Journal #15
Question 1:
By giving up meat he lost a lot of things that he had as a child is lost in the future for him. He lost much of his grandmothers cooking which to him as a child earned her the title of the greatest chef. He loses many of the experiences he could have had later in life that involved meat and much of which had to do with his grandmother. He gave up eating meat and he had said how he lost the taste and the joy from eating meat and that even though vegetables are great and do great for your health, but it just cannot replace meat. What is gained for Foer is that he found a sense of identity and a sense of belonging that he was not finding before. He found that he was caught in a crossroads of having the idea that eating meat was wrong, but he couldn’t follow through with it. This sent him on a journey for years and in college where he became a philosophy major. He had eventually met his wife on a blind date and vegetarianism had come up and she had the same struggle as him. He eventually had children and all this was a chain that had started all from giving up meat and attempting to find an identity.
Question 2:
There is absolutely no way that is even remotely easy to answer this question at all. It is comparing a sexual urge towards an animal and the thought of killing it when we are hungry. In my head there are way too many things wrong with this question, but one simple thing is the difference of how many people who don’t have the option to go and only eat vegetables and must hunt. People surviving in the wilderness must hunt and eat meat in order to survive due to the hard work they do, and the protein needed for it. No one would want to rape an animal if they were horny. No body just goes out and kills if they are hungry. There is something that has already been killed and put on a shelf in a fridge and the person doesn’t have to think about how it got there just that it is food. If you take away the production people must go hunt for their meat and many people will not put the effort in or be able to have the heart to kill the animal. I personally have no issue when it comes to killing fish or another animal for food and for me it is not necessary as I can afford to go to a super market. My morals are that the fittest survive and that would be humans due to its intelligence, but other things want to live as well. They do their best to survive and we should not just kill them for absolutely no reason except for necessary sustenance.
Journal #14
My thoughts on consider the lobster has only partially changed since we had read it the first time this year. I still think the same things that I did prior for the most part but the part about people not wanting to think about the food they are cooking. Some people do consider the thought that these lobsters or their food in general does go through pain to be produced as food. I still believe thought that people do need to eat and if they aren’t just killing animals for absolutely zero reasoning then it is alright. The killing must be moral or fast, not drawn out and almost torturous. That’s for most of the animals but personally I do not believe that is true for lobsters. They are insects that come from the ocean and as much as people would like to debate that they have animal rights such as rights of a cow or chicken which we would not boil or grill alive that just not the case. Insects are often crushed, poisoned, burned, drowned, and so many ways of killing them so why is a lobster any different? It is not. That why my thoughts have not truly changed but have only a little bit since the last time we had viewed it.
Journal #13
I believe that paper 2 was much more difficult than the first. I thought it was a bit harder to use some of the quotes and sum up everything I wanted to say within the limiting guide lines I had. I also believe it was a bit more difficult trying to relate your peers’ essays to Pollan’s or each other in some smaller cases. I found it somewhat easy to pick out a general idea from Pollan’s essay but when it came to pick out the idea from other essays, I found that it was extremely easy. Trying to convert those ideas to my own paper and explain what they are saying down on paper was a bit difficult though. I had spent way more time on this essay over the first as well which is aggravating because I feel that I did very poorly on it. Some of the connection that I was able to gain with their essays was the sense of home and love when it comes to food which was nice and was likely the larger reason for why I was able to figure out the general idea easily. Still despite the easier parts the rest of it was quite difficult and aggravating
Journal #12
Page 2 Paragraph One-
The morals of a vegetarian or a pescatarian is tough since a pescatarian is still eating fish which is meat and comes from a living thing. The point that the author is trying to prove by this passage is the fact that it is hard to stay moral and the slightest thing can change how moral you are when it comes to food. A woman had gone from being almost strictly vegetarian for years yet when her husband made her a dish of poultry with raspberries which she loves very much, she lost her morals and ate it. She was a vegetarian for 15 years but since her husband made the dish and used her favorite thing which is raspberries it was over in just one taste and she did not go back to being vegetarian. She had gone to full blown carnivore eating all kinds of meat without care.
Page 2 Paragraph 2-
A college student who oversaw disposing and killing the baby chickens at the end of experiments had no problem doing it at all and he had zero thought behind it. He had to do it for a class, so he had no moral worries and was not shaken up at all. But one day his mother had sent him a magazine about animal rights. He immediately changed his point of view and stopped eating meat and thought about if what he did was moral. He had stopped wearing leather and gone vegetarian very quickly and pressured his girlfriend into it too. He questioned having pets and let his pet bird go into the wild. This is proving the authors points that there is a connection between humans and animals and our moral compass is constantly being challenged or changed with ease. This could be for the good where there is less animal murder for no reason and giving them a chance. In other cases, though it could be the change to lack of care for an animal’s life unlike this passage.
Page 2 Paragraph 4-
This passage proves what I believe is the authors point by talking about the fact that humans have always had connections with animals. One of the examples that he uses is the fact that there was a woman whose husband accused her of loving a manatee over him. She spent every single day with this animal playing with it and feeding it. If she had left the animal got moody like a child would by getting sad and not eating any of its food, it was given. She shares a twenty-year bond with this animal and I have no idea if she is still with her husband. Her morals were affected in a different way as the animal she cared for wasn’t really a pet and kind of was at the same time. She treated it like her child and cared more about the animal then other people. Other morals shown is the caring of animal lives but not the extreme attachment or the lack of care at all out of nowhere. This woman brought it to a whole new level with animal love and care over that of a human.
Page 4 Full Paragraph 1-
The debate of Moral or unmoral with animals doesn’t just include what we do to animals, but we allow to happen in order to benefit other animals. It extends to what kind of pet we can have as a cat or a snake. This passage is asking the moral implications behind pets such as these. On one hand the snake only eats meat, but some are pests or pre-killed animals. Sometimes there are live animals though. Then there are cats though which if allowed to roam outside will several different animals from rodent and birds to even frogs or toads. The idea that is being challenged is if it is alright to allow predatory animals to be pets or if it is alright to allow them to kill living animals in the wild or in a tank instead of giving them processed food. There is also the discussion of which pet is more moral to have that is continued on. This is between the snake and cat and I believe the snake would be more moral. It eats less and is also less of a danger to animals outside its cage as it won’t get let out like a cat would.
Journal #11
This chapter is very helpful as it can help change my writing style. There are different ways to show your topic as you can make it be out in the open or you can hide it within your writing. You can state your point but make it, so the reader must engage with the writing in order to understand what is being said. The chapter is also trying to tell you the ways in which other can or do write for you to become better at analyzing readings. It helps show where and when in a paragraph you should be looking for the authors main points outside of their thesis. This helps me understand you need to think more and pay attention when it comes to reading for me to fully understand a reading. It also teaches me how to be good at analyzing papers in order to get these points. This is something that takes some time to learn.
Journal #10
Page 3 Paragraph 2
I do not really agree with this passage or at least the beginning of it but it is complicated as well as it is somewhat true at the same time. He says that cooking shows are extremely popular across America which is accurate. He proceeds to say that his 16-year-old son could name the winner of chef competitions on television months after which it all happens. I do not really believe that or think that most kids would be able to do that or do that at all. Most younger people enjoy other shows such as reality shows, cartoons, and Netflix or other movie and show providers instead of a cooking channel. I do agree though that many Americans that are constantly watching television would like to find a show that “the road to personal fulfillment and public success passes through the kitchen”. Most of these are large cooking-based shows with a relation to real life and society which can make the shows popular.
Page 4 Paragraph 1
I believe that this paragraph is somewhat correct yet also somewhat wrong which makes my response complicated. I would try not to offend anyone with the first sentence of this paragraph as it says that part of the decline of cooking dinners was caused by women getting jobs outside of the house and leaving the kitchen. I believe that that is correct and very wrong at the same time. In the historical aspect of this women were always the ones to cook so them leaving could cause the decline of cooking. At the same time this is a very wrong comment as men can cook and stay home as a woman works. I believe that this paragraph has a controversial feeling to it as it mentions how women used to be in the kitchen and now they are not which is a blessing and a curse. Pollan mentions how “it has been easier for us to give up cooking than it has been to give up talking about it – and watching it”. I believe this is true as many try not to cook and do not want to, yet they are willing to talk about it or watch it on television or whatever it happens to be.
Page 5 Paragraph 3 continued to page 6
I believe that this paragraph is all about how cooking has changed on television. From Julia Childs show which was all about loving cooking and the great feel you get after doing long hard work cooking a meal that tastes good. To the new shows such as Rachel Ray which is all about making the quickest easiest meals at home and not putting real work into it. It all about looking like a good chef very quickly and impressing people with small dishes that are quickly thrown together. Childs show was just very different. I agree with this point as I have watched those shows before such as Chopped as each meal needs to be prepared in 30 minutes where many are highly complicated and are not finished. This makes it so the food cannot be appreciated the way it should be such as for example a thanksgiving meal prepared at home or by a professional chef on air. The time it takes with all the effort makes it so much greater as it shows the care and all the effort that had been put into the meal.
Journal #9
I had spent the most time revising the wording and grammar that I had used in my sentences. Some of my sentences were too long and word just word jumbles as they made zero sense. Other sentences I tried to use better language then I had prior to make the essay sound nicer. I changed much from the original essay as my very first draft to my final draft it was in a completely different format in the beginning. All my past approaches in high school when it came to drafting was solely spelling and grammar. If I used the function on Microsoft word or whatever it was to spell check then I thought great I’m all set, no worries. I never realized how much really went into the drafting and editing process as I did so little before. Its rewriting a lot of your essay, spelling and grammar, changing your paragraph or sentence structure, making sure you have sound sentences, and information to support your statement. My approach did not fit at all as I was doing so little before my grade would be much worse if I followed only doing that instead of all the other steps.
Journal #8
This reading makes it very clear that there are plenty of ways to make your essay better and have it made better sense to the audience. It shows there are different ways to show what you are arguing, stating, or proving within your essay. The templates were quite helpful as they showed the many ways in which someone can improve their essay and gives you clear examples on how one might fill in the blanks with their own topics. The Dr. X part at the beginning was helpful as it showed that a major portion of the speakers’ discussion was missing as the point was not passed along and it made very little sense to those that didn’t know what he was talking about. The big idea of this reading is to show that one’s point must be made clear at the start of the essay or article instead of being said at the end or when someone questions what exactly is going on.
Journal #7
I found that the best global comments were based on the total explanations or flow of paragraphs. The total explanations sum up on how I could do more to explain a quote. I was somewhat vague in explaining my quotes which gave the essay less meat to it. Next was explaining my points which I did an alright job of, but it made very little sense. I needed to explain what exactly I meant by my statements and no just leave it for the reader to decide. The flow of the paragraphs is easy as I need to be able to make my sentences come together better. The quotes and paragraphs don’t have good lead ins or transitions for going into the next paragraph. It is choppy and lacks sense in some as it doesn’t fit well. The best advice that I had given my peers was simply to use more quotes and make sure they are larger to create a longer paper and give the reader more. Giving larger quotes makes it so you can explain more to the reader and help them understand. Mostly all the ideas that were brought up in our review was on the page. Most things that we had noticed or had to say was on the essay already. The only stuff that wasn’t was how we talked about what good things one had done whether the quote was integrated well, or the transitions were good. That showed me what I should do comparing my essay to what they had done. I wish more comments about what was done properly to show me what to keep rather than what to change when it comes to looking at my draft.
Journal #6
Journal #4
Soylent is a basic mixture of chemicals and nutrients that can make a person extremely healthy and solve many issues. A man named Rob Rhinehart thought of this idea while him and some colleagues were working on a business idea as technical engineers. They were thinking about their food costs and how it was not cheap at all and figured there had to be an easier way. They came up with the substance and started marketing the idea online. The mix could solve many issues from environmental issues to government issues. The world has a horrible climate change issue right now and this could change that as it eliminates the need for much agriculture and livestock. It is such a futuristic concept that just one small mix can eliminate the need to eat full meals and create so much waste. It is highly efficient and practical as it could eliminate world hunger. They are experimenting with an alga that can grow Soylent from light, air, and water absorbed from anywhere. This would create less government struggles and wars between villages over food or land to grow that food. This is truly futuristic and is almost like technology as it could change everything.
This is a conflicting article that didn’t change my thinking completely, but it had me think more about how Soylent could change everything. This is a revolutionary idea that could make the world a healthier and better place but at the same time take away something many people hold dear, food. Food is important when it comes to families sitting down and eating or dinners that can fix government or political issues. This creation could solve world hunger if applied properly and if allowed by the government. A large loss of cash flow for the government would happen though as farmers and large livestock farms would be shut down as demand for meat and other natural goods would slow as all the nutrients a person needs, and the amount of money saved of Soylent would be fulfilling and helpful. I would personally invest in this product for a little while to see how it could help me eat healthier and make me feel better about myself in general. It is just the right number of calories and is easy to do which is great because I am a lazy person. If I could make my meals out of a liquid for most days yet still have a great tasting meaningful meal with my family once or twice a weak this would be the ideal product. The idea behind it seems to eat it for every meal every day but if you strayed from this idea there would be no real issue as taste is something many people look for in food or food substances. I thought I could only live of the full portioned meals that I eat and that there was no other way, but Soylent proves that very wrong as it is healthy and filling.
