I'm a huge fan of eating meat. I was just raised to like it. It's tasty, it's satisfying, it get's the job done. But I found out some pretty disturbing things about meat and how it effects the entire world. According to vegsource.com, there are many arguments as to why our meat consumption should be toned down quite a bit. They have many arguments with evidence for this, but I think the most convincing was the hunger argument. According to them if Americans reduced their meat consumption by 10%, the land freed up could feel 100 million people. It doesn't give many details like a time frame or how they'd get the food or what food would be grown, but it still packs a powerful punch. It also goes on to say how most of the corn and oats and grains produced in America are used to feed livestock. This is rather convincing because it shows if we ate less meat there would be less livestock and if there was less livestock there would be more food. It seems to make sense. Another convincing point is that on one acre of land 40,000 pounds of potatoes can be grown while only 250 pounds of beef can be produced. It all makes perfect sense and if you read the page the other arguments are very logical too. But my question is, if it's so obvious that less meat is a good thing, then how come we are still eating it by the shovelfull?
I have some ideas. For starters we're really used to consuming meat, and plus it's tasty. Old habits die hard and plus, I can say personally switching from meat eating to vegan is tough. My mom had a phase of at least a year and a half where she was obsessed with eating organic. We would often have meatless meatballs and meatless bacon and meatless meat. I'm not gonna lie, it was pretty disgusting. But another reason is because it's profitable. There's nothing more important to people than money, and less beef means less money. So in order to keep the cash flowing they have to keep the beef flowing. That also makes perfect sense and it's probably the main reason. Another main reason is that many people just don't know. I know I didn't. Meat is thought of as being healthy and the stuff that builds muscles, it's hard to see the overall impact that producing meat has on the world when we see the immediate benefits so much sooner. So for now I will try to eat less meat, but unless somehow the word is spread quickly and well about the harm meat has on the world, I don't see less beef in our future.

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Stalkerazzi

My sister is a frequenter of sites such as perezhilton.com. She likes her celebrity gossip and candid photos, and hey, who can blame her? Let's be honest, it's really interesting to hear about what the daily life of your favorite movie star or musician is really like. Here's where the Paparazzi come in. I always hear about the Paparazzi ruining lives, so being the curious person that I am, I decide to look wikipedia it. I never realized what horrible people these photographers are. For example, a photographer crashed his car into Catherine Zeta-Jones's car in order to get her out of it. Some photographers were found camping on Susan Sarandon's property, as in her house. And of course the most famous would be the debate of whether Princess Diana's death was due to the Paparazzi they were fleeing from. This seems like a minor subject, but I feel like it's exploitation and pornography. These leeches are making a quick buck out of harassing celebrities. They intentionally try to get a reaction out of them to make the footage more sensational. If you've ever seen a show called TMZ it's all they do. If you haven't seen it, count yourself lucky. It's painful to watch. It's a room full of people saying who they harassed and then showing the footage. It's truly despicable.
This makes me wonder how far is too far. When will something so horrific happen because of the Paparazzi that laws will be put against them. Already there are laws against being too aggressive while getting photos of celebrities. But just look at all the photos of people like Amy Winehouse. It's horrible of course what she's doing to herself and she obviously has some issues that she needs to deal with, but for Christ's sake leave her alone! She's troubled enough without four trillion people trying to get her to look bad. Anyway, I didn't even expect to be writing about this, but after looking at what a person will do to get a stupid photo I had to say something.

On Gugle Making us Stoopid

I wanted to touch on the topic we discussed a few days ago with the "Google is making us stupid" article. There is really no way to measure the affect on google on the entire population, but we can make good guesses based on certain cases. When Carr quotes Karp and Friedman, two persons well versed in literature according to Carr, this evidence really puts in to words something I've noticed myself. I'm beginning to read books the way I read online, in short bursts. I have diagnosed attention deficit disorder and I have trouble listening and reading one thing for too long. It's a trade off though because when I get into something I'm interested in, I hyperfocus for a short burst of time which can be personally rewarding. It's not a big deal, but ADD does affect almost everything I do. But I feel like more and more people are beginning to have ADD of some kind. This makes me wonder, are we being conditioned by society and by basically ourselves to have short attention spans? This is basically the argument Carr is making. Will our education system then adapt to this new way of thinking? I can personally say that a short attention span and our current education system do not mesh. I don't think either the person or the system are at fault. But something has to be changed in one or the other won't survive.
But we can't forget that google has revolutionized the way information is gained and shared. It's truly incredible the hieghts technology has taken us to. But we have to be careful with all this new power, it might make us stoopid.

Obamarama

I know this is probably about the four billionth post about how great Obama is, but I'll go ahead and say what I mean to say anyway.  I'm so incredibly proud of our country.  Our country was founded on ideals of equality and the basic rights of man (I won't go into that since I already have an essay's worth of things to say about that) and some of those rights were great ideas but didn't really work out when they got the country started.  Abolishing slavery wasn't just a cool idea Lincoln came up with one morning, they'd been talking about it for years.  It took them three quarters of a century to get that done.  But even after they abolished slavery there was clear racism in america.  I don't want to bore you with a stupid brief history of the civil rights movement ect.  

The point is that Obama being elected president is probably among the most important events in our nation's history.  It has turned the american dream into something even wider and more inclusive.  Growing up teachers said "anybody can be president" but now I actually believe it.  And the fact that he is also and incredible smart leader who will do great things with this country and was elected for that and not because of his being black is even better.  Nothing will ever be the same.

That being said, I'd like to also say something about John McCain.  I was talking to my friends on election day about the whole thing and finding out just how misinformed people can be. Almost all of my friends are very liberal people and I consider myself to be a moderate with liberal leanings.  But they were saying wild things like "if McCain wins then it's over, I'm moving to Canada,"  or "Mark Kirk is a crazy man."  I know they were exaggerating for effect, but it just was so strange to hear.  Had McCain been elected president, he would've done a fantastic job!  I don't agree with everything he promises, but I don't agree with everything Obama promises either!  McCain is a true american hero and would've made a darn good president.  I just think Obama was the best candidate.

Well I guess this post has about no point whatsoever and is really just me ranting about my opinions.  But if I were to make a point it would be that I think people our age should be more informed before they go around making really strong statements.  That's not to say that I am well informed about everything, I just think a person should be informed before they start hating someone for no reason.