Two things stood out to me about last night\u2019s talk, one for each speaker.\u00a0 First was when Nicola Twilley talked about the way that refrigeration has so radically changed the way we see our food that we no longer have the ability to know what makes food good, to the point that it should be an evolutionary trait: to be able to tell what food is good.\u00a0 However, myself and many other Americans are no longer able to do this. \u00a0I\u2019ve spent some time thinking about this idea: if I were to buy meat, I would know it was good to eat by the packaging, the date on the package, perhaps if it was frozen, and maybe by the color.\u00a0 However, Twilley talked about how you can put your finger in the meat, and the amount that it bounces back reflects whether or not this it is good to eat.\u00a0 I definitely didn\u2019t know that, but I was able to learn.\u00a0 With a little more guidance, I could probably master this skill.\u00a0 So what I wonder is: is this skill truly evolutionary, or is it learned?\u00a0 It would be pretty small scale evolution if it were to be true, because I assume that my grandparents had this skill.\u00a0 However, I believe that it is more likely a learned skill, and that had it been necessary in my life, I would have been able to (and still can be able to) check to see if my meat is good to eat.<\/p>\n
The second thing that stood out to me at the talk was when Geoff Manaugh was talking about the kinds of things that we save.\u00a0 His example was some Mayan temples in the South American rainforest, that were once important, but have now become unimportant and have been allowed to become part of the landscape.\u00a0 I found this idea of \u201conce good, now bad\u201d to be an interesting contrast to an idea I\u2019ve learned in outdoor education regarding Leave No Trace ethics.\u00a0 There is always an interesting question about where packing out your trash conflicts with leaving things that you find.\u00a0 A great example is sea glass: is sea glass really someone\u2019s trash, and we could be good citizens by removing it from the landscape? Or is it an artifact, and we should leave it behind so that other visitors can see it?\u00a0 This has always been something that I have wondered about.\u00a0 When archaeologists examine historic communities, they say that their trash (or midden) is a great way to learn more about how those people lived.\u00a0 So, is sea glass a great way to understand how Americans dispose of trash?\u00a0 Is finding a SPAM can in the desert a great way to understand how hikers in the 1950s lived?\u00a0 Unlike Manaugh, I wonder when we come to a line of \u201conce bad, now good\u201d.\u00a0 When does trash become and artifact, and when does an artifact become trash?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two things stood out to me about last night\u2019s talk, one for each speaker.\u00a0 First was when Nicola Twilley talked about the way that refrigeration has so radically changed the way we see our food that we no longer have… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4673,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[249054],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4673"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":438,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437\/revisions\/438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}