Berry’s Blog

  There is no doubt that the agricultural sector is having to change at an unprecedented rate due to a multitude of factors. For thousands of years only food was grown that could sustain itself with the natural resources of that area. However, the 20 th century saw that change for the first time in human history. Crops were now being grown in places that they didn’t really belong and in quantities that were not sustainable in certain areas. For example, look at the Ogallala aquifer which has experienced a 70-foot water drop since the Industrial Revolution. This is the aquifer that provides a significant proportion of the water for Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota agriculture. This seems to imply that something like vertical farming could solve the issue. It uses less water and it is resistant to weather changes that have also started to play a bigger role in the agriculture sector. However, something like vertical farming will neve...

  About a year ago I was on vacation with my family in Florida and we were at a restaurant. When we went to order I said to the waiter, “can please have this”?  After this my dad gave me a funny look and something along the lines of “why do you not just tell the waiter what you actual” after this we went down the rabbit hole about differences between Midwest verse northeast mannerisms. The Midwest tends to have the stereotype that everyone is very nice to each other with constant apologizing and small talk. However, in the northeast the stereotype is that they tend to be blunter with less care for how other people view them. The reason that many midwesterners tend to have the mannerisms that they have is due to their roots. Many people in this region are from German and Scandinavian ancestry who were fleeing political turmoil and were driven by the promise of cheap land. Many of these immigrants depended heavily on each other which formed a strong sense of community in these p...

  There exists a common stereotype that French people are rude. This stereotype can be seen in Sedaris’s piece “Me Talk Pretty One Day”. However much of this steams from differences in the cultures of many places. In the United States, especially in the restaurant industry, people will often act kind for no apparent reason. However, this is likely due to the risk of losing a big tip if a waiter acts rude or mean. However, in France this is not the case. Tipping culture is not even close to as big of a thing so there is less pressure for people to act kind for no apparent reason. There could also be a social media aspect to this as well. American tend to use social media more than their French counterparts. This means that Americans have a greater risk of becoming famous for all the wrong reasons if they are caught being rude or ungrateful. While this is undoubtably a newer phenomenon, it could explain part of the reason that American view the French like this.  Another big par...

  To be able to rent a car in the United a person generally has to be twenty-five years of age or be over twenty-one years of age and pay a “young driver”. The only notable exceptions are the states of Michigan and New York where eighteen-year-olds are able to rent a car, which stand as the only places in the United States where people of this age actually have freedom. For a lot of kids when they turn eighteen and graduate high school they are shipped away from their homes to a university in an attempt to get them grow up under the guise of “education”. Eighteen-year-olds are also able to go join the armed forces and fight in wars. They are also able to vote in elections for who the leaders of this country will be. Here are some other random things that can be done by an eighteen-year-old, buy a pet, buy fireworks, skydive, buy spray paint, adopt a child, get tattoos, file a lawsuit. While all of these things can be done, RENTING the most common type of transportation cannot be do...

  This weekend marks my parents twenty-eighth wedding anniversary. This got me thinking the ways that wedding have changed over the years. With the advent of social media wedding have become more of a comedy. For example, at my parents wedding all the photos were low quality and all of them now exist in a large photo book that gets pulled out once a year. Nowadays many couples seem to try and use their wedding for attention on social media. So many times I see some random wedding video come up and its like I don’t really care. This has historically been a pretty special day but it has been degraded as so many people only want the clout. This has become so normal that according to Sherry Gaba who is a writer and a licensed relationship therapist, 68 percent of younger couples will post about their engagement within one day of the engagement. Similar numbers were also seen to post about their wedding day. With divorce rates rising steadily, the question must be asked why are people n...

I disagree with the notion Deborah Tannen put forth in the short essay “There is No Unmarked Woman” that women tend to be more marked than men. The only difference is the way that men and women tend to be marked. As Tannen described, women tend to be more focused on the physical aspects of being marked. Tannen describes herself closely inspecting other women at a conference that she went to. This demonstrates that women tend to value the physical more than men, but that does not mean that men are marked any less. For example, take collage and professional sports. Men overwhelmingly mark themselves as a fan of certain sports franchises. However, this is slightly harder to spot than the clothes and makeup that women tend to wear which leads to the perception that women are more marked than men. There are also many other ways that men are marked that can be slightly harder to see. For example, the amount of money that a man makes automatically marks him and determines many of his future o...