Food Fuel and Water, Week 1

This week in the 21st century we’ll be turning our sites towards natural resource use. We’ll be here for the next three weeks. I like to call the module “Food, Fuel, and Water”, but we won’t tackle these issues in order. First we will look at fuel, or energy. More specifically we’ll look at energy use in buildings. Focusing the lens further, we’ll be looking at energy use in our home away from home, the Alabama School of Fine Arts.

You will join a team of four students and take on the following assignment: "A rich (and eccentric) ASFA alum has given money to tear down the existing school and rebuild it exactly the way it is EXCEPT that she wants the new building to be LEED certified. LEED fits into my approach for facing 21st Century Challenges. The way I see it, LEED is essentially designing and building with intention.

LEED is an acronym for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, but it is really, "sustainable development one project at a time". During class we’ll get into the specifics of LEED -- and LEED certification for schools -- but suffice to say there are four major intentions of LEED. First, work with local and regional materials, and reuse materials whenever possible. Second, design buildings and landscapes to work with environment. Third, minimize environmental impact during site development. Fourth, increase efficiency of energy use and water use during occupation. The cool thing about LEED is that it is more than just the buildings themselves. LEED incorporates how people get to work or school, and how they live when they get there. Although I don’t have any data to support this claim, I think that LEED certified buildings increase occupant productivity and increase their overall health and wellbeing. I look forward to seeing what data come out regarding LEED buildings in the next few years.

We can get lost in the details of LEED, or we can work with LEED principles to model how to change the way we obtain and use energy in the 21st century. I’m going to try and lead us down the second path. Get ready for a productive and fun week.

LEED Nuts and Bolts

In my never-ending attempt to cut down on paper and keep track of “hand outs” we use in class, I am posting our LEED documents on my SharePoint Site. You will need access to the following documents to rebuild ASFA for LEED certification.

LEED Checklist for Schools

LEED 2.2 Credit Summary (this is the gnarly one. Ask me for big picture ideas and direction.)

Ross McCain, LEED Accredited architect with KPS Group (and sub 3:00 marathoner), will be visiting with us on Thursday, February 19, to discuss the designs you all have come up with. You can get a good intro on LEED certified projects by clicking on the KPS Group hyperlink above.

The World Is Flat 3.0

Here's Thomas Friedman, Pulitzer-Prize (and bestselling) author of The World Is Flat. All about globalization and its causes and ramifications. The lecture, which took place in November of 2007, is available through MIT's Open Courseware program. We'll talk and debrief on Friday.

Point/Counterpoint: Popular Media Is Making Us Smarter?

Take a look at the following links and, in the comments section, weigh in with your opinion on the topic.

1. Malcolm Gladwell reviews Steven Johnson's book Everything Bad Is Good For You, in which Johnson argues that as popular media has grown more complex over time, it has "made us smarter."

2. And then here is an excerpt from Al Gore's book, The Assault on Reason. Gore's isn't a 180-degree refutation of Johnson's ideas, but there are important areas of disagreement.

So what do you think? Do you buy one argument over the other? Or maybe these two arguments aren't mutually exclusive? Try to use an example from your own experience to support your position.

Kids and TV

Here's a link to an MSN article about the effects of TV on kids. The upshot is what you would expect: too much TV isn't a good thing. The article was produced by KidsHealth.org, and here's a link that speaks to what they're all about.

Blog Roll Round-Up

Ramsey explains why Mr. Beitelman has no friends.

Komal and Clint aren't buying the whole anti-branding propaganda Beitelman's dishing out. (There's a pun in there somewhere.)

Kelsey H fesses up: she totally at an Egg McMuffin this past weekend.

Robin links to an interesting article on the uneasy marriage between food industry advertising and federal nutrition guidelines.

Inquiry Essay Prompts

Not this Friday but next Friday, your Inquiry Essay will be due. Here's the original post which has a few general ideas for how to approach the assignment.

I also want to give you a few examples:

1. Check out Jennifer 8. Lee, a New York Times reporter, whose new book is The Fortune Cookie Chronicles. Here's a little blurb about the book from her website (which also includes her blog [!!] and excerpts from the book):

There are more Chinese restaurants in this country than McDonalds, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken combined. In The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, author Jennifer 8. Lee takes readers on a remarkable journey that is both foreign and familiar: penetrating this subculture by traveling the world (and almost every American state) in her quest to understand Chinese food and the people who make it.

Obviously you're not going to write a book. But a miniature version of this project would certainly fit the inquiry essay prompt. Lee got interested in the blending of food and culture, and so she researched and wrote about it.

2. Here's a NY Times Magazine article about young Egyptians voicing their protests of the recent military action in Gaza. Where did they voice said protests? Facebook. Again, this article is a little longer than what we're asking for, and it does some in-depth reporting that we don't expect you to do. The project, however, fits.

3. And here's an open letter to Al Gore re: climate change, etc.

The main thing to remember is that, regardless of the topic, this is a personal essay. Write about something you care about passionately. Don't shy away from the pathos here. Create an emotional bond with your reader by sharing relevant personal anecdotes/stories. Be funny. Be smart. Be sincere. Be the kind of person with whom your reader wants to sit down and have a cup of coffee.

This isn't a research paper. Think of it as an extended and slightly more formal blog entry. The emphasis is on your own personal experience and analysis.

Does that mean I'm suggesting you drop logos and ethos altogether? Pshaw! Key word: BALANCE. There may, in some cases, be a place for a little research. But what's most important is not what other people have said about your topic; it's what you have to say about it.

Last Words on Branding

Take a look at these two General Mills images and see what you think:

#1.



#2.

The Science of Marketing, the Marketing of Science

Below is an excerpt from an article by Marcia Angell in the NY Review of Books. It's about several new books that deal with the (ENORMOUS) role marketing plays in contemporary medicine.

Angell is a Senior Lecturer in Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. A physician, she is a former Editor in Chief of The New England Journal of Medicine. Her latest book is The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It. (No, she's not an unbiased observer, but her credentials [ethos!] are pretty darn good, so she's no quack either.)

As you read, think not just about the idea of "The Perpetual Marketplace" but about the use of rhetoric in general. Doctors = Science, right? And Science = Facts(ish), therefore it also = Logos (Reason). But is that how the marketing efforts of these pharmaceutical companies are really working?

Think also about the implications of all this on the unit we just covered, Human Health & Disease. It's like Deep Throat told Bob Woodward during Watergate: Follow the money... Where's there's money to be made, it's always buyer beware. (Which is certainly on a fortune cookie somewhere...)

Here's the excerpt:

In recent years, drug companies have perfected a new and highly effective method to expand their markets. Instead of promoting drugs to treat diseases, they have begun to promote diseases to fit their drugs. The strategy is to convince as many people as possible (along with their doctors, of course) that they have medical conditions that require long-term drug treatment. Sometimes called "disease-mongering," this is a focus of two new books: Melody Petersen's Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs and Christopher Lane's Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness.

To promote new or exaggerated conditions, companies give them serious-sounding names along with abbreviations. Thus, heartburn is now "gastro-esophageal reflux disease" or GERD; impotence is "erectile dysfunction" or ED; premenstrual tension is "premenstrual dysphoric disorder" or PMMD; and shyness is "social anxiety disorder" (no abbreviation yet). Note that these are ill-defined chronic conditions that affect essentially normal people, so the market is huge and easily expanded. For example, a senior marketing executive advised sales representatives on how to expand the use of Neurontin: "Neurontin for pain, Neurontin for monotherapy, Neurontin for bipolar, Neurontin for everything."[15] It seems that the strategy of the drug marketers—and it has been remarkably successful—is to convince Americans that there are only two kinds of people: those with medical conditions that require drug treatment and those who don't know it yet. While the strategy originated in the industry, it could not be implemented without the complicity of the medical profession.

Melody Petersen, who was a reporter for The New York Times, has written a broad, convincing indictment of the pharmaceutical industry.[16] She lays out in detail the many ways, both legal and illegal, that drug companies can create blockbusters" (drugs with yearly sales of over a billion dollars) and the essential role that KOLs play. Her main example is Neurontin, which was initially approved only for a very narrow use—to treat epilepsy when other drugs failed to control seizures. By paying academic experts to put their names on articles extolling Neurontin for other uses—bipolar disease, post-traumatic stress disorder, insomnia, restless legs syndrome, hot flashes, migraines, tension headaches, and more—and by funding conferences at which these uses were promoted, the manufacturer was able to parlay the drug into a blockbuster, with sales of $2.7 billion in 2003. The following year, in a case covered extensively by Petersen for the Times, Pfizer pleaded guilty to illegal marketing and agreed to pay $430 million to resolve the criminal and civil charges against it. A lot of money, but for Pfizer, it was just the cost of doing business, and well worth it because Neurontin continued to be used like an all-purpose tonic, generating billions of dollars in annual sales.

If you're interested in reading the whole article, click here.

Branding Report

After we chat about what we think brands are and what they do, you'll be split up into four groups. Each group will be assigned a well-known American brand/company:

• Starbucks
• Walmart
• McDonalds
• Cadillac

In an informal presentation of five to ten minutes on Thursday, I want each group to address the two general questions below. Be sure to divide and conquer the research and presentation duties.

Also: be aware (and beware) of the way Logos-Pathos-Ethos is working in the stuff you research and present. Think about where you're getting your information and what inherent biases are at play.

1. How did your brand establish and maintain itself? Try to deal with the following areas:

- Product(s): What does your company sell? What tangible reasons are there for people to buy those products?
- History
- Logo/Slogans (Past/Present)
- Identity: "If this brand was a person, it would be..."
- How is your company doing right now?
-- Profits up or down?
-- Layoffs? Store closings? Plans for expansion?
-- Other indicators?

2. Who is your brand targeting and how does your company reach them?

- Traditional Media Messaging (example)
- Non-Traditional Messaging (example)
- Analyze both forms of messaging in terms of Logos/Pathos/Ethos

When every group has presented, we're going to see if we can make any hypotheses about branding and how/if it influences our collective cultural experience.

"The World is Fat"

When I read Barry Popkin’s article in the August 2007 edition of Scientific American, I thought, “This is exactly what I want to talk to my students about.” Isn’t it interesting that when the global standard of living increases, many of the problems associated with consumerism manifest them selves?

Several key statistics and anecdotes jump out at me from this article, but who would have thought that over nutrition would out pace under nutrition (or famine) in the course of 15 to 20 years?

As part of your weekly posts, feel free to comment on this article and tell me if you think Popkin’s thesis is correct, or if you think it is all over blown. If you need a prompt, consider any of these three questions:

1) How do international trends in overweight and obesity mirror US obesity trends? Cite three examples and use evidence to back up your claims.

2) Should obesity even be considered a US problem that has spread to the world or should it be considered an international problem? If so, who is to blame?

3) How does the nutritional transition (shift from under nutrition to over nutrition) affect a nation’s ability to continue developing? (How do you think the problem of overweight/obesity affects a countries ability to prosper in the 21st Century?)

Scientific American has lots of digital content, and this article has an associated podcast with the author. Take listen if you’ve got the time.

Today is the Day of Blogging

First order of business: flesh out your own blog. The idea was for you to have at least one extemporaneous post (with a link) per week. We're in our fourth full week, so that amounts to four posts. These posts should be related to the class in some way -- either extending the discussion of issues we cover in class or touching on other 21st C. challenges you're interested in. These posts don't have to be essays; a meaty, thoughtful paragraph should suffice. For a good model of length and intellectual investment, here's Steven's response to "This Blessed House." Check out Kelsey G's response to "This Blessed House" (she gets fired up and goes longer than a paragraph, which is totally fine too) and Codrin's initial extemporaneous post for other exemplary models.

Second order of business: address the assigned blog entries and comments. Over in the right column, under "Posts of Note," you'll find the additional entries/comments Mr. Reardon and I have asked you to complete.

Third order of business: if/when you get done with that, surf around your colleagues' blogs and make comments on posts that interest you. Restrict your commentary to the issues at hand. If someone comments on one of your blog posts, see if you can't respond in the comments section.

Tomorrow we're going to start on the concept of branding. Between now and then, think about "your" brands (clothes, electronics, restaurants, etc), if you got 'em, and your level of attachment to them.