Urvashi Vaid

Before attending this event I really didn't have any expectations. I didn't look into it much or know what was going to be talked about. I just figured she may talk about an LGBT issue. I thought the presenter did a wonderful job of giving information. She incorporated personal stories along with facts to get her point across. I also felt this helped the audience understand and kept them very engaged. One thing I didn't like was how when she talked about people's opposition to gay marriage I felt she used extreme examples. Even though people use that i feel like the majority are more rational. Obviously, she was biased on the topic so it is understandable why she used this technique. I thought the point she made about because the movement has won same sex marriage doesn't mean it is over. Just because the LGBT community has received this right does not mean society views them equally. Even now the African- American population still struggles with this. I felt that Urvashi Vaid had authority on this topic for multiple reasons. She has written three books on LGBT topics, she is a lawyer, and has been apart of the LGBT movement for many many years. I don't know if I can specifically use this presentation in my alternative viewpoints paper but I did learn a lot of things and it did help me understand the topic a lot better.

Intellectual Property

My definition of intellectual property is the ownership of a person's own ideas. After searching the term on Google I came across a good expert definition on The United States Patent and Trademark Office's website. They defined intellectual property as imagination made real. It is ownership of dream, idea, an improvement, an emotion that we can touch, see, hear, or feel. It is an asset just like your home, your car, or your bank account. There are multiple examples of this in academic and everyday life. In everyday life a person may come up with a funny joke then a few days later their friend uses the same joke. A person may find themselves claiming the joke is theirs after their friend uses it. In academic life a person may create a hypothesis about something, they then can create an experiment to test it. This whole process is their academic property because they came up with the idea and tested it. When intellectual property is shared or manipulated I think that it becomes less personal. The person who originally came up with the idea can feel less ownership of it, especially when they are not given credit.

Google 101

I learned a lot of new things during Google 101. I will list all of the things I learned during the demonstration.
1. ~
2. related:
3. + or -
4. Using ends of websites like .gov or edu
5. The Google Art Project
6. Searching by a picture instead of words
7. Google translator

Learning all this changed my opinion because before I thought there wasn't a lot of ways to refine a search on Google. Now I know there are multiple ways to do this. It will help a lot when I using it for other projects because I do have some trouble with narrowing down results or finding what I want. I think I will use these tools for school work more than everyday life. In everyday life I usually just use Google to look up a quick stat, fact, or picture. When I am doing school work I can use the - or ~ to narrow results or expand them. I also can use .gov or .edu to help find specific things. Overall, I think Google 101 helped a lot and I look forward to using the new tricks.

Semester Research Assignment Questions

After reviewing the semester research assignment questions I found that I can answer most of the questions. Question 4, which asks, what are some of the challenges this group faces in mainstream society? I think I have bits of information here and there for this question but I could look more into it so I can learn some specific challenges. I also think I could work on question 6 a little bit. The question is, Whare are the challenges that people have in doing library research and original research on this human population? I don't think this question has to much research that needs to be done to answer it. I just need to take some time and evaluate it. Overall, for most of the questions I just need to sit down and organized my information and see where I am missing things.

Blog Evaluation

Before taking this class I didn't have much experience with blogs. I was first introduced to in when going to a presentation about obesiety oppression and the blogosphere. When I went to this I realized that there were a lot of people who are using blogs. That is all the experience I have had though.

I think blogs can be useful. They can be good when researching different opinions. Some blogs can be good for research and some can't be, it just depends.

For my topic I used a blog titled "The Homeless Guy". The author has posts from many years ago. The main purpose of the blog was to raise awareness for homelessness and get people to suppport  it. There was a lot of interesting posts just on general information and how you can help a homeless person.

The one I found most interesting was titled Why do people become homeless. The link is below.
http://thehomelessguy.blogspot.com/2011/01/why-do-people-become-homeless.html
The author talks about different ways people become homeless and he stresses the difference beteween "why" and "how". This post was good for general information and helping people understand and syphathize with a homeless person. I thought it was more of his own definition of why. Based on what I have learned I thought some facts were left out about how they become homeless. They could lose their house from natural disaster or war and he fails to mention that. Overall, I thought the post was informative but it lacked some information.

The Homeless Guy. (2012 March 12). [web log comment]. Retrieved from http://thehomelessguy.blogspot.com/

Research Reflection- LGBT Population

An LGBT population I think I should learn more about is the gay population. In society there is a stereotype that all gay men are really feminine. They are into fashion, they talk with a higher voice, and anything else that is not socially acceptable for men to do. I know that this is not true about all gay men but it is difficult to ignore the stereotype when that is how many people identify gay men. I find the topic difficult to understand overall. Last semester I took a class in communications and we worked on a group project with the topic of legalization of gay marriage. I am  strongly opposed to this because I was raised in a Christian home and have never really changed my thoughts, they have really became stronger as I have gotten older. Two members of my group were gay. I was weary at first, but it really turned out to be a great experience. I did not change my opinion but the whole thing really taught me a lot of things. So, I do not believe that being gay is a choice. I know this is a very harsh opinion but it is what I have grown up believing. Even though my group project taught me a lot of things I still stand by my opinion. I think the most difficult thing I will encounter while researching is to not let my opinion get in the way. I feel very strongly about this topic but the point of my research is to learn and inform others about the topic, not try to persuade them to think how I think. I will just have to be open to learning new things.

Using a Subject Specific Database

This is the search string I decided to start with when searching different databases for articles on my topic:

minnesota AND (homeless* OR refuge* OR abandon*) AND (adult* OR mature) AND (support OR help OR provide)

The subject specific database I decided to use was the Cambridge Social Science Database.

When I used my initial search string I did not find very relevant results in either database. For ASP I adjusted my search string to create more results. It only gave me four results and none of them were relevant to my topic. After playing around with my search string, I finally got more results when I used the following one: homeless AND minnesota AND (support OR provide OR help). With this search string I found eight results that were relevant to my topic and three had the full text option and the other five had the find it option. While searching the Cambridge Social Science Database I found many results. A lot of them were irrelevant to my topic. I changed my search string to minnesota AND homeless* AND adult* AND (help OR support OR provide). I still had a huge number of results but I was able to find a four articles that were relevant to my topic. Of these four none of them were in full text but they all provided the find it option.

Since working with these databases I do not think my research question has changed at all. It has taken some time to find information that I want but after change my search string a bit I do find articles that have some very valuable information. I think the hardest thing has been taking the time to modify my search string to find things I am looking for. I cannot use the same search string for each database. It takes some time to figure out the right keywords and synonyms to use. After I figure that out though I do find some really good information.