Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Dead Three: Merit Badge




                The other day I saw one of the sweetest things a gentleman can do. It was simple, but something you don’t really see anymore, not even at Publix, which is ridiculous. A very old woman was walking to her car with a couple of Grocery bags, when a young man in his twenties came up to her and offered her a hand. She thankfully accepted his offer and allowed the boy to take her bags into her car.
                While I was watching this I thought “oh how sweet” and was instantly reminded of the young boy from UP trying to attain his last patch. Of course in retrospect the only true aspects connecting these two characters are that they are both males who aided an elderly person… Don’t question my logic!
 Well, while I was thinking this, my boyfriend instantly took a defensive pose. It did not take me long to understand that the reason he had prepared himself to attack was because not all people do good things with good intentions. It’s sad really, that good deeds go undone because of this preconceived fear that everyone in the world has malicious intentions. Thankfully, however, the young man did nothing but put the bags in the woman’s car, shut the door, and smile.

Friday, October 7, 2011

Free Rice



                Recently, through my membership to Psi Chi, I was exposed to a site called Free Rice. The site is absolutely wonderful. It was founded in 2007 by John Breen, and it aims to both educate the population and end world hunger. How it’s done? Well it’s simple. The first step is to choose a subject area, from this area you are asked various questions, and if you answer the question correct you earn 10 grains of rice for hungry people around the world.
                So what is 10 grains of rice? You may not realize it, but it’s actually a lot. With thousands of people answering only a few questions a day we make a significant difference in ending world hunger. Each question takes seconds of your life, in one minute you can get twelve questions done easy. Twelve correct questions means 120 grains of rice. With the average person needing approximately 20,000 grains of rice a day it would take a group of 20 to answer questions correctly for less than 10 minutes to feed this starving being. Over two billion people in the world have access to the internet, so does ending world hunger really seem like a goal we cannot accomplish?
                I ask you from the wholeness of my heart to make a difference in the world in any little way that you can.