Readings

Here are links to our course readings:

COURSE READING UNITS

Overview
“The Stolen Forests” New Yorker

Food
Excerpts from Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation
Fast Food Nation [film] (2006)
Food, Inc. [film] (2008)
“The Oil We Eat: Following the Food Chain Back to Iraq” Harper’s
“No Bar Code” Mother Jones
“Unhappy Meals” NY Times
“The Omnivore’s Delusion: Against the Agri-intellectuals” The American

Global Capitalism
“The Real Roots of Darfur” The Atlantic
“Message in a Bottle” Fast Company
“Fiji Water: Spin the Bottle” Mother Jones
Jonathan Swift, “A Modest Proposal” http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html
Slavoj Zizek, “First as Tragedy, Then as Farce” RSA Animate http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/2010/07/29/rsa-animate-tragedy-farce/
“The Rise and Fall of American Apparel” Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/aug/25/rise-fall-american-apparel

Technology
“A Global Graveyard for Dead Computers in Ghana” NYTimes
“Revealed: the environmental impact of Google searches” The Times http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5489134.ece
“Avatars Consume As Much Electricity as Brazilians” Rough Type http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/12/avatars_consume.php
Bruce Sterling, “When Blobjects Rule the Earth” Boing Boing http://boingboing.net/images/blobjects.htm

Sustainability
“Nudging Recycling from Less Waste to None” NY Times
“Wisdom of the Small” Economist
“An Environmental Cleanup in Every Aisle” NY Times
“The world’s rubbish dump: a tip that stretches from Hawaii to Japan” http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/the-worlds-rubbish-dump-a-garbage-tip-that-stretches-from-hawaii-to-japan-778016.html

Local Issues
“Idle Hands” New Yorker
“Between Queens and Brooklyn, An Oil Spill’s Legacy” NY Times
“Newtown Creek/Oil Spill Study” EPA, 2007

Architecture
“(Solar) Power to the People” NY Times
“From Grey to Green: Environmental Benefits of Green Roofs”
“No Furnaces but Heat Aplenty in ‘Passive Houses’”
“Ask Nature: the Biomimicry Design Portal” http://asknature.org/
“Skyfarming” New York http://nymag.com/news/features/30020/
“A Low-Impact Woodland Home” http://www.simondale.net/house/
“The Next Slum” The Atlantic http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/03/the-next-slum/6653/
“Pop-Up Cities: China Builds a Bright Green Metropolis” Wired http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.05/feat_popup.html
“Panels of Light Fascinate Designers” NY Times
“The Street as Platform” City of Sound http://www.cityofsound.com/blog/2008/02/the-street-as-p.html