This is the smallest unit of plastic. Currently it is not biodegradable.
What are nurdles?
100
Not sure if the author was serious or high at the time, this reading states "Culture at any given moment is the 'meme pool' in which we all swim".
(I heard you like memes so I put a meme in this answer about a meme so you can read about memes with a meme)
What is The Botany of Desire (by Michael Pollan)?
100
This Greek god is characterized by order, control of nature, and civilization as hierarchical.
Who is Apollo?
100
Pollan travels to this city in Holland to learn about the recent history of marijuana in America.
What is Amsterdam?
100
Ireland's potato famine was due to over-reliance on a specific strain of potato known as "the lumper." This is an example of this agricultural practice of relying on a single crop.
What is monoculture?
200
The "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" is located in this large ecosystem consisting of a system of currents.
What is the North Pacific Gyre?
200
This reading discussed the inability for nurdles to completely break down.
What is "Polymers are Forever" (The World Without Us by Alan Weisman)?
200
Halflife is described as this...
What is the amount of time it takes for half the material or compound to break down?
200
This chemical compound was isolated in the mid-1960s by Raphael Mechoulam as responsible for the psychoactive effects of marijuana.
What is THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol or The High Causer)?
200
The NewLeaf potato contained a gene borrowed from this strain of bacterium found in the soil.
What is Bt (bacillus thuringiensis)?
300
The term for biotoxins leaking into the environment or water table.
What is Leachate?
300
Chernobyl, nuclear fallout, and power plants were discussed in this reading.
What is "Hot Legacy" (The World Without Us by Alan Weisman)?
300
These are the ways in which marijuana is Apollonian.
What is the amount of control necessary to breed and control this illegal subsistence?
300
This marijuana hybrid plant consisted of the breeding of a plant from the mountains of central Asia and an equatorial species.
What is Indica x Sativa?
300
Pollan states John Chapman ("Johnny Appleseed") is a "faintly Christianized version of some pagan wood god" (36). From Pollan's perspective he was the American version of this Greek god.
Who is Dionysus?
400
This compound has been identified as contributing to ozone depletion and is associated with refrigerators and aerosal.
What are CFCs?
400
The dry tomb method was suggested as a solution for leachate in this reading.
What is Garbage Land by Elizabeth Royte.
400
Pollan discusses changes in cultural views towards a variety of things. These are some of those things.
What are views towards John Chapman (Dionysus/Apollo), marijuana (medicine/"demon plant"), and apples (ethical/unethical)?
400
In biology this is a process where the change of a biological object is triggered by a change in a related object. Consider interspecies warfare and the creation of a "super pest".
What is coevolution?
400
Pollan identifies this procedure (agricultural practice) for cloning trees and limiting their heterozygosity.
What is grafting?
500
The botanical term for variability. Apples and humans share this genetic variability.
What is heterozygosity?
500
This reading states that as a society, we are estranged from our estrangement to nature.
What is "Contact and the Solid Earth" by Manes (from Wild Earth)?
500
This is the leaking landfill for nuclear weapons.
What is WIPP (Waste Insolation Pilot Plant)?
500
Pollan links intoxication and Nietsche's the "art and power of forgetting" in describing this mental state of complete and utter absorption. It can be linked to to "the Eastern tradition [of] One Big Nothing".
What is transcendence?
500
These are some of the disadvantages of monocultures.
What is a need to rely on fertilizers and other chemical substances and increased fragility of crops?