IDS 202: Food Security vs Food Justice

This semester we have spent a lot of time talking about food security and food justice. Both issues are important to talk about and are not the same thing.

Food security is having access to not just food, but healthy nutritious food that can fuel the body and mind. Food security is about eating a meal and not having to worry about when the next meal will be.

Food justice is having the right to grow, sell, and eat healthy foods that are affordable and grown locally, with care for the well-being of workers, the land, and animals.

Both issues effect many people today, and both issues need to be addressed.

Things such as school lunch programs, Feed My Starving Children, and food pantries work to provide food security to people. Food security is not just about patching a whole and moving on. It is about teaching people how to grow food, and how to change their lives to make this food obtainable.

Food justice addresses making sure that healthy food is locally grown, in a sustainable, and humane way. We want to make sure that our farm workers are treated well, which is not always the case.

Food justice and food security are both very important to help the world run smoothly. Today, these topics are not addressed as much as they should be. I urge you to work to make a change in your community, and communities around you to grow healthy, sustainable food, that is accessible to everyone.

IDS 202: Feed my Starving Children

This week I was fortunate enough to volunteer my time at Feed My Starving Children. For those of you who don't know, Feed My Starving Children is a Christian run organization, who is working to provide nutritious meals to third world countries. They focus on giving healthy and filling meals to malnourished children. There is a packing facility, right down the road, in Aurora. 

The day I attended we were focusing on packing boxes for El Salvador, Mexico, and Haiti. These are all areas that are extremely malnourished, and need a little extra help to make sure their kids are getting the resources they need to not only survive, but to thrive. Without food, these kids brains and bodies are not able to grow at a normal rate. They become extremely frail and underdeveloped. Feed My Starving Children want to provide food for these children, not so they just aren't hungry, but so they can live a full lifestyle and grow at a healthy pace.

At each station there is a bucket of rice, soy, freeze dried veggies, and a vitamin mix. Two people scoop ingredients into a bag, just like the ones pictured above. The next person holds the bag and then gives it to the weigh-er. The weigh-er is in charge of making sure the bag has 180 to 200 grams. They are in charge of putting in more rice or taking it out when it is needed. The next person is in charge of sealing the bag, and the last is in charge of boxing it. I was the scoooper of the vitamins and rice.

Volunteering at Feed My Starving Children is always so rewarding because you know exactly where the food is headed to, and you see the kids of kids who are receiving the food. They are a great organization and I highly recommend volunteering there!

https://www.fmsc.org/

https://www.fmsc.org/impact-of-our-work/where-we-serve/africa

Week 14: MKTG 345: AI Humor

AI intelligence has taken massive strides in the past year. It is now possible for face and object recognition, understand different voices, and many more complex variables.

One thing that AI can't seem to master, is humor. Since different people find things funny, it is impossible for AI to predict humor. Some psychologist think that all good jokes share the same qualities, so AI may be possible.

In this article, Radev took 300,000 captions written for 50 New Yorker cartoons since 2005. He linked different captions and gave them rating based on the topic used. He then tried to figure out what topics linked to most liked captions.

He found out that the funniest captions were based on negative sentiment, human-centerdness, and lexical centrality.

Radev tried to imagine an AI system that could select the funniest captions based on these findings. He concluded that it would be virtually impossible to create an effective machine to pick out humor.

In today's day humor is not something AI can distinguish, but in five years, it might be a different story.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/539291/an-algorithmic-sense-of-humor-not-yet/

Week 13: MKTG 345: April Fools+AI Intelligence

https://www.newscientist.com/article/13-13-absurdly-comic-ai-april-fools-pranks-youll-want-to-try/

AI intelligence can be used for many things, even for April fools day pranks! Janelle Shane collected a list of April fools pranks found online, and put them into an online list. She then asked used AI to make a whole new list.

1. Below is what the processor came up with:
2. Place a pair of pants and shoes in your ice dispenser.
3. Put marbles in the hand soap dispenser.
4. Putting google eyes on someone's computer mouse so that it won't work.
5. Place a pair of pants and shoes in Easter egg foils.
6. Hide all of the entrance to your office building if it only had one entrance.
7. Put food coloring in the mailbox.
8. Glue all the eggs in the hubcaps of someone's computer.
9. A meat and mashed potato sundae makes or quite the hand soap dispenser.
10. Put a glow stick in a toilet paper into the toe of your kid's shoes.
11. Take the door know off your kid's shoes.
12. Rearrange someobody while pretending to pee.
13. If you rip up a toilet paper roll, then leave them a ransom note.
14. Hide an alarm clock in someone's keyboard who isn't a very good typist.

As you can see, AI still has a ways to go because some of these pranks make no sense at all. Next I think that this article should post a video of a robot performing all of these tasks!

Week 14: MKTG 348- SEO Fundamentals

searchenginenews.com is a great website for you to get certified on. It looks great on a resume, LinkedIn, and employers really value it. The certification has four training course videos, that are very helpful on the exam. It is only 28 questions, and you can take as long as you want when taking the exam. The test is graded by hand, and they let you know what questions you get wrong once it is graded. You only need an 80% to pass, which is definitely doable! I took the test earlier today, and passed so I now have another certification to add to my LinkedIn. I highly suggest taking the exam!

IDS 202: Food options

As a student who lives on campus, I have experience what it is like to live on campus with a car, and without a car. Living on campus and not having a car leaves you with limited options in terms of food. Most of the options served at school are unhealthy, not vegetarian friendly, and served continuously.

My freshman and sophomore year I did not have a car on campus. The only food options that were available were Krasa, Coal Ben, and Starbucks. Krasa is run by Sodexo and since this is such a small campus, there were not many food options. They had a small salad bar every day, and that's as far as they went for healthy options. They also had a small sandwich station, pizza, a grill, pasta, and desserts everyday. Just tasting the food, you can tell that it is not healthy. The next option that we have is "Coal Ben." It is run with a sports bar vibe, and most of the meals are served with fries. The most popular items are burgers, wings, and quesadillas. Below is the picture of the menu. As you can see, they have a Halal portion of the menu, but barely any options for vegetarians.

Another option on campus is Starbucks. There are not many food options at Starbucks, but the food they have is viewed as "healthier," even if it is not. The drinks served are packed with sugar, dairy, and many empty calories. While there are healthier options at Starbucks, most people do not purchase those drinks.

When I finally got a car, I'm sure you can imagine how excited I was for new food options. Within five miles of campus are three grocery stores. There's a Butera, Jewel, and Mariano's. These grocery stores range in prices, foods sold, and overall experiences. There are also many restaurant options. To just list a few; Chipotle, Nando's, Panera, Portillo's, Taco Bell, KFC, Mongolian Grill, Front Street, and Rose Bud are all within a ten minuted drive. Having all these options gave me many more vegetarian options, and made choosing healthy options much easier!