Book Club Journal #3

Journal for 3/7 Book Club Meeting #3 Text: The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan
Quotation 1:  “While the surgeon general is raising alarms over the epidemic of obesity, the president is signing farm bills designed to keep the river of cheap corn flowing, guaranteeing that the cheapest calories in the supermarket will continue to be the unhealthiest. (108,  ¶2)	Response:    Paraphrase:  In this chapter, Michael Pollan made a discussion concerning the obesity problem in America.  He gave a variety of evidences proofing that corn is a main source in the production of processed food, which much of the fat added to these food are from corn. Reflection:  I was a bit shocked after reading this chapter.  I have never thought of the broad usage of corn in food, and the consequences of using corn in food processing, such as much higher calories resulted than using the original food in making the final product.  Pollan’s conclusion makes me think that the people who kept producing excessive corns are very irresponsible, what they only concern is profit, and have never thought of the how it negatively affect people’s health. Questions:  (Before) What does it mean by cheapest calories? How does it relate to corn? (After)  Who are responsible in resulting this phenomenon that almost everyone are suffering from the bad sides of using corns?
Discussion Notes:
Quotation 2:  “In the industrial food economy, virtually the only information that travels along the food chain linking producer and consumer is price. … The bare-bones information travels in both directions, of course, and farmers who get the message that consumers care only about price will themselves care only about the yield. This is how a cheap food economy reinforces itself.” (136,  ¶2)	Paraphrase:  Pollan means that both sellers and consumers only focus on the price of the food, they do not care about any other things, like the disadvantages of using a certain kind of pesticides etc.  Since then, a grey loop is produced, which no one cares anymore about the nature of food and effects to the human.  This grey loop of production becomes a very unhealthy phenomenon that we are now living under. Reflection: I agree with Pollan’s point of view.  I think that he pointed out the current food economy situation that most of us ignored and neglected the consequence of having such an unhealthy food trading and production practice.  Though we are not the food producer, we can put our efforts in trying to improve the current situation by not buying those products, which its manufacturer does not have social responsibility and only focuses on its profits. Questions: (Before) How does a food label related or even have the power to affect the functioning of the food economy?  (After) What other information should be included in the food labels in order to become a “well-written” label to consumers?
Discussion Notes: (etc)
Quotation 3: “When we mistake what we can know for all these is to know, a healthy appreciation of one’s ignorance in the face of a mystery like soil fertility gives way to the hubris that we can treat nature as a machine.  Once that leap has been made, one input follows another, so that when the synthetic nitrogen fed to plants makes them more attractive to insects and vulnerable to disease, as we have discovered, the farmer turns to chemical pesticides to fix his broken machine.” (148,  ¶1)	Paraphrase:  Pollan mainly talks about the use and effect of NPK (the three letters correspond to the three-digit designation printed on every bag of fertilizer.)  He mentions that using NPK in agriculture has helped cuing the earthworms and humus in the soil in a short term.  However, in the long term, these “useful” tools might become harm to both the crops and human after they eat the food.  Reflection:  I think that Pollan’s paragraph reminds the readers that how pesticides are not good in food growing.  It does not only affect the natural environment, but also affecting the food chain seriously.  In a short term, the NPK might benefit us (farmers) in crop growing, however, in the long term, these chemicals will become a harmful substance, which creates even more problems. Questions: (Before) How does soil fertility affects the food chain, most importantly, human’s health? (After) Other than using chemicals, are there any methods to substitute the usage of chemicals in the farming process?
Discussion Notes: (etc)

Book Club Precis

Jasmine Ho

Mr. Hayes

English 1A17 

19th February 2013 

Word Count: 427

The Rape of Nanking

Hi everyone, I’m writing to recommend that we use The Rape of Nanking:The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II by Iris Chang, an American historian and journalist, as one of our book club text.

The Second World War was a war that involved a vast majority of the world’s nations.  I’m sure that most of us are familiar with this famous global war, however, not very much people, especially in Western Countries, have heard of the Nanking massacre happened in this period, as Iris Chang said, it was a “forgotten holocaust of World War II.”

--The book is non-fiction.  It describes the massacre and atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese Army after it captured Nanjing during the Second Sino-Japanese War.  It is the bestselling non-fiction book in 1997.

--Length: It has 290 pages, which meets the page requirement, and not too lengthy or short to be read.

--Difficulty: This might be a difficult book to read, since it depicted in detail the killing, torture, and rape that occurred during the Nanking Massacre.  The details of the merciless slaughter might be uneasy for the readers.  However, despite the details of the slaughter, the first person perspectives that Iris Chang chosen in writing this book should be interesting to readers, as we can “visualize” the Nanking massacre through the victims’ eyes.

I have read a book review by Daisy Wong, a Hong Kong author and columnist.

“Iris Chang has led readers and the newer generations to “get in touch” of the history, not a nation’s history, but human’s history.  By reading Chang’s book, we can know that how “good” can human be, on the contrary, how “cruel” can human be.  The Second Sino-Japanese War was not simply a matter between China and Japan, as long as you are a human, you have to know about it.”

By reading Wong’s review, I think this book is an informative and insightful one.  Since I am a Chinese, I have already known some of background of this massacre.  However, I believe even to those who do not know this history, Chang’s all-round and in-depth discussion of this history will make readers discover the importance of a nation facing and make reflections on their history.

--Availability: It’s all over the place, even at Barnes & Noble.  It is available for electronic version, hardcover and paperback, price ranging from $10.55 to $15.99.

I think this would be a great text to use in a book club, so please consider it.

Critique #1

Jasmine Ho

Mr. Hayes

English 1A17

23^rd January 2013

Word Count: 520

Article chosen: Social Networks Are Vulnerable to Crime by Gordon M. Snow

Social networking websites are proliferating in recent years.  Living in a “technology-based” era, with the trend of using smart phones, almost everyone has an account for these websites, for instance, Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.  The younger generations are addicted with these sites; they tend to share every bits of life through these platforms.  Meanwhile, criminologists point out that these networks provide cyber criminals more opportunities.  In Social Networks Are Vulnerable to Crime written by Gordon M. Snow, an assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), he stated out how fraudsters make use of different channels to exploit Internet users.
            Gordon first listed out several platforms which cyber criminals take advantage of in order to deceive the users of different networks, including social engineering, fraud scheme, phishing scams, data mining, and cyber underground.  For each of the above-mentioned platforms, he explained in detail what exactly it is, and what techniques the criminals use to get the users’ personal information and passwords.  By reading Gordon’s brief introductions, readers are able to have a big and clear picture of the specific terms that mentioned by him throughout the passage.
             Take data mining as an example.  From the paragraph, readers are able to get a rough idea about it, criminals send out “get to know yourself” quizzes to a large group of users of a social networking site, which the questions are the same as those asked by financial institutions or e-mail account providers when an individual has forgotten their password.  In this case, criminals automatically get the “tool” to enter people’s personal account, for example, bank account, and email account.
              Gordon then proceeds to the next big part of explaining how FBI deals with the increasing number of cyber crimes by collaborating with different federal law enforcement agencies, for some of them, further examples are given.  For example, he introduced that thousands of cyber squads were set in their state offices around the country to help combating the increasing number of cyber criminals nowadays.
               After that, the writer jumped to the conclusion that FBI and its partner have made significant strides in combating cyber crime, though there is more work to be done, through a coordinated approach, egregious offenders could be subjected to justice.
               Overall, the writer used simple vocabularies, sufficient and related examples to demonstrate his ideas and opinions, which make the passage very easy to read and understand, even to those who have not much knowledge in cyber criminals.  However, this passage is very expository, full of facts and information, but lack of relevant arguments raised related to the topic.  The writer’s style of writing did not make the passage argumentative at all, which disabled readers to have an all-round angle towards the issue.  Since Mr. Gordon did not raise any arguments, readers are not able to criticize the points of view or supporting reason of the writer. In this case, Readers might feel like acquiring knowledge, rather than being lead to different angles in the discussion of the issue.