Entry#11: Final Blog Reflection

          Hey everyone, well this is it.... my final blog entry.  I am going to reflect on my experiences with my blog entrys and what I learned with using blogger.  I personally have never used a blog before I came into college and I had to figure out how to create a blog.  Now your probally thinking, "Creating a blog is easy, what is difficult about it?"  I am not very tech- savy so I am still learning how to fully take advantage of technology with my daily routine.
           After using blogger, I have learned a lot by how to propally research and create blog entrys.  I liked using blogger it was a very interesting experience because with the self generated blogs, I got to experiement with the differnt topics that I could use and out of that I could learn something about the subject along with my audience.  That was the fun part of the blog was being able to choose the topic which was also the difficult part of it as well.  It was difficult sometimes because there are so many different topics to choose from and it was very time consuming.  It was interesting to try to come up with blog ideas by trying to research a subject that I was interested in.  For instance, I had an idea of doing a blog post about the history of the electric guitar.  It took me about 2 and a half hours to create that blog because of doing research about the subject.  When I finished the post, I was very proud of myself on how it came out.  It is one of my favorite posts that I have done.  I have also learned to not wait the last minute to turn in a blog post or posts.  I would try to get as many of them done in a period of time so I would not have to worry about it.  Getting like 1 or 2 of them done in a day is a big accomplishment in my book and it was fun to create them altogether.

         When creating blog posts, I would defentaly take the process serously because I wanted a good grade and that I wanted to make a good impression to my audience.  I have always taken things serously because I have always wanted do my best on everything.  I also take thing seriously because I am the oldest out of 4, I have 3 little sisters and it is my job to show my little ones that with hard work, anything is possible.  If you take everything that is presented to you seriously, like responsibilities and school work, then you will have a sucessful life.  Hard work pays off, you work hard then you can play hard.

To wrap up this final blog entry, It was fun to have created blog entrys and to view other people's blogs.  I liked to see what other people had on their blogs and to see what their interests were.  By looking at all the different blogs it opened up ideas for my next blog entrys.

I hope that you enjoyed my final blog entry and let me know what you thought!

Entry#10: Evolution of Harley Davidson!!!

          Hey everyone! This blog post will be about how Harley- Davidson the iconic American motorcycle manufactruer evolved into todays loved products!  I have always loved motorcycles since I was a kid and I thought that it would be cool to do a blog about Harley- Davidson and how they became from then to now.
         Founded out of a small shed in 1903 by William S. Harley and brothers Arthur and Walter Davidson in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  The Motor Company produces traditional cruiser motorcycles utilizing air- cooled V- Twin engines.  When Harley and Davidson produced and sold their first motorcycle in 1903, they were one of many small motorcycle marques springing up across the country.  Flash forwardmore than a century and the Harley- Davidson brand is so rooted in American culture that the history of the company intertwines eith the history of America itself!!! Within the next decade, Harley- Davidson contiued to expand and on many sales were generated by Uncle Sam with the American military sourcing Harley notorcycles during the First World War.

          Heres what the motorcycle looked like during the First World War when the U.S. military used this product.

This picture is the bike from World War 2 era.

The Bar and Shield continued to grow and by the early '30's, its only surviving domestic rival was indian.  Again H- D expanded in peacetime and fond itself producing high quantities of bikes for the American military during World War 2.  Harley- Davidson press material cites its wartime motorcycles production at 90,000 units.  

Harley- Davidson also built racing bikes and the public best knows Harley- Davidson for its cruisers, but the American firm does have a storied racing past. Pre- WW2 riders like Joe Petrail made a name for himself campaigning the Bar and Shield in AMA Hillclimb and Dirt Track races, with Petrali scoring numerous Grand National titles.

Post war, H- D continued to wreak havoc on dirt tracks and the American marque found success in road racing as well.  One name forever linked with Harley_ Davidson is Cal Rayborn.  The AMA Hall of Famer won back- to- back Daytona 200s for Harley and also set the ultimate motorccle land speed recond at Bonneville with a 265.492 mph run i a Harley- Davidson- powered streamliner.

This picture is an H-D V- Twin Engine.

Harley- Davidson also demonstrates what can be done with products from its vast Genuine Motor Accessories and Morot Parts catalog in the form of its CVO (Custom Vehicle Operations) line.  The CVO motorcycles ar modles form Harley's standard lineup that have received the royal treatment, like the Screamin' Eagle Twin Cam 110 engine, show- topping custom paint and top- shelf H-D controls and components.  

The blue Harley is my dream bike!!! Love the look of it!

This concludes my post I hope you enjoyed even if you are a Harley lover like I am! Let me know what you think!!! 

Entry#9: Pink Slime!!!

          With this blog post, I will be discussing about "Pink Slime" and what it is generally and how it affected McDonald's way of business.  So Pink Slime, we have been hearing about it for the longest time, more often than others but its out there and how McDonald's is putting it in their products!  I personally do not eat at McDonald's because I like Jack In The Box better and I have never really been a big fan of them.  I don't really worry about it personally... but, I try to not to fixate on the matter but I know its just disgusting.  I remember hearing about this "pink slime" my freshman year of high school and it just disgusted me to where I would not go there even if it was for dinner that night, I would not eat it.  since then, I have eaten there mabye 4 times and I still am not comfortable going there and don't think I ever will.  No matter how many "healthy" commercials they air, I will not be comfortable with that fast food chain.

"Pink Slime" ( A dysphemism for lean finely textrued beef or LFTB, finely textrued beef and boneless lean beef trimmings or BLBT)  is a meat- based product used as a food additive to ground beef and beef- based processed meats, as a filler to to reduce the overall fact content of ground beef.  In the production process, heat and centrifuges remove the fat form the meat in beef trimming.  The resulting product is exposed to ammonia gas or citric acid to kill bacteria.  In 2001, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) approved the product for limited human consumption.  In March 2012, an ABC News series about "pink slime: included claims that approximately 70 percent of ground beef sold in U.S. supermarkets contained the additive at that time.  Some companies and organizations stopped offering ground beef with the product.  "Pink slime" was claimed by some originally to have been used as pet food and cooking oil and later approved for public comsumption, but this was disputed in April 2012 by both the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) administrator responsible for approving the product and Beef Products, Inc. (BPI) the largest U.S. producer of the additive.  In September 2012, BPI filed a lawsuit against American Broadcasting Company for false claims about the product.  Some consumer advocacy groups have promoted the elimination of the product or for mandatory disclosure of additives in beef, while others have expressed concerns about plant closures that occurred after the product received significant news media coverage. 

I believe that this whole thing with the "pink slime" is just ridiculous because of the way these people are processing the beef.  It has proven dangerous to the consumer over the years and that it could cause illness amoung the average consumer.  

This concludes my post about the Pink Slime let me know what you thought about it!

Entry8: Guns, Guns And More Guns!!!

          Hey everyone this post will be talking about the history of the firearm and how they evolved to todays firearms that we use for hunting game, protection, and within our military.  I will also go over the rounds or "bullets" also and the meaning of the word.  The firearm was invented in China during the 13th centruy AD, after the Chenese invented black powder during the 9th century AD.  These inventions were later transmitted to the Middle East, Africa, and Europe.  The direct ancestor of the firearm is the fire lance, the prototype gun.  The fire lance was invented in China during the 10th century and is the predecessor of all firearms.  The first fire lances were made out of a tube and bamboo and later on a metal that shot a weak gunpowder blast of flame and shrapnel.

                     The earliest fire lances were spear- like weapons combining a tube caontaining gunpowder and projectiles tied to a Chinese spear.  Upon firing, the charge ejected a small projectile or poison dart along with a flame.  These fire lances had a range of only a few feet.  Being a weaponn that combines with a spear, it was initially used as a hand- to- hand weapon with the unpowder shot designed to give the wielder an edge in close- quarter combat.  This weapon paved the way for further imporvements to gunpowder weapons and is the direct ancestor of the modern- day firearm and artillery.
          Next would be the first machine gun ever built and how it was used.  A machine gun as we all know would be a fully automatic mounted or portable firearm, designed to fire bullets in quick succession from an ammunition belt or magazine, typically at a rate of 300 to 1800 rounds per minute.  Fully automatic firearms are generally categorized as submachine guns, assault rifles, battle rifiles, automatic shotguns, machine guns, or autocannons.
         In 1873 Helge Palmcrantz (1842- 1880), Swedish inventor and industrialist, patented the multi- barrel, lever- actuated, machine gun that would later be known as the 'Nordenfelt machine- gun" after his financial backer, Thorsten Nordenfelt.  Palmcrantz met Nordenfelt in 1875 and the latter's company became his British agent.  They agreed to market the "machine gun" under the then well known Nordentfelt brand.  It was Nordenfelt who convinced Palmcrantz to increase the caliber of his gun to one inch, makint it a suitable weapon for use against the growing threat of torpedo boats.  After Palmcrantz succumbed to an early death from a bleeding ulcer, Winborg and Nordenfelt continued to develope and manufactrue his guns in Sweden, England and Spain.

          With the first firearm, to the first machine gun, they have significantly improved over time with distance, and accuracy.  Today, we have all different types of guns that we could choose form and with different calibers.  For guns, "caliber" means the diameter of the barrel and thus, the diameter of the bullet that is going through it.  Also for terminology sake, "bullet" just means the matal projectile, while the entire thing is called a cartridge.  To make things a little more confusing, there's a mixtrue of measurements in inches and millimeters.  There's also a unit of weight called a "grain" which is used to denote the witght of bullets.  A "grain" is really small since 7000 grains make up one pound.  When you talk about bullets at this high of a level, the most high level tarit is "Stopping Power".  This is a relatively vague trait and somewhat controversial.  What it boils down to is how many bullets does it take to drop a person.  Granted, it you hit someone ini the right spot it only ever takes on but in Most situations you're aiming for center mass (a.k.a the chest, a.k.a the largest target available).  Thus, it goes for game and war.
 

This picture show the different types of rounds there are and some of them could contain some deadly ingredients.

This picture is self- explanatory.

Heres another picture of what it looks like inside a round.

When you pull the triger of a gun, a spring mechanism hammers a metal firing pin into the back end of the bullet. igniting the small explosive charge in the primer.  The primer then ignites the propellant- the main explosive that occupies about two thirds of a typical bullet's volume.

Here is a picture of someone firing a gun to get the idea.

I hope that you enjoyed this post, it was fun making it and I learned acouple of things about the history of firearms.  I hope you learned something too, let me know what you thought! 

E.C.: Food Inc.

   

            The way they treat animals within the factories can cause many different issues that can lead to bigger issues that can spiral out of control.  We should care because it can cause some major damage not only to the animals but to us as well.  For instance, when the animals get sick, all we do is inject them with some type of antibiotics and some steroids that will just make matters worse.  If the animal is sick and we inject them with different antibiotics and steroids, then the illness or disease adcances to a worse strain thus, could kill more of the life stalk.  If an animal is sick, and then gets slaughtered, then even after the processing the strain could still be in the meat and could get people sick.

          Lastly, with the amount of steroids that the factory animals are given makes them grow way faster and thus, makes haste on production.  The unnatural feeds, hormones and excessive quantities of antibiotics used on factory farms put the human population at risk for chronic disease, obesity, and drug- resistant bateria, and pose the threat of major zoonotic disease outbreaks.  According to the Centers of Disease Cortrol and Prevention, animal products are the primary source of saturaed fat in the american diet. Saturated fat has been linked to heart disease and obesity.  Studies have shown that the unnatural feeds used to promote growth in animals on factory farms increase the saturated fat content of meat.  In the 1950's antibiotics have been used on factory farms to increase the rate of growth in animals.  Today, an estimated 70 percent of the antibiotics used in the U.S. are given to farm animals for non- resistant bacteria; as a result, certian bacterial ininfections have already become or are on their way to becoming untreatable in humans.  Antibiotic resistant infections kill 90,000 americans every year.  Some diseases, like H1N1 (Swine Flu) and Avian FLu, are communicable form animals to humans.  These "zoonotic" dieases have the potential to become pandemics.  Experts believe that the outbreak to H1N1 was likely caused by the overcrowding of pigs on factory farms and the storage of their waste in giant manure lagoons.

                                       This concludes my post I hope you enjoyed it!

Entry#7: Fresh!

          Hey everyone, the other day I saw a video about where our food comes form.  This video was more like a movie and it was called Fresh.  It did a comparson between small farms and huge factories that produce the majority of America's food products.   Within the movie there is one famer in particular, Joel Salatin who grows his crops without using harmful pesticides, to grow a better quality and fresher crop.  Unlike these huge factories Joel lets his life stalk roam around his farm while they graze and fertilize the farm.  Joel, does not use store bought fertilizers because he believes in the natural way of growing and porducing crops and letting his cows, pigs, and chickens roam around letting nature take its course.  By closely observing nature, Joel created a rotational grazing system that not only allows the land to heal but also allows the animals to behave the way they were meant to- as in expressing their "chickin- ness" or "pig- ness" ass Joel would say.
         Another farmer that has a similar way of producing his life products would be Will Allen who is a son of southern sharecroppers, he has a 3- acre lot in the middle of urban Milwaukee and he grows natural crops and some fish.  He uses the fishes waist as a fertilezer for some of his crops that he grows.  The other part of his natural fertilizer would be his worms he uses as compost.  He sure loves his worms!  This man and his organization go beyond growing food.  They provide a platform fr people to share knowledge and form relationships in order to develope alternatives to the industrial food system.
          With these huge factories producing the majority of America's food products, there is no longer within their policy to just product food and lots of food.  By that, these factories treat these animals way differently than the farmers mentioned above.  These animals are confined and are injected with these growth hormones and other types of steroids to prevent illness among the life stalk.  These animals are not at all healthy and are causing major issues to the economy with their waiste and other chemicals that are used within the factories.   With the crops, they are sprayed with different types of pesticides and yet is dangerously effecting the health of the crops and the enviornment around them.

          What I personally think about this issue would be that it needs to stop and we need to find some way of producing food in a more clean and safer enviornment not just for the workers but for the animals and crops also.  I do not like how the government has just sat back and watch this happen to the animals and the way thet are treated.  The last I checked, that was called animal cruelty.  By that, even if they are our food source and that they are going to die anyway does that mean that these factories can just treat these aminals like that.  By confining them to absolutely no room to move, and to just feed them what they just do not eat like they would feed dead cows to cows, to me thats just wrong.  With these animals in such close proximity its just asking for trouble, aminals will get sick, injured, and thus, cause these animals to be no good but to feed other animals their ground up carcasses.  That alone could cause the other animals to get sick.  By this, people could get sick from any lingering bacteria within our food.  I believe that this is all "engineered" food processing and that should not be called that it should be called "farming!"  I think that there should be more people like Joel and Will to help us learn more about the natual ways of producing healthier and better quilty food.

          Now, I did some research to get the recent numbers of todays slaughter houses and what stood out to me was the number of life stalk there could be in a factory alone and what the conditinons are for the animals and the wrokers that handle the animals.  The United States raises and slaughters almost 10 times more birds than any other type of animal.  Approximately 8.5 billion chickens are killed for their meat every year, while another 300 million chickens are used in egg production.  The U.S. raises some 100 million pigs for food each year, the cast majority of them on industrial- scale farms known for their crowded, inhumane conditions.  Ammonia fumes rise to dangerous, uncomfortable levels due to the pig's wast.  Cattle are raised and processed across several distinct industries, a lot which, in the U.S., rely heavily on inhumane factory farming.  Lastly, approximately 238 million  turkeys are raised for meat in the U.S. annually.  Like chickens, most turkeys are housed in groups on the floors of long sheds where they are denied fresh air, sunshine,  and pasture.  THey are forced to breathe dangerously high levels of ammonia emanating from their own waste.  That information is just sad because of the way these animals are treated and i just hate thinking about the way these animals are forced to live, start ot finish.
         

          Heres a picture of a factory which is a Pink Floyd album called Animals.  I thought that this image was revelant to what I posted today.  Let me know your thoughts about what you thought about this post! Hope you enjoyed!

Entry#6: Airplane History

          Hey everyone!  This blog post is going to be about the history of how airplanes came to be and how they got so far from when the Write Brothers had their first flight.  During the spring and summer of 1903, they were consumed with leaping that final hurdle into history.  On December 17th, 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright made four brief flights with the  Kitty Hawk, their first powered aircraft.  The Write brothers had invented the first successful airplain.  Little did they know that the ariplain would be used for transportation, war, sport , and even hobbies.
               
          Here are some pictures of the Kitty Hawk the Write borther's built and flew.

Over the many years of engineering and perfecting the airplain had its fair share of ups and downs.  Thus, by working to improve the aircraft, it has given us the advantage in some catagories like transportation to other states and other countries.  Other advantages were with advancing our Air Force, and Naval plains to beat the enemy whenever neccessary.  

The aircraft that the military used in both World Wars would be the Junkers J4 that truned out to be a masterpiece of engineering.  I was built almost entirely of a relatively lightweight aluminum alloy called duralumin, it also featured steel armor around the fuel tanks, crew, and engine and strong, internally braced cantilevered wings. Originaly, these were used for reconnaissance, but were soon turned into offensive weapons, shooting at eachother known as "dog fights" and dropping bombs on the enemy positions.

Then in World War 2, in 1942, Adolf Galland- director general of fighters for the Lufwaffe (German Airforce) veteran of the Battle of Britain, and one of Gemany's top aces- flew a prototype of one of the world's first jets, the Messerschmitt ME 262.  "For the first time, I was flying by jet propulsion and there was on torque, no thrashing sound of the propeller, and my jet shot through the air," he commented. "It was as though angels were pushing."  As Adolf Galland and the others soon realized, the angels were pushing with extraordinary speed.  The ME 262 that Galland flew raced throug the air at 540 miles per hour, some 200 mph faster than its nearest rivals with piston- driven engines.

                                I hope that you enjoyed this post let me know what you think!