Online Documentary: The Future of Food

Deborah Koons, the widow of the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia, wrote and produced a poignant film about food that is available on snagfilms.com. With interviews footage and other relevant documentation from various experts and sources, The Future of Food makes it clear that big, influential chemical corporations like Monsanto (especially Monsanto), are pulling strings to control farmers and even pulling strings to control the government.


What is the future of food?
Of course we don't really know for sure and the film doesn't make any specific predictions. Nevertheless, one thing is clear, you and I, as citizens and as consumers, will have a say in what comes next. In the last fifteen to twenty years Americans' spending on organic food has increased at a remarkable rate. Many of us are willing to pay a little extra for the safety and quality of "real food." Many more of us also enjoy raising our own food. The future of food is up to us.

Watch The Future of Food on Snagfilms now.

ABC News Looks at the 2000's

Amidst all the excitement over the "holiday season" and all the stress that comes with the end of the semester, you might not have taken the time to observe the end of the decade. The 2000's were a newsworthy decade, and, whether your kind of news is about Brad Pitt, hurricanes, scandals and frauds, or, "what-have-you," it was covered by ABC News. With no further ado, I give you ABC News' End of the Decade website.



Use your mouse to move the New Year ball down from one year to the next. Each year features the ten most newsworthy events and each of those events, in turn, can be clicked on for an in-depth look.

Remember this?



Or this?






Those events and much, much more can be found at ABC News' End of the Decade site!

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture

Many of the MPTC faculty are taking a class in which they'll discuss a book by Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch called The Last Lecture. There's really no better way to introduce the book than to quote from its' own web page:

On September 18, 2007, computer science professor Randy Pausch stepped in front of an audience of 400 people at Carnegie Mellon University to deliver a last lecture called "really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams." with slides of his CT scans beaming out at the audience, randy told [them] about the cancer that is devouring his pancreas and that will claim his life in a matter of months. On the stage that day, Randy was youthful, energetic, handsome, often cheerfully, darkly funny. He seemed invincible. But this was a brief moment, as he himself acknowledged.

That lecture became a phenomenon.


View a 5-plus-minute video excerpt of the lecture...




View the one-hour and sixteen-minute lecture here in its entirety:




You can even (gasp) read the book (gasp). We have copies at all MPTC campus libraries:
call number QA 76.2 .P38 A3 2008

New Book: Global Warming is Good for Business

I imagine that the mere mention of the term "global warming" conjures up thoughts and images of gloom and doom in your mind. (Perhaps it makes you think about how the melting of the polar ice caps is shrinking the polar bear habitat.)


But some very different images and thoughts come to K. B. Keilback's mind when she thinks about global warming. According to her, the worldwide awareness of our environmental problems has resulted in huge business opportunities. Consumers and investors want to go green. And so the time is ripe for Ms. Kelibach's book, Global Warming is Good for Business.

One critic praised it as a "shrewd and insightful new book" that seizes many business opportunities that are "offered by a carbon-constrained future."

Fond du Lac campus library, call number QC 981.8 .G56 K45 2009

Wall Stats' Death and Taxes Poster

Did you ever want to know how many taxpayers' dollars are being spent on various government programs? I'm not necessarily trying to stir up outrage, but then again, even those who don't grumble about paying taxes are likely to question some part of the United States budget, because the numbers reflect our country's priorities. If you don't think that NASA or the Department of Education has too big a budget, you're likely to think that the Department of Defense is costing us too much, or, looking at the big picture, a lot of people will look at our level of deficit spending and question if we'll ever be able to pay back our debts.

If you're going to be outraged anyway, you may as well do it over the correct data. That is where Wall Stats comes in. Their Death & Taxes 2010 poster can be viewed at MPTC's Fond du Lac campus library near the atlas stand. alternatively, you can see Death & Taxes 2010 on the web.



To give you an idea of the complexity of Death & Taxes 2010, here's what the whole thing looks like:

The Economy: Crisis and Response, from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Fransisco

The Federal Reserve Bank of San Fransico wants you to know that they're doing something about the state of our nation's economy. That appears to be their motivation for creating an excellent website which will appeal to a wide range of people. Whether you want a quick overview of the causes of our current financial crisis, or an in-depth look at it, this site can deliver financial information with a minumum of jargon.






Visual aids, like this one, clarify the economic realities we've been facing.







You can also use the San Fransico Federal Reserve Bank's site for direct access to the views of policymakers.

See The Economy: Crisis and Response now!

New Book: John Brown: His Fight for Freedom

Behold the tears of such oppressed and they had no comforter, and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter. Ecclesiastes 4:1

Those words inspired one man’s mission to eliminate slavery. Who was this man? His name was John Brown.

John Brown not only believed in the abolition of slavery; he also believed that all men are created equal. His vision was so intense that Frederick Douglass once said this about John Brown, “His zeal in the cause of my race was greater than mine. I could live for the slave, but he could die for him” (Hendrix, 2009, p. 39).


Many view John Brown as a controversial historical figure. John Hendrix, the author of John Brown: His Fight for Freedom; however, begs to differ. Hendrix portrays John Brown as an individual following his deepest convictions fueled by his determination.

Although written for young readers in mind, we recommend this book for all readers.

*Read an outstanding illustrated review of this book from Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast (a blog about books).

**Discover for yourself. You can find it at Fond du Lac Campus Library,
Call Number: E 451 .H46 2009

contributed by Katie