Environmental Justice

The website StumbleUpon is one of the coolest I've encounted, and while most of the sites it bumps you to lack the "life-altering experience" and useful information our society turns towards the world wide web for, it occastionally drops you into some pretty cool places. Exam week is usually when I "stumble" the most, and today my procrastination really paid off. 

The phenomenon of "floating islands of trash" is a rather well-known reality, but not the conventional way that I once originally thought. When I first heard about one "island" imparticular, also known as the "Garbage Patch" (although there are a host of other names for this thing), I just kept picturing this mass of empty soda bottles, milk jugs, barrels, anything plastic really, just hanging out in the middle of the ocean.

Nobody knows the fishing industry of New England better than those who help operate the market. Over the course of the last week, I was fortunate enough to interview two members of the fishing community, both of whom agreed to speak with me under the pretext of anonymity, and they helped me discover several new breakthroughs for Go Fish.

Recently I had a interesting discussion with a family member over Thanksgiving break that lead me to really think about the assumptions that we (an affluent, white, "developed" world society) place on the "underdeveloped" regions of the globe. And in this particular instance, it happened to be Africa. She was reminiscing about her past trip to the continent several years ago, all the amazing animals she saw, glimpses of the traditional culture, etc. But what really struck me was the trip's apparent lack of immersion and exposure to that society, people, culture, etc.