Pink Slime Across America

            Since we did not have a discussion Tuesday in class, instead I’ll write about something that relates to my topic and that Mr. Eagen brought up: Pink Slime.

While most media outlets are busy covering the most recent shooting of Trayvon Martin with all the controversy surrounding it, another hot topic in the media is “Pink Slime”. Essentially, it is a food additive that contains animal by- products that has been treated with ammonium hydroxide. It first was brought in the media light at the beginning of March by ABC 70% of ground beef for sale in the United States contained unlabeled “Pink slime”. You know that once your product is labeled with the word “slime” it will affect your sales. Currently, the largest producer of pink slime, Beef Products Inc., has suspended three of its four factories.

After doing some research I discovered that pink slime has been a major part of the meat processing industry since the early 90’s and has been criticized by some scientists and media outlets in the past 20 years. The USDA allowed Pink slime to go unlabeled in beef products even though the USDA’s own scientists said that pink slime should be labeled! The issue of pink slime has delved from a food only issue but also now involves more corporations and the political spectrum. McDonalds, Taco Bell, Burger King have all committed to having “pink slime” free products. Also, other well-known grocery stores such as Publix, Costco, SuperValu have pulled any beef products containing pink slime. Parents have also seemed to join the cause via online petition and now the United States Department of Agriculture has offered public schools to have pink slime free products at the cost of having untainted beef products with a higher percentage of fat.

Unfortunately, the amount of research on the actual effects of pink slime is negligible. The critics of “pink slime”, as it has been coined, say that it may be unsafe and looks unappetizing. Many prominent Republican governors such as: Rick Perry, Sam Brownback, and Terry Branstad believe “(Beef Products Inc.) have been a victim of a smear campaign, and I think we need to do all we can to try to counter this,” as stated by Branstad. The three Republican governors toured Sioux City, Nebraska plant to show their support for Beef Products Inc.

            So the question to ask oneself is why now, why is pink slime becoming an issue today as opposed to 10 years ago? No research has circumstantially shown that pink slime is unhealthy so why is it being banned from companies, grocery stores and by some schools? Is it the media manipulating the story to make a “mountain out of mole hills scenario”?

            Personally, I think currently there is not even research or evidence to ban pink slime. Pink slime has been used for the past 20 years and has shown no adverse effects. It is simply meat by product that is being heavily processed. If every food that was heavily processed was banned, there would be no fast food joints, no sugary sodas. Since that scenario is not going to happen, it unnecessary to pick on pink slime just because it got stuck with a disgusting nickname.

Picture of Pink slime and article: http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/pink-slime-maker-suspends-plant-operations-ammonia-treated-beef-nixed-nyc-schools-supermarkets-article-1.1051323

What are your family traditions?

            Do we still have strong families within our homes in today’s society? Have we forgotten the meaning of tradition and family? I feel that the normal traditions between families in the past and present are very different. They are not minor changes but in my opinion they are dramatic and in some cases unhealthy changes. I think that the biggest reason for this is because of the economical and social changes that our society has gone through throughout the last few decades. We have become a high class, high spending, and self consumed materialistic society. We have become less dependent on families and more dependent on our own materialistic wants.

            A decade or so ago and even longer had a traditional family lifestyle which in my opinion consisted of a mother who’s occupation was to take care of the household needs; such as laundry, cooking, taking care of the children, cleaning, ect. The fathers role was to go to work every day to support the entire family then to come home with dinner already prepared for him and then to relax the rest of the evening. This gave the parent figures time apart in the day and quality family time in the evening, thus resulting in a healthy family environment. The children were to go to school, do homework, and have normal healthy friendship relationships in their spare time. Past families had more children to not only help with household work but to help bring income in. A family with five or six children was not uncommon what so ever.

            In today’s family lifestyles the mother usually takes on all of the same responsibilities including having a part time or full time job on top of that. This creates less time with the children and more stress on living life. The father figure role now consists of the same responsibilities but, the difference is that there are many more men that are unemployed that look at the women to take on the financial responsibilities. This creates stress and tension in the relationship between the mother and father in the household. I feel that this is a primary reason that the divorce rate is so high and common amongst the world today. The children now a day’s still go to school, with higher drop outs and lower education; partially in my opinion due to problems at home. But the will to succeed and have an education for the children today seems to be more of a struggle than for the children in past traditions. Families today typically only have one or two children because of the cost of living and the want for things. People feel that children are expensive so they would rather have money to spend on other things in life than children. How do you want your family to be brought up in the next generation to come? Will you bring them up with strong qualities and traditions? Or will you be overtaken by the future and what it holds for all of us? 

  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IK_20_9830&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HI2ALjJaXQ

Research and Arguments

For our final essay, the class is going to have to create an argumentative essay and a presentation. My blog response for tonight is to ask you guys for help with my argument. The idea for my argument is that America needs to refocus the importance of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in schools for students at an early age. I have general reasons on why this needs to be done but I haven't been able to figure out a few things. For one, I'm not aware of many arguments that go against the claim, so do any of you guys know why my claim could have any disagreements? Another question is if there is a reason not to refocus the education, why would we do so when the economy is globally thriving due to the engineering and science fields? As I said, I have been able to generate more ideas that lean towards refocusing the American education on STEM fields than away from them. I am open to all criticism, hurtful or pleasant, so I ask you all to give your thoughts. If you aren't really familiar with the field itself, I ask if you can give  me ideas that can make my essay attention grabbing; what about a good essay makes you keep reading it?

Research Essay Stuff

For our research essay Mr. Eagan presented us with two example essays that we were supposed to read and go over in class. The first essay that we went over was about credibility of child witnesses. Throughout this essay this person did many good things that we should incorporate into our research essays; at least I am going to in mine. Their introduction paragraph was very well done according to Mr. Eagan, so we should take note of that. They introduced the topic to us and included some research with it. Their thesis statement stated what they believed (main claim) and three things that they would be covering throughout their essay. I asked Mr. Eagan in class if three things to cover was a good number or was it okay if we had more... he said three was perfect and easy to follow in an essay. Starting off their essay, they define things for their "audience" that may be confusing. That is another thing we should focus on in our research essay is who we are writing for and who our audience is. We have to remember that we are not writing for little children or scholars so some things need to be defined and other things do not. Also in their essay they had a phrase that most of us were confused about and that was "et al" after an authors name in a citation. Mr. Eagan explained to us that we can use this when there are more than a certain amount of authors for a source, so we do not have to list them all and take space up in our paper. One thing that needed to be improved in the paper was transitions into each body paragraph. Some transitions that I am going to use in my research paper are furthermore, additionally, pursuing this further, specifically, and a few others. In class we talked about the lengths of the paragraphs in this example essay and no length is right or wrong as long is the point gets across and it is not too vague. Mr. Eagan said not to use simple words like "a great way". Instead of "a great way" it should be something like "the best way". Those are just small details that we need to focus on to make our research paper read smoothly and clearly.

This person also added an adequate amount of research, while not using too much. They put in a block quote where it fit well and there was one point where there was something that was not cited correctly and we need to keep an eye out for that in our papers. Throughout the paper the writer used words that were presented in the thesis statement, which kept our attention on those topics and helped us understand them better. In our papers we should do the same by using words in our thesis throughout our entire paper. The conclusion of the essay summed up the whole essay pretty well which is something we need to do too and not confuse our audience. What did you think about this paper? I thought it was very well done!

... But Not as Much as You Think

The parts of the data I found most interesting was the counter argument on how it doesn't pay as much as you think.  It didn't seem right that when you set the high school education value at one, then look at the graphs of higher education numbers and see a value of 1.61 on the Lifetime Earnings graph for bachelor's degree.  To me that doesn't seem like a large enough increase.  Maybe it's because growing up my parents would say constantly "if you go to college you'll make hundreds and hundreds of times more money than just high school".  Well, according to the graphs it's not even twice as much money.  And when it comes to graph accuracy, does it factor in the expenses of college?  And the 4 years time a high school only student gets to have a full time job rather than just part time or no job like a college student would have to?  If those weren't factored into the graph then the lifetime earnings for the college student would be even lower.

It just seems like, based from the data presented on the graphs, our time we put in at college isn't valued nearly enough by employeers.

Culture & Eductaion

On Thursday, we talked about how education pays and we had to create a claim about one of the charts. For the group that I was in, we made the claim that because asian males make the most earnings and get the most education, that it is in their culture to work hard and be the best in education.
Compared to the Asian culture, America is very spoiled and lazy, even statistics show that. If it was pushed more or a part of American culture to work hard and be the best in education, we could be doing just as well or even better than Asians. Which goes back to the support of family and schools. If the importance of education was pushed more by our leaders, families, and teachers, students would think of this as "the ONLY way"; this would become a part of our culture.

Waiting for Superman

We didn't really talk about much on Tuesday's class so I'm going to comment on the Waiting for Superman documentary we watched. I found a lot of the information provided very interesting. One thing I wonder about is the failing neighborhoods and schools. Are schools failing because of the failing neighborhoods or are neighborhoods failing because of the failing schools? Quite frankly, I can see a little bit of both. If the neighborhood is failing, it is likely they aren't providing a lot of tax dollars to make the schools great. At the same time though, if the schools aren't providing good students, those students will grow up and end up the same way their parents did, it will be a never ending loop of failure. In the end I think at some point it is the school's duty to make better students to stop the loop of failure.

I also thought it was very interesting how it cost more to house an inmate then it did to send a child to a private school. An inmate costs $33,000 per year. If they are there for four years it will cost around $132,000! Per year, a private school costs around $8,300. That multiplied for 13 years of schooling through high school is only $107,900. For the cost they pay to house inmates with no education to set up a nice life, they could be sending them to private schools where they can set up a great future. It is something that needs to be considered. Especially because in the end, they are saving money!