Outdoor Fundementals Everything you need to know to stay safe

I really appreciated the depth of knowledge provided by Professor Elizabeth K. Andre for her course - Outdoor Fundamentals: Everything You Need to Know to Stay Safe. She covers knots, clothing, packing, food preparation, weather, first aid with wisdom gained from personal experience. It also doesn't hurt that she is a former U of Minnesota graduate.

Her weather related tip: A low pressure system usually produces rain but there is a difference between warm fronts and and cold fronts. A warm front may bring gentle rain for a long time. A cold front in the summer can often produce strong short thunderstorms.

She provides great tips on minimizing injuries from cooking. To minimize the risk of scalding with boiling water, do not place your legs under the cooking stove  Instead, stand to the side if the stove is on a picnic table or work with the stove on the ground.

Her tips on food selection, personal hygiene, and clothing are helpful. Keeping dry and clean is very important. Wear layers and choose clothing that dries quickly. Consider that the caloric consumption will be higher on the trail because of the energy expenditure. With shared food, pour it into people's hands rather than allowing people to grab the food out of the bag.

Be careful about an aspirational decision. Are you making it because you want to have the experience or because it is a thoughtful one that takes into account the circumstances including the weather? I remember being caught in a rainstorm in a row boat because we were having too much fun fishing. We ignored the gathering storm clouds and got drenched before we landed on shore.

Her suggestions on risk assessment apply both to outdoor situations and in daily life. Decisions are best made when rested and with sufficient food and water. Decide big decisions by consensus rather than by a single group leader. The additional perspectives will serve as a check on the ideas of one person. 

Outdoor fundamentals - 2 minutes

Customs of the World - Using Cultural Intelligence to Adapt, Wherever You Are

I really enjoyed Professor David Livermore's course - Customs of the World: Using Cultural Intelligence to Adapt, Wherever You Are. Being curious about another culture or another human being is much more interesting than working from a rigid stereotype from limited knowledge.

He advocates an approach of intelligent stereotyping instead of negative stereotyping. This involves learning as much as you can about a different culture before you begin interacting with individuals from that culture.  You can use this knowledge as a working hypothesis to better negotiate the nuances of a culture. Remember that these are not hard rules but starting points as there are variations within cultures and be ready to make adjustments and learn the culturally appropriate ways to ask for help if you don't understand.

Learning how a culture typically treats time is very important. Some cultures value the time being spent in relationship with a person more than being punctual for a future engagement. Other cultures expect people to anticipate problems they may encounter and expect individuals to be punctual. In a relationship culture this makes scheduling meetings or even arranging a time to play golf problematic. Another author's book describes an express bus in India that stopped and allowed people to get out and join in with wedding festivities on the way out of town. The ride took longer than anticipated but people had a good time enjoying the company of other people.

Professor Livermore lists ten contrasting cultural characteristics.

1. Risk - low vs. high uncertainty avoidance
2. Achievement - individual vs. group
3. Lifestyle - being vs. doing
4. Rules - universalist vs. particularist
5. Identity - individualist vs. collectivist
6. Authority - low vs. high power distance
7. Time - punctuality vs. relationships
8. Communication - direct vs. indirect
9. Expressiveness - neutral vs. affective
10. Social Norms - tight vs. loose

Communicating in an indirect culture is often very difficult. The person speaking assumes you have contextual knowledge. This is often more common in areas that are isolated and have little contact with outsiders. Individuals often don't need to offer explicit directions because there is an assumption that you have a basic familiarity with the territory and a few landmarks will be sufficient to guide you. 

The Professor also roughly organizes cultures into groups. He notes that this list is not exhaustive and may lump some very different cultural groups together. He describes how each cultural group generally fits in with the ten cultural characteristics. 

• Anglo
• Nordic
• Germanic
• Eastern Europe
• Latin Europe
• Latin American
• Confucian Asian
• South Asian
• Sub-Saharan African
• Arab

The information from these lectures will be useful as I interact with staff and students around the world on health and safety concerns. 

Turning Points in Modern History - Great Courses

The Great Courses offering of Turning Points in Modern History by Professor Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, Ph.D. covers historical events from the 1433 voyages of Chinese Admiral Zheng He up to the development of Facebook and the internet in the 2000's. The Chinese chose to pull back from exploration allowing the Europeans to begin the Columbian Exchange with its negative consequences for the people who had arrived earlier in the Americas.

The course is not centered on the American perspective. I appreciated learning about the dawn of the women's movement that started first in New Zealand and gradually spread around the world. The lessons from the temperance movement about organizing were used to move forward women's right to vote. The abolition of Slavery started in the UK and then spread to the Americas.

The first modern war between the Japanese and the Russians was resolved by a peace treaty brokered by Teddy Roosevelt. Japan learned the wrong lessons from that war and attempted to apply it at the start of World War II. 

The professor contrasts peaceful accidents of history such as the fall of the Berlin Wall with the violent crushing of the Chinese student protests around the same time. Do leaders have the will to kill their own people? The leaders of the Soviet coup attempt against Gorbachev did not. The Chinese leaders did.

Summary of Turning points - 2 min. 

HG Wells and table top war games - 41 seconds

Nuke the moon - 30 seconds

Customs of the world: Using Cultural Intelligence to Adapt, Wherevever You are

I enjoyed the lectures in Professor David Livermore's Customs of the World: Using Cultural Intelligence to Adapt, Wherever You Are. I don't do the extensive world traveling that the instructor does, but I do encounter people from all over the world as part of my job. Getting a basic understanding of the cultural archetypes provides a good starting point for attempting to understand how to relate to other people.

The first part of the course describes cultural dichotomies such as universal vs particular. In a universal culture treating everyone the same is valued over making exceptions for individual circumstances.  As an example a public school may have specific guidelines for a student who will qualify for assistance with a learning disability following the universal guideline. A private school may have more latitude to respond to the particular needs of a student.  Cultures will also differ on the value they place on being prompt and how much forgiveness they will have for being late.

In the second part of the course he examines some of the major large cultural groups and how they fit on all the dichotomy scales.  Some groups are closely related including the Nordic and Germanic cultures. Middle Asia incorporating Russia, the Baltic countries and Mongolia is a more diverse grouping with individuals at least historically adapted to a nomadic cultural lifestyle. He recommends doing extensive research prior to traveling to another country and using the knowledge of cultural norms as a starting point but not a strict guideline as for interacting with people from other countries.

Introduction the Cultural Intelligence - 2 min. 

National Geographic Guide to Birding Great Courses

I've just got into birding this year and found National Geographic's The Guide to Birding in North America from the Great Courses to be very helpful. The course leader, James Currie covers the basics of bird identification with physical description and auditory cues. He also provides specifications for binoculars and other birding gear.

He describes each grouping of birds and how to differentiate them. There is also a section on extinct and endangered birds.

A nice complement to the course is the National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America, 7th Edition. The sixth edition is also available at considerable discount. The full color line drawings are helpful with verbal descriptions of the bird calls.

National Geographic Guide to Birding in North America - 31 minutes 

The National Geographic Guide to Landscape and Wildlife Photography - Great Courses

The National Geographic Guide to Landscape and Wildlife Photography by Tim Laman and Michael Melford gives tips specific to each type of photography.

I was impressed at the efforts required for getting wildlife photos. Researchers will sit in blinds for long periods of time. They will install cameras in nests. They will climb up hundreds of feet into trees and wait days to get the perfect photo.

Landscape photography has more to do with location, lighting, and time of day. You need to be comfortable getting up early in the morning before sunrise to capture the special light when the sun is low in the horizon and the shadows are long.

Preview of The National Geographic Guide to Landscape and Wildlife Photography - 2 min. 

Landscape Photography by Michael Melford - 46 minutes

Evolutionary Psychology part II: The Science of Human Nature

This part of the Modern Scholar lecture serie The Modern Scholar: Evolutionary Psychology, Part II: The Science of Human Natures on focuses on group interactions. How do friends and foes interact. Warning some of the conclusions in this lecture are disquieting.

The lecturer makes a compelling argument that the cohesion and sense of group identity with a larger purpose that religion offers people makes them a much more effective in fighting and surviving wars than individuals with no religious background.

Identity and willingness to sacrifice for a group can also lead to toxic altruism in the form of extremist groups or terrorism.

Understanding warfare an evolutionary approach - 50 minutes