Unit III

Vivian Ortega
ENG 131.02
Dr. Lucas
06 May 2014
Raw foods
Ingesting nutrients and proper physical activity are necessary for everyday human life. Every little thing that we consume can dramatically help or hinder our body’s ability to maintain homeostasis. From the beginning of human civilization, man has hunted for food while migrating. With time, we have gravitated toward an agricultural society of stability that is greatly influenced by medical advancement. This gravitation was thought to be beneficial, but has confused our perception of progression and instead has led us to regress nutritionally. Ultimately, food and water are the number one survival necessity for mankind, so what we don’t know won’t hurt us, right? Well in reality, what we know will benefit us, and knowing the capacity of what our bodies can endure physically and nutritionally will result in a pure and lucid life. Maintaining an over-all raw food diet will help get rid of all the toxins and help every cycle in our bodies work effectively; which will be more beneficial to us in the long run and will set our nutrition clock to a more accurate time.
What we consume in modern times is traveling between 1,500 to 2,000 miles before we get it and is at least a week old by the time it hits the market (Brighthope, Zeines and Blewitt). According to Dr. Victor Zeines from the documentary Food Matters, “the nutritional value of food that is at least five days old, is questionable”. How much nutritional value is actually available through the product of cheap labor and genetic modification? Dr. Zeines strongly affirms that on a very lucky day, “the percentage of nutrients available are 40. Professor Ian Brighthope, a nutritional and environmental medicine expert, maintains that “nearly every food that you will find in the shops in a big city have been processed, and they have been delayed to the shops. Quite often the nutrients have deteriorated or disappeared from the food by the time they get onto the plate. The world authority on raw foods and super foods’ expert David Wolfe, is concerned on the amount of pesticides that are being used to handle every threat to every crop. “We, for whatever reason, decided we’re going to spray everything with every kind of pesticide, herbicide, larvicide, and fungicide. We decided we’re going to genetically modify things we don’t know anything about” (Brighthope, Zeines and Blewitt). The major fertilizer used is made up of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium, which wouldn’t be so bad if the soil didn’t require as much minerals as it does, says Dr. Charlotte Gerson; which is an approximation of 52. When the soils are deficient, the plants are also deficient and weakened, and they lose their defenses. This process causes our bodies, because of our dependency on food, to imitate the symptoms and leads to the preciseness of the aphorism: You are what you eat.
We as the consumers have no other choice but to be what we eat, and that is in many cases deficient and toxic. Most of the food eaten by the majority of Americans, is very high in calories and cholesterol; even the vegetables, because they have been processed and cooked and have lost their enzymes; which help with our body’s digestion (Cobb). Consuming raw grown crops from a healthy soil will have a tremendous effect on the body. The human body will react to food that is incompatible, as an invasion of a foreign organism; which forces the body to go through digestive leukocytosis, where the body begins generating white cell activity against the cooked food that was eaten (Ward). This may lead to malnutrition in future generations and is seen in many cases today.
Chronic malnutrition is the persistent lack of access to necessary vitamins and minerals in early childhood, leading to health problems late in life, even if the patient later receives adequate nutrition. This causes in the later ages symptoms of fatigue and weakness in the immune system (Global Health Observatory). The nutrition that has become so common for us now is weakening us and is decreasing our energy, but has allowed for experts to distinguish the great benefits of certain foods like the spirulina algae and cacao. These certain foods, which are raw, are extraordinary because of their amounts of vitamins and minerals and the effect on the body. The significance of these nutrients will be imperative for the survival of human kind; and may have a correlation with life expectancy (Ehrlich).
Japan has one of the highest life expectancies in the world. Compared to the United States’ of 78.64, Japan’s life expectancy is 82.59. Japan has one of the lowest adult obesity percentages in the in the industrialized world, which is only 3%. Their diet consists of mainly raw vegetables, rice and noodles and lots of physical activity. This type of lifestyle is believed to be the reason why they are on the top ten list for having the longest life expectancy (The Editors of Publications International). In order to further explore the effect of raw foods on our bodies, the Evolution Diet experiment was carried out and documented for analyzing (The Editors of Publications International).
The Evolution Diet study was conducted to test the effect of certain food in our bodies for which top scientists from around the world were commissioned. Nine volunteers were required and split up. They were weighed and their cholesterol levels were recorded; which revealed that the levels were alarmingly high. The first portion of the participants was asked to maintain a raw food diet for twelve days, while living outdoors on a camp. The second experiment was performed on two male truck drivers who suffered from on-going constipation. Driver number one had a transit time of 22 hours and 35 minutes, while driver number two had a transit time of 40 hours and 30 minutes. They were instructed to eat only raw foods and lots of fibers for the ten days of their experiment and on the final day say that their effort paid off.
The first group of volunteers decreased by 17%, 19% and 23% in cholesterol levels and the drivers decreased by forty hours all together. Driver number one’s time decreased by ten hours and driver number two’s decreased by thirty. Every individual that assisted with the study was pleased to see the product, and how such a small change could such a large impact on their lives, in such a short period (What are we really eating).
Hippocrates believed that the human body had a self-healing capacity and all it took was becoming aware of the care that must be given to the body; “Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be by food”. Proper nutrition is what it takes to boost all of those systems in our bodies, so that they are able to work properly.
William J. McCormick and Fredrick Robert Klenner left behind documentation of curing viral diseases using high doses of vitamin C (Ward). When the human body is nourished by vitamins, minerals, and nutrients, it allows for the body to compensate this nourishment by acting to repair the damage that has been caused by poor nutrition. The bonds react to our intake by completing what is remaining for the reaction’s proper performance. Once the body has reached proper nourishment, it will be able to enjoy the benefits of our investment. The consumption of raw foods are man’s natural form, and it will provide the nutrition needed for our digestive system to properly complete our natural cycle; and the adequate factors to help our bodies heal and work against illness.

Bibliography
Cobb, Brenda. What are we really eating? 01 January 2014. 20 April 2014 <.>.

Ehrlich, Steven. Spirulina, University of Maryland Medical Center. 11 June 2011. 19 April 2014 <.>.

Food Matters. Dir. James Colquhoun. Perf. Ian Brighthope, et al. 2008.

Global Health Observatory. 2014. 19 April 2014 <.>.

Micozzi, Marc and Gary Breecher. “Cartenoir Analysis of Selected Raw and cooked foods Associated with a Lower Risk of Cancer.” JNCI (1989).

Morse, Joseph. “A Mixed Bag.” Morse, Joseph. The Evolution Diet. San Diego: Amelior Publishing Company, 2008. 233.

Null, Gary, et al. “Death by Medicine.” (2014).

The Editors of Publications International, Ltd. “How Stuff Works.” Top 10 Countries with the Highest Life Expectancy 19 September 2007: 10.

Ward, Ashley. Digestive Leukocytosis. 2009. 19 April 2014 <.>.

“What are we really eating?” 1 January 2002. Capital Health. 27 April 2014 <.>.

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unit II individual

Vivian Ortega
ENG 131.02
Professor Lucas
24 March 2014
Television: Does it make you smarter, or an idiot?
Character Guide

Steven Johnson: An author of seven books, and essays including “Watching TV makes you Smarter.” He was a contributor and editor for many works including Wired. Johnson writes a monthly column for Discover, and teaches journalism at New York University. “Watching TV Makes You Smarter,” was first published in New York Times Magazine.
Steven Johnson: What most of you don’t realize is that “the usual counterargument here is that what media have lost in moral clarity, they have gained in realism. The real world doesn’t come in nicely packaged public-service announcements, and we’re better off with entertainment like The Sopranos that reflects our fallen state with all its ethical ambiguity” (279).
SJ: If your job is to literally watch television, you would understand that turning off the set is not the only way to “evaluate whether our television shows or video games are having a positive impact. Just as important— if not more important—is the kind of thinking you have to do to make sense of a cultural experience. That is where the Sleeper Curve becomes visible” (279-80).
SJ: Shows like 24 allow the viewers to view “the media as a kind of a cognitive workout, not a series of life lessons” (279) as you claim they do. Watching television helps to exercise your brain by allowing you to critically think about possible scenarios, or if we are talking about sports, to repeat plays that you may have learned prior to watching the game.

 

 

 

Works Cited

Johnson, Steven. “Watching TV Makes You Smarter.” “They Say/ I Say”: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing with Readings, 2nd ed. Eds. Gerald Graff; Birknstein, Cathy; Durst, Russel. New York: W.W Norton & Company, 2012. 277-98. Print.

unit II

Davis et al. 6

Jeffrey Davis, Emily Hefner, Vivian Ortega, Tiandra Williams, and Carlos Zamora
ENG: 131 Section 02
Professor Lucas
2 April 2014

Television: Does It Make You Smarter, or An idiot?
Character Guide
Gerald Graff: A co-author of “They Say, I Say” and a professor of English and education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He was the 2008 President of the Modern Language Association, a U.S.-based professional association of scholars and teachers of English and other languages. This essay is adapted from his 2003 book, Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind.
Steven Johnson: An author of seven books, and essays including “Watching TV makes you Smarter.” He was a contributor and editor for many works including Wired. Johnson writes a monthly column for Discover, and teaches journalism at New York University. “Watching TV Makes You Smarter,” was first published in New York Times Magazine.

Antonia Peacocke: A student at Harvard University majoring in philosophy. She was born in London, and when she turned 10 she moved to New York (the same day that the fourth Harry Potter book came out). She has always loved writing and worked as a copy editor and columnist for her high school newspaper. She received the Catherine Fairfax MacRae Prize for Excellence in both English and Mathematics. She is also a National Merit Scholar.

Dana Stevens: A movie critic for Slate who has also written for well-known companies such as the New York Times, Bookforum and, the Atlantic. She received her Ph.D. from University of California at Berkeley in comparative literature and published “Thinking Outside of the Idiot Box” on Slate, as a direct response to Steven Johnson’s “Watching TV Makes You Smarter” article.

Jason Zinser: A teacher at the University of North Florida. He received a Ph. D. in philosophy in 2007 from Florida State University, and he researches both evolutionary biology and environmental philosophies. This essay first appeared in The Daily Show and Philosophy: Moments of Zen in the Art of Fake News (2007), edited by Jason Holt.
Scene : The new Family Guy movie has just came out. All of the cast members have decided to meet up and go to the movie together. They are all riding to the movie when a debate breaks out.
Dana Stevens: Johnson, You claim that television is a great tool to enhance the brain. Personally, I think your comment is baloney! “Not unlike the graphically mesmerizing plot diagram you provide of “any episode” of Starsky and Hutch as a foil for the far fancier grid representing The Sopranos. But, I don’t know that I have a lot more sympathy for the wet-blanket Puritanism of the anti-TV crowd” (296).
Steven Johnson: What most of you don’t realize is that “the usual counterargument here is that what media have lost in moral clarity, they have gained in realism. The real world doesn’t come in nicely packaged public-service announcements, and we’re better off with entertainment like The Sopranos that reflects our fallen state with all its ethical ambiguity” (279).
DS: “There couldn’t be a better time to test Steven Johnson’s theory than National TV Turnoff Week- just turn the set off till Sunday and see if you get any dumber. I’d participate in the experiment myself, but in my case, watching television is definitely a smart thing to do- I get paid for it.” (298).
SJ: If your job is to literally watch television, you would understand that turning off the set is not the only way to “evaluate whether our television shows or video games are having a positive impact. Just as important— if not more important—is the kind of thinking you have to do to make sense of a cultural experience. That is where the Sleeper Curve becomes visible” (279-80).
Gerald Graff: Real intellectuals turn any subject, however lightweight it may seem, into grist for their mill through the thoughtful questions they bring to it, whereas a dullard will find a way to drain the interest out of the richest subject” (381).
Antonia Peacocke: “’Sure these ‘screenagers’ might sit back and watch a program now and again’ Rushkoff explains, ‘but they do so voluntarily, and with full knowledge of their complicity. It is not an involuntary surrender’ In his opinion, our critical eyes and our unwillingness to be programmed by the programmers make for an entirely new relationship with the shows we watch.”(305)
DS: “Wait a minute- isn’t a fictional program’s connection to real-life political events like torture and racial profiling one of the “social relationships” we should be paying attention to? 24 is the perfect example of a TV show that challenges its audience’s cognitive faculties with intricate plotlines and rapid-fire information while actively discouraging them from thinking too much about the vigilante ethic it portrays. It’s really good at teaching you to think…about future episode of 24” (296).
Jason Zinser: We need to examine the function of television for our society, and we can examine past situations for example, “Journalists like Tom Fenton have blamed the media for failing to anticipate the pre-9/11 threat posed by terrorism. By reducing the number of foreign correspondents and cutting down on hard news stories, real foreign policy issues had been more or less remaindered to the periphery of the news. Having a population concerned and informed about relevant facts and issues helps guide the future course of the country” (365).

SJ: Shows like 24 allow the viewers to view “the media as a kind of a cognitive workout, not a series of life lessons” (279) as you claim they do. Watching television helps to exercise your brain by allowing you to critically think about possible scenarios, or if we are talking about sports, to repeat plays that you may have learned prior to watching the game.
AP: “I believe that Family Guy has its intelligent points, and some of its seemingly ‘coarse’ scenes offer have hidden merit.”(308)
JZ: What we need to realize is that, “Like most things, The Daily Show isn’t all good or all bad. The question isn’t whether Jon Stewart or the show’s producers and writers are morally corrupt people, but whether or not fake news is, on the whole, beneficial or damaging to society” (364).
GG: “I see now that I in the interminable analysis of sports, teams, movies, and toughness that my friends and I engaged in- a type of analysis, needless to say, that the real toughs would never have stopped to- I was already betraying an allegiance to the egghead world. I was practicing being an intellectual before I know that was what I wanted to be” (383).
JZ: It’s important to question the validity of the material and opinions shared on the show, because, “Cana show unburdened by objectivity” be expected to communicate news to the public accurately and responsibly? Can a program concerned with getting ratings through comedy be expected to provide objective and responsible coverage of world events? Of course ‘deception’ means ‘the intentional imparting of false information to another’ (366).
GG: “Everyone knows some young person who is impressively “street smart” but does poorly in school. What a waste, we think, that one who is so intelligent about so many things in life seems unable to apply that intelligence to academic work” (380).

Work cited
Graff, Gerald. “Hidden Intellectualism.” “They Say/ I Say”: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writings: With Readings. 2nd ed. Ed. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel Durst. New York: Norton, 2012.382-87.Print.
Johnson, Steven. “Watching TV Makes You Smarter.” “They Say/ I Say”: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing: With Readings. 2nd ed. Ed. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel Durst. New York: Norton, 2012. 277-94. Print.
Peacocke, Antonia. “Family Guy and Freud: Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious.” “They Say/I Say”: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writings: With Readings.2nd ed. Ed. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel Durst. New York: Norton, 2012.299-311. Print.
Stevens, Dana. “Thinking Outside of the Idiot Box.” “They Say/ I Say”: The Moves in Academic Writings: With Readings.2nd ed. Ed. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel Durst. New York: Norton, 2012.295-98.Print.
Zinser, Jason. “The Good, the Bad, and the Daily Show.” “They Say/I Say”: The Moves in Academic Writings: With Readings. 2nd ed. Ed. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel Durst. New York: Norton, 2012. 363-78. Print.

annotated bibliography Breaking Bad

Vivian Ortega

ENG 131.02

Professor Lucas

26 February 2014

Breaking Bad: An Annotated Bibliography

Introduction

“You clearly don’t know who you’re talking to, so let me clue you in: I am not in danger, Skyler. I am the danger. A guy opens his door and gets shot, and you think that of me? No! I am the one who knocks.” The person who speaks this is a father who has been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. This, I imagine, is not a light load to carry, but it does not justify the construction of a meth empire. Walter White, the main character of the award-winning television series Breaking Bad, is a loving father of two and a loyal companion. White was a chemistry teacher at a high school in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was there where the foundation of the empire was built. As a low income employee, he did not have the means necessary to ensure that his family was taken care; this led White to take the road that he thought fit.

The complexity of the series Breaking Bad, supports precisely what Steven Johnson advocates in his essay: “Watching TV Makes You Smarter” in which he states that the media is doing the world a service by providing realism. “I think there is another way to assess the social virtue of pop culture, one that looks at media as a kind of cognitive workout, not as a series of life lessons.” Johnson states that the real significant portion of it all is found in the kind of thinking that you are investing in the viewing.

Johnson’s theories are not without its critics, Dana Stevens, author of  “Thinking Outside the Idiot Box,” does not take lightly Johnson’s critical thinking theory; but contradicts it. Stevens believes that watching TV simply teaches us to watch more TV. Stevens argues that watching TV has made us “rats in a behaviorist’s maze” (295).

 

Annotated bibliography

Breaking Bad. Dir. Vince Gillian. Breaking Bad. American Basic Cable, 20 Jan, 2008.

Television.

Vince Gillian’s Breaking Bad was borne with his desire to have a protagonist become an  antagonist. Gillian saw this vision while working for FOX on the production of a television series The X Files. His main goal was to change the way viewers look at protagonists. The show’s idea germinated with a joke to a colleague in regard to their unemployment. Gillian suggested that they should drive a meth lab in the back of an RV and sell meth throughout the country. That way, at least, they would be employed.

It turns out, this is precisely the plot chosen by Gillian for Walter White to play. The directors were intrigued by this character and surprised because at the end of the day they did not know whom they were pulling for. Viewers, also, acknowledging that good is supposed to prevail, are used to pulling for the “good” character and rejecting the “bad” one. Being asked to identify with a good “bad” guy can be disturbing. Who is the viewer to pull for: Walter White the chemistry teacher and loving father or Heisenberg, the spiteful meth lord? The complexity that the cast of Breaking Bad has worked so hard to achieve is insightful and productive; the series is described as being the “epitome of perfection.” Many of the descriptions on the website Internet Movie Database (IMDb), include words such as suspenseful, magnificent and complex.

George Vincent “Vince” Gilligan, creator of the series Breaking Bad, is an American writer,     director, and producer.

Johnson , Steven. “Watching TV Makes You Smarter.” They Say/ I Say Comp. Gerald Graff and

Ed. Cathy Birkenstein. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 2006. 1-679. Print.

Steven Johnson, the author of “Watching TV Makes You Smarter,” strongly believes that watching television requires analysis. Johnson looks at media as a “cognitive workout” (279) and mentions that there are different ways to evaluate the impact that television shows have on us; one way to evaluate is to examine what kind of thinking these shows demand of us.  An example he gives is the Mary Tyler Moore Show. The characters onscreen “say witty things to one another and avoid lapsing into tired sitcom clichés, and we smile along in our living rooms, enjoying the company of these smart people. But assuming we’re bright enough to understand the sentences they’re saying, there’s no intellectual labor involved in enjoying the show as a viewer” (280). What Johnson explains is that watching a show may seem effortless but may require the viewer to combine different threads of thoughts, to recognize arguments, and evaluate them. This process is cognitive thinking.

Steven Johnson, author of seven books and the essay “Watching TV Makes You Smarter” (2005), is a contributing editor for Wired, writes a monthly column for Discover, and teaches journalism at New York University.

Stevens, Dana. “Thinking Outside the Idiot Box.” They Say/ I Say. Ed. Gerald Graff and Ed.

Cathy Birkenstein. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 2012. 1-679. Print.

Dana Stevens’ “Thinking Outside the Idiot Box” disagrees with Johnson’s essay “Watching TV Makes You Smarter” in a handful of ways. Stevens compares the viewer to a “rat in a behaviorist’s maze”: “So that now, like rats in a behaviorist’s maze, trained viewers can differentiate among up to 12 distinct plotlines in shows like The Sopranos” (295). Stevens is emphasizing her views that watching television does not help exercise our cognitive thought; it only prevents our minds from distinguishing between different plotlines. According to Dana Stevens, the ability to “differentiate plots” limits our thought processes and our ability to identify between different scenarios.

Dana Stevens, Slate’s movie critic, has written for the New York Times, Bookforum, and the Atlantic. “Thinking Outside the Idiot Box” was first published in Slate on March 2005 in direct response to “Watching TV Makes You Smarter.”

 

 

 

LINK: http://www.imdb.com/find?q=BREAKING+BAD&s=all