Food

We all eat at least three times a day. We can’t survive without it. And a lot of our free time is spent thinking about what our next meal is going to be…or is that just me? As high school students we don’t often stop to think what the healthiest choice is. Often times, we just grab whatever is in the pantry, such as a Pop-Tart or granola bar, on the way out the door before we go to school or practice. But when we stop to think about it, what really is the healthiest choice? Personally, when I think of a healthy meal I think of foods like yogurt, salad, fruits and vegetables, fish, etc. But how healthy are these things?

The documentary “Food Inc.” really made me wonder what actually goes into these food products. The main focus of this documentary was how mass produced animals and crops are raised. And it definitely did a good job of getting its point across. It showed how poorly the animals are treated. Some of the stuff they showed was really disgusting and I can see how someone would want to be a vegetarian after seeing that; especially after hearing the story about the little boy dying from e-coli. But what was the purpose of the film?

To me it was all very confusing. One second it would be talking about how animals are treated poorly and the next it was talking about how farmers that grow crops like wheat and corn, aren’t allowed to clean seeds. First off, the only reason the animals are alive is to die. I know that sounds harsh but, as humans, we are meant to eat meat. That’s how we survived since prehistoric times. And second, why the hell does it matter if you clean the seeds? At least, that’s what I was thinking during the movie. I had no idea that “cleaning seeds” meant using the seeds from the plant that you grew with the first seed. They definitely should’ve cleared that up so people like me knew what they were talking about. Again this comes down to what the purpose of the movie is. Are they trying to get us to become vegetarians? Or do they want us to stop buying processed food?

Because the video was so unclear and vague on what the purpose was, it didn’t prove much of anything to me. What it did prove is that processed food isn’t always the best or healthiest thing you will ever eat, animals are treated poorly, and big manufacturing companies make it hard—nearly impossible—for farmers to get out of the business. But really, most of us already knew at least 2 out of 3 of these things and haven’t done anything about it yet. So, yet again, I ask what the purpose of this documentary is and what are we supposed to take away from it?

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Super Bowl XLVII

Every year people around the nation look forward to the Super bowl. Whether it is for the actual game itself, the halftime show, or the commercials it is one of the most watched and talked about events of the year.

          For me, the commercials and the halftime show are more important than the game itself. I still watch the whole game, but I am not a big pro football fan so the game isn’t that big of a deal for me. This year Beyoncé performed for the halftime show, which, obviously, was fantastic because it was Beyoncé and she’s pretty much the best.

          Then there were the commercials. When I think of the Super bowl commercials, I think of a commercial that is both clever and funny. And I was really looking forward to seeing some funny ones. But instead, there were about three commercials that I liked. The Dorito’s commercials were funny and the Budweiser one with the Clydesdale was very cute. So many commercials this year were absolutely ridiculous. Some of them were so incredibly dumb, I can’t even comprehend why someone thought it was a good idea to put that on TV in front of millions of people. Also, there were WAY too many commercials about NFL. Like honestly, almost every other one was about the NFL.

          Overall, I was pretty disappointed in the Super bowl commercials this year. I was expecting much better. But hey, it is what it is. I guess we will just have to wait until next year to be impressed.

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Book Reviews

One Moment, One Morning:

When I pick out a new book I always read the summary to get an idea of what it is about. Then if it sounds interesting I take it home and start reading it. And most of the time I am thrown for a twist by the way the book is actually written. With One Moment, One Morning, it was the same story. It was easy for the first couple of pages, but I was soon, once again, thrown for a twist with the writing style. In the book there are three main characters and because of that it is written from three different perspectives—seen through the eyes of the main characters.

          Another challenging part of the book was some of the diction. The story takes place near London and there they use certain words and do certain things (like take the train everywhere) that we don’t use here. That sometimes made it harder to understand what they were talking about.

          This book is a very sad story about this father dying one morning on the train. The whole story goes on about how it changes the lives of the people that knew and loved him (his wife and kids, his wife’s best friend and her boyfriend) and another passenger that sat across from him on the train the morning he died.

          I really liked this book. It was a good story and had a good message behind. It also makes you think and reflect on your own life and how some lives get cut too short sometimes.

The Violets of March:

Usually, the books I read are teen drama or love stories. I also really like reading books that have been made into movies. When my aunt gave me this book, I was a little skeptical about it because I thought it would be some book that older women like to read. I wasn’t very open minded about the type of story it would be. At first, it didn’t really catch my interest. That definitely didn’t help my already negative thoughts towards the book.

          As I kept reading on, though, it got a lot better and became much more interesting. The story got more exciting and intense. I realized that the book was a love story with a twist. A puzzling mystery also came about the story. I really like that it wasn’t a typical story where you know in the first seen that the two main characters are going to get married.

          This book was about a girl who was getting divorced and decided to take a trip to see her aunt. While she was there, she found a secret diary. As she read it she tried to figure out who it belonged to. She kept coming across clues, but time starts running out when the person who is helping her the most starts to die.

          Reading this book has opened my eyes to read different types of books. Some of the vocabulary used was a little tricky, but for the most part it wasn’t a horribly hard book to read. One thing I have learned from reading this book is to not judge a book by its cover…or by its first couple of pages. A lot of the time, it gets better!

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Tragedies

It was a day that started out as any other. It was a day that many people lost their lives or loved ones. It was a day that affected a whole nation. It was the day of the planned attack on The United States of America. It was a day that Americans will never forget. It was September 11, 2001.

          On September 11, planes were hijacked by Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari. These planes were then crashed into the side of both World Trade Centers. Not long after that had happened, another hijacked plane was crashed into the west side of the Pentagon. These crashes happened in front of many people. Even more people watched it on the news for days to follow.

          The impact of these crashes was huge. It affected so many people’s lives. From the crash itself, it killed thousands of people at the World Trade Center. Hundreds were killed at the Pentagon. To add on to that, 343 NYC firefighters were killed while trying to save others’ lives.

          The loss of all these people affected more people than could be imagined. Family and friends of all these people were devastated. It changed many families’ lives. When people first heard about the crashes, all they could do was hope and pray that it didn’t hurt someone they knew and loved.

          You all might be wondering why I chose to write about something so irrelevant to what is happening in the world right now. But really, there have been so many tragedies like this in the world, some more recent then others (9/11, school shootings, etc.), and that’s a horrible thing to think about. I don’t get why things like this happen. While, we might learn the reasoning behind some of these tragedies, it doesn’t make anyone feel any better about it.

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Leadership

I am part of a leadership program that meets once a month. We go around to different businesses in Cedar Rapids and learn about their start in Cedar Rapids and what their contribution to the city is. This month we were informed that we had to complete a survey before our “graduation” from the program. So today I got online and did it. One of the questions we had to answer was what leadership meant to us. I answered by saying that leadership meant being able to take charge of a situation while still being able to incorporate other’s ideas to reach a goal.

          The last part of the survey asked us to provide a quote about leadership with the author. But I don’t know any leadership quotes off the top of my head. So, obviously, I googled it. And I found a website that had 100 quotes about leadership. I started reading through them and found one that I really liked.

“A great leader’s courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position.” —John Maxwell

I really like this quote because it has a really good message; which is that you don’t have to have a lot of power to make a difference. All you need is to speak your mind and get your ideas out there.

          When I go to these leadership days once a month, I don’t really think about how the speakers are teaching us anything about leadership. But how does someone teach leadership? I don’t think you can. I think leadership is something people have to do on their own. And the reason we go to all these businesses is to see how people in our community are leaders in their own way. It shows us different ways to go about being a leader in the community and that we can do anything if we set our minds to it.

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Sunday Night, Words Are Falling.

Three posts. Twelve hundred words. The worst part of my week: blogging. Once a week, we get class time to work on blogs, but if you are like me, one class hour is not enough time to think of a topic and then write a quality post of at least 400 words. And during the week, we have other homework that takes up most of our time. This then leaves Sundays to finish everything up. But as I have written about before, in Sunday Funday?, Sundays are supposed to be peaceful. They are infamous for being a lazy day. So when I am stuck finding things to blog about, I usually start thinking about what I could be doing instead. Like…

¾    Shopping (online or in stores)

¾    Watching movies

¾    Eating

¾    Learning how to do something new

¾    Sleeping

¾    Painting my nails

¾    Looking at Pinterest OR Wanelo (pretty much Pinterest, but it takes you right to the website where you can buy the product)

¾    Watch Netflix

¾    Exercising

¾    Look at Twitter or Instagram…because I don’t do that enough times in a day

¾    MATH homework

Gah. SOO many things I could be doing instead of blogging. And yes, I would rather do math homework instead of this. As you can see, writing is one of my weaknesses in school and therefore one of my least favorite things to do. I assume that if Ms. A. was reading this she would tell me that I should blog more during the week or to look for topics to write about on classmate’s blogs. And, I mean, she has a point. Every week I tell myself that if I don’t have a lot of homework on a certain night then I will work on a blog. But let’s be honest. That has happened approximately one time this entire year. And it isn’t looking very likely in the near future. Especially when I think about all the better things I could be doing. But instead, it’s just another Sunday full of blogging.

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Misrepresenting on Miss Representation

So we have continued to watch Miss Representation  in class and I as sit here, writing this, I am asking myself why we should listen to anything that documentary said. In my last post about this documentary, I talked about why they didn’t put any media sources of women being portrayed as holding position of high power. And most of you are thinking, “Well that’s because it doesn’t support their claim.” Right. Okay. But now, taking that into consideration, what makes these people are reliable sources? Why should we believe what they are saying is true?

          Think about it; when you are trying to make someone believe you, wouldn’t you say anything to prove your point? Even if what you are saying isn’t true? Most of us would probably answer yes to those questions. And that’s my point. If these people are trying to get us to buy into what they are saying, they are going to say anything—most likely the worst things, too—to prove it.

           Most of the speakers in this documentary are women. Better yet, all the women have very specific feelings towards how women are being treated in the media. One of the speakers is Margaret Cho. To make her point in this film, she talks about her experience with her first TV show and being told that she was too fat by her network. To me that makes her very biased to how things actually are. How am I supposed to believe her when she is only speaking from one side?

          Another reason to question their sources of information is the fact that they are deliberately going to choose the worst or most extreme pieces of evidence to show us. They do that so we when we watch it, we just sit there, shocked. But then again, how are we supposed to believe the numbers they show us? Advertisements say things like 9 out of 10 dentists recommend this toothpaste. And then in the fine print it will say that the survey consists of only 10 dentists. Well, that’s not very representative of the thousands of dentists in nation is it? So why should we believe any numbers they are showing us?

          There are so many things that people will do to make you believe them. It happens every day; whether it’s an argument between two best friends or an advertisement for a new medication on TV. So when I hear all these negative results and complaints about women being portrayed in the media, it makes me take a second to think if this stuff is an accurate representation of what it is actually like. And, yes, this documentary definitely pointed out all the most extreme cases of women being degraded, but what about all the times that they were being looked up to?

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