The Great Gatsby

Food Inc

The documentary Food Inc was very interesting. It put a whole new look on the industries that make up our nutritional status. It was an eye opener, I could relate to and disagreed with some of the acquisations made toward the beef industry. The showing of this video was perfect timing for the comments that I had in class, just a few days after we watched the movie Food Inc in class a video of the Beef Industry's response to the video was aired. We are in the process of watching it in class, but it is getting close to the end of the year and is very hectic!! I watched it on my own to scope out what the main points were. I really liked the way the response was set up. At the start it is rather boring to listen to the introduction, but after it gets into the main points it is interesting. It shows clips of the movie and then flips back to the panel of people representing the different areas of the beef industry and there reactions to it. In addition they pointed out more neutral points of the video. They started with one of the more famous pictures from the video, the one with the business men walking in there suits and breifcases to the factory. Our class talked about this shot quite a bit, it brought up many different interesting aspects. Overall this video taught me many things, not only with the different industries and the things that go into our food, but with how if you believe in something there is something out there that your can use to stand up against it. Luckily this retaliation video came out at the perfect time. But, in the end this has been a positive learning experience for me.

Food Inc

The movie Food Inc. was an interesting movie I think it had a lot of many good facts involving the food that is being produced and distributed throughout the United States, but I did not agree with a few of the facts that were used to degrade the beef industry.
In chapter one they brought up workers rights, which is a major issue our country; the workers that are often hired by the major companies don’t have any rights because more than not are illegal migrants. It is cheaper for the companies to hire illegal workers, as they need them, than for them to have legal workers on staff full time, which would include them having to provide benefits.

Chapter two was focused on the mass amount of corn in almost everything that we eat, which is crazy to think that 90% of our food has corn in it. A point was brought up pertaining to the knowledge of consumers and the amount of corn in everything, do the producers want the consumers to know, why don’t more people know. This is an interesting point, it doesn’t matter to the producers if the consumers know, the consumers aren’t buying the corn specifically from them, the companies and corporations are buying it from them and then selling it. I personally think that if the consumers would pay more attention to the world around them they would have to think about where all the corn was. In the summer time there is corn in a field wherever you look all over the world, why is it such a surprise to the consumers that there is corn in our food. The consumers could easily get on the internet and research corn and realize how much of it is in our food.
Chapter three brought up a very touchy issue involving the beef industry as a result of Kevin Kowlacyk’s death from diseased meat. The death of a young boy is a very sad thing to hear about as a result of the lack of responsibility from the USDA taking control. Once again in this chapter thProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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went back to corn and how too much corn is being fed to the cattle and that the right way to feed cattle is only grass. They say that our meat would be so much better if the cattle were grown on grass, it would be more organic meat. But, just because they are grown on grass doesn’t mean it’s organic. There is a time period of many years it takes for grass to technically be organic after being fertilized with manhandled fertilizer. In addition there is not enough grass to handle the large amounts of cattle that our consumers are demanding. There is a period of time when the grass has to recover and revitalize itself. In addition all of the grass that has the possibilities of feeding the cattle is being destroyed and turned into housing developments. Finally in different parts of the United States cattle cannot survive solely on grass through the winter.
Chapter four brought up the serious point of fast food and how cheap it is in comparison to healthy food. Fast food is cheaper due to the mass production of it, there is so much supply and demand for it that they can sell it cheaper to the consumers and still make a lot of money.
In Chapter five Eduardo Pena points out the fact that, “ We want to pay the cheapest price for our food. We don’t understand that it comes at a price.” I agree with him there are so many risks in the future for paying the cheap price now. The fattening unhealthy substances that are in the cheap food cause so many health risks and even lead to death from them for our future.
Chapter six brought up the interesting point of bigger companies owning the smaller companies, but still using their name in the selling process. They do this so they still keep the values and innocence of the smaller companies in their selling process.

This documentary has opened my eyes, but yet still has me in a little bit of disbelief. For the part of the documentary that I was knowledgeable at, the beef industry, there were parts that were inaccurate and false, which makes it hard for me to take the other information as fact and not doubt it. So taking that into consideration it has made me think about what I eat more, I have caught myself eating food and think about what is in it, but I haven’t stopped eating any specific food due to the documentary. Finally, to change things people can buy from companies that have good morals, buy from farmers markets, and eat out less.

Vlog #1

Digital Nations Blog

Relationships, the ongoing battle, which is larger over the Internet and social networking involving, parents than actual love relationships. The Internet battle of relationships mainly involves the “commenting war”. Commenting has brought up so many conflicts. There are so many people out there on the Internet that don’t take commenting serious. These people comment just to start a ruckus and get more people to look at whatever they are commenting on. Some people’s only purpose of commenting is to draw attention to the post, which is a good philosophy if the comments that draw the attention are positive. But if they are negative comments they can lead to worse things with bigger consequences. For example, one of the videos I watched actually told a story about commenting on Myspace. These girls posted negative comments just to start a fight. There was absolutely no reason for the rude comments, but in the end it actually lead to a physical fight at there school. After the fight and everything was out, seven girls were suspended for the fight. It is interesting what people will say if they are anonymous and there name is not right next to there comment. Some people turn into a total different person if their name is not out there. Some people care what is next to their name on the intranet and some people don’t. In this case these girls didn’t care, they were just doing it to start a fight.

In addition to commenting, the growing password conflict is a growing trend that mothers want their kids’ personal passwords to get onto their Facebook accounts. There were a lot of mothers that said they would just get on there if it was an emergency, but who isn’t tempted by something that could open them up to something so large? My personal feelings about this are that it all comes back to the original parenting. It is how the parents raised their kids and how much honesty and trust they built into their relationships with their kids. I think that parents should trust their kid to do what they think is right. There is a point in time when parent have to let their kids go and live there own life under their own personal control. Facebook is the beginning, letting the kids have a little freedom of judgment and grow to feel comfortable with control. This might actually help kids adjust sooner once they are out on their own.

Moving on to the correct main point of this blog, I am supposed to tell you about three other presentations given by my fellow classmates.

First I thought Reece and Chris's War Tech Presentation was very interesting. They explained how the military has a recruitment center in Pennsylvania that had 60 PCs and 19 XBox's and 3 simulators that were all free for the use of kids 13 years old and older. This is a place for kids to go and play war like video games and even be involved with simulators. This is a place for kids to learn about war and have the ability to ask any questions from recruiters at any time. This was very interesting to hear about this facility and hear about the conflicts that parents have with this facility. Second was the Virtual World by Willie, Cody, and Kinsey, was interesting to hear about all the different virtual worlds that any one person could be involved in. Kinsey specifically talked about second life and how you could live a whole different virtual life online. It gives people a second opportunity to live a life as a different person with a different personality. Willie and Cody finalized there presentation with the conflict of violent video games. This brought up a conflict in our class of how these video games affect kids in the long run. My personal opinion is that these video games actually teach you a lesson of what you don't actually do in real life on the streets. Finally, Learning by Cassie and Shane, this topic talked about how teachers have to start keeping up with the technology to be on top of the teaching "wave". Video games are a big way of teaching in this day and are in a way always at the top of the "wave" . It has come down to the fact that teachers have to compete with technology/video games to have the best teaching style. Overall this Digital Nation section was a very interesting section and it really opened my eyes to see even more things that technology has an affect on.

Vlog #4

VLOG 3