How Can We Fix The "Food Insecurity" Problem in the US?

Over the last year or so, I've been interested in learning more about food and what is really a healthy diet, why are some foods or food additives bad, the different types of diets to lose weight and how they work, etc.  And it has gotten me interested in learning more about the food we eat in general in the US - particularly GMO food and processed foods, and why they are bad for us.

And with my general interest in food and learning more about it, I just watched a documentary called "A Place At The Table" that has me wondering... how can we fix the food insecurity problem in the US?

Now first of all, the term "food insecurity" is stupid as far as I'm concerned. It's a polite way of saying there's a lot of people who don't have enough food to eat each day, so they're often living in a state of hunger.

Why? They're hungry because they don't have enough food to satiate their appetite, and the food that they are eating is the wrong kind of food in the first place to keep them healthy and make them feel satisfied after they eat it.

The main problem is that they don't have enough money to buy enough real food (meat, vegetables, fruit and some minimally processed foods) for themselves and their families to eat to satisfy their appetite and keep them healthy. There are millions of people in the US who work jobs (including people who work full-time jobs) who still just don't make enough money to buy enough real food. But they often make too much to qualify for public assistance (food stamps). 

There are millions more who do qualify for public assistance, but the amount they get isn't enough to buy enough real food either.

So they try to make the money they do have for food stretch as far as possible, which means they buy the cheapest food they can, to get the most volume of food possible. That means that most of their food is comprised of cereals, ramen noodles, bread, cheap processed meats, canned soups and spaghettio-type foods, etc. These foods are full of carbohydrates, GMO's, preservatives, additives, artificial flavors, sugars, artificial sweeteners (high fructose corn syrup), and all kinds of other things that aren't good for you!

So not only do they not have enough food to eat, the food they do eat doesn't satisfy their hunger, and it's unhealthy for them as well - getting them closer and closer to obesity, diabetes and heart disease with every bite they take. And that's just the problem on the surface of the issue.

If you go a little deeper into the problem, you'll see that this issue affects quality of life, crime, education, and the economy. When people are hungry on a regular basis, their thoughts tend to focus on how they're going to get their next meal more than just about anything else, because food is one of the basic human needs. And with those thoughts come stress and worry, which lower their quality of life.

When people are hungry, they tend to be more irritable and don't think as clearly as they could or would if they weren't hungry. It doesn't take much of a stretch of the imagination to see that this could cause people to commit more crime. And it should be obviously to every one that kids who are hungry will not be able to pay attention as well in class, or retain what they do learn as well, so their education is impacted in a negative way. And don't even get me started on the quality of school lunches...

Poor focus in class leads to poor grades. Poor grades leads to lower chances at graduating from high school or going to college. That limits the types of jobs a person can get, which limits their income as well. And when too many people are in that bucket of society, there is always someone willing to take a minimum wage job - regardless of how low that minimum wage is. That allows companies to keep paying those low wages. 

Unfortunately, the Fed is still printing money like nobody's business in the meantime which leads to inflation, which leads to higher prices for the same goods, which moves a livable wage further and further away from the minimum wage, which leads to all kinds of other problems - one of which is not being able to afford enough real food to eat on a regular basis.

So how can we fix this problem? I've heard multiple ideas...

• Raise the minimum wage
• Increase the amount of public assistance available to low-income people
• Let charitable organizations make up for the difference (food banks in particular)
• Teach food 
• Encourage community gardens
• Improve school lunch quality
• Etc.

Each of these may help, but not enough - and each of them have problems too. So I wonder how it could be fixed... I honestly don't know. It seems simple, but I think it's a pretty complicated issue.

Free Will

Sam Harris is guy believes and argues that human beings do not have free will - and does so very convincingly. He's also happens to be a NYT Best-Selling Author of multiple books. You can listen to a talk he gave about it here:

http://keentalks.com/illusion-free-will/

Well I happen to disagree. I'll admit that I agree with just about everything he says about how we live in a deterministic universe where each effect has one or more causes that have determined what each effect is. But as I thought about it more, it occurred to me that there is something Sam Harris failed to consider fully - the notion of time.

What Mr. Harris basically states is that ever since the first "cause," what has followed is an unimaginably complicated series of resulting effects. Each of those effects is also a cause for the next series of effects, and so on and so on all the way up to everything that is happening everywhere in the universe right now - including everything that is happening in each person's brain which is causing their feelings, thoughts, behaviors, desires, etc. Therefore since all of these causes and effects control everything going on in our heads as well, when we think we're actually making decisions, or thinking of something new, etc. it's not because you are doing it, it's because all of the causes happening in your brain are producing the effects that determine what decision you make, what you think of, etc. So you think you are the one in control, when it's really just the chemical reactions going on in your brain, influences from your environment, radio waves bombarding you, the earth's magnetic field, and the butterfly that flapped it's wings on the other side of the world all interacting in a complicated chain of causes and effects that determine what you do, think, feel, etc.

And of course each effect is preceded in time by one or more causes. So anything that happens in the future is because of the things that are happening now, which will be causing those future things to happen. And this means that anything you think, feel, or do in the future will happen because of the things that have happened up to that point that have caused you to think, feel, or do those things - which means you don't have free will.

So here's where I think his argument breaks down. What if you could go back through the chain of causes and effects to the very first cause. What happened before that to cause that first cause? I submit that it was God who made that first cause happen in time. And how did God do it? Well here's the key point that I thought about that makes it possible for God to make the first cause happen, and for us to have free will right now as well. It is that not everything necessarily has to exist within the framework of time.

Now I now that last statement might be a little hard to grasp mentally, so let me try to guide you through it real quick to help. Imagine that you and God are just chilling side by side in space where there is nothing, not even time. God decides to create our universe, so he snaps his fingers and you see something like a tiny bubble appear that keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger, in all directions, super fast - at let's say, the speed of light. You've heard of the big bang right? Well you are looking at the bubble expanding and everything in it being created - galaxies, stars, nebulas, planets, etc. And the walls of the bubble are the boundary of time.

Now maybe since God decided to give us human beings souls, which he tells us are eternal, maybe he creates our souls outside of that time bubble. And who's to say that things outside of the time bubble can't interact with things that are inside of the time bubble? If God can do it (since he made it in the first place), and He made us in His image as it says in the bible, then we can do it too - that is, our souls can do it too.

So if you put all of that together (our souls exist outside of time, but can interact with our bodies which exist inside of time), then we can still have free will. It is obviously true that we do live in a deterministic universe and that things that happen do determine future things that happen. And when it comes to our thoughts, feelings, opinions, etc. we are definitely products of our environments and the things that have and are influencing us every second of every day. And it is also possible for our souls to interact with our brains to produce new causes that overwhelmingly determine what the effects (what our thoughts, opinions, feelings, etc.) will be.

So it is completely possible for our brains and bodies to exist within time and be governed by the deterministic rules of the universe, and for us (our souls) to have free will by interacting with our brains and bodies within time to cause our thoughts, feelings, opinions, which determine how we act and what we do.

So that's what I believe. I don't know if I explained that very well, but what do you think?

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What is The Higgs Boson? And Why Does It Matter?

This is something I recently wrote that kinda goes along with the previous post in this blog so I figured I'd include it here.  =)

What is The Higgs Boson? And Why Does It Matter?

Physics is Too Complicated

Having taken plenty of physics classes, read some books, and watching shows on the Science channel, I know quite a bit more than the average person about physics. And I'm pretty interested in it because I think that knowing how the world and the universe works is pretty darn cool!

And over the past couple of years, I've developed a thought that just won't go away. That thought is that Physicists are making things too complicated. It's not their fault though, they are doing the best they can to make sense out of things we don't fully understand yet. I'm talking specifically about the small stuff... the really small stuff.

Most people think that the smallest things in existence which everything else is made out of are atoms. And how atoms work is pretty well understood and accepted as true around the world. But then these brainiacs called theoretical physicists started trying to break down the atom even more. They determined that atoms are made up of even smaller things called neutrons, protons, and electrons. But that wasn't even good enough for them.

I'll spare you all of the details (mostly because I don't know all of them), but basically they now think there are even smaller fundamental particles called quarks, bosons, gluons, and some other ones - twelve of them in all. And one of them the so-called Higgs boson is only a guess, they haven't been able to detect it's existence yet but they think it has to anyway.

And not only that, but there are also a bunch of different forces too - strong, weak, electromagnetic, and gravitational. And each of these act differently.

These are all parts of the Standard Model.

Then there are people talking about string theory, M-theory, and dark matter which is something that supposedly is what most of the universe is made of, but we can't see, touch, or otherwise prove it directly. Uh huh...

Is it just me or does all of this seem a little too complicated? You know what I think? I like Einstein's theory that everything is made up of energy. And I think there is some type of fundamental unit of energy that isn't a particle, and isn't a wave, it's something different but can' look like either one or neither of them based on the circumstances. Those circumstances are based on a set of rules that we just don't completely understand yet.

So there is one type of thing - energy. And with the rules (who knows how many - but probably not more than a dozen) that control how energy acts it could explain everything. It could explain why gravity is so weak for small things but strong for big things, compared to say the electromagnetic force. It could explain why some matter is visible and some is dark. It could explain why sometimes things act like particles and sometimes they act like waves.

I have no idea what these fundamental units of energy are or what the rules would be that govern them, but I bet that's how everything really works.

Mind/Body Connection

I have always wondered about how the mind/body connection works. I am a religious person and I believe that humans have souls, which are the parts of us that control our mind which in turn controls our body. I know how the mind controls the body (through electrochemical reactions from the brain to nerves in the body basically), but I don't know how the mind controls the brain. I think our mind and our brain are two different things. To me our mind is in the domain of the soul. It is am intangible thing, but still very real. The brain on the other hand is obviously a tangible thing. If you think of a human that is alive as a computer, the brain and body would be the hardware (hard drive, processor, memory, etc.) and the mind would be the software (programming). So if it were possible to take your mind and put it into another body with a diferent physical brain, you would still be the same person. Or would you?

There are three ways the mind/body connection could work. Either the mind controls the body, the body controls the mind, or both influence each other. I have a feeling that they both control each other. I think that the mind influences the body somehow, and the body influences the mind somehow as well. I think this because when you drink wine for instance, the chemicals (alcohol) in the wine change the chemistry in the body and the brain which in turn affects how you act and how you think so therefore the body must be able to influence the mind. Also, if you close your eyes and think about a time when you were really happy, you visualize that time and experience it in your mind as if you were really there again, you get happy, and your brain and body reflect that change in your mood (specific chemicals are released in your brain like dopamine, and seratonin) which was brought on by the thoughts in your mind.

But how does something that's intangible (your mind) influence something that is tangible (your brain)? Is it something kind of like light. Because light which is intangible hits the choloroplasts in plant cells (which are tangible), which causes them to produce food for the plant (with the help of water and carbon dioxide of course). And there are different types of light depending on the wavelength and frequency of the waves contained in the light, and plants can only make food when irradiated by a certain spectrum of light. So could the mind be something like that? Could the mind put out something like a particular "wavelength" for happiness, a different one for sadness, a different one to trigger the release of adrenaline in your brain, a different one to trigger a particular memory, etc.? So then if you have something like alcohol in your brain, does it cause your brain to put out these "wavelengths" that your mind picks up and that's how the brain effects the mind?

Or is it something totally different...maybe something I just can't comprehend yet? I don't know...what do you think?

What's after outer space?

Here's something I've thought about many times and never come up with a good answer for...

What's after outer space? If you think about it, you'll probably come to the conclusion that "nothing" is after space. Suppose you start at Earth and you could keep moving further and further away from Earth as fast as you wanted to. First you would see the moon, then other planets, then once you get of our solar system you'd see other solar systems, and then other galaxies, and then the whole universe with all of the galaxies in it,....and then what? Nothing? But isn't space "nothing?" I mean I know there are subatomic particles and random atoms of nitrogen and other elements scattered throughout space so it's not completely empty. So that means there is still something in space, even in outer space there's something even if it's just one atom every 100 billion miles or so. But what is it after you get past where the last atom of anything is? What is it when there is truly nothing anymore (except you of course if you were there hypothetically). Is that space too? If so, what if you keep going further and further anyway....is there an end somewhere, where it turns into something else?

I've read stuff by Stephen Hawking and other physicists that theorize that matter and time are related so really the four dimensions we all know (x,y,z, and time) are all connected together and influence each other. So if that's true, there must be an end to space right? Because if you believe in the big bang theory like I do (the basics of it, which doesn't make it necessary to deny creationism is true), then there was a beginning to space and time. And since there is a beginning and the universe has been expanding since that point (or maybe is contracting again now depending on what you might believe about the different theories that are out there), then there must be an outer edge somewhere. So what if you reached that outer edge? Would you be outside of time then too? And if you were, then there would be no dimensions either because they are all connected. So you really couldn't be there at all since you are a three dimensional thing. So there really is "nothing" after space, because there can't be right? So then what would happen if you were at the edge of space and you threw a ball past the edge? Would it just dissapear? If so, then that would break Einstein's  law of conservation of mass and energy? Or I guess maybe it wouldn't just cease to exist, but it could be transformed into some kind of energy. So then even if that happened, there would then be something in the "nothing," so that would be an extension of space right? So then if that were true, then there would be the three spatial dimensions and the dimension of time in that extension of space too, so would the ball reappear or stay energy? Or would that not happen at all and instead when you tried to throw the ball out past the edge of space, would the edge of the ball just push the edge of space out with it so it would never dissappear or transform into energy in the first place? And if that were the case, what if you could throw the ball faster than the speed of light? Would the edge of space be able to keep up with the front edge of the ball? Or maybe that's totally impossible anyway because if you threw the ball faster than the speed of light then it would turn into a black hole or something crazy like that. 

Yeah,....I don't know. But I still wonder what is after space...if anything...and what would happen if you got there and threw a ball past the edge.

What do you think?

Introduction

I'm a person who likes to think about things a lot, and I imagine there are a lot of people out there who are like me in this way. So I decided to start a blog to share the random things I think about that other people who are like me might like to read and think about too. I won't be updating this blog every day but I will probably once a week or so. Also, I'd like to make this more of a forum type of blog, so please comment on what I write if you think it's interesting, if you agree with me (or not), if what I write makes you think of something else that I didn't talk about, etc.

Talk with you soon! =)