Counterintuitivity

I will be doing my research paper on Adrian Peterson’s comment of being a “40 million dollar slave”. This was first brought to my attention in my Africana Studies class when we were examining how African Americans feel today, knowing everything we as a race had to go through in the past. Adrian Peterson’s comment made me think and really ask myself what made him come to his conclusion. Do he have the right to compare himself to a slave? Is it more about the money or the treatment? This should be a very interesting topic to research because it will allow me to not only go into the true meaning of slavery but compare Adrian Peterson’s comment. At the end of my paper I want to be able to determine if he has the right to compare himself to a slave. A “40 million dollar slave” doesn’t make sense only because a real slave would of never saw 40 million dollars. However, for that exact reason I believe Adrian Peterson made this comment because of the treatment he might of been receiving. I’m also interested in what others had to say about his comment. I will not know until i do my research to see exact where everything comes together from Adrian Peterson’s point of view.

1. Slaves to the Game? Adrian Peterson and the ‘S’ Word

This article provides me with Adrian Peterson’s point of view and his issues with the team owners during an interview. This link also provides a video of Adrian Peterson addressing his comment and his feelings about it all.

How I intend to use it: I intend to use this as the main source of my paper, its the background information to why he made the comment. This is very important because without this information i won’t know exactly how Adrian Peterson feels and what made him say what he said.

2. Pampered black athletes lose sight of past struggles

This article by DeWayne Wickham examines the things that were said in William Rhoden’s book, Forty Million Dollar Slave: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete. It points out a few important parts of the book and explain very well. This article encouraged me to buy the book because the book can be another main source for my paper.

How I intend to use it: I intend to go over the things that were mentioned in this article until I am able to actually get the book. I will also research more due to this article because there are things that i feel can add to my paper.

3. America’s most wanted slaves: Black athletes bought, sold, traded

This provides basically proves that Adrian Peterson’s comment correct. It goes over ways black athletes can consider themselves slaves. Out of all the articles I came across while trying to find a source, this one caught and kept my attention! I

How I intend to use it: I will use this as well as Adrian Peterson’s opinion to make my research paper come together. I will compare this article to what Adrian Peterson said to see if the same points were made. I will also use this article to see if the author and Adrian Peterson will disagree on anything.

4. Slavery in the US

This source provides everything I need to know about slavery so my paper could be a success. It provides the history of slavery in the US, details about the slave trade, and every other part of slavery. I need this information to learn more about slavery and actually get a idea of what life as a slave would consist of.

How I intend to use it: I will make a comparison of Adrian Peterson and a actual slave. This would be impossible without knowing the history of slavery and what these slaves had to go through.

5. Have Pro Athletes Become the New Slaves?

This article provides information about a situation in the past with Jimmy Snyder, a commentator on the NFL Today show. He made a racial comment about black football players which is why he was fired. He claimed that “blacks were better athletes because they were bred during slavery”. He voiced his opinion a little to much which “reopened an old societal wound” said Ron Goodwin.

How I intend to use it: I will use this article to farther my research and go into details about Jimmy Snyder’s comment. Because Jimmy Snyder is a white man, was he being racist? Was he taking up for black athletes? What exactly was his claim? I want to know how did black athletes feel about this. Is Adrian Peterson alone with the way he feel? Or is he the only black athlete that spoke up and said something? I will find out Jimmy Snyder’s exact words and use all the information I gather in my paper.

For my research essay I will be proving that extreme amounts of money are not needed to buy a team of all stars, brains and a deep look at statistics that would be overlooked by others are elements you would need to put together a championship team. I will be finding teams that have won the World Series that have low pay rolls and won it by having players with specific statistics that all meshed together to form a championship winning team. Baseball is a game of numbers, it is not just about hitting a ball with a bat. People do not realize all of the numbers that go into a player for a fielder it would be his on base percentage, batting average, how many error he commits, how many put outs gets. There is a lot that goes into the strategy of picking certain players to fit the positions on your starting line up. The statistics that a manager or scout will have to look into can be every stat or just one, they can be between two players and one statistic such as outfield assists can make the team choose one player over the other.

1. Moneyball : The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis.

Background: This is the story of the Oakland Athletics team and it’s manager Billy Beane, and they had collected a team of players that had specific stats they excelled in such as stolen bases and on base percentage and they had a 41 million dollar salary cap as apposed to a team like the New York Yankees who had a 125 million dollar  salary.

How I will use it:  It will be used by giving an example of a team that completed what I am trying to prove in my research article this will be a main source of mine.

2. Playoffs and Payroll Rankings

Background: This is an article talking about how teams that make the playoffs is not necessarily about your salary cap, teams with very high salary caps make the playoffs and a lot of times do not as well. The same goes for teams with the lowest salary caps this article gives examples of situations where teams all types of salary cap teams have either made or missed the playoffs.

How I will use it: I will use this by examples of teams that have made it to the playoffs with low salary caps and teams that have missed the playoffs with high salary caps.

3. New York Yankees vs. Florida Marlins

Background: In 2003 the New York Yankees and Florida Marlins played for the World Series, the Florida Marlins won it (4-2). This was an example of a team with the highest pay roll losing to a team with solid all around players with specific skills. Josh Becket, a Florida Marlins pitcher had 19 strikeouts through out the World Series. That is just one player on the team.

How I will use it: As an example of statistics that can be over looked and really be needed to win a championship like the Florida Marlins did.

4. Biggest Busts

Background: This is a blog about the biggest baseball busts who are over paid players that did not live up to the money that they were getting paid.

How I will use it: I will use this source to show how some teams waste so many millions of dollars on players that did not even help their team win a championship instead of not spending so much money and getting a player that can help you win a championship.

5. Top Players

Background: This is a website with the top 100 baseball players in the major league.

How I will use it: I will be using this website because will give me names of the top players to use in my paper and their salary types compared to other cheaper players that are picked based off of their individual statistics.

For my research topic I will be examining if it is possible to walk in a straight line while blindfolded. Experiments have shown that it is not possible to walk in a straight line without a visual landmark. However, I plan on using first hand study and research to see if different sounds will help to keep people on a straight path.

1. A Mystery: Why can’t we walk in a straight line?

This video and article provides a clear description of the problem that people can not walk in a straight line when they have no visual landmarks to work off of. It gives specific examples of people who have tried this experiment and what the results were.

I will be using this to to establish what others have done to test this problem. I will also be using it to help guide me through my own personal research.

2. Mythbusters: Walk in a Straight Line

In this video The Mythbusters, Jamie in particular, offer up a theory that we cant walk in a straight line because the body makes fluid movements and is not perfect. Eventually, all of the little errors that are made while walking, without correction, will pile up causing us to walk in circles.

I will use this as a possible answer to the mystery question of if there is any way for us to actually stay on a straight path without the help of visual landmarks. I also noticed in the video that while doing the experiment they were wearing noise cancelling headphones, so that still leaves my theory that noise can substitute as a landmark open.

3. We Can’t Help Walking in Circles

This article gives more information about Jan Souman’s experiment where she blindfolded participants and let them attempt to walk straight in the desert or through an open plain. There is also a video about her experiment.

I will use this to help me determine how large of an area I should use to conduct my own experiments. Unfortunately, I will not be able to use an area as large as in the original experiments.

4. Jan Souman’s Paper

Gives all of the information about the experiments where she had subjects walk through the woods on a cloudy day as opposed to blindfolding them. Also gives more information about all of the separate tests since this is her main research paper.

I will use this as my main source in my research paper, getting most of my information about her theories and experiments from it.

5. Personal experiment

I will do my own experiment to see if we can walk in a straight line while blindfolded. I will also attempt to find out if noise can be used as a stand in for a visual landmark.

For my research essay I will be examining the morality of arguments supporting file sharing over the internet of music through peer-to-peer file sharing programs and the financial effects it has on musicians. While those against file sharing argue that it is stealing, a majority of people who support file sharing argue that morally they are not doing anything wrong because they say it is being “shared” to them over the internet even though they are being given possession of something that should cost them money for free. This is a counterintuitive claim by those who support file sharing because they are defending something that is going against their natural intuition that stealing is wrong. Although any musicians and artists, like the band Metallica, are against file sharing say that the idea of sharing was “borrowing things that were not yours without asking,” some people still argue that it is not stealing from the artist. Music can be purchased for a fair price over the internet through sellers such as iTunes, Amazon, CD Baby and plenty more online store in which the artists receive up to 65% more revenue per cd sale, but people who are for file sharing still complain that most of the sales of cds go to the record companies. Also, these websites and online stores frequently have deals on albums making them affordable, countering the argument that cd prices are too high. The following resources will help explore the argument that file sharing is a positive and moral system that does not harm artists’ hard work or wallets:

1. 99 Cents per Song: A Fair Price for Digital Music? The Effects of Music Industry Strategies to Raise the Willingness to Pay by P2P Users

Background:  “This article studies the effect of those initiatives on the willingness to pay of a sample of Spanish P2P users. Results show that value-based strategies are the most effective, while legal campaigns come second.” – from abstract of article

How I Intend to Use It: This article will help show statistics on how many people are willing to pay for music over downloading it illegally and recognize that the music industry has made attempts to counter file sharing by making affordable music available to purchase on the internet.

2. P2P, Online File-Sharing, and the Music Industry 

Background: Peer-to-Peer and its relation to online file-sharing has been a matter of great controversy for several years. Intersecting, as it does, the interests of innovators, content owners and consumers it has posed difficult and interesting questions not least those regarding how the interests of some IP owners should affect the development of technology. This brief literature summary does not seek to address these wider questions about how copyright and technology policy can be balanced in the best interests of society, but rather to simply address the basic question of the impact of online file-sharing on sales and welfare. – from Introduction of article

How I Intend to Use It: This article will help in finding a close figure expressing the amount of money the music industry really loses from file sharing. The article shows different findings over different periods of time by a variety of studies to give multiple findings to compare with one another.

3. How Much do Music Artists Earn Online? [INFOGRAPHIC]

Background: This web infographic chart shows how many sales an artist would have to make to earn a month’s worth minimum wage pay through the different market mediums such as CD retail, online music stores, and internet radio. The article also has a link to a chart that shows how much an artist makes on publishing royalties to find out exactly how much an average artist can make.

How I Intend to Use It: I intend to use this article to bring to light just how little artist make through record sales and to show how downloading an artist’s music for free can really effect their revenue.

4. MUSIC FOR NOTHING OR, I WANT MY MP3

Background: With the public discourse around filesharing veering towards punitive extremes, our aim in this essay is to reframe the issue in two ways. First, we argue that the filesharing debates are ‘too economic’, insofar as they reduce a multi-faceted phenomenon to a single issue: financial loss resulting from the theft of intellectual property. Lost in such arguments is the fact that music routinely circulates through the culture in myriad ways that have little (if anything) to do with commerce and capitalism, and everything to do with affect and affiliation. Second, the filesharing debates are simultaneously ‘not economic enough’, insofar as they evade the financial complexities of the music business in favor of an overly simplistic equation:‘downloaded music’ leads directly to ‘lost sales revenues’. A more robust analysis of the music industry’s standard economic practices, however, undercuts both its economic claims about the negative effects of filesharing on sales and its moral claims to be defending helpless musicians from downloading ‘thieves’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How I Intend to Use It: I intend to use this essay to have an alternative source to check facts with other sources and vice versa. Upon further reading of all my sources, I will be able to differentiate claims that may be false with claims that match up with other sources.

5. The Moral Argument In Favor Of File Sharing?

Background: This article shows certain opinions from people who are for file sharing and for those who are against file sharing. The article gives examples of their moral beliefs on the subject and why it is or is not acceptable to use file sharing.

How I Intend to Use It: I intend to use this article to find the argument that defends the morality of file sharing. The article also offers comments from other people who have read the article and have their own input on the subject, so I will be able to look through other peoples opinions.

Proposal: For my research topic, I want to investigate how the use of Facebook can reduce a candidate’s ability to attain a job. Many people are aware of the dangers their Facebook profiles possess when they apply for jobs — employers often use an analysis of a prospective employee’s Facebook page as a tool in their decision making process for hiring someone. Likewise, companies can use information posted on their employees’ Facebook pages to terminate them due to a lack of professionalism. However, as much as Facebook can make it difficult acquiring or keeping a job when companies probe their employees’ personal lives, new research shows that Facebook has actually become an important tool for job hunting and job advertising. It also is one of the quickest growing businesses, constantly opening new warehouses for production and expansion, and in turn creating thousands of jobs, with its headcount of employees increasing by an average of 50% per year. I want to determine through research of different source materials whether Facebook’s positive contributions to the job market outweigh the negative impacts it has on the process of finding a job outside of the Facebook world. 

Sources:

• 1. The Facebook Economy
  Background:This article discusses the current financial status of the Facebook corporation, and explains what we can expect to happen as far as growth within the company when their $5 billion IPO goes through this spring.
  How I Intend to Use It: This article will be useful for the facts and statistics incorporated into it. It gives data regarding the current size of the company, as well as the number of jobs they will be expected to create within the next few years. It also gives more detail about the types of employees they are generally looking to hire.
• 2. Can Facebook Train Better Workers?
  Background: This article gives insight to the ways in which Facebook has been able to actually increase employee productivity rather than decrease it. It explains how employees who are more adapted to working with social networking sites end up being better workers because they are more capable of expanding the technological aspect of the company they work for, whether through  networking or advertising.
  How I Intend to Use It: This article will help measure the benefits of Facebook in the workplace, giving details from studies that were done to discover what type of skills students and employees possessed that made them more capable to function in the academic or professional setting that they worked in.
• 3. Paterson School Teacher Under Fire for Racist Comment on Facebook
  Background: This article shows the dangers of having a Facebook page when working in a professional environment, such as that of a school. A teacher in Paterson awaits a verdict from the state education commissioner, who will decide whether or not to adopt a judge’s recommendation, after presiding over her case, that she be terminated.
  How I Intend to Use It: This article will provide my paper with a somewhat anecdotal example to demonstrate to readers the repercussions that can take place at work when someone behaves a certain way via social networking sites like Facebook.
• 4. Online
  Background: This article gives more in depth information about the ways in which companies use the task of perusing Facebook profiles as a pre-requisite for hiring someone and how college students who are beginning to enter their professional lives feel about the situation.
  How I Intend to Use It: As part of an argument concerning the concept of companies previewing prospective employers, I want to analyze this article to determine whether or not it is morally right for companies to employ this practice.
• 5. More Grads Use Social Media to Job Hunt
  Background: This article gives a lot of statistical data regarding the ways that college students are using social media sites like Facebook to find jobs after they graduate.
  How I Intend to Use It: I want to use the statistics that are given in this article to examine how beneficial Facebook really is in aiding graduates find jobs. I want to compare this data to that of the amount of jobs that are lost or not offered because of a company viewing an employee or prospective employee’s Facebook page if I can find that type of data.

For my research paper I will be analyzing the placement of marijuana in the Schedule 1 drug category under the Controlled Substances Act. According to the act, schedule 1 drugs are the deadliest drugs and will get you in the most trouble due to the serious illegality. I will be arguing marijuana should be under a less intense category. I believe other drugs in the category are much more dangerous than marijuana and it would fit another category better. I will not be arguing for the legalization of marijuana. Resources I feel I will be able to use for this paper are:

1. DEA Diversion Control 

Background: This website put up by the Drug Enforcement Agency’s Office of Diversion Control. It explains the Controlled Substances Act. It also goes into detail about each of the schedules and what guidelines a drug must meet to be placed under this category. It also lists some drugs in each category.

How I Plan to Use It: This source will provide background information on the government’s official policy regarding drugs. This information can also be used to persuade the reader.

2. Cannabis, Consciousness and Healing

Background: This source is a persuasive piece about how marijuana has medical benefits and therefore should not be a Schedule 1 drug because Schedule 1 drugs by definition have no medical benefits.

How I Plan to Use It: I plan to use the author’s views and information to persuade my readers that marijuana has a true medical use that is better than similar drugs. This author only argues one facet of the definition of a Schedule 1 drug so I will be using other sources for the other parts of the definition.

3. Federal Foolishness and Marijuana

Background: This author’s editorial is persuading the reader marijuana should be a Schedule 2 drug rather than it’s current state as Schedule 1.

How I Plan to Use It: This author argues from all of the definitions of a Schedule 1 drug. I will use his work to build on my own views and portray that in my paper.

4. Cannabis and the U.S. Controlled Substances Act

Background: This article posted by drugawareness.us explains that marijuana does not have a high potential for abuse and therefore should not be a Schedule 1 drug.

How I Plan to Use It: I plan to use this information to prove marijuana shouldn’t be a schedule one drug based on the fact it does not have a high potential for abuse.

5. Federal Marijuana Law

Background: This article explains more about the Controlled Substances Act, how it came to be and what it’s about.

How I Plan to Use It: I plan to use this information to prove that marijuana does not fall under the categories of a schedule 1 drug.

For my proposal, I would like to research the effectiveness of diet pills. In this case, I’m doing research on a newly passed controversial drug, Qnexa. The drug, manufactured by Vivus, had previously been denied approval by the FDA. The questions I seek to answer are: Does the drug really cause people to lose weight, or is this some sort of scam plotted up by Vivus? Just how effective is the drug? I can advertise a knife as a weight loss solution, but could it really cause someone to lose weight? Yes it could. However, the knife is dangerous and would cause a lot of injury in the process. I wonder just how similar the case is with these expensive drugs on the market advertising promising results.

Below are some sources that discuss Qnexa in different perspectives:

FDA panel backs obesity pill Qnexa: What happens next?

This article, fairly recent in the history of the drug, discusses its recent passing and questions the the future of it. It provides further information on the safety of the drug, as well as the reasons why it was finally approved by the FDA. I intend to use it as a window to information about the drug, and as a way to point out some of the benefits accredited to the drug.

What Vivus Fails To Say About Its Diet Pill Study

This article was written prior to the previous source. It discusses Qnexa in a much more negative light and gives reasons as to why it was NOT passed by the FDA. The product fails to fulfill Vivus’ advertisements. This article is crucial because it points out how companies, like Vivus, can be so anxious to sell their product that they do not even seem to care whether or not the results are conclusive. 

Safety is Tricky and Getting Trickier

I’m not able to provide a reliable working link to “Safety is Tricky and Getting Trickier”. Clinking on it may give some sort of error message. However, it definitely works if you find the article for yourself. Just search the title in the search box and it will come up. The article discusses some setbacks within trials for the drug. It provides useful insight to what the average consumer would not know about the drug. 

Drugs Zero In 

This source briefly mentions Qnexa in a broader subject of other drugs. However it provides one very interesting detail: Vivus excluded women in their childbearing years for approval of their drug. So women between the ages of 16 to Menopause aren’t approved to take the drug, according to this source. 

New approaches to the pharmacological treatment of obesity: Can they break through the efficacy barrier?

I have not yet been able to read most of this article yet. It provides a lot of information on different pharmaceutical drugs available and discusses their effects on the human body. Even if it doesn’t go into great detail on Qnexa itself, it provides information to the market and Qnexa’s competitors. Reading this article will (hopefully) help me acquire a deeper understanding of the diet pills market so that I am able to see Qnexa in contrast to other drugs promising similar results.