This week I read a book that tells that the production of global livestock is around 20% of the greenhouse gases on Earth. It also says that many Americans eat eight ounces of meat per day while third-world countries only eat about an ounce. There are sixty billion animals raised(or according to the author grown) a year for food and six billion people on Earth. In the US there's nine billion-chickens, one- hundred million pigs, two-hundred and fifty million turkeys, and thirty-six million cows. All raised industrially. The books says that nineteen billion tax dollars in subsidies go to thirty-one hundred farmers.

While I was reading this I was shocked that agriculture is a bigger part of global warming than transportation. I didn't know that it takes more energy to make our food then actually eating it. This Book made me think about how in modern society we bite more than we can chew and although global warming was just a myth thirty years ago it is surely real now and it is not as hard as you might think to lower you part in it. You don't have to have three different garbage bins, drive a Hybrid, or use Eco-friendly light bulb, although of course having these things help. It's as easy as lowering your intake on meat and staying away from food with more than one major ingredient(at least that's what the book says). I personally think most veggies taste revolting but after reading just a few chapters of this book I ignored the tasty steak and almost painfully ate a few spears of broccoli instead. I guess it's an acquired taste.

I think the author of this book wants their readers to think smartly about the food they eat and is trying to stop the over consumption of food in America and and other developed countries. I also think it's better to know what you are doing instead of doing it blindly. It also might help with these decisions by knowing that choosing the "wrong' one even once is slowly killing you and our planet. Then make the decision of whether you want to continue doing it. It is easier to understand the impact that our food has when you see how it ties into the other major global problems today. The books says that if all the cows that are raised/grown in C.A.F.O.s are put into pastures would nearly destroy all farmlands and forests in existence. Even though we may not be able recycle and re-use the food we eat we can definitely reduce how much we eat and that can make all the difference in the world.

On the diabetes.org website l read a very short article about a study of 4,857 American Indian children that were born from 1945 to 1984. It stated that nearly 600 of them developed some form of diabetes. It also says high-blood pressure raises the death rate by 53% and high-blood pressure raises it to 73%. The article said "The 1,214 most overweight children in the group had a mortality frequency that was about 230 percent of the leanest group." and that 559 of the study subjects died before age 55.
This study answered a few questions, but it raised some too. Why was the study only on American Indian children? It also said 166 of them died from natural causes, did their weight have anything to do with this? If obesity and cardiovascular problems can be predictors of an early death then why doesn't the government try to lower the risks and strive for a more healthy country. Why do they give millions of dollars in farm subsidies that produce unhealthy food? The only answer I can think of is money and connections but that's a different post. Even though 12.3% of 4,857 doesn't seem like much it is still too high a percent than it should be.
I don't think the author of this article was trying to make the reader think a certain way. There were no opinions in the article. It was simply the results of the study. Although I don't think the author would write the article if they didn't want people to know what the results of the research was. Sometimes I get a little thrown off when I watch, read, or hear something that is supposed to be informative but is mostly someones opinions on the subject. Since the writing was on a website called diabetes.org you can be pretty sure it is wants people to know about this condition. It was an interesting article and I would like to research more about their study.

Another Reason for the Inferior Races to Work Harder

Base on modern medical technology and expanse, a patient in need of an organ transplant is usually separated by life and death due to the racial gap. For example, a black patient will probably die because he can’t afford an organ, while a white man survives because he’s rich. I think this is really unfair and I want to do something about it.

As I was surfing through the net just now, an article in RT.com really caught my attention. Its title was “Printing new organs – sci-fi becomes true”! This article is about how bio-printing technology is progressing, aiming to save thousands of people all over the world. At the Federal Scientific Research Centre of Transplantology and Bioartificial organs in Moscow, “the scientists now use a bio-printer. A cartridge of bio-ink containing materials such as proteins and peptides is snapped into a printer followed by cell-friendly biopaper. They then use a computer to tell the printer the desired shape the matter should take. After processing the commands, the machine performs like a laser jet printer dropping individual ink clusters onto the paper. The clusters fuse together and as the layers of matter build, the structure becomes more complex and eventually the biopaper dissolves.”

Everything sounds very ideal; though as the article came to an end, Professor Simon Matskeplishvili, a cardiologist, said, “People would know that this isn’t a cheap thing, this would be a very expensive procedure, very difficult procedure – and not for everybody until 10-15 years [from now].” After I comprehended the comment briefly, my heart suddenly failed. So I guess that the people involved in the racial gap will just have to work their harder for their own sake, because there is no free lunch in this competitive world, you’ll have to earn it!

2 China Schools Said to Be Tied to Online Attacks

According to an article in the New York Times newspaper, there has been a series of sophisticated online attacks done to Google and a few other American corporations, which had connections with two china educational institutions, including one that has close relationships with the Chinese military. These attacks were believed to have begun in early April, aiming to steal trade secrets, computer codes, and emails of Chinese human rights activists.

When some of the institutions’ staffs were questioned, the professor that teaches Web security responded, “I’m not surprised. Actually students’ hacking into foreign Web sites is quite normal”. While another staff acknowledged that every four or five students from his computer science department were recruited into the military, which support the theory of the involvement of the military and the institution.

I have a feeling that these hackers are working for a good cause, because the US government has been hiding a lot of facts from the public, even from its citizens (excluding the idea that they will spread the news). Since China is currently strengthening, this might be a conspiracy that they’re holding. Though I do not feel ashamed even if it’s true, because I know that it takes great skills and intellects (above normal) to accomplish such work, (I also tried it a couple of times, so I know what it’s about), so I am proud of the Chinese.

I would love to follow their footsteps if I have the potentials in me, but I have not discovered any so far.

2/18/2010

Saving the World #1

Today, while I was taking a ride along the countryside, I began wondering about the crisis of global warming. I thought about the rise of water level as a result of the increasing temperature, where one day, the human race will be flooded into the history.

As I was thinking, I came up with a theory that might have the potential to save the world! My theory is that perhaps we can use a machine to suck the water vapor (cloud) from the sky, and release it into the space. This way we can prevent the water level from rising to our feet.

Readers, feel free to comment on my theory and give me suggestions, and please spread my thoughts to others.

Happy Farm? What Happy Farm?

Do you know where your food comes from? Who makes it? How much it really costs? How the animals you eat are being treated and taken care of before they get on your plate? How about what the labels on food products actually mean? I used to not know any of the answers to any of these questions. I did know that many cows live in feed lots some on farms, pigs live in pens, and that chickens live in coops. That is pretty much the extent of what I knew about how our food is treated and cared for. Of course I have seen some of the recalls on tainted meat, in the media but I never really bothered to find out more. Did I know that four-hundred cows and hour are slaughtered in a large slaughterhouse? Or that there are five-thousand seven hundred slaughterhouses in America to kill around twenty-eight billion pounds of beef a year, and that's only cows? Or that the Smithfield Packing Company can butcher up to thirty-two thousand hogs a day? These things are all true and I found this out after watching a little documentary call "Food Inc.".
Food Inc. is about how food industries try to cover up how they really take care of our food and what's in it. Food Inc. also shows how food industrialism affects the lives of Americans and their health. The movie shows cows jammed together with thousands of other cows in feed lots like sardines in a can. The cows stand knee-deep in their own excrement all day and night. Imagine living like this and having to eat something you can barely digest, like gravel. Gravel to us is like corn to cows but we don't have to eat gravel, cows have to eat corn. Grass is what cows have eaten for thousands of years and it's what they love, so why are they forced to eat it by large food companies? Corn is cheap, easy to make, last a long time when stored, and are made in colossal amounts(about two-hundred bushels an acre). When some cows eat large amounts of corn a bacteria builds up in their stomachs called E. Coli. This bacteria can be harmless and even help it's 'host' but sometimes they release potentially lethal toxins that well, can be lethal. It sort of makes me nervous that the meat or the veggies(vegetables can have E. Coli too) I might eat could be riddled with bacteria from the darkest corners of a cows' stomach. There are about one-hundred different cows mixed into a single hamburger and it is extremely likely that at least one of those now diseased cows had E. Coli.
Take the case of a young now diseased boy named Kevin who ate a hamburger from a burger chain called "Jack in the Box" and suffered from E. Coli poisoning. They should change their name from "Jack in the Box" to "E. Coli in the Burger". One day Kevin is playing around, having fun and eating snacks as children do. Eight days later he wasn't able to drink water and had to suck it from a sponge. Twelve days later his parents had to bury his cadaver in a child-sized coffin. His mother and grandmother made it their goal to pass a law that gives the USDA power to close plants that produce meat contaminated with E. Coli or other potentially deadly pathogens. Kevin's law has not yet passed because the food industry is protected by laws and bills. The food industry in protected by our government because many congressmen have worked in these large food corporations and still "look out" for them and make sure it's nearly impossible to sue or make laws that put them in situations they rather not be in.
Do you know who works in Americas slaughterhouses and assembly lines? Or who loads the chickens onto the trucks, and "takes"care of them. Who works at the C.A.F.O.s? The answer to these questions were the least surprising thing to me in all the movie. It's usually illegal immigrants that do the work that no one else wants to do. Illegal immigrants have to do the same mindless labor day in and day out to earn minimum wage. In a way the food industries blackmail illegal immigrants in order to keep them in their grasps. One of the many ways food companies "blackmail" illegal immigrants to continuing working for them is telling them that they will go to jail or worse, back to their home country(usually Mexico). Some illegal immigrants work for a food company for years and if they get deported the company doesn't get into any trouble at all. Why do companies use/hire illegal immigrants? They do this because immigrants work for little pay, are desperate, it's hard for them to find a lasting job, and they have no rights. At all. I don't know exactly what the countries that these immigrants come from are like and I don't know how hard it is to get a green card. But I still think that if they want the rights then they should do what's needed in order to become citizens. You can't go somewhere your not supposed to be and expect to have what the people who are supposed to be there have. Even though these immigrants shouldn't be here illegally they are still people and it is still hard to have your life pulled out from under you.That is why I sympathize for them.
One question of Food Inc. raises is "Whose responsibility is it to make sure our food is safe?". There are many answers to this question. Some people would say it's the governments responsibility to make sure our food is safe. They pass the laws, they have to protect our rights, the government says what can and can not go in our foods and their labels. Other people say that it's up to our parents to make sure our food is safe. They say young adults and children do not completely understand what they are eating and what nutrition is. If parents aren't a hundred percent sure that the food their child is going to eat is safe then they shouldn't feed it to them. I personally think it's our responsibility to make sure the food we eat is safe. If we want to make sure our meat, poultry and vegetables came from a "happy farm" and are healthy we can go to a local farmers market or order it from a validated website. If we do not want to eat something then we usually don't have to eat it, we are not force fed like the poor bacteria filled cows. It's up to us as consumers to change or keep the way our food is being grown. I don't know how I feel about chickens not being able to walk on account of them growing too fast for there bones to catch up or cows having to be fed corn. I think I feel more sorry for the cows because they are bigger so you see how sad they look more. I believe that cows belong in pastures and barns. I also think pigs shouldn't just be overfed and in overcrowded pens but able to play around in the mud like in the book in Charlotte's Web. I don't really care much about chickens, they are kind of annoying but at least deserve to be able to walk. I know that since consumers demand so much products and goods to live and because we are used to it that these companies need to save money to make money and that means saving space and expenses. We can't exactly complain about the treatment of these animals and how safe our food is when we still buy and eat the food in question. We have to change and question ourselves before we try to change and question others. I think that's what the makers of Food Inc want us to do, change our lives to change the world.