Story of Stuff

My teacher showed my class a video a couple weeks ago on an organization called The Story of Stuff Project. It is a website that informs the public on what the corporations are doing behind our backs. I decided to wright my second research paper on this. Most of my research was directly from their website which came to be a quite valuable source. Story of Stuff is famous for their online videos that are easy to watch. Story of Stuff sends 100 dvds of the videos to schools and buisness every month. The videos range from facts about water bottles to cosmetics to cap and trade. The organization started when Annie Leonard (left) wondered what was happening to trash. So she investigated and found surprizing material. With the information she found, she teamed up with Free Range Studios to make short easy to understand online videos. Their first video about trash got 50,000 views real quick and that surprized her and her team. now, just five years later the video has over 5,000,000. Story of Stuff is growing day by day and anybody can join or donate. Donations are helpful because Story of Stuff is a non-profit organization and there are a lot of costs to run this organization. Its quick and simple, for more information on Story of Stuff, go to www.storyofstuff.com.

Natural Selection.

Charles Darwin(right) is famous for his theories on natural selection. I personaly liked this story. I have always been intreeged in evolution and this story had it all when it came to facts. The main point of the story is that evolution is real. All animals have evolved over time, but the thing is that evolution takes a long time to work. If a bird has to migrate for a reason like climate change for instance, the bird will have to find new sources of food. If the bird cant find food, it dies. That means that the bird couldnt adapt quick enough so in a sence, it wasn't worthy of living. It is cold but true. One point Darwin made in the story is if a bird needed to crack a nut with his beak, then he would need a strong beak. If he didnt have a strong enough beak, he would die, but if the bird adapted quick enough and could crack the nut to get the food inside, it would live on and produce more offspring with its qulaities. So now the offspring can and will be able to crack the nuts and the species will live on. Natural selection can be bull sometimes also. If the animal was in the wrong place at the wrong time and dies, technolically it wasnt fit to survive, but the animal could have lived if it wasnt there. Anotehr example is that birds hatch from eggs, but not all eggs are the same thickness. So two identical birds could be in two different thickness shells and only one could make it out if they wernt strong enough. I believe in evolution and that all animals including man have evolved from primordial states.

Evolution of Man.

Watching the movie Food Inc. changed the way that I think about the food industry. After hearing what happened with Kevin, how he ate meat that was contaminated and ended up dying makes me think about food differently. The "farms" that hold the animals are not very sanitarty and are more like factories and the animals are the product being produced. The movie said that the same places where the animals eat is also where they poop. The food then is going to become contaminated and the cows will still eat the food because they dont know any better. On top of that, they feed the cows corn. The thing is that the amount of corn they are feeding the cows causes the bacteria to stay in the animal because the corn holds it in there instead of coming out the end and the bacteria ends up becoming E. coli. When they cut up the animals to make into meat, the E. coli stays in the meat and is fed to humans, this is how kevin died. The movie made it clear that feeding cows only corn is bad and that we need to find another resource to feed them. One part that amazed me was that some cows have holes in them to where people can reach there hands inside the cows stomach to get food out. Seeing this movie has opened my eyes. All i know is that I am going to be careful with what I eat and not eat much fast food anymore.