"Food Inc." Issues In Context

After we engage in the Silent Spring debate, we watch the movie Food Inc. and discuss the issues it raises about industrialized food production.  Below are some links to further information on the issues raised in the movie:

Industry Response:

• SafeFoodInc.com:  A page created by the National Chicken Council, the National Meat Association, and other industry groups challenging the assertions made in Food Inc.

• Monsanto: Food Inc. Movie:  A page created by the multinational agricultural company Monsanto rebutting some of the claims made in the movie.

The Individual Issues:

Farm Subsidies:  

• This is a hugely controversial and poorly understood part of U.S. government policy and one on which both the far left and far right tend to agree (but for different reasons).  

• Farm subsidies result in the U.S. government paying farm companies to grow too much corn and grain by paying them a set price even if the excess supply causes a drop in market price.
• According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG)--a left leaning environmental group--the U.S. government has paid agribusinesses $170 billion  in subsidies in the past 16 years .
• The "tax payer calculator" on FoxNews.com allows people to calculate (based upon their yearly income) what tax burden is put on them from the $15 billion per year average the government pays in farm subsidies.

Persuading the Supreme Court

One of the issues about persuasion that we discuss in AP Lang is the issue of form versus content.  What matters more, how you say it or what you say?  And the answer to that question often depends upon the situation, the medium, and the person delivering the message.  An LA Times article today highlighted that issue as it applies to the Supreme Court case concerning the Obama administration's new health care law.

In the article, four Constitutional scholars were asked to evaluate both sides' arguments, and three out of four focused mainly on how the lawyers representing both sides sounded, saying things like........

Throw out your old studying habits?

Recent brain research suggests that much of the conventional wisdom about good study habits may actually be just plain wrong.  New York Times reporter Benedict Carey has written about research on learning and education and lists several suggestions for improving study time.  

Almost everyone has heard the advice to find a single, quiet place in which to study and to focus on one topic at a time.  According to the research, this approach is not the most effective.  One 1978 study found that college students who studied vocabulary words in two different rooms did better on a test than students who had studied in the same room.  Researchers think this occurred because of the brain's tendency to make unconscious associations with the differing surroundings and those associations cause more of the brain to engage, resulting in better retention of the information being studied.

Click inside for more information on the latest brain science approved studying tips.

Ash forests to be wiped out

An invasive insect from called the Emerald Ash Borer entered the United States in 2002, and it will kill nearly all ash trees it comes into contact with.  In Pennsylvania alone, over 300 million trees will be destroyed by this infestation.  They are believe to have entered the United States in the wood of packing crates from China.

Rachel Carson Tattoo, Spied!

Breaking News:  A Pennridge Student seen today in the hall with a Rachel Carson tattoo on his arm.  When asked why, he said, "I just feel that her contribution to the dialogue about our environment is too important not to make a statement about it."


Check inside for a high resolution look!

The Lainhart Files Haiku

Brenna E. wrote an (excellent) haiku about this blog.  And check inside for her Godot and Rachel Carson haiku:

The Lainhart Files

There he sits at home

Typing things vigorously

Only his wife will read.

Govt. agencies, colleges demand applicants' Facebook passwords

From MSNBC:

"If you think privacy settings on your Facebook and Twitter accounts guarantee future employers or schools can't see your private posts, guess again.Employers and colleges find the treasure-trove of personal information hiding behind password-protected accounts and privacy walls just too tempting, and some are demanding full access from job applicants and student athletes.

In Maryland, job seekers applying to the state's Department of Corrections have been asked during interviews to log into their accounts and let an interviewer watch while the potential employee clicks through wall posts, friends, photos and anything else that might be found behind the privacy wall.

Things about Writing Papers I keep Forgetting to Say

In list form; in no particular order:

• The seventh (most recent edition of the MLA Handbook) requires that all titles of books be italicized, not underlined.

• The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) continues to be one of the best sources of information on paper formatting in both MLA and APA style

• That whole last post is about your job as a paper writer, which boils down to this--find information that correlates with the argument you are making and then do your best to prove the correlation exists and is significant.

Why do I have to write this paper?

Why do teachers make such a big deal about writing research papers?  Why do they assign so many points to them and spend so much time on them if they’re just another assignment for school?  The answer lies deep within the core of the academic world.  

At colleges and universities, professors talk about facing the pressure to “publish or perish.”  They often are required to write and publish a certain number of articles in academic journals to show that they remain on the cutting edge of their field.  Those professors (in the humanities especially) emphasize paper writing as one of the main methods of evaluating student knowledge of a given topic.  The roots for this emphasis extend all the way back to Ancient Greece and Rome (and beyond) when humans began recording their societies’ knowledge and preserving it for the future.  As technologies such as paper and printing presses evolved, the emphasis on writing down knowledge grew even stronger.  As colleges and universities developed around the world, recording new discoveries and publishing them for public evaluation became the gold standard for proving an idea’s merit.  Even today in the time of the Internet, published text is still the primary source of information on the web—even Google admits that this is the case.  And so, the scholarly paper remains, especially in the academic world, as the primary way a student demonstrates his or her grasp of a subject.

Kony 2012: Four Stars on Charity Navigator

The charity Invisible Children is generating much buzz right now because of their Kony 2012 video that is circulating on Facebook and the rest of the web.  While the film itself has generated some controversy for being  heavy on pathos and light on information, it's difficult to criticize a movement that is attempting to raise awareness of the plight of children in war torn countries.

The point of this post is not to add to that debate but to introduce an excellent website for evaluating a charity before you give it money.  That site is called Charity Navigator and the image below is from their rating of the "Invisible Children" charity, who get a fairly solid 3 out of 4 star rating.  Charity Navigator is an independent, non-profit organization whose aim is to help people give wisely to charities that will put the money they receive to good use.  Below is a Charity Navigator graphic depicting their rating for "Invisible Children":

Umwelt--The limits of our perception

Umwelt:  the word umwelt comes from the theories of a German biologist named Jakob von Uexkull (1864-1944), and it refers to every organism's tendency only to perceive that which is meaningful to it.  Uexkull uses a wildflower as his example.  He explains that an ant that climbs the flower to reach the petals sees the flower as a kind of ladder.  A little girl that plucks the flower to put into her hair sees it as a decoration.  A cow that eats the flower sees it as food, little different from the other grasses and plants around it. A bee sees the flower bud as a source of pollen, etc, etc.  The major point being that neither the cow or the girl or the ant will see the flower in the same way nor will they consider the perspective of the other organisms.

Psychologists apply the idea of umwelt to humans and our approach to the world around us.  In  other words, we all carry biases inherent to our biology, our upbringing, and our identity.  That tendency toward umwelt should remind us to be careful trusting the objectivity of our own opinions and assuming that we don't all wear some kind of metaphorical blinders.