building are in for an exciting time.  It’s a fascinating building with a lot of potential for innovation and discovery and will probably sustain that “new/modern sustainability smell” for the next few years too! I want to redo my undergraduate now.

Bibliography

“ECE ILLINOIS.” THE BUILDING CAMPAIGN FOR ECE ILLINOIS Details Comments. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Oct. 2014. <http://buildingcampaign.ece.illinois.edu/project-details/>.

Jiain, Anket. “Tour of ECE Building with Anket.” Personal interview. 16 Oct. 2014.

“Nick Holonyak.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 10 Oct. 2014. Web. 28 Oct. 2014. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Holonyak>.

The University of Illinois is currently well known for its engineering and business schools but some folks forget that it, like many universities, started with a focus on agriculture and continues to be a leader in the field as well.  With the growing topic of sustainability in the field, the University of Illinois has set up the Student Sustainable Farm on the far south side of campus nested in among the fields used for regular crops by the university.

Working on 7 acres, the farm is run by Zack Grant, a U of I alumni who oversees most of the operations. The Student Sustainable farm is open to all students to volunteer and help out in.  Those who do own a “share” of the farm that Zack explains translates to the occasional free and fresh produce.  The farm is currently working on plans to expand into markets beyond student dining halls and they’re occasional appearance on the university’s quad just south of the Union.  They are especially eager to do so with the coming land expansion of 10-12 acres next year says Zack.

The Student Sustainable Farm started off from a grant given by the USDA and has been learning their own method of operation from the ground up so to speak. Zack claims the farm also does “unreplicated research” meaning it’s one of the first of its kind!  The goal of the farm is to maintain consistent yields year round in a sustainable manor.  This means that every done on the farm is done in as “green” of a way as possible, meaning the facilities are carbon neutral.

The idea of a year-round yield working in the Midwest with a goal to remain a carbon neutral facility seems like quite the challenge that the farm is eager to accept! A tour of the facilities reveals a few nuances one might otherwise not see in a traditional farm.  The first noticeable feature would be the transparent airplane hangars that loom over a few crops.  The high-tunnels, as Zack explains, helps to create micro-climates that help keep the plants, their atmosphere, and their soil in tolerable temperatures during the harshest of winters even!  The crops currently protected are hardy by nature so it doesn’t require strict amounts of moist or heat and are tolerant of a few extreme frosts on their own in short periods of time.  These high-tunnels also allow for earlier planting in some crops as winter transitions to spring that can provide for planting between 6 to 8 weeks earlier than the typical growing season allows for, depending on the crop.  Zack also mentions that the root crops growing right now will last 4 to 6 months in storage after harvesting.  After harvest the high tunnels will then be easily moved over another set of crops for the winter.

Another feature one might find would be the ever-so-essential-to-the-word-“sustainable” solar panels! The Student Sustainable Farm does not turn away help based on discipline. Zack was proud to inform that the panels were set up in collaboration with a “Learning in Community” (LINC) engineering course that designed and implemented not only the panels but also the greenhouse the panels power as well as the battery-powered tractor the team redesigned. Another LINC class also designed the cart the farm uses to hitch up to a bicycle and pedal to the quad where the produce is sold.

Of the farm’s current yields, roughly 15% is sold at the quad via their stand.  The other 85% of their yields go to the student dining halls, most notably, the Ikenberry hall.  Their plans are to supply 20% of student meals by the year 2020.

Zack’s quite proud of most of the progress made with the sustainable farm. Not only are they operating as low budget as they can but he sees it as an opportunity for the students who volunteer as well.  Most Americans pay entirely too low of a product’s true cost.  Through subsidies and illegal workers, many can afford a bunch of strawberries year-round for example.  Zack says the actual, true cost without such mechanisms in place would be $15-20 a pint with seasonal availability!  The student-side of the farm helps serve to education students about to enter the job market about the true cost of production!

The farm very much embodies a philosophy that one cannot take without first giving.  This is shown through the sustainable efforts Zack takes to give back to the Earth (or at least not impact it while taking), as well as educating or giving back to those who support the farm’s efforts.

Remember when you were in school and the history lessons hit our early 1900s in America and there was that good chuck just before the wars and social changes about living in America? You may also then recall a book titled The Jungle and how it was key in reforming not just the food industry at the time but also the labor market as a whole as unions followed thereafter.

Food, Inc. might be the new The Jungle. That’s probably not much of a comparison because The Jungle hit such a wider audience and was far more popular given it was sort of the first of its kind. Still, Food, Inc. is just as eye-opening regardless.

I had the first part of this post done October 2 and had to take time to fully process the video (do not eat food while you’re watching this. Maybe try a nice tea or something?) Granted posting it so late probably wasn’t necessary.

The film takes place in Western Iowa, parts of Tennessee, and probably somewhere in California as well.  It explores our food “manufacturing plants” (as I’m calling them) out in Iowa.  There are these huge bits of land dedicated to raising and processing cattle.  Because we have to have our meat the food industry has to find the most efficient means of producing it all.  This leads to plenty of injustices that the guy giving out flyers near the Union (mostly when the weather’s nice) can tell you all about!  His views are entirely legitimate! For instance, we only eat meat from female chickens but we can’t just grow every egg to be female (we’re certainly trying though!) Food, Inc. shows you what happens to the other half of the eggs that won’t be covered in this post (a visual medium is far more effective of driving the point home I feel)

We’re also showed the conditions that other chickens and pigs are kept in down south.  Most growing operations raise them in small enclosures so that they never see the sunlight. I could go on and on but just know that it’s shitty (no, literally, the pigs and chickens live in that. No joke [except for the pun])

The film does wrap up nicely enough as we’re shown local, smaller operations in California I believe.  After showing the mechanical processes involved in the large operations we’re given an interview with a farm as he “processes” his own chickens with his family.  By comparison there’s something more humane in how his farm operates.  The juxtaposition between the two is astounding!  Point being, watch Food, Inc., it’s worth the watch.

I’ve been in college for longer than I care to admit (it’s the fall of 2014 as I write this and my first semester was spring 2009) and in all the classes I’ve taken it’s not until my final semester that I get a fieldtrip? That’s a bit of a rip-off considering the tuition I’ll be paying back now and the “tuition” I paid for in grade, middle, and high school. (see “lunch money”) The point is a fieldtrip’s been long overdue, as is knowing what a local prairie looks like when you live in the Prairie State.

The trip was to a local “local grass planting” as botanist Ken Robertson and director of said “planting”, John Marlin, called it.  My classmates met in our classroom and filled a bus and SUV before arriving at the site. I took my bike two minutes east of my dorm. Not a bad start if you’re goal is to win the fieldtrip.  I was able to saunter about a good 15 minutes before they arrived.  It was nice to take in the clouds looming over head.  I’d done my research and knew they brought only shade today unlike yesterday’s rain.  As I pulled into the street I noted a field to my right and as well as an administration building near it.  I wondered if I was in the right place and foolishly asked a student waiting at the bus stop where the “grass prairie” was.  He pointed right behind me. To the “field” I passed right by to get to the guy.  When everyone finally arrived we were taken on a quick tour of the field I’d rode past on the way in.

On the outside the collection of grasses and, well, more grasses doesn’t look like anything special (recall that I rode past the field without realizing it) but being given the chance to look and walk inside it is quite different.  You can do that by the way! That’s why it’s there; it’s for the public though most might not realize it.  This field is unique because everything in it (except for maybe the one tree offset from the middle) is a grass native to Illinois.  These are grasses that the Native Americans reportedly used to set on fire and trap the bison that once inhabited our lands according to John Marlin. Didn’t see that anthropology coming there did you?

While some got to talk to Ken Robertson about the plants specifically, I stayed near John as he told a few of us about the bigger picture involved in making and maintaining the prairie.  There was a lot he wanted to show us and I’m guessing we were all as eager as environmental students can be at 10am on a cloudy Thursday. Sticking with John we were reminded of how little is left of tall grass prairies (95% extinct east of the Mississippi River) which is kind of a big deal if you’re called “the prairie state”.

Fun fact: as I write this, Illinois is celebrating “Illinois Prairie Week” as it does every third week in September apparently.  The things you learn writing an article! Look it up or click this link. Considering that we take a week to celebrate our prairies (let me know when you find others!) This article comes at a fitting time.  Before listening to John I’d known that tall grass prairies were dwindling pretty heavily but also thought “it’s just grass”.  It’s a bit more than that.  Go check out the planting on Florida and Orchard in Urbana.  It’s pretty colorful in the fall with classic yellows and whites painting the field in general but if you take the time to walk through and ignore the little traffic that does go by you’ll notice the cadence of crickets and other critters, the chirping of birds, the various shades of purple among the grasses and maybe a butterfly or two.  I imagine it makes for decent meditation and reflection when you’re not with 20 other classmates or so.

If you’re wanting more however (I don’t know why, but if you do) John says the best time to come is in the early spring as the field features perennials that bloom around then to sprinkle the field in a greater variety of sights and smells (all good I’m sure!).  I can’t confirm this, but it’d be nice to check out.  Right now I’m particularly eager to see if John will do a controlled burn on the grassland.  Don’t worry! It’s totally fine, healthy even to do so with these!  The roots of the grasses can withstand any burning and it helps the carbon/nitrogen cycle of the soil.  Based on my experiences of watching fire burn, it’s also fun and if it’s for/from the university it’s also probably safe too.

Overall a lot of work has gone into this plot.  They planted in spring 2012 when it was just dandelions. Seas and seas of dandelions and now it’s this swarming mass of a thriving ecosystem that’s a small step back in restoring prairie to the prairie state.  A lot of work does still go into it to keep everything moving in the right direction so if you haven’t gone out to the field, do so and if you want to help John says they accept volunteers all the time!  I just wish I’d known sooner, they probably won’t let my first volunteering be with fire-starting.

Alright! Pretty interesting first assignment here after that last post (which I forgot to mention was also an assignment as most of this blog will be). We were asked which author between the two articles (Pollan and Jensen) we’d like to have a beer with.  Again, an interesting prompt.  Trick question! The correct answer is both because of beer.

Assignment numero uno is done-o!

Naaaah! But really, I’d say Jensen is more my pint of beer for a first round pick.  He’s a realist who nit-picks the preposterous logic and solutions to helping the global. While everyone else has been going along with lines like “less water on our end equals more water in places that need it” Jensen is the guy to ask the hard questions that need asking like “how?” and “why?” but not “when?” because that’s easy.

I get that plenty will read the last paragraph in his article and think he’s gone off the deep end here but given the arguments of logical disconnects between actual change and social movements that he puts forth I think he’s writing the last paragraph to call attention to how ridiculous a grand and quick solution would be.  Jensen doesn’t have a quick answer or solution to the problem but can point out issues with the current methods. He’s fishing here for someone to call him out at the end so that he can talk with them one-on-one and start a dialogue that can lead to change eventually.  He’s the guy I want a beer first.  Then Pollan because beers good, therefore we should share it in good company and Pollan’s the guy who will give a balanced view on the whole thing so if Jensen happens to get carried away, Pollan might be able to calm the guy before a fight ensues.  Either way, you need both on your team.

I’ll start by parodying the title of I,Robot by Issac Asimov.  Essentially that’s what I think of my writing to begin with.  I don’t like writing something I can’t read later and go: “ah that was clever” or “hey! Insightful, I forgot about that” or even “that was dumb, I like it”. I like to feel constantly at ends with myself because writing has never been in my wheelhouse. (If you wanted to delve in psychologically I’d say it’s because the moment I’m not battling myself then I think I have a skill) I’ve always enjoyed my English classes for the most part but hated the writing.  They’ve always been like pre-college course philosophy classes because they teach us to think differently and that’s what I enjoyed the most about them, never the writing.  Writing has always been this huge mountain for me (and still is sometimes depending on what’s being asked of me) with a deadline that I had to climb it.  Fast forward to recent revelations and I’ve come to realize that a lot of the opinions I value come from great writers.  It’s a weird mixture between my favorite band, my favorite columnists, and my favorite friends (but we’ll just call them friends in the pre-facebook sense because they’re like family to me at this point, family I can have a few beers with and who want to play video games unlike some members of my real family)

That all being said, I’ve started reading more than columns on Cracked.com (books) and listening to more than just songs from Rush (podcasts from Cracked.com) to broaden my horizons.  It was shortly after that I found this environmental writing class and decided it’d be a perfect fit for my major in Earth Systems and Environment because it fits in my schedule and I know this is a skill I can apply to in any sort of text-based communication.

Hello and welcome.

For those of you just joining us, I am Dustin Roberts and this is going to be a blog about the environment, and stuff.  I mean that literally.  When we’re talking about the environment one of the topics is waste management which is comprised of, you guessed it, our stuff.

So if you’re just tuning in and want to see me previous works as well as what I was up to in the spring of 2014, the site’s here.

As I have alluded to in the September 3rd, 2014 post this site will serve as the platform through which I’ll learn to become a better writer (through vigorous critique) and you’ll maybe learn something worthy of those cocktail parties I’ve been told about.