I've just posted this on Medium, with a handful of my favorite insect photos.
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| Crimson Patch Butterfly (chlosyne janais; Costa Rica). |
Insects used to frighten me. Now I love them, and I am more concerned about losing them than living with them.
At the end of the article I've offered some tips about how to ensure we have a happy future together with the insects and other arthropods around us. Enjoy.
(Image copyright 2022 David L. O'Hara)
I've been publishing some short pieces on Medium lately. It's a way of doing some quick writing about things I've taught about for years.
This latest one is about watching fish, and I hope you enjoy it. Here's a sample:
I love fish. And whenever I say that, most people assume I love either eating fish or catching them. But neither of those is what I mean.
What I mean, more than anything, is that I love watching them at home in the places where they live.
You can find the whole article here.
One of my recent articles on Medium. Here's a sample:
If you want to know what someone believes, don’t ask them what they believe. Ask them where they spend their time, energy, and money.
Because the things that we genuinely believe are things we act on.
And soon the landscape around us becomes the outward form of our inward beliefs.
Since all my Environmental Studies students learn GIS, I've been trying to gain some new skills, too. The ArcGIS Storymap tool is a lot of fun to work with, and I've been playing around with using it to tell stories both with and without maps. Here's one I made for the Environmental Studies program itself. I'd love to hear feedback about what we can do to improve this.
It was a delight to work on designing last year's Call For Code challenge with IBM Developer, and then to participate in judging the entries. But I think the best part was joining my team in NYC to watch the university awards!
Our students Onajite Taire and Gedion Alemayehu impressed us--and others, plainly--with their Mile 12 app.And of course it was wonderful that my university, my colleagues, and
I received some recognition for our contributions as well.
Dr. Matthew Willard gives his time generously to Augustana students and to students around the world. The two of us love seeing students try new things that aim at the common good.
https://developer.ibm.com/blogs/announcing-the-2021-call-for-code-engagement-awards/
IBM just released their latest "Call for Code." If you have a team with some coding skills and you want to put them to use helping others to tackle some intractable problems, click that link and dive in!
I have a particular passion for clean water, but each one of the problems they're inviting people to work on are worthy of our time and attention.
Recently I had the pleasure of talking with Jeffey Howard on his Damn The Absolute! podcast. We mostly talked about Charles Sanders Peirce, pragmatism (or "pragmaticism" as Peirce called it), religion, and communities of inquiry.
You can listen to our conversation here.
My latest publication, a winter meditation on the beauty of brook trout, in Hothouse // Solutions. This is my first publication in collaboration with my son, Michael O'Hara, my favorite pro photographer.
A little taste of my article:
The trout is, for me, an icon of what I hasten to ignore.
I hope you enjoy this short read. Consider subscribing to Hothouse.
We can all use good news, after all. I like the short format and the focus on solutions, not just on problems.
Of course, if you like what I've written here, you might also like my book on brook trout.
