508. "Climate" The Lacuna of My Life.... Learning Through Cartoons ::: Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny!

I have learned a lot of very cool stuff over the years... but one thing my father is a bit disgruntled about is that I'm pathetic with weather and climate. Well... I think it's partly my laziness because... well, my dad knows so much about climate I just ask him stuff all the time and he knows everything... and now I have all these fishermen buddies and they know a LOT about climate simply because it's a matter of choosing to go to work or not the next day, and planning ahead for the week (they have a very detailed regional climactic knowledge whereas my dad is a bit more broad-scale in his analyses, you need BOTH scales though).... So, I'm surrounded by weather nuts, terrestrial and marine... and I myself am The Climate Patheticist. Until... now... through the venues of my CARTOONS!

I started grasping some sense of climate by learning the HISTORY of climate. I started realizing that learning science makes a LOT more sense to me when I learn it through the LENS OF HISTORY OF THE SUBJECT. Not only in biology, but in terms of the history of accumulated human knowledge the following goes: ONTOGENY RECAPITULATES PHYLOGENY.

Back to cartoons, my father had been wanting me to make a cartoon for a while about the history of climate. But the current cartoon had several holes in time. We settled for this timeline.
The narrative thread through the cartoon was "If Terra and Buz saw the same cloud every single time, how would they perceive the cloud given the scientific state of understanding in a given time period?" This sort of narrative thread could be used multiple times in reconstructing a history of perception / paradigm shifts in whatever fields... ranging from geology to ecology to medicine, like for example, Terra and Buz enter the doctors office due to some illness Terra had and different points in time, the doctor would respond differently in diagnosis and treatment.

1777. If someone saw a cloud, they would think about lightning and electricity. (Benjamin Franklin discovery of electricity).

1867. If someone saw a cloud, they would think of tradewinds. (My father recommended drawing Terra and Buz on a boat, common knowledge of British sailors, Columbus, transportation, old world to new world in low latitudes relied on trade winds, new world to old world in upper latitudes relied on westerlies) (Most people's knowledge was very localized, and there was no instant communication across distant regions. Ever since the invention of the telegraph and rapid communication of ideas, then observations from disparate regions were beginning to associate. Cross-scale-connecting the dots from local to regional to national, gaining a collective picture from multiple disparate localized observations, "collective perception of climate") (connecting the dots in space)

1897. If someone saw a cloud, they would maybe think of water vapor. (Nuts and bolts)

1907. If someone saw a cloud, they might associate it with cyclones (Swedish research, Swedish folk had lots of incentive to study storms especially since they were bombarded with stormy weather all the time)

1957. If someone saw a cloud, they would maybe think of the jetstream. (During World War II, people from all over the world started to position weather balloons all over the place, before people's perception of weather was GROUND weather (SURFACE PATTERNS) and not UPPER ELEVATION DYNAMICS, ground weather was very localized but upper elevation dynamics, pressure, temperature, humidity provided clues to broader-scale, global weather patterns) (connecting the dots in space)

1970s. Including satellite imagery, didn't drastically enhance understanding, but provided better imagery of broader-scale patterns.

1977. If someone saw a cloud, they would think of global cooling. Milankovitch cycles and such, and Paul Ehrlich's loud mouth, population bomb etcetera blah blah blah.

1997. If someone saw a cloud, they would think of El Nino. (When El Nino became popular culture, though my father said that he met the scientist who worked on El Nino cycles back in the 1950s and 1960s; the concept had been around for a while, this is a time in which scientists started discovering annual and multi-year cycles, for example the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and the Northern Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), besides annual El Ninos and La Ninas) (connecting the dots in time)

2007. If someone saw a cloud, they would think of Global Warming. (Post Al-Gore-Inconvenient-Truth film, which I critiqued the shxt out of that film, every single flippin' second of it, funny, though I critiqued the film... I still don't know jack shxt about climate).

2010. If someone saw a cloud, they would probably imitate a Global Warming Joke from last night's Jay Leno show. They would also blame ("attribute") their melted ice scream, excessive nose boogers, flat tire, and weight gain to global warming. Ultimate Blame-All. Blame-a-cea!

2010. Now I understand why my father can't stand modern "incomplete models" of climate, which are very short-sighted. There needs to be more roleplay and factoring in of paleo-climate (ice cores and other proxy data), the role of the geologic record in climate, and the coupling of climate with ocean dynamics. This is the next frontier.

I am 3 years old (28), and this is the first time I could say that my "cognitive map" of climate and history of climate has expanded... since... perhaps the Al Gore paper I wrote back in 2007. Sad situation, I do say. My being the Climate Idiot around very well-versed Climaticists (ha ha) is encouraging me to expand my knowledge....

NOTE: DIFFERENTIAL HISTORY TIME SINCE SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY VERSUS TIME SINCE CONCEPT BECOMES POPULAR CULTURE OR "MEDIA HYPED," LINGO, FOR EXAMPLE... EL NINO CONCEPTS EXISTED BACK IN 1950S, BECAME POPULAR CULTURE OR MEDIA LINGO IN 1990S

488. Vic's Strange Days on Planet Earth... Resolving a Very Ancient, Tangled Knot

December 8, 2009. Today is a certainly a day worth blogging about. I have been carrying with me some very deep-seeded anxiety and fear in regards to a relationship with a potential Ph.D. committee member at UC Santa Barbara, and somehow all of this anxiety had been released through a great conversation... and some third party help....

I had not been productive in the morning. I was trying to adapt my novella The Mountain's Last Flower (MLF) into a stage play, but my mind kept swirling in out of control thoughts. For some reason, I felt like I was walking toward my deathbed. I was figuratively ready to commit suicide--just figurative folks, FIGURATIVE! I really felt like I was venturing into a black box. I had not interacted with this professor since June, and it's now December! I was supposed to meet with him in July... never happened... I was in the Road Trip Nation spirit of I can do whatever the hxll I want with my life. I should choose the people I desire to be around... life's too short to create problems that don't need to exist. And then the beginning of fall quarter, all I did was romp around and find a whole fall-back committee before I returned to this professor.... I honestly thought the meeting was going to be short and sweet and it was going to be about "I think out of my own best interest, it's good to have a marine natural scientist" which implied the whole "I don't want you on my committee." But then, after walking out of the meeting (yes, I did survive!), I came to realize that this wasn't the problem at all.... The problem had to be addressed and resolved in an informal transaction, an informal agreement in code of conduct....

Okay, so back to the drama! I was driving in from Ventura and as soon as I was considering to do a quick jog, I receive a strange phone call. The meeting was at ONE pm!!! It's 1:24 pm. OH SHXT! I honestly and sincerely thought it was at 2pm for the last week. I think that my biopsy and scalp-mole appointments really screwed me up in terms of scheduling and my overall perception of time. The STAGE competition's not helping either.... The graduate advisor put me on phone hold and then she said just come on down... don't worry, stay composed. I had all these negative, pessimistic thoughts, these doomsday disaster thoughts... the very thoughts that partly fueled the novella MLF. But then I thought about all the people behind me. I thought about how my dad and mom loved me... and my sister... and Jules and Shannon and Oscar and Hector and my housematies and then I thought how Randy might consider this scene to be perfect for the next hilarious film and I thought how Jorge Cham might make a cartoon out of the meeting and then I just felt like I had this whole social sphere of people who would still love me no matter what happened at this meeting that I felt... I wasn't alone... though I didn't feel any better. It was a chronic disease of endlessly swirling pessimistic thoughts, as if I were stuck in a prison cell... and the prison cell was ironically inside a university....

I arrived to the graduate advisor's office and she was cool with me. I thought that I pissed off everyone at Bren because I was late and screwed up with the timing, but it seemed like no one really minded... it rolled off their sleeves... but still I feel ashamed. That was totally unprofessional in my part. But heck, what the hoo haa, I'm an absent-minded science-artist-a-masomething-or-other so slipping of thought with appointments is... well... may be a sporadic problem in my life....

So, we go into the professor's office, just the three of us... and I tried to start talking, fumble, fumble, fumble... I was going straight for the meat... but then the professor piped in and showed us some beautiful posters of landscapes found in the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). A few representatives visited to school to establish relationships... maybe future masters group projects and future employment of students.... Well, that's always a good gig. Who's hiring nowadays anyways? I didn't know the BLM actually owned sea rocks. Like those rocks that stick out of the ocean like along the Oregon coastline? I thought it was owned by the birds, because they certainly put their marks on them. Guano rocks I do call them.... So the birds and BLM own the rocks, I'll be!

And then the prof asked the "magic question" of "How are things going?" Which is just a wonderful diversion from the point... and then I just rattled off about MLF and the MLPA process and writing and Roadtrip Nation and AAAS Pacific Division and UCSB's STAGE and key features of my life from June to December and that was a lot of fun to discuss. He's the first academic person I told about the STAGE competition... and my participation in it.... So now that I told someone potentially on my committee... I feel a lot more obligated to participate... and do a VERY GOOD JOB!

I think one of the most interesting things we talked about was about the MEDIA'S representation of reality. And what is my role in the spectrum of multi-media storytelling? The basic issue is that media representation of the southern California Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) process in my opinion has been very fragmented, choppy, and overall disorganized... including sensationalizing the very WRONG and INSIGNIFICANT things. The case in point is at the last Blue Ribbon Task Force (BRTF) meeting... November 10, I think... there were major journalists and photographers from the southern California region (I even was able to speak to some of them!), and I discovered a day or two after the meeting that over 50% of the news articles used the hook of a pseudo-wanna-be-fist-fight quibble of two minor audience members (not major Regional Stakeholers) that lasted a couple of minutes around 11 am in the morning... and it seemed like they totally ignored the notion that there were 300 and more people sitting in the room for over 8 hours, peacefully participating and negotiating toward the end goal of an Integrated Preferred Alternative for marine reserves. It seemed like none of the news sources focused on the notion that after a year's worth of labors, the fisheries representatives walked out of the room NOT pissed off, no one seemed pissed off. And that all the fisheries reps and I-team staff and conservation reps and scientists meandered off to the bar afterwards and sat down and all schmoozed amongst each other with some alcohol to pacify their brains before they drove home. I thought the bar scene was epic. The journalists didn't pick up on that. I guess they don't see "THE LACK OF CONTROVERSY" or "PEACEFUL NEGOTIATION" as "REAL NEWS." No, they want to see fist fights and blood and guts and name-calling, mudslinging. My gosh, if they wanted to see conflict, the journalists should have been loyal, sticking around for the whole year, because they would have found incredibly rich conflict of values and ideologies inside each and every single stakeholder.... For example, fisheries groups having to grapple with the compromise of conservation with socioeconomics in a very major internal ways.... So, besides my dad wildfire ecology research, this MLPA situation has really made me come to realize the sickening state of media reporting. But the prof mentioned how some media sources do have credibility... The Economist, Scientific America, Discover, to name a few.... I said flat out that in the spectrum of multi-media storytelling, I can't be an ADHD journalist just filling up space on a paper and only committing to a project for two hours. I think having a long term perspective, such as my involvement in the MLPA process... is vital to representing a truth that is very difficult to capture in a 700-word slapped-together newspaper article.

So, I'm not sure whether all of this was necessary, the answering of the golden "How's it going?" question... was I beating around the bush? Or was it a necessary way to ease into getting to the point, versus going cold turkey to the meat. Anyhow, that's where it ended up. The Committee Issue. That's where I started to stumble again.... So, I am choosing a committee... and throughout the summer and this quarter I have received so much academic and stakeholder support for this MLPA documentary that I thought it's probably a really good idea to have a marine scientist on my committee. This prof is more biogeochemistry / remote sensing. And the second issue is, I came to realize that the people on my committee I need to be "100% open" with. At first the professor read this comment as this: "Your Ph.D. committee members can't be your 'friends.' It's a professional relationship and they can help ease you out into the real world." But that was not what I meant. What I meant was that since I am pursuing a Ph.D. in environmental media, I am generating narrative stories. One rule of science and scientific writing is that you do NOT express any overt emotions in the writing. But the fundamental drivers of narrative (and art in general) is emotions and visceral motivations. So, in order for me to function as a graduate student, I will need a committee who will allow me to put my EMOTIONS on the table, not just my logic. I will need committee members to acknowledge that I have this very sensitive, fragile ego that can easily get smashed, and that if it does get smashed or confined in any way that I will not be able to function and generate the work in order to achieve what I need to achieve for a Ph.D. So, I need committee members to be okay with that. And I need committee members to be supportive and constructively critical, not pessimistic and antagonistic. The professor acknowledged this notion right away, and mentioned it was well put: (1) for a committee, you need people who are the "best of expertise in certain fields," (2) but in addition, you need committee members to provide a supportive, emotionally stable environment that can promote mental growth and the creation of art.

PERFECT. GREAT. We are on the same page. Whew. It was such a fundamentally simple notion that can be the fundamental assumptions for a new informal contract of interaction, right there. Erase the bad. All the bad. The very bad past. I had to clarify this "bad past" with the professor. I stated that in the beginning our interactions were antagonistic, and I felt were like figurative sword fights [father]. And that this type of relationship actually made me depressed, instilled a great deal of fear, and stifled my creativity. I don't operate under these conditions. The prof acknowledged this as well, but in the beginnings I didn't have much product and he didn't know where I was heading, but now I have a lot of projects behind my back and he has a better sense of where I'm going. And our interactions had improved since this January of 2009.

So, ya, that is where we are at now. We had to end the meeting because the professor had to teach a seminar, and the graduate advisor had to go to another meeting. So... even though my initial goal was to eliminate a prof from my committee... I left feeling confused... softened... and realized that I needed to merely clarify my own psychological needs. Expertise + sensitivity. I'm a flipping female. I'm a softy. Yes, I'm very guilty. I know a lot of science, but my mind's heart is very very very vulnerable. Oh well. So the people on my committee have to know that. Maybe I should have given them a Disclaimer Sheet About Victoria. I think the profs need to do that to. So we can expose our quirks from the get go.

I left and had some anticlimactic moment. I went into the graduate advisor's office and came to realize that this massive entangled knot deep within my mind, my interface of logic and my emotional center... had been fundamentally nearly 100% dissolved... cleared... within a few seconds... maybe a minute. That this tangled knot of negative energy had been released... And now I have a segment of my mind that's freed up to do other things.... Coolio! The prof also suggested that if I needed a little more time to resolve a committee... don't worry about it.

The graduate advisor said that I handled the situation very well... and I felt kind of bad... I hope she was amused by all this quasi-beating-around-the-bush discussion.... The graduate advisor said to think about how "naughty cats get sprayed." Snuff out problems from the start. Don't let them dwell inside you, because then they rot and become overly massive mental tumors. I'll say. I told her that my grandfather died around the same time there was a quibble. I couldn't deal with it, and I took the experience overly personal. Now I know how it feels when life throw too many problems at you all at once, and your mind has no capacity to deal with it all together, and so many problems start to grow like tumors in your head, blocking your capacities to function better. Now I know a little more the life of my grandfather. Too many drastic problems thrown at him all at once. Thankfully the scale of my problems are minor compared to his. I miss you, Ray. It's all good.

I left the Bren parking lot and was surprised I did not receive a parking ticket. Yes, it was a good day. I went jogging in the sunset in Goleta, and I saw a supplemental image to The Mountain's Last Flower, equivalent to the end of one of Calvin and Hobbes books: instead of Calvin and Hobbes in a big hug... even though Heisen and Gonzo had all this antagonism and turmoil in the story, I saw them give each other a big hug. And they smiled and the caption said "Isn't it just all in our heads?" Truce!

Well, now I have one other major PESSIMISM in my head, which will be elucidated in a peacock-bowerbird story.... I started to think that a major part of my Ph.D. will be answering the question "WHY I DO NOT BELONG IN A CREATIVE WRITING DEPARTMENT."

336. A Sketch Essay on Inherited Versus Acquired Academic Families: A Delicate Relationship Between a Professor and His Daughter (Lamarck-Darwin)

I don't want to inherit an academic family (through my father, a scientist). I want to acquire it. I want to earn trust and respect. I need to sweat intellectual blood, re-arranging neurons in my head just to EARN my academic family. And then it will all have meaning.

Basically, I started a Question Reality Google Groups, which can be found at http://groups.google.com/group/questionreality in which I have made a somewhat religious effort to collect precious quotes from my college experiences within the last five years that I have failed to write down (bad me). Furthering the notion that my existence only has worth or merit given that it is searchable on the internet. *Sigh.* I wrote down the above quote (in big orange letters) and it ended up prompting this lengthy essay on the relationship between me and my father (both of us scientists). Quite cathartic. Amazing to say that I was able to write well simply because I had excessive sleep the night before... I slept from 5pm to 7am. 14 flippin' hours. Shows you how EXHAUSTED I was! Sleep-deprived. Etcetera. After Dr. Sweet's midterm (yesterday), I had come to realize that right now it is IMPORTANT TO WRITE and POST ON MY BLOG. Freeform structure. It is a huge burden right now to worry about formatting my writing for multiple different media sources. Like writing for the Daily Nexus (UCSB's undergrad newspaper). If I write something that ends up being optimal formatting for a media source around town, all the better. But I shouldn't constrain my mind to creating it's own structure. For example, this essay below, I should not worry about it's length or structure. The most important thing is that my mind just took my through a coherent logic structure that was good enough to place on the internet. Glory Halleluliah!

Essay Starts Here.

The above quote is in response to my problems for going to graduate school at UC Riverside. I was having huge psychological problems because around campus I was not regarded as "Victoria" the "scale girl" (which is my name at UCSB), but I was perceived as "Rich Minnich's daughter," or the "daughter of that famous fire ecologist." Which is cool in part, but very frustrating because I am attempting to mold and earn my own Intellectual Identity, along WITH my father, but at a healthy distance.

Things at UC Riverside became so absurdly bad that I was approached by scientists who shifted their adult voice into baby-cootsie-coo tone as their minds shifted into flashback mode, "Oh! I remember back when you were yay high (three feet from the ground) and you would run around the lawn outside the geology building, making and playing with paper airplanes with Sadler's kids." Excuse me, but HOW can I take my academic career so seriously when they know me at such a personal level that they probably even know MORE about me than I do myself when I existed as a naive kid?

UC Santa Barbara is an optimal place. When I first applied to the College of Creative Studies, I purposely removed any information in my application that my father was a fire ecologist and climate scientist at UC Riverside. Dr. Armand Kuris and the CCS committee permitted me to join CCS without knowing my deep historical roots in science. Hence, I earned my admission independent of affiliation with my father. Though, a month later, Armand called me into his office, and he said, "Victoria, why didn't you ever tell me that your father was a scientist?" I guess he found out through the internet, but I admitted to him that I wanted to be seen through his eyes independent of my father. I think he admired this notion, but he said that my academic record seemed very suspicious from the start (being involved in science fair projects at an early age and all), let alone to acquire an email account from ucsb by the name of "bioweb" (I should have received a patent or copyright for that name because in 2000 I was essentially the only person on google who affiliated with "bioweb" and three years later, three biotech companies named themselves "bioweb." Perhaps I could have gotten quite a bit of money from the invention of a single word!). Armand also had a student by the name of Dana Schulman who was so obsessed with octupii that her email account was "octopus" at umail.ucsb.edu. Talk about extreme biological identities. Armand further pointed out that most of his CCS biology students ended up having someone in the family affiliated with academia, whether a father or mother was a professor or a brother or sister was a graduate student.

Though, when it was time to apply to graduate school--more specifically the Bren, under Dr. Oran Young, I do admit that I informed Oran about my intentions and how they were very closely tied with my father's history of research in fire ecology and his role as a scientist in the greater arena of stakeholders in society. The primary factors that I told Oran is that (1) I lived with a father who knew something that would ultimately affect people's jobs, taxpayer's dollars, people's homes, and people's overall survival. He published articles in Science and various other respectable scientific journals. He knew this for FIFTEEN YEARS, and no one in society (journalists, policymakers) paid much heed to his work, for multiple reasons: (1) people were in denial of this knowledge (2) there was another ectoparasitic scientist who lived to counteract my dad's research and chronically hogged the journalists' and policymakers' time and energy (3) my father was very timid and isolated, he did not make much of an effort to voice out his concern (though he said the most important thing you need to do is WRITE not SQUACK) and (4) my dad was not affiliated with any credible journalists for quite a bit of time. There were multiple dimensions of communication gaps between science and society through the lens of my father and I saw him for fifteen years LIVE IN FRUSTRATION because no one was listening to him. It's a psychologically turmoiling thing, you know.

And then the October 2003 Fires hit. BAM. Then the October 2007 Fires hit. BAM BAM. People started to become desperate. A Shifting Baseline of Poor Smokey the Bear Management led to an EXTREME EVENT of too much fuel build up over the last hundred years burning off during extreme October Santa Ana Winds. When people are desperate and in a state of shock (loss of lives, loss of homes huge expenditures in taxpayer dollars), that is the only time they start to question their bad habits, existing traditions, and conventions that they once thought was the Truth: (1) Smokey the Bear fire suppression and Hollywood tanker shoes (2) listening to the other squacking ectoparasitic scientist camp who was promoting Smokey the Bear (hmmm, this scientist no longer seems to make sense anymore) (3) vicious cycles of repeat journalist reporting that had no sense of deeper time frames of environmental issues... etc etc etc.

Desperation and shock from the October 2003 Fires and October 2007 pulled the veil from the public's eyes. And so the desperate public and the desperate journalists found my father. Finally! And they hit him really hard. It is strange. From information deprivation to information overstimulation! My father was hammered by journalists so much that UC Riverside had to cut off his phone line and filter out calls so my dad wouldn't go nuts (talk about journalism being homogenized and spinning their wheels, every news source is in the race to get the scoop, and every news source is competing with the other news sources, so they have to quote other news sources and gather information from the same people just to keep up with the competition). My dad at that point needed an Agent, and UCR ended up playing the agent/manager role to filter out the insane bombardment of people who were trying to reach my father.

Then the second wave of problems come: from the media's disregard of my father's research to the media's DISTORTION of my father's research to whatever news sources multiple agendas. Hence the birth of INDUSTRIAL MEDIA ECOLOGY: tracking the formation of scientific stories (from the university knowledge factory) and how they are transmitted and distorted through society, the sources and sinks. How the knowledge is being used by various stakeholders.

It's almost as if the media comes in repeat waves an periods of deadened silence. One, day the media cares about my dad as if he were their dearest, intriguing next door neighbor and the next day they act like he doesn't even exist. He is a forgotten name in a lost pile of emails and phone calls. The Metabolism of Media is so ADHD / hyper / short term / instant gratification that it's almost like a dysfunctional hummingbird with a heart beat so fast that it's circulatory system was going to explode.

The media makes my dad as the center of the universe in the fall (severe fire season) and now ever since my father released his book on "California's Fading Wildflower Legacy" (an historical ecology book on shifts of the flora of California) the media will start to hit him hard in the spring, when all the residual spectacular wildflower blooms emerge in the deserts, hills, and around the coast. (I was in part sad when the Los Angeles Times started an Outdoors Section because all the barren places where my father and I and other scientists would enjoy in peace and solitude are now flocked with newspaper-educated cocoon tourists with needs of fleeting instant gratification--from snow bunnies to desert bunnies to beach bunnies--such that now our research sites have been an Environmental Disneyland. Such tragedy. Lack of education is bad. But too much education is bad too. Like I said, I like people. I hate humans.

I am wondering whether journalists operate on a Routine Cycle of Repeat Human Dramas, much like a news' stations' B roll. Like every single day of human existence has a REPEAT THEME, whetter it's hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, seasonally, annually, decadally. This recycling of human drama, tell me about it. So, technically, my father is attacked on a seasonal basis, in the fall and in the spring. Summer and winter season is when things are quiet--media wise--but there is always academic drama occurring on a daily basis. That sucks. Media and policy drama is just a few too many layers for a scientist to deal with.

So, that is why I promose my existence as an environmental media Ph.D. student, which I elaborated with Dr. Young. There are three missions of the university: (1) research, (2) teaching and (3) outreach. Most professors focus on research and teaching. Outreach carries out as far as being a judge for a local science fair. Uh, cool, but too local and small-scale. I propose that in order for the university to diminish its role as an Intellectual Disneyland Floating on the Ivory Towers, it needs to create roles of scientists involved in research and OUTREACH. I think it is very critical for a scientist to chronically pursue research projects, just to maintain intellectual sharpness and skepticism. Whereas journalists think they have credible information if they quoted a "credible, famous person." Journalists don't attempt to track down the source of the scientists' conclusions. They just assume the scientist is the "expert" and the scientist "knows what he is talking about."

Honestly, I don't need to collect data to show there are severe problems between communication and collaboration links in science and society. It's FLAMING OBVIOUS. Everyone can see this DISCREPANCY BETWEEN REALITY AND MEDIA REALITY, on a DAILY BASIS! There are problems at multiple scales (1) the assumptions of journalists and policymakers (2) how journalists and policymakers collect their data (3) the NUMBER of journalists and policy-makers, the number of MIDDLEMEN involved in tweaking and transmitting the information.

So? Voila. Here is cute little Victoria full of pure vision and purpose, determined to be that little cavegirl dancing around her troubled father to protect him and become all the things that her father desperately needs to become a functional scientist in the circus arena of public stakeholders of Planet Earth. So, over the years, besides acquiring the traditions and methods of scientists and knowledge that spans the environmental sciences (and hard sciences of human behavior), I have acquired multiple forms of storytelling skills, such that I can adopt any one story and any one message into 101 or a million-and-one different ways, such that it can be disseminated as truthfully and as optimally-emotionally-engagingly as possible such that it can be communicated and remembered by most audiences (which I have immersed and done research in) in a potentially most lasting impactive way. How should I call this? ADAPTIVE STORYTELLING? Adapting one story into a million possible INFORMATION PACKAGES such that it SUITS THE BASELINE OF KNOWLEDGE AND ATTENTION SPAN of multiple different audiences? Sweet! For example, 101 different representations of the rock crab, there is no right or wrong way to perceive a rock crab, correct?

If the university internalizes the Environmental Media role rather than relying on National Geographic and CNN to do the job, it minimizes several problems, mostly the distortion of scientific information from several sources of middlemen with various different (profiteering) agendas.

So, overall, I live in a situation of catch 22. The evolution of my thought processes and my role in the university has largely been derived from the relationship with my father, but at the same time, when I am in the university in pursuit of a Ph.D. I want--and NEED--my own Individual Intellectual Identity, which had been greatly honored in my experience at the College of Creative Studies, and has been honored thus far at Bren.

I remember having a conversation with Becca in concern of these issues (Becca is a very intelligent, creative graduate student working under Drs. Steve Gaines and Bob Warner). I try to keep this information about "my father is a professor" very low key. I only tell my close friends (or people who I attempt to become close friends with). I have seen other students "abuse" this knowledge to "inherit" their contacts in the university rather than "acquire" them. I know as a Professor's Daughter, born and raised, playing on the university campus in Riverside, California, I have a historical (heritage) advantage in concern of knowing the ins-and-outs and formalities (the OVERALL ABSURDITY OF BUREAUCRACY) of this academic niche space in society. A love-hate relationship, indeed!

But, with my conversation with Dr. Oran Young, it was inevitable for me to discuss my relationship with my father over the years, because it is truly the driving force that compells me to acquire the title of "environmental media Ph.D. student before the "true discipline" of environmental media actually comes to EXIST at UC Santa Barbara. There are only three environmental media Ph.D. students at Bren, and they are all under Oran (formally), though I have found out how other Ph.D. students have added a media component to their research.

So, as a scientist, now taking a step back from my years of scientific practice and am now accounting for the notion that "science is done by humans," (which has led to the revelation of the intersubjectivity--not objectivity of science, scientific practice is driven by value systems, a whole can of worms, etcetera). I am now essentially on the same page as my advisor, Dr. Young, who investigates the human dimensions of environmental change and the institutional dimensions (or is it "institutional framing") of scientific practice. I must now account for the quirks and perks of human behavior, the underlying PSYCHOLOGY and SOCIOLOGY of scientific practice and the decision-making of the diverse stakeholders of Planet Earth.

Thanks to Dr. Young and Dr. Melack, I can assume a role as "scientist in an artist's body," much like Dr. Milton Love (my most inspiring fisheries biologist with a tattoo of a wrangler and rock fish on his arm, VERY real marine biologist, I do say) exists as a "scientist in a humorist's body" without any shame. To live my dualist personality of being systematically creative, expressed in pieces of art and pieces of legitimate science.

All in the name of being my father's Right Hand. Err. Much needed Extra Left Hand. So we can exist ambisinistrously!

There are multiple dimensions of research that fill in the gaps between my knowledge as a scientist and Oran's research:

(1). Institution-Ecosystem Mismatching (pardon my untechnical language) Gaps and Overlaps of institutions (laws) and organizations in wildland fire management of southern and Baja California (spatial and temporal lag times in science-policy-media, gaps are institutions that need to be connected, and overlaps are institutions that overlap in law-policy, that are either conflicting and contradictory or synergizing (which is non-problematic). The goal is to match Institutions and Organizational Operations/Management with understanding Ecosystem Processes (Julie Ekstrom's research, gxd bless her soul, though I'm not religious!).

(2). The Psychology of Scientific Practice and Cognition of Stakeholders of a common resource/environment at small-and large-scale systems. What do people know and not know about a resource/system? How did they come to know and come to such conclusions? Why do people do what they do? What are their underlying motives and purposes? How do people collect data and information about their environment? Film can be a tool for mapping spatial cognition of a stakeholder's environment. This is the core essence of Ecopistemologizing and EvPsychinMyDailyLife. This is where I see the interesting flicks coming from. I have already established some interesting new techniques in interviewing people, which involves ART as a "cognitive mapping" tool. For example, I had each stakeholder to say words that related to the resource in 60 seconds. Another tool is to give the stakeholder an opportunity to DRAW the resource from MEMORY. Cognitive mapping-based spatial-artistic interviews of the resource. VISUALIZED INTERVIEWS.

(3). Industrial Ecology and Industrial Media Ecology. Tracking the sources and sinks of a resource in the human system (e.g. like I did with the rock crab). A little bit of old news here, I call it more so Ecological Structure and Process Knowledge. Industrial Media Ecology assumes the the University is a Megacorporate--Or MegaPublicaInstitutional Factory of Knowledge. First, you must assemble the protocol as how scientists generate knowledge (e.g. the "sacred" scientific method that no one seems to be able to pin point and track down the exact clarity of the method, or it's organic roots of the method, what is the underlying psychology of scientific practice, if you remove any form of institutionalization of scientific practice). Then you track how the science is being published and/or produced. And then you start to track the "mass-energy flows" of scientific information being disseminated into society... (the prism of Dr. Nancy Baron's slideshow): (1) policy-makers (2) non-profit groups (3) journalists (4) general public. The multiple sinks of scientific information, and then you start to analyze how this scientific information is being tweaked and distorted given the number of "middlemen" in the process, and then how the information is being used. And whether any changes of behavior occur, from the individual to mass-scale level and whether at the mass-scale level was it bottom-up or top-down change? I essentially have a project here with my father's research. I know the science, and now I have to systematically track the literature emerged from my father's research in the realm of business, government, and journalism.

I guess between me and my dad, we both think very similarly in terms of scale-based issues. We are both left-handed, go figure. He focuses on the plants and the physical parameters, and I have come to shift focus more so on the psychological parameters and human dimensions of environmental change. I have come to view humans as very peculiar and fascinating, multi-dimensional creatures, from a biologist’s (and evolutionary psychological) point of view. If you have those two factors covered—the natural sciences and a naturalist’s view of the social sciences, you've got a dynamic duo covering nearly all elements of the spectrum!

As you can tell, I love my dad. If it weren't for him, I wouldn't be where I am today. I just think it's important that I have a healthy academic/bureaucratic distance from him such that I can establish my own credentials in my own terms. It will force me to create and earn my own academic family, in addition to inheriting his.

KEY WORDS: inherited versus acquired wealth, industrial media ecology, university factory of knowledge, academic family, scientific distortion, media metabolism, media reality, adaptive storytelling, adaptive management, individual intellectual identity, absurdity of bureaucracy, psychology and sociology of scientific practice (the social contruction of reality), intitutional-ecological mismatch, gaps and overlaps analysis, psychology of collecting, visualized-cognitive interviews, university factory of knowledge, INDUSTRIAL MEDIA ECOLOGY AT UCSB: DR. ROLAND GEYER AND POST DOC BRANDON I MET AT BREN SOCIAL.

249. "Media Reality, People's Reality" Poem / Song Initial Response to American Idol, Phoenix, Arizona

Below is a rough draft sketch of initial thoughts that need to be further elaborated.

Media Reality::People's Reality
(poem/song by Victoria "Stokastika")

How can I resume to assume
When there's hardly a thing, to hold on to?
How can I come to trust you
When there's no longer incentive to pursue?

Media Reality::People's Reality
Incumbency. Discrepancy.
Between what They Feed
And what We Need
Between what We Know
And what They Need Us--
To Believe....

Bombard! Repeat!
Till Truth Comes
From Your Lying!
Bombard! Repeat!
Till Truth Comes
From Your Lying!

I think it is insulting to look at myself in the mirror, and with my multiple encounters with Hollywood the last year and a half--to think that I have worked so hard in life, to think that I have developed strength in my mind--only to be rejected by these "agents" and "producers" who value "image" over "conduct," who value "sparkly super human tricks" over profound content and emotional depth of the performance! Talk about the root of, and the perpetration of surface-value discrimination and stereotyping!!!

To think that my parents lied to me when I was a little kid--they lied to me saying that if I worked hard, then I will get what I deserve, I will be rewarded, and I will go far. Well, the more and more I am out in the real world, I have come to realize that they lied flat-out.

So now, the pure, idealist values of my mind are in conflict, in a multi-layer bind of the spectrum of conflictory values of society.

All the statistics in the university says that there is a discrepancy between what the public wants and needs (in terms of mental consumption) versus what the multi-media producers force-feed and drown the public in.

It's one thing to collect all the statistics in the world.

It's another thing to directly encounter and experience it--directly--and be rejected--in your face--and to allow this echo of rejection vibrate within every neuron and bone and tissue layer within your body. The frustration and anger and anxiety builds up until there is a point you just yell out--and who knows where you will be when that moment comes (thankfully I was in the middle of the desert between Arizona and California).

A rejection based on image and style over conduct and content has essentially shattered twenty years of my education. Hence, I go back to my Ph.D. question, entitled: "What's the point?"

What values are these?
The summation of human brains in society experiencing a multi-layered bind of denial and confusion and chaos because there is no value system and there is this illusion of some reward system?

[Okay, that was the end of my rough draft. I have a LOT more to say about this topic, but we'll save that for LATER! I created the above main theme of the song in the car after a Toastmaster's meeting in which Greg (a police detective) discussed "The Hollywood Factor" in the public's perception of police.]