Entry #6: Blogging?

Blogging has been quite an experience for me.

I have never thought about blogging before this English 101 class.

When we were assigned blog postings as apart of our grade, I was intimidated.

"What is a blog?" "What is the significance of a blog?" "What am I supposed to even blog about?"

These were some of the questions that passed through my head as I sat with my classmates.

Blogging, for me, was not very fun. I am not computer smart and I also don't have much to say in the personal posts we were also assigned to write. I was excited after I finally figured out how to attach a picture within' my blog!

I did try to take the blogging assignments seriously. It was harder for me to create the personal assigned blog entries; I was having a hard time connecting my thoughts to entertain my audience. My thoughts do not flow well onto paper. I most likely have learned some from blogging in this class but nothing at all that pops up. Blogging was useful and valuable as a writing assignment because it allowed me to overview what we have previously learned.

Overall it was a successful process to blog about the class assignments and to teach us how to create a specific atmosphere for our audience.

After writing this blog post, I realize I did not not learn anything; I learned how to create an atmosphere and I learned how to entertain my audience in a more sufficient way!

What we Consume

What do we consume?

That question has been my main thought now for about a week. My family loves to eat and we are always cooking. To save money we buy food that is cheap, or on sale. After learning more abut pink slime and what foods it is packaged in concerns me greatly.

I want the best for my family and for myself.

Us buying and consuming these products is not the best for us. 

What if we get sick?

What if your family gets sick from this packaged meat and we are the only reason the industry knows are the E-coli break through?

How can we help families and keep each other healthy if we don't know what we are consuming? 

Know what you are buying and where it comes from. That is the first step to helping ourselves and our families; even helping those we do not know.'

I have done a little research and have found two websites (eatwild.com and LocalHarvest.org).

They have information on where to buy healthier food for you and your family. 

I plan on making a change, do you?

STAY HEALTHY AND SPREAD THE WORD!

Entry #5: Pink Slime

 http://youtu.be/wshlnRWnf30 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/15/pink-slime-school-lunch-opt-out_n_1347784.html

Pink Slime?

Before seeing this video (the first link above) and reading The Huffington Post article (the second link above), I have never heard of pink slime before.

Pink Slime is the unwanted parts of the cow/animal, beaten to separate the meat from the fat, boiled, and ten soaked in ammonia and water to kill E-coli and salmonella that may not have been released during the beating process.

YUM! Doesn't that sound delicious to consume? NO! Many food restaurants buy pink slime product because it is cheaper and what the people don't know won't hurt them. 

That statement is false, of course; young children and adults have died from eat a "pink slime" burger. Our local restaurants do not advertise what exactly they're feeding us, we automatically assume it is healthy for us to consume.

We, most times (as the customer), want food that is quick, easy, and cheap.

Have you ever noticed that McDonald/s sells fish sandwiches, but they do not tell us what kind of fish they are advertising? Is it Cod, Bass, Crappie? Or are they all mixed together to form this "delicious" patty? 

What are we consuming??

We need o be more attentive to where our food is coming from. The chef in the pink slime video above did a great job grabbing the attention of his audience, considering most were parents who, of course, want their kids safe and healthy. This presentation on pink slime isn't only for adults; the kids were amused and grossed out themselves when learning about the pink slime and what they're eating. Stay healthy and do your research! It will be worth it.

Help?

 

My father, Chris, is one of the most hardworking men most will meet. He is very generous, kind, and always one hundred percent honest. In his pare time he fixes up old classical cars. It was his dream when he was younger and has worked very hard to pursue it. He was recently in a car crash in his favorite black and chrome 48' Oldsmobile. The car is totaled and may cost up to  $80,000 to fix. The accident was not his fault yet it seems like he is the one paying for everything.

I want to ask my audience; Have you ever been in a situation similar to this?

Do you have any helpful advice or ideas?

My mother and I are planning to have a bake sale to help with the costs and help raise money for him (he doesn't know of that yet).   

Input would be very helpful!

The picture below is of him and his 48' Oldsmobile at the 2012 DUB Show before the crash.

Entry #4: Food, Inc.

Before watching Food, Inc I would occasionally think about the fast food meat I would consume.

I am a picky eater when it comes to meat, probably like most other people my age.

Now that I have seen Food, Inc. I am thinking of a lot more than just fast food meats.

I learned that even the meat in the grocery store is something I should be looking into and thinking about. Seeing how some "farmers" treat their cattle was shocking to me! 

Their living conditions do not look inhabitable, or healthy.

In this movie they showed how they kill the animals and treat them during the process of raising them. In my opinion, they were very cruel to all of the animals.

Watching them in their daily techniques of killing all of these animals looked unsanitary. I learned that one package of meat in the grocery store contains up to hundreds of different cows, not just the one cow I was thinking of. Now if one of the many cows in that one package has a disease that can kill us, it is not only in one package but inside all of them.
I am shocked about the amount of greed displayed in some American businesses.
I feel as though we are so caught up in the thought of supply and demand that we will feed our customers anything as long as it is cheap and can come in through large amounts at a time.
I do not like the fact so much of our everyday food is engineered. We are in the mindset that our food is healthy and grown fresh on the farm when in reality it is made in what is a factory.
The words "factory" and "engineering" should not be involved in our food world.
All of the bacteria in our food is absolutely disgusting! I don't believe we should be eating meat from sick and drug ridden animals or eating meat that has been soaked in ammonia.
We should care about what we eat and where the food we are eating comes from but where are we to get the truth when the packages assume "farm fresh".
Where do we find good and healthy food to eat?

Forever Family

My Grandpa Barry passed away January 03rd, 2013.

He was and always be my best friend. We could always be silly together and eat everything and anything that was placed in front of us.

He was my other half, hard working and always sarcastic; even in the worst situations.

He is a Veteran with a huge heart. Him and my Grandmother have been together for 32 years, that is a loooong time! & that is true love, through thick and thing. Family is forever.

He was a gardener and with so much love to give to people, he had a lot left over to give to his plants and his puppy. My grandfather was the type to call you all day everyday just to say "HI!" 

He is who I think of when times get rough, my silly grandfather who always knows how to brighten my spirit. Never out of our hearts, just out of sight.

I love my Grandpa Barry <3

NEVER FORGOTTEN.

^ Smile for the Camera! ^

Entry #3: Is this what technology will do to us in the future?

I have never seen the movie WALL-E, funny to me that it came up in a blog posting because I was just talking about it with a classmate about a week ago.

My reaction to this is almost shocking. I continuously become curious about the way our future will look like if technology still remains the number one thing in our life. Sitting around all day and doing nothing on some days is already hard enough. To be doing that all day every day would be horrible for me. I am the type that likes to be in control of my body as much as possible.

To be overweight and not able to pick myself up after I fall would be like a nightmare for me.

(I literally do have nightmares where I have no control of my body.)

The one thing that really sticks with me is when WALL-E distracts the woman from her virtual phone call and when she looks around for the first time it seems as if she has been so caught up in her virtual life that she forgot about her surroundings. I feel as thought that will happen to many people if we aren't too careful of what we surround ourselves with. I received this assumption by the fact that she looked surprised by her surroundings when she actually had a moment to analyze them.

This film is relevant in ways to our gamers who do actually sit for hours or days at a time in their virtual world. Eating some and zoning back in and when they finally look up again they think, "When did that get molded?"

(Not all gamers, just my silly imagination.)

I do believe that most of our society is too focused on technologies that we may end up like this in our future.