White Paper

Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd: “Fight” to Save Whales

The launch of the TV show Whale Wars on Animal Planet spread the issue of Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean.  Organizations like Greenpeace and the Sea Shepherd campaign to protect whales.  However, an underlying tension exists between these two major players.  Greenpeace is committed to non-violent direct action while the Sea Shepherd has been know to take radical and innovative direct action against the whalers.  This difference in opinion is causing turmoil between the two groups and their lack of cooperation is inhibiting the effectiveness of their anti-whaling campaigns.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qxdkZGBLKU

Living in a Throwaway Society

It is trash day. Consumers have placed their garbage and recycling units outside to be whisked away by municipal garbage trucks. This ritualistic behavior has contributed to American’s accustomed lifestyle of “out of sight, out of mind” when it comes to garbage. What needs to be enlightened is the dark side of decay and filth: a subject that most people are not consciously aware of or perhaps do not even care to think about. It is time to start caring as our country, and the world as we know it, is becoming a giant heap of trash.

https://sites.google.com/a/bucknell.edu/biz-gov-soc/research-for-white-papers/white-paper-archives-or-sources

Torture Interrogations

In my White Paper, I focused on educating the reader on the practices of torture and its use in prisoner interrogations, providing evidence supporting and condoning these practices, and ultimately suggesting policies to aid Army executives on the subject of torturing. The use of torture has been documented well throughout history, primarily used as a form of intimidation and aggression from one group to another. However, this ancient practice has turned into an information-gathering tool from incarcerated prisoners in modern times. These torture interrogations hope to physically and psychologically breaking down helpless prisoners to the point that they relay vital information to their torturers.

Evidence points to the United States Army as utilizing such techniques to gather intel from captive terrorists. While many countries admit to using torture interrogations, the fact that the United States uses similar strategies is nothing short of appalling. Though the United States is involved in a difficult War on Terror, the country who holds individual’s rights above all else should focus on leading by example with the way she treats her prisoners. Therefore, it is shocking that the United States has been implicated in numerous torture interrogation scenarios, such as Bagram Prison, Guantanamo Bay, and Abu Ghraib.

Continue reading →

Domestic Violence in the US: Not Just A Domestic Problem

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, one in four women have experienced domestic violence in her lifetime. ¹ Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women, more than car accidents, muggings, and rapes combined. Every nine seconds in the United States, a woman is assaulted or beaten. ² 3.3 million children witness domestic violence in their homes every year.³ According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, which includes crimes that were not reported to the police, “232,960 women in the U.S. were raped or sexually assaulted in 2006. That’s more than 600 women every day.”⁴ The Bureau of Justice reported in 1995, women of all races are about equally vulnerable to violence by an intimate partner. On average, intimate partners murder more than three women and one man in the United States every single day. ² Even more alarming, 74% of Americans personally know someone who is or has been a victim of domestic violence. That means that statistically speaking, you personally know at least one domestic violence victim. It could be your professor or your student, a co-worker or your neighbor. It could even be your mother, your sister, or your daughter.

However, violence in the household does not end with women. The abuse and neglect of children is also a pressing issue that many domestic violence advocates try to address as well. In fact, child abuse in the United States has recently grown worse. In Appendix 1 is a graph displaying the number of child deaths per day due to child abuse in the US; from 1998 to 2010, it has risen from 3.13 to 5. This gives the United States the worst record in the industrialized nation.¹⁵ Each year, 3.3 million reports of child abuse are made in the United States involving 6 million children; reports can include multiple children. ¹⁶  Other disturbing statistics include the frequency of reports of child abuse, one report every ten seconds, and the estimation that between 50-60% of child fatalities due to maltreatment are not recorded as such on death certificates. 

The statistics do not lie about the severity of the domestic violence problem on a national and global level. It will affect 75% of American citizens sometime in their lifetime, regardless of their age, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, income level, or gender. For many of these victims, those effects may have life-changing, or even life-ending, consequences. Although the United States has passed a comprehensive set of legislation on domestic violence, I still believe there is much more our government can do to help prevent domestic violence and help victims. In my paper, I will present a comprehensive set of facts on how domestic violence affects our country, what is already in place to help prevent domestic violence, and what more can be done.

Preserve College Sports

The institution of college sports is faltering.  With growing revenues, greater exposure, and increasing volatility, college athletics are more heavily scrutinized as institutions bring in more money.  In tandem with this grand commercialization of college sports, the governing body of major college sports – the NCAA – hands out more and more violations each year.  Most violations are frivolous rules that seek to aggressively enforce the NCAA ideal of amateurism in college sports.  That is, college athletes will never see a penny of the billions of dollars generated by one of the greatest spectator sports in the world.  The issue of whether to provide salaries for college athletes has gained steam in the last few years; people are beginning to get fed up with players losing eligibility and teams being vacated of their wins and championships.  

However, paying student – athletes a salary will cause irreparable damage to the institution of college sports, creating complications that will not only shake the foundation of college sports, but could prove to destroy them altogether.  This is no doubt that college athletics need to be fixed, but it is a matter of deciding to effectively overhaul the way college sports is governed.

Inequalities in Collegiate Athletics – 40 Years after Title IX

On March 8, 2010, President Barack Obama stated, I didn’t run for President so that the dreams of our daughters could be deferred or denied. I didn’t run for President to see inequality and injustice persist in our time. I ran for President to put the same rights, the same opportunities, and the same dreams within reach for our daughters and our sons alike. I ran for President to put the American Dream within the reach of all of our people, no matter what their gender, or race, or faith, or station.[1] With the President’s unwavering support for gender equality, one would assume that the United States’ government would be taking proactive and protective measures to eliminate the number of discrimination cases and incidences that continue to plague our society. Despite the fact that women face an array of obstacles in today’s culture, the source of these hurdles is often rooted in the notion of parity. Whether it is in the private or public domain, women have been pressing for equality and working towards eradicating gender stereotypes through governmental channels for centuries and despite immense strides, inequalities still plague our nation.

Even though both men and women have benefited from the implementation of Title IX and despite the fact that the law clearly states that its purpose is to promote fairness and equality, cases of inequity and discrimination are still emerging from the athletic realm. Although we live in an age where some people would agree that women have made tremendous strides towards social, political, economic equivalence, there is still much room for improvement and change. Within the context of intercollegiate sports, while the number of women and women participating in athletic programs and the number of teams at institutions have consistently trended upwards, why are there increases in the number of discrimination cases filed with the Office of Civil Rights?

Addressing the Childhood Obesity Epidemic

The childhood obesity epidemic is a social, economic, and public health challenge (Wechsler, et al, 2004).  It constitutes a critical threat to the health and well-being of our nation, as rates have risen dramatically over the past decades.  The United States now has the highest rate of childhood obesity among all developed nations (Kluger, 2008).  Its mitigation requires a multi-disciplinary strategy, as it has become a serious public health concern, not only in the U.S., but also worldwide.  The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that, over the last thirty years, the number of overweight children has doubled, while the number has almost tripled among adolescents (Ogden and Carroll, 2010).  The main issue is that children and adolescents are eating unhealthy high calorie, high fat, processed foods, and are not getting enough physical activity.

Children, in contrast to adults, are treated as unable to weigh the future consequences of their actions.  Children may have a poor understanding of the long-term health consequences of overeating or lack of physical activity.  In the case that they have adequate information, they may assign minimal importance to problems in the distant future.  Therefore, government actively regulates the decisions of children more strictly than those of adults.  Additionally, when children are enrolled in the public school system, the government acts in loco parentis; thus, it is important to consider the relationship of school policies, especially regarding nutrition and physical activity, to the childhood obesity epidemic (Acs and Lyles, 2007). Continue reading →

Research is Invaluable

Having chosen childhood obesity as the topic for my white paper, I have had no trouble finding information as there is a wide variety of research and literature on the subject.  In the library, I was pressed for time, but I uncovered several books in the sciences and medicine stacks within a matter of minutes.  The title that I found most interesting was “Generation Extra Large: Rescuing Our Children from the Epidemic of Obesity”.  Given last week’s discussion regarding Generation We, I found the labeling of our same generation as “Extra Large” was worthy of comment. 

Nevertheless, the book that I actually chose to look at more in depth for this particular blog post was entitled “Obesity in Youth: Causes, Consequences, and Cures”.  I decided that this book might be the most helpful as it was the most recently published (2009) of the books I discovered in my less-than comprehensive search.  I assumed that this book may have more reliable data and statistics and therefore it would be more helpful than the others in contributing to my white paper. Continue reading →

Finding Gold Mines of Info- Blog Prompt 8- Cited Ref Searches

Cited Reference Searches.

As Brody explained, the works cited of an article, case or book is a view BACKWARDS in time to what the author used.

A cited ref search is a look FORWARD.  It can be a very powerful and targeted search based on what you know is a good source.  The idea is to look at a piece of knowledge and see, from its point of publication, FORWARD, who else cited it.

Several tools can do this.  All are reachable here at the LIT page for management.

ABI/INFORM is one.

Google Scholar is another.

Web of Knowledge is the third, and perhaps the most sophisticated.

The differences are primarily around which databases it searches for references.  The second is the presence of BOOKS.  Only Google Scholar does books.

FOR NEXT WEEK,

1)      Take a “piece of knowledge” we have used or referenced and

2)       Do a cited reference search on it to find a

3)      New item that is useful to you.

4)      Briefly describe the new item. Continue reading →