Meat Inspection

In class, we started reading excerpts from Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. I also read this book for my junior theme, and it taught me to not allow myself to be reassured too easily. In the book, Jurgis observes the world of meat packing in great detail. One of the most surprising things for him is the informality of the inspection of the meat. He observed how the inspectors would stop examining the meat for minutes at a time while animals were still passing through. The Inspectors were supposed to be there to make sure that unsanitary meat did not pass through, but sanitary is the last thing that I would call the whole system. Jurgis told how rats, feces, sewage, and even nails would make there way into the product. After reading this book, I realized that many titles of safety could just be for the purpose of reassurance.

On that note, I was watching a youtube video about meat inspection. You see a white man in a lab coat speaking very generally about how the modern day inspections work. He never really goes into great detail about how inspectors do what they do. I am not saying that modern day meat qualities are bad, or even close to that of the early 1900's. The Jungle merely taught me to think on my own rather than eating up what some man is saying. I would like to see what really goes on in these modern day inspections.

Is This Really That Important?

We've all heard about the Michael Phelps ordeal in the last two weeks; the press have been talking about it non stop. I was looking over CNN and I saw a headline on the case. Apparently, there is not enough evidence to charge Phelps, and also he only admitted to being sorry for his "inappropriate behavior". I realize that an Olympic athlete should not be smoking marijuana, much less get photographed while doing it, but is this really that much important?
Go to any high school or college campus and you will see worse actions than what Phelps did. I feel that it really should not be on the level of national news. Why hasn't the Los Angeles train station shooting been in the media for some time? That instance is arguably one of the worst examples of police brutality. All that I've seen were the initial reports that came shortly after the event. Maybe the media should focus on issues that are of a more serious nature than an athlete getting high.

Hummer, if you can then maybe you will?

I was looking on youtube for car commercials, and I came across one that was very ironic. For about a minute, you see two young men driving around on beautiful mountainous, snowy landscapes. You get an idea of the capabilities of the car, and the things it can do are actually very impressive, but then I stopped to think. The reason that such marvelous landscapes are deteriorating around the world is because of cars like hummers that produce so much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Then the slogan is just priceless, "if you can, maybe you will"; I find this entertaining because of its lack of logic. If everyone drove hummers, we would not be able to go drive in the snow would we? Hummer did a great job here of appealing to the public with the positives of their vehicle. The commercial makes sure that the public knows how much the hummer can do that others cannot, but a pretty poor job of stating the downsides. For example, a hummer h2 receives fuel estimates of 10 mpg in 9 mpg in the city. Hummers have clearly been romanticized into the ultimate fun-mobile, but they actually are very harmful to the planet, and are extremely expensive.