Urvashi Vaid Presentation

Before attending the Urvashi Vaid presentation, I wasn't very familiar with the topic so I wasn't really sure of what to expect.  Urvashi Vaid opened my eyes very quickly on the topic.  She presented the information though stories and examples, and asked question to expand the audiences thinking on the issues.  She also provided facts and even some jokes, which I really enjoyed.  Something I learned that I've never thought about before is after the marriage law is achieved for LGBT communities, where do the LGBT activist groups go next?  Is that the end point?  This really made me think.  I definitly think Urvashi is and expert on the topic she was presenting.  She has been an LGBT activist for almost three decades and has written many books.  In her presentation, Urvashi brought up a transgender activist named Dean Sparks, who has written a book called "Normal Life".  I'm thinking I could look up Dean and some of his information could help me with my alternative viewpoints paper.

Intellectual Property

I'm not quite sure what intellectual property is, but if I were to guess I would say it has to do something with the inner workings of the mind.  Someone's thought's and ideas would be their intellectual property.  When researching an official definition of what intellectual property, I came across a website called WIPO- World Intellectual Property Organization.  Their definition of intellectual property is "Intellectual property (IP) refers to creations of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce".  One example I can think of would be McDonald's famous quote, "I'm lovin it", or Subway's "Eat fresh".  I think when something is manipulated and shared, it is no longer intellectual property.  for example, at one point in time, I'm guessing the stove top was someone's intellectual property.  Someone came up with the concept, then decided to share it with others.  Throughout the years, the design of the oven has changed and many different companies have started producing them.  There is no longer a patent on the design.

Google 101

In last weeks class, during Google 101, I learned quite a few things about Google that I wasn't aware of before.  The most interesting thing that I learned was a newer feature on Google.  This feature allows you to upload a picture and do a search on it to find out where the picture came from.  I think that this is really neat.   wanted to try it out for myself, so I uploaded a picture of myself and got some interesting results!  Another thing I learned about was using this symbol ~.  I don't think I've ever needed to use this symbol in my life until I learned that when I use it in Google, it will look for sites about the topic, but use related terms.  I will definitely use this in the future when doing research to broaden my search results.  Another thing that i learned was .gov at the end of a URL means that the site is a federal government site.  Google 101 didn't necessarily change my opinion about Google, but instead just expanded my thinking about it and the type of research I can use it for.  This in class exercise was very helpful!

Research Project Questions

From the research I've done so far, I can answer about four of the eight questions that need to be addressed in my oral presentation.  I need help with finding organizations that educate people on this population.  I also need help in finding some of the challenges this group faces in mainstream society.

Alternative Viewpoints Paper

The LGBT population I want to learn more about, and I think I should learn more about, is the transgender population.  More specifically, I would like to learn about transgender people and health care because I have little, almost no, knowledge on it.  I’m curious id transgender people have health care at all, and if so, what kinds of health care are out there to support them.

 I have very little knowledge on the transgender community.  I have never met a transgender person in my life so I’ve never been able to observe how they’re treated and I’m very unfamiliar with the discrimination issues they face every day.  I would like to learn more about them because the things I've learned about them I don't believe are accurate.  From what I’ve heard about transgender people, I assume that they are confused about their sexuality and they are actually just gay.  This doesn’t seem accurate to me though because I believe sexual orientation and gender identity are two different things.  I've also have been told that transgender woman are not 'real' woman and transgender men are not 'real' men, they just associate with their unassigned sex.  I have never heard anything about transgender people and health care, so I don’t really have any assumptions about the type of health care they receive.

 I'm not quite sure where I got this information and these ideas about transgender people from.  If I had to guess, I would say it had to have been in middle school and high school from my peers, when I first learned there was a thing as a transgender person. 

First Draft of Annotated Bibliography

Lindsay Valenzuela

Whitney Olson

IM 204

Annotated Bibliography

Waddington, I., & Smith, A. (2009). The other side of sports medicine: sports medicine and the development of performance-enhancing drugs. In An introduction to drugs in sports: addicted to winning?. (pp. 89-101). New York, New York United States: Routledge.

In this chapter of Waddington and Smith’s book, they say that sports medicine has been one of the major contexts within which performance enhancing drugs have been developed and used.  They give three case studies, the use of drugs in some of the former communist countries of Eastern Europe, the early development and use of anabolic steroids in the United States, and blood doping.  These case studies help to illustrate how performance enhancing drugs evolved from sports medicine.  This chapter gives good information on the evolution on performance enhancing drugs, but doesn’t do a good job of explaining why athletes began the use of performance enhancing drugs (steroids).

Use of performance enhancing drugs in sport. (n.d.). Retrieved March 10th, 2012 from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_performance-enhancing_drugs_in_sport

This Wikipedia article describes that the use of performance enhancing drugs in steroids if refered to as doping.  There is a brief history given that includes the man who fathered the father of anabolic steroids in the United States, Jon Ziegler.  Zeigler was a physician for the U.S. weightlifting team who learned that the reason for the Russian’s success in the sport was due to their use of performance-enhancing drugs.  This article is interesting and good for a brief history on how performance enhancing drugs were brought to the United States, but doesn’t go into much detail.

C Geier. (2006, December 11). Steroid use in sports extends far out of bounds. [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://sportandsteroids.blogspot.com/

In this brief blog Geier discusses that anabolic steroid abuse in sports is a major problem. He also talks about the decision that professional athletes make to use steroids and how it affects not only the athletes but everyone whether or not that person pays attention to sports. Geier also wrote about an incident with an athlete who was guilty of using steroids. This article is very short and is also very old but it does have credible information.

Rodriguez, A. (2010, August 4). Alex Rodriguez. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/alex_rodriguez/index.html?scp=9&sq=steroid%20abuse%20and%20athletes&st=cse

In this newspaper article the author talks about Alex Rodriguez career as a baseball player. He then talks about when Rodriguez started abusing steroids and how he had obtained the steroids. In the article Rodriguez says that he would inject himself with the drug twice a month for six months a year. Rodriguez became a spokesman for a group dedicated to educate people about the dangers of steroids. This article is fairly new still and has credible information. It has personal quotes that Rodriguez said himself.