Here's an Idea: Thoughts for food

      How far must we fear to become elucidated? With our growing knowledge of these issues on food happening in our own local home, we are becoming afraid of our surroundings. What i mean is that we are everyday learning more and more of what is wrong with our food and what we intake, it literally scares us and worries us. We learn what is wrong with the processed, fast food and what is even wrong with the fresh local foods. When i realized i was feed up with this fear and our decreasing heath as a nation i thought maybe Ron Finley is right. Finley inspired me that if we build it will rise. (ha ha) I mean that if we create a better eating environment, then our health will get better. His thought was to make all empty, abandon parking lots or open land into farming land. Small gardens all over California. And why not? He is right. If we have kids volunteer they will eat what they have created. and if we have enough effort we will change everything.All i think of this idea is positive things. Sure it will take work and effort, qualities our nation lacks as a whole but with our focus we can truly benefit. Starting now we can begin to grow enough to support our growing population which is said to be in the near 10 billion by 2050. If we are having issues feeding our people now, it will not get easier as the days continue. So here's a though world: lets grow everything, ourselves and our food.

Issues on School Lunches

    (3/18/ 14 quick write)
        It saddens me to know that when a child is given lunch money to have a well balanced meal to help get through the day, and that money is is either used for a unhealthy "healthy" warmed up mush at school or is used for unhealthy snacks that don't really fill one up. It seems that the only way a child receives a healthy fresh meal is to bring from home and this option is not always at hand. Most families don't have enough time or money to make meals like this daily. So with theses limited options, children are being forced to eat unhealthy or starve. We need to change one way or another or unhealthy rates will not fall.

       Due to the fact that get free lunch, I am required by my parents to eat at school or starve. The meals on campus are never in my favor but i have learned to look past taste. Will in the past years i have not had much issue with the food once i stopped thinking about it but if in order for a student to have to ignore the heath issues in school lunches to have full stomach, then there is something wrong and i needs to be changed. Recently i have had a hard time eating at school. Due to my sacrifice of meat because of lent, I given up meat. But what must i eat if all meals are meat based? I have many vegetarian friends and i wonder what do they do? most do bring food from home but many have just fruits and juice. But this isn't enough to fulfill me all day. I have had salad for the last few weeks and i feel terrible. My health is not where it should be.
I used to be proud of having been on the list of students with free lunch. To have a meal before home unlike many other kids. But once looking into what is in these free "meals", I feel more of a guinea pig to "If it doesn't kill them then its okay". So what must we do to end this whole issue?

Thought? Opinion?

Cornstalks Everywhere (but nothing else. Not even a bee)

Check out this review of the book A World in One Cubic Foot by Robert Krulwich of Radiolab!  This is cool because it communicates so well, but it's awful, tragic, devastating information.  It worries me.

The Politics of Food

This is a wide open topic with multiple fascinating avenues to explore.  Don't get stuck.  Find a research question you are genuinely interested in, and follow your research in a direction that matters.  It makes the work fly by; it's interesting and real when the writer really wants to know something.

Here are some websites you can explore:

Michael Pollan has his own web page
Here's the Atkins Center for Weight and Health at UC Berkeley
The Food Inc. documentary has a website
The Edible Schoolyard -- wouldn't it be cool to plant a garden here at Mayfair?  What would it take?
Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity

The fourth talk here (all about ecosystems) is about our dwindling bee populations.  Galvanizing.
Ron Finley inspires me:  a TEDTalk about guerrilla gardening
Jamie Oliver's TEDTalk called "Teach Every Child About Food"
Another TEDTalk:  "My (subversive) garden plot"

I planted last year in hay bales that I purchased up the street at Bellflower Feed.  You could put one of these bales almost anywhere, even beside a driveway.  I'm going to try this again this year -- it was easy, cheap and fun -- my idea of a good time.  Last year, I planted four; this year, I'm gonna double that.  (Twice the fun.)

Early:

Later:

Funny Translated text.

So I took the opening paragraphs of Left Hand Of Darkness and ran them through a whole bunch of languages on Google Translate. The first quote is the original text. The second quote is the translated version. enjoy.

"I'll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a
matter of the imagination. The soundest fact may fail or prevail in the style of its telling: like
that singular organic jewel of our seas, which grows brighter as one woman wears it and, worn
by another, dulls and goes to dust. Facts are no more solid, coherent, round, and real than
pearls are. But both are sensitive.
 The story is not all mine, nor told by me alone. Indeed I am not sure whose story it is; you can
judge better. But it is all one, and if at moments the facts seem to alter with an altered voice,
why then you can choose the fact you like best; yet none of them are false, and it is all one
story."

"I learned early in my house that we are not aware of the fact. The fact difficult test success or failure . You have a unique jewel dust , it's actually better than the real bright and smooth pearl worn by female and others and implement environmental development in hard tissue . However , all of the key .

My own story , he said . In fact , I who am stories, can judge knows best . However , trade unions and faster. Why do you choose the best , and yet none of them could be fake the fact that , no subjects seems to change to a different sound ."

Feminism Presented in Left Hand of Darkness

In the Socratic Seminar we just did, the subject of feminism aroused my attention. Ms. Fletcher made the point that Le Guin uses the people of Gethen's same sexness to show that females should be treated equally with men. However, I contend that Ursula wasn't trying to convince us that women should have the same jobs and that men should be equally responsible for childrearing, but was simply showing what a society would be like if we were all the same sex or had the opportunity to change gender roles readily. I do believe Le Guin is concerned about the treatment of females. She writes that men have a lot more freedom than women. However, while females do have less time to become CEOs or presidents due to childbirth and the constraints that brings, she misses the fact that while females have different roles in society, their roles are no lesser than males and should be kept in high regard.
If I were to follow Le Guin's logic, then I could contend that males are the ones with less freedom. Males have absolutely no freedom to bear a child, a privilege reserved only for their female counterparts, while females do have the ability to achieve anything a man can.  She, as well as many feminists out there, simply forget that childbearing is one of the most important roles in society and whoever does it should be applauded. She believes that a respectable women should strive for power and wealth and forgets that while women can do this, their natural role of Birthing isn't one we should see as lower than a running a company.

Some Feminists make the moral fallacy of  seeing the role CEO as more desirable and more honorable than the role of a mother. Obviously, being a mother is exponentially more respectable.

LHOD Questions

I'm just writing this to get my present thoughts down and to see if any of you guys have answers to them. I've been reading LHOD and some questions arose. I was wondering if anyone knows what Dothe is and what the mechanics of it is. From why I gather its a form of super strength (?) but I don't really understand when it can be used or what it actually does to the body. Also I was confused on Genly's movements. When he visits the foretellers, is he in Kharhide? Thanks in advance if you can clear these things up for me.