Superman

Essays that are primarily focused on the worlds current environmental cataclysm and its impact on man-kind fascinate me. Which is exactly why I took a significant liking to “The obligation to endure” by Rachel Carson.  In our current world there are several different ways to control the insects and pests that make their homes on our farms. New chemicals are being produced everyday, and according to Rachel, these insecticides can have a harmful affect on humans and the environment. What we regard as “pests” are able to adapt to the chemicals we use, so more deadlier chemicals are in demand for production. Carson is a passionate environmentalist with a clear concern for the well-being of the worlds inhabitants. This is very apparent in the style which Carson conveys herself in her writing. Rachel states, “Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life?” Carson seems pretty educated about the applications of pesticides and the possible effects that can occur from these chemicals. I feel that Rachel has a specific target audience whom she is pointing this worded guilt pistol at, that target would be those who use chemicals, like a farmer. Another audience would be the people concerned with the relationship between people and the environment and what’s done to protect the environment from man. I suppose Rachels excerpts could hold potential for someone interested in the improvement of the environment, and need some arguable facets to benefit their cause. The author makes a crucial point that people are unaware some of the chemicals used in insecticides have a negative affect not only on pests, but also harmless animals and insects. Therefore, the insecticides are passed through these creatures and agriculture on to people, who  are eventually affected as well. This point then weaves into that not only is wildlife at risk, but peoples health is in danger.  Rachel makes her opinion on chemicals pretty evident when she states that insecticides should be referred to as biocides instead.  In addition, the way that Carson writes her paper is from a logical perspective. She presents the significance of the problem regarding her topic, and then she backs up her opinion with facts and evidence. She elucidates the negative effects insecticides have, then she presents a healthy possible alternative to the problem. Rachel explains what the problem is, the significance of the problem, and how the problem could be improved or fixed. Carsons plan of attack works because she makes her point and provides concrete reasoning and logic.

-scott

So I thought the essay "Television: The plug in drug" was pretty interesting. I have seen in so many families the TV kind of take over daily routines and rituals. I too remember as a child having many family gathering for holidays, and the children running around the house crazily playing off the wall games that we made up as we went along, while the adults sat around the living room talking and laughing, having a few drinks here and there. I can also remember however, all the grandchildren cuddling up in my grandmothers bed to watch Rugrats once we were all worn out. TV has been in my family for as long as I can remember and I don't seem to agree that it ruins the quality of family time, at least not in all families.
I have a three year old who loves to watch TV. I only let him watch disney movies, and educational programs that air on TV. I admit that I use the TV a lot when it comes to trying to get things done around the house. If I have homework to do, i'll turn the TV on and let him watch his shows while I do my work. I also  make it a point though to turn it off when I'm finished and make him sit with me and read books or work on his numbers or letters. TV can be a great tool in that aspect, but I think the real problem is parents being lazy. Either not wanting to take the time to work on those things cause they're just too tired, or letting their children watch too much tv simply because they want to watch their own program in another room and letting the kids watch TV allows the parents to do that. We have four televisions in my house, all with DVR cable boxes. I love my TV shows don't get me wrong. I just choose to make my TV time at night after my son has gone to bed and use the time I do have with him to make each day as productive as I possible can with his learning.
I think that the TV is only as damaging as you let it be to your family life. My family is pretty big on sports. We get together to watch sporting events making enough food to last days as we sit and watch big games. If we aren't all at one house watching something, the phone rings off the hook during games as we discuss what's going on. In this sense I think that this is just one more thing that makes my family as special as I think it is. So all in all I have to say that I don't necassarily agree with Winn's essay.

Reading Responses

Reading The Obligation to Endure, I see that it actually ties somewhat to my group's reading The Ends of the World as We Know Them.  They both relate to the downfall of humanity.  It's just that one goes about it with the collapses of societies, and the other goes about it with the self-destructive nature of mankind's endeavors in the chemical field with insecticides.  I really see where he's coming from with his mentioning of "resurgence", for it is indeed true that insects are very adaptive.  It kind of goes with the territory of having a generation lasting no longer than a few days or weeks.  The only issue I have, is that his opening is more focused on the problems faced by people due to insecticides, but he ends up spending the rest of the excerpt focused on the insects and the way society has been targeting them.  However, his point really made me recall a presentation I watched on PBS about a certain chemical contained in such stuff as colognes and perfumes to help them last longer, that has actually been found to reduce the "ano-genital distance", or the distance between your bung-holio and your genitalia.  Considering how modern youth are so into such things as Axe & Tag and other body sprays, I shan't be surprised if, in a few generations, we'll end up evolving to have a cloaca.

Meanwhile, I enjoy the points put forth by Television: The Plug-In Drug, the effect that the "tele" has on small children is astonishing.  It doesn't help that sometimes exasperated parents decide that a brilliant and easy solution to taking care of children is to throw them to the television.  Also, looking at television, things like Sesame St. and the like from classic children's shows actually had some educational value to them.  However, nowadays I see more and more shows that merely seem to be heavily influenced by drugs and crazy trip-outs.  And the point of the multiple-set family is a good one.  In the old days you had shows like "The Andy Griffith Show", which was definitely a family-oriented show.  But nowadays, the television shows are more focused, aiming towards the men, women, OR the children.  And it really does affect the peer group as the reading says, people are often using things such as television as a way to connect to their friends, and some of the impressions that may be given by television are inappropriate for the younger viewers.  But then, without television there wouldn't be shows such as Nature or NOVA, which were a big part of my life as a child, and I even find myself still very much partial to such shows.  The television is very important to the spreading of news and knowledge.  As Caleb points out, the imagery that is made possible by television makes things such as news that much more of an impact on our lives.  If a picture is a thousand words, just how many words is a reel in a newscast worth?

Zombies

I must say that I rather enjoyed " Television: The Plug-In Drug." I was completely engaged the entire time and had no problem following along like I did in some of the other essays, though the reason may be my own paranoia of the television. I have noticed in the past that my family is the exact image of the one Winn portrays, glued and tuned out on a daily basis. Ive made several comments and started several arguments over the way T.V seems to run our lives. My mom tunes out so much she will literally ignore me if one of her "soaps" are on. My dad goes straight to bed at 6:30pm when he gets home from work, and besides the late night snack, spends all night watching T.V away from the rest of us. Except when Idol is on, then he will come downstairs, make some comment about the show, and instead of watching it with us, continue up again to his room to make another appearance 15 minutes later to say something else. Now, I'm not saying I'm any better, though I may not be away from the rest of the family, I'm still downstairs watching T.V. If I'm honest with myself the only reason I'm doing anything with my family is because I don't have T.V in my room and anytime I want to watch a movie the T.V in my parents room goes out for some crazy, unexplainable reason, and we wouldn't want my dad to be without T.V for an hour and half now would we? Its very sad. We eat in front of the T.V, we fall asleep in front of the T.V, we ignore each other in front of the T.V, we pretty much do everything in front of the T.V and it took this essay to really get me started on my soap box. The more and more I think about it, the more and more angry I am that Ive become another statistic. My fiancee is the only one I think has any sense and the poor guy is stuck with me. To move beyond the realm of the T.V its not the only culprit that enables families to ignore each other. Cellphones, Internet, video games, these are all weapons against the family household. My fiancee, Brent, is constantly complaining about me being on my cell phone. He says it makes him feel like I don't want to engage with him and even with that said, I still cant help myself. People these days are talking more and more about our escapist society. They talk about how we use movies and games to escape from reality, from the war, from the economic strain. Apparently these devices can give us more comfort and reassurance than our families can. I cant even remember the last thing me and my family did together, aside from just me and Brent, in honesty I cant even remember the last time I went and did something outside. I used to run the hills in my hometown in Ohio. I would pick berries, go fishing, and watch the stars come out until I was dragged into the house. I remember having a teenage summer going to concerts, walking on the railroad tracks, going to antique malls, and getting into various troubles. Now all I do is sit at home, watch Dr. Phil and ignore the wold around me. I'm not completely trashing my family. When it comes to being there for each other and getting the necessities done we are perfectly functional, but we do rely too much on the T.V to help us get along. I think tonight I am going to try something different. I might take a walk with Brent, or be the one to cook dinner. Either way I'm going to step away from the T.V and the cellphone tonight and see how that feels. I might find I actually like the world around me if I step back long enough to see it.

Television: The Plug-In Drug

Marie Winn's essay Television: The Plug-In Drug it rings of the truth, as I have lived through the changes within the broadcast industry and seen it deteriorate to what we have today. The first time I saw a TV the tube was round and the programs were only on for a few hours a day. The screen was as black and white as the programs themselves. They were an extension of the radio programs. As a kid there was little interest other than the TV itself. Time went by and there appeared programs for the children like Howdy Dowdy Show, and Roy Rogers. There was no violence or sex as we have today if the Lone Ranger had to beat the bad guy up once in a while it was fast and with little ado. Of course the good guy always won, and no died. Programs were only a half hour long. Our family would all sit and watch Father Knows Best and Leave It To Beaver, and other shows that taught good family values. The FCC had total control and tried to keep it that way.  However this did not last, producers started to push the limits and found people liked the programs that hinted at sex and violence but did not actually show it. Eventually they wanted more because it produced revenue.  Eventually the TV stations won more freedom under the first amendment right to broadcast more sex and violence but the FCC still had some control. Over the years the FCC lost ground and the stations gained ground. Even though studies go back to the 1960's and before and found the effects to be bad most of the public and the media ignored those findings. My wife and I chose to keep the TV out of the house for many years because of these finding, but eventually we broke down and bought one. luckily our youngest was in his teens by this time and any major influence that the TV might have had was already past. However I found myself becoming a couch potato taking the drug and that became a problem, and yes I liked the action shows with all there violence even though I think they could still be good without as much gore in them. Maybe the salvation for this generation will be the internet, or will it follow the path of the TV?

sex, drugs, disasters

 This essay was very interesting. The different theories as to what could have happened of the dinosaurs was interesting. The first theory, sex, said that the temperatures were rising so much that the male testes couldn't function in the heat and they died off due to lack of reproduction. I never thought about this theory but it made me think it could have possibly happened so it opened up my mind a bit. the next theory, drugs, says that there could have been possible flowers with hallucinogens that would make the dinosaurs trip and eventually overdose, again never thought of this theory but that doesnt mean its not possible and the last theory, disasters, is the most common theory. The theory that the dinosaurs went extinct because of meteorites so big that it destroyed almost all species in the world. this is something ive heard a lot and i think its the most believable, theres still proof of meteorites and it's the most brought up speculation. I think so far this was my favorite presentation, Scott obviously knew what he was talking about with his group and was super interested and proved facts and showed lots of excitement about his research.

Response: The Ends of the Worlds as We Know Them.

I liked the way in which Jared Diamond laid out his points in his article “The Ends of the Worlds as We Know Them” and compared many different cultures that have failed and used them for his examples. I really enjoyed reading this piece, it flowed well and I felt engaged with it the entire time I was reading. Most research articles seem to be rife with quotations and scientific data. Maybe it was the lack of all the statistics and concrete facts and citations that made Diamond’s article more interesting and readable for me, compared to some of the other research articles we have read.
 Also, in contrast to some of the other articles we have been reading lately, this one did not directly cite other people’s research to back up what the author was saying. However, considering the brief bio at the beginning of his article he is well educated and he must have had to do a lot of research for all the books he has written, so I think the reader can give him the benefit of the doubt in this case and we can trust most of what he has to say.

His article could have been construed as preachy, but I think it is a genuine plea to the rest of humanity to realize the mistakes of our forebears and be able to learn from them. In this way I think it is similar to the Pollan article we read, “What’s Eating America” because Michael Pollan  seemed to also impress upon readers the impact which humans have upon the planet and the  importance of finding ways to live more sustainably, ways which will not jeopardize the future of our society. Both authors talk about earth’s “finite resources,” as Diamond puts it. Compared to Pollan’s article, however, I think the title Diamond chose for his piece was much more fitting and gave the reader a better idea about what to expect when they were reading it.

In this article the author is asking many things of the reader, right from the beginning he talks about reflecting on humanity and being able to learn from our collective previous mistakes. He pushes his audience to think very hard and ask themselves difficult questions, sometimes about things that we don’t like to think about that much because often the answer we land on is an unpleasant one.

One interesting thing that Diamond pointed out is that because of globalization, nearly everyone in the entire world is connected. This was probably the part of the article that I dwelt on the most after I finished reading it. This fact of modern-day global interconnection means that we risk not just one culture dying through human error, but a near total global collapse, on a scale never seen before.

Enduring

         When reading "The Obligation to Endure" it's hard not to notice the way that Rachel Carson uses her research. She uses several different professionals to further her points as if trying to add credit to her words to show that it isn't just her that feels this way and she isn't the only one finding that we are poisoning ourselves with the pesticides that we use. Her idea seems to be really passionate to her;    this shows throughout all of her main points where she begins to almost start ranting about how horrible we are for continuing to use pesticides. Her opinion and facts are somehow tainted by the fact that she is an environmentalist and that she puts her emotions into this piece of writing.
         She does use the research she gathered in a good way by providing good quotes from different people. This can give the reader a warm fuzzy feeling in knowing that she can back up her facts and it isn't just her opinion. She also provides solutions to some of the problems that are given or at least somewhere that the world as a whole can start pushing for.
        On the other hand some fo these ideas that are given to reduce the problems that we have are very biased; leaning more towards her environmentalist view. A good example to point out would be the decrease of acreages so that there would be less plants for insects to infest and therefore reduce the insect problem without using insecticides. I can't help but to look back at another reading we had, "What's Eating America". In this essay Michael Polin uses some words from Vaclav Smil's book "Enriching the Earth" in which Vaclav explains that the creation of the Haber Bosch process in which ammonium nitrate is used to produce nitrogen for agriculture. The reason that this process was created was due to the fact that with the current organic way of producing crops we would only have 2 in 5 people that would of been born in todays society. This shows that with the current production of food in agriculture we are just getting by and if we were to reduce the acreage for farming we would be hindering ourselves even more than we are currently. Of course this is just one example of hers that appears to not be applicable, but her other ideas seem quite reasonable as alternatives to better our environment in the future.
       All around this essay appears to have a lot of work put into with the research that she has done. It has at least made me think about how much pesticides we use in America and gives me an idea of some things that can possibly be done to prevent any more damage to this environment that we have. After all we only have one Earth and it's our job to make it livable for the next generations to come.

Television the plug-in drug

Television has become a large part of our culture not just here in the United States, but all across the world. However, I believe it hasn’t completely destroyed all the traditions that Marie Winn thinks that it has taken. Instead, I believe that the television has given a new traditional that our culture has become accustomed to. It seems as if she is talking to people that didn’t exactly grow up with televisions and instead as they came out, life started to change for them. Growing up with television my whole life I have not seen changes to the family traditions I had growing up to life now. Other parts of my life have changed, but not the traditions in which my family had.

We grow up in a society where everyone is considered different and where some people truly strive to be different than their parents and friends. Also, where television might have destroyed families when it first came out, it isn’t doing it now. Ms. Winn is using compare and contrast through personal feelings rather than using actual research and actual numbers to support her thesis and topic. I believe some parents due depend too much on television to teach their children right from wrong rather than doing it themselves. Ms. Winn makes a very valid point in that regard because my wife and I know people who just sit their child in front of the television so they may do what they would like to do.

As far as rituals go I do not real as if my family lost any while we were growing up. We actually had a big time tradition on Sundays in particularly. Every Sunday my family would sit down and watch football together on the television and picked who we thought was going to win. After this my brother and I would go outside and play football or any other sport or activity that we could think of doing. My father would go to work and my mother would clean up the house. That was a Sunday ritual for my family, whether it may seem like a ritual to Ms. Winn or not I don’t know, but it was something my family and myself enjoyed.

Looking someone squarely in the eye or looks to the side or shifts one’s gaze from side to side is something that parents teach their children. If a child doesn’t learn this aspect from a parent and the parent expects the television show to teach it then this falls more on the parents than the actual television program.

After reading this essay I have taken away from it that Ms. Winn doesn’t like that the invention of the television. She feels as if television has destroyed some of the family traditions that she grew up admiring. What I believe she fails to realize is some of the traditions that have been created from the invention of the television. Or some of the times when family members do become closer because they get a chance to sit them and enjoy being together watching a movie or a sporting event.

Sex, drug, disasters, and the extinctions of dinosaurs: response

After reading through this essay a couple of times, i find it difficult at times to comprehend or understand what Gould's was trying to say or point out. It might be because, I was not hooked or that the essay did not grab any of my attention enough to even read more. But having to discuss it in class and listening to the group who were presenting it to us they had my ears wide open. Gould has a lot to argue about and seems to me, he claims he is right and everyone else is wrong. He does this, by talking about science and arguing what science should mean. As stated in the first paragraph "Science is a fruitful mode of inquiry' and not a list of conclusions" he argues the fact the people or "scientist" jumped into conclusion too quickly and that they use conclusion as the main idea and not refer ably as the consequence. Gould is disappointed at the fact people tend to mix theories from methods. What's that suppose to mean? Aren't hypothesis or theories made to be proven, and in order to do so we should find a conclusion for it? Another interesting topic he then talks about, is the extinction of dinosaurs and the three theories behind it. The first one was sex, how one theory states that even the dinosaurs can tolerate increased temperatures, and in such high temperature the male dinosaurs testes become sterilized which would not allow them o reproduce. The second was drugs, this theory states that the dinosaurs died of overdose. The dinosaurs did not have a liver that could detoxify the angiosperms that were supposedly growing on some kind of plant. The third was disaster, this theory claimed that an asteroid or some kind of catastrophe is was led the extinction of dinosaurs. The theory behind e disaster was what Gould supported the most because it was reasonable and there were a lot of evidence to back up this theory. The other two theory on the other hand (sex and drugs) he did not support very well. In fact he argued that it should not be considered as theories and that scientist needed more studies to proof it was right.

What's Eating America

In Michael Pollan's essay "What's Eating America" was very inconsistent.  He didn't really have a main topic for the essay.  His topics changed throughout the essay.  He made some references to some books that probably didn't need to be in the essay.  His opinions on the matters of the essay weren't very clear also.

He began the essay on the history of corn then the farming of corn in America.  He mentions that corn is a big part of American life.  There are about 45,000 corn products in our markets that he mentions.  After that he mentions the invention of chemical fertilizers that are made from ammonium nitrate.  The chemical nitrate had a big impact on agriculture.  There is mention from a reference to a book that the population today would be a lot small if the chemical fertilizer was not invented.  He then references to another book about Fritz Harber the inventor of a chemical fertilizer and that he won the Nobel Prize.  He also mentions the Fritz Harber's wife killed herself.  That reference could have been left out of the essay.  After all that he goes on a tangent on how the nitrogen from the fertilizers are poisonous to the environment.  If too much nitrogen is put into the environment, that it will eventually kill everything.  I believe that the nitrogen problem was the main topic for the essay because he mentions it a lot towards the end of the essay.  He should have just stayed on that topic.

The essay could have been done better if it was written starting with the main topic and ending on the same topic.  Instead he started with history of corn and ended with the harmful effects of nitrogen.  He did a complete 180 degree turn with his essay.  It seemed that there were too many topics for his essay.  The topics he mention seemed to contradict each other also.  He mentions on the good things of chemical fertilizers then goes on a tangent on how bad they are.  Overall he should have stayed with one subject for the essay.

Irony, It's what's for dinner!

In the essay, “What’s Eating America,” Michael Pollan explains the double edge blade of what farming industry is in America.  In the beginning of the essay, he makes the case about how important and dependent Americans are on the crop corn. He goes off to list the vast amount of products and uses the simple crop does for everyone. Even I was surprised by the application that corn provides. However, It seems that was just the beginning, after reading more I discovered this essay to be way more frightening than the essay, “ The Ends of The World as We Know Them.”

Michael switches gears, when he explains that all of life is taking energy from plants or from plant eaters. The hard earned energy converters, working tirelessly everyday to produce food and promote growth for their goal of survival on this planet. It all comes to an end when someone or something consumes them for the caloric value that they hold.  What is compelling about this outlook is that Michael makes the case that humanity could never grow past a limit due to not enough nitrogen in the ground. Nitrogen being essential for all life on the planet is extremely limited through out the world.

After exploring how ironically, humans through the development of trying to kill one another to secure political geographic lines, resources and other causes, ended up using all the left ammonium nitrate as a way to artificially introduce nitrogen into the farming industry. This explodes the power behind the U.S. for its capability to grow food. It is interesting to read “The End of The world as We Know Them,” as seeing one of the big down turns for all civilization is of course lack of food. This can be applied as a warning to some of the biggest societies in today. This artificial way of introducing a key ingredient in our soil is a great way of breaking that cycle of limited food……right?

No, my hope of having a heart warming essay of informative, and reinforcing that American health and society on a whole is safe came to end as Polland explained the perils behind using the Haber-Bosch methods and the impact it has on the environment. As also in explained in “The End of The World as We Know Them,” failing to keep an eye and maintain the environment was a huge key factor in most of the downfall of those societies. So when Pollan explained that the artificial way of adding nitrogen, has the potential threat of ruining our seafood supply and when the nitrate evaporates into the air and becomes acid rain, it effects people and animals who drink it, I flipped out. I don't know about you but I love eating sushi….and I really love drinking good healthy water with delicious sushi.

All this fear and warning signs of course is triggering my guilt to start buying local homegrown food or organic food. More expensive, but healthier food is a small price to pay for the greater good of humanity right? I hope so, but it seems contradicting as the end of the essay states that organic farms and the organic market is still able to compete and produce the goods regardless of using the old fashioned way. As stated earlier that without having the Haber-Bosch way of growing food, we wouldn't have as many people in the world, due to the population restraints of having less food. So is going back to the old way the answer? I wish I had that answer, perhaps from the bombs going off in Afghanistan, and other places around the world, and through the military industrialization we, as a human race, can ironically find the answer to this problem.    

Response
Sex, Drugs, Disasters and the Extinction of Dinosaurs

Though I like to think of myself as a fairly competent reader, able to understand most large words and some convoluted theories, I could not concentrate while reading the first few pages of Gould’s essay, “Sex, Drugs, Disasters and the Extinction of Dinosaurs.”

The first time I attempted to read it, I didn’t really see where the author was going or what point he was trying to make. While I was waiting for him to prove his point I lost interest in his essay within a couple of pages and put it away to read later. I think the author tried to capture the reader’s attention with his title, and this failed for me because I had no idea where he was going with it and it lost and confused me. I wanted to be interested in what he was saying but his text failed to draw me in at the beginning. After I made myself try reading it again, I did start to get interested in the middle of the text and found a few of the ideas Gould presented to be rather intriguing.


However, there were a few thing about this piece of writing that did not work for me. It did not seem to be accessible enough to the reader; I thought Gould used a bit too many long, drawn out examples and went off on too many tangents. Perhaps this kind of writing may be appealing to scientists or scholars, but it was not to me, an average college student. I felt that Gould seemed to ramble on about an idea and as the reader I had no notion of what this would be ultimately leading to. Though Gould did make some interesting points and eventually came to thought-provoking conclusions, I felt that the way his ideas were laid out in this piece of writing was a little disjointed.


I had to push myself to feel engaged in “Sex, Drugs, Disasters and the Extinction of Dinosaurs”, and I don’t think that is something the reader should necessarily have to do. I think the author should produce a piece of work that is compelling, and may challenge the reader in that it presents new ideas, but it should also capture their attention in the introduction. There were a few elements of “Sex, Drugs, Disasters and the Extinction of Dinosaurs” that I was dissatisfied with, but eventually after I read through it more thoroughly (and read it in its entirety) I found that I enjoyed it more that I initially had anticipated.

What’s Eating America

              I found this essay by Michael Pollan very enjoyable to read because it is something I’ve been looking into for quite some time. I challenge someone to have a diet where they are not digesting some by product of cord. Corn syrup is in about everything we eat and sadly it isn’t good for us. This essay digs a little bit in to an American’s diet. His focus is on corn and not only does he just talk about corn being in almost all our food products but he brings up other issues such as fossil fuels and our factories polluting the air. It’s amazing when you stop and think about how many things are made from corn. The part that really grabbed my attention in Pollan’s essay was when he stated…

“It’s not merely the feed that the steers and the chickens and the pigs and the turkeys ate; it’s not just the source of the flour and the oil and the leavenings, the glycerides and coloring in the processed foods; it’s not just sweetening the soft drinks or lending a shine to the magazine cover over by the checkout. The supermarket itself–the wallboard and joint compound, the linoleum and fiberglass and adhesives out of which the building itself has been built–is in no small measure a manifestation of corn.”

 It gets you to just really think about it for a second, corn is pretty much used in everything. 

            

            Michael Pollan then goes on to talk about how corn use really “sprouted up” in the year 1947 after World War II because of fertilization. After this was developed, Pollan claims that is when our lives really started to change from overly consuming corn to pollution from the fertilizers and factories. Non-organic farmers think they need all these processes to make the most corn and the fastest, although it’s damaging all our health. He discusses how the synthetic fertilizer is mostly wasted when used because the synthetic nitrogen from it isn’t taken in by the plants and instead is released and evaporated in the air and some it also seeps down into the water table. These affect the earth by contributing to global warming and also affects our health, when we consumes theses little bits through our food or water over time.

           

           Pollan's ending paragraph states how organic farmers get a long just fine by using natural ways to maintain and grow their crops. They use the sun and water, and they don’t use synthetic fertilizer. He says we need to reduce our dependency on synthetic nitrogen. I completely agree, although this might be more work, in the long run we will be healthier for it and so will the world. Over time using things like synthetic nitrogen really do affect our lives.

Nicki Minaj

Nicki Minaj

My four year old loves her and my Mother despises her.  Nicki Minaj is loved by America and around the world.  She has fans all around and not just little girls it's men, women, teenagers, oh ya and don't forget she reaches out to Gay's and Lesbian's as well.  I myself love her and I think that she is a great role model.  She is strong, independent, outgoing, smart, and a beautiful person.  I allow my daughter to be her biggest fan but what about those hater's out there.  I can understand why people disapprove of Nicki Manaj.  She's raunchy, not so socially acceptable.  She is a rapper and she swears in some of her songs.  Her style of clothes are revealing and proctavive. So is she a good role model or a bad role model?

Thesis

In our society today, many people find entertainment from making fun of other individuals and many well known pop icons are solely known because of this reason. On February 10th 2011, Rebecca Black's song It’s Friday was released, although this song was released with the intent of being taken serious, Rebecca Black’s popularity sky rocketed and her video went viral by jokes and negative feedback.

WOW Thesis

World of Warcraft provides an escape from reality, giving a chance for self-expression and communication regardless of sex, race, or physical appearance.

Twilight Thesis Draft

The Twilight series is very popular with younger teenaged kids, and due to its popularity, it may be giving the youth of the United States the wrong ideas. The many small themes throughout the story just may be warping their minds and twisting their views on such topics as necrophilia and bestiality.

pop media thesis

Sunrise Bagel and Espresso to-go cup, as a rhetorical devices reflect the Fairbanks employ experience of being controlled. 

The COVE Response

The Cove was by far one of the saddest film I have seen. I couldn't imagine how bad slaughtering could get any worse among those innocent dolphins. This movie was definitely filmed to inform people about the killing of about 23,000 dolphins each year and to stop and change the Japanese fishing practices at the cove. It was also filmed to educate viewers the high risk of mercury poisoning from dolphin meat. Knowing this I would think maybe killing dolphins should stop if the risk of mercury poisoning could cause severe brain damage or maybe even death. So why kill so many dolphins or even kill them at all? I mean i understand that it helps create jobs for the people and that this so called job brings food and a roof over these "fisher men's" heads and their families as well. But honestly their are other ways they could bring food and shelter to their families without having to captivate and slaughter so many dolphins. We have a huge variety of fishes out in the ocean that we could catch/kill and are way healthier to eat other than dolphins. But then again maybe there isn't other jobs these fishermen's can work for. One of the things that got me thinking was the way this movie was filmed. The movie only captured the killing of dolphins and the behavior acted upon the dolphins at the cove but it didn't really address what would happen to the small city of Taiji if the slaughter of dolphins were to stop. Will the city survive if they were to stop doing this? The film was only addressing one point and doesn't sway an opinion, it just open our eyes to a situation. Yes one could argue that it that America has no right to be messing in other peoples business cause then it would cause other problems, and this i agree with. But now that the Japanes people outside of Taiji know whast happening at the cove, I'm pretty sure they would eventually take this matter in their owns hands and try and stop/protest against the slaughtering of these dolphins.