You Are What You Eat

Being fat as a little kid made me had a hard time eating junk food during my friend’s party. I always had my parents telling me to be careful with what you eat.  Before I thought it was just an excuse from my parents to make me stop eating junk food. Now after some years of losing weight I can see that the food you eat can shape a person’s identity.  Today I eat healthier food and my lifestyle has change a bit. I always have in mind what food is going into my body and I always try to exercise.  Normally you have the people that are very rigid with what they eat and other people that eat whatever there is to eat.  In TV/movies you can see an exaggeration of this because most of the time it shows serious and hardworking people eating a very healthy meal while fat and dirty people fast food.  I think that people are indeed what they eat, since based on their food you can see their identity. Their background roots, their likes and don’t likes, if they are clean, dirty or healthy or not healthy. On the two pictures below, you can see how one of the two picture does not match with her identity. I say her because you would imagine the girl eating something healthier. But you would expect a big guy like him to eat a hamburger that size!

Local Celebrity T-shirts

Clothing brands mostly want their costumers to advertise their brand by placing their logo on their t-shirts. But recently I read a case that said how the t-shirt brand Local Celebrity had a different approach. They create t-shirts with funny phrases so people will like to wear a t shirt with a funny phrase.  By doing this people will like the t-shirt and ask the costumer what brand his t-shirt is. In contrast, I always had t shirts with funny phrases but I never thought I was wearing it to advertise the brand nor criticize something . Around Babson campus, you can sometimes see some people  wearing t shirts with double meaning phrases/funny pictures.  Do you think people want to buy the shirt because they like the store/brand or because they like the phrase that the t shirt.  For me personally it was the phrase which leads to my second question. I remember how in my high school we were not allowed to have t shirts with a funny or a double meaning phrase.  This was because some people might find the phrase offensive or not polite. Do you think t shirts with a double meaning phrase, criticizing a race, ethnicity should be taken more seriously ? 

The photos below, show two different types of designs that local celebrity sells.  As you can see, the Mexcellent t-shirt might be offensive for some people since it has a taco and  mex written on it. On the other hand most people will find the other t-shirt fun to wear since it makes fun of the I love NY shirts.

Barnes and Noble vs iPad

At the beginning of the semester when I saw the article showing that The Barnes and Noble Book store was put for sale I did not understand. I thought it was unreasonable for the owners to sell one of the biggest bookstore chains in world. Barnes and Noble have over 720 stores in the United States.  Now after reading and analyzing the impact the iPad has on book I understand their dramatic decision. The effect that the IPad/technology plays on bookstores might not be the only reason why the owners of Barnes and Noble are trying to sell it but a big factor of their decision.  On the article Publish or Perish, that we have to read in class, tells us many times how books are becoming less popular. Two quotes that I found powerful on the article where: “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore”. And “Forty per cent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year”.  We know that by having the newest technology to play around makes every individual cool but what I see from this article now is that it also makes us dumb.  Because of the iPad and other similar technologies not only people are stopping to read but it is also making some chain stores like Barnes and noble go out of business. If Barnes and Noble goes out of business it can hurt the economy. That is why my question I have is if the iPad and other similar technologies are helping or affecting the society.

Below you can see the two articles that I used:

Ipad

 http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/04/26/100426fa_fact_auletta#ixzz14QGcJZSL

Barnes and Nobles

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/04/barnes-and-noble-for-sale