Pornography and youth leaving the church

Stewart and I have decided to team up to tackle the topic of youth leaving the church, and we decided to focus our efforts on how pornography in all of its different applications may be contributing to this trend. I personally feel that there are a lot of youth in the church that struggle with this, both male and female, and that because of these problems many of them lose the spirit and start down a path of unbelief. Unfortunately, they don't realize that if they could rid themselves of the addiction, then they would be able to feel once more of the spirit and they would not feel culpable and shameful at church events and the like. I am very interested to read about studies that have already been done because I know that especially here at BYU this topic has been well researched. I am also very interested to see what the general US population thinks about the pornography problem. I am kinda expecting them to think that it's not a problem, and that it's just "something that boys do." This is great because, it will mean that with this paper we will have a legitimate opportunity to address these problems and prove that this problem exists and that it needs to be eradicated.

In conclusion, the main questions I will personally be researching are:
1. What is the view of leaders of other churches as well as the mainstream US population on the pornography problem?
2. Is there a strong correlation between pornography usage and a loss of faith?

Qi Gong

I have decided to do option 3. I am not sure what the "question" will be but I hope to find it along the way. The question I will start with is "Can Qi Gong provide an effective way to balance our stressful lives?" I will probably need to divide the question into 2 parts, one addressing the art of Qi Gong and the other is the need for finding or creating balance in our lives. I will start reading and learning more about Qi Gong and the research that has been done on it's abilities to help create balance in life. Qi Gong found me in Peru and since it has given me much. I am excited to come to a better understanding of the art of Qi Gong, hoping that with that understanding I will be able to find the science and the words to share it with others!

Post Niners

I chose option two for my issues paper. My current research questions is simply put, "what influences youth to leave religion?" It seems as if I should know the answer to this because I am considered a "youth". When I thought about this a lot more though, it's kind of hard to pin point exact things. We all understand that drugs, alcohol, and sex are huge reasons why kids don't like the standards that church rules bestow upon them, but are those the exact reason that they leave the church? Welp, I'm not sure. To research and familiarize myself with the topic, I plan to speak to others just to get an opinion first. I want a wide range of ideas so that my research can start off very broad. I then plan to narrow my search to something specific that immensely influences youth to change their beliefs. Once I figure this out, I will gather ideas from other youth again to begin forming a solution. This may be the hardest part, but I believe that it won't be as hard after speaking to those directly dealing with this problem. It may be interesting to also talk to church leaders or adults in the church just to get a gist of what they see and what they feel about their own children regarding change and falling away in the church. Another good way about research will involve the investigation of other faiths and how they deal with youth in the church. 

Número Nueve

Do to the unappeal I found in option number 1 and what I think would be very difficult for option number 2, I chose to write about option number three. My current research question is, “How does geography play a part in central America’s development?” I chose to write about this primarily because I am interested in Latin American culture. It was difficult, trying to think of a topic that would work with globalization. That’s when I came up with my question, it dealt with both my interest and relates to globalization…at least I believe it does.

To familiarize myself with my topic I plan to just do a ton of research. I want to learn about the history of Latin America, the different climates, the first people to settle their, how exportation and that works today. I may begin by looking at the library’s website just because that looked pretty helpful. I’m hopeful there will be stuff about my topic but that’s pretty much my plan. After the library’s website just continue by looking at Google and any other resources I can find.

SCS - Scared Cat Syndrome

         Decisions are like cookies to me, I can't make them, but when someone else does.... they are delicious. Okay, maybe that wasn't the best analogy. Point is I can't make decisions; they terrify me. What if I make the wrong one? What if I make one and then I look back and see the other one and it is way more fun?
         That's how I feel about this research paper. I don't know what to write about, but if someone just told me I'm sure it would be great. However, I took a whack at it.
        I have decided on topic #2. So, after looking at the charts we made, two of my biggest interests are the way people think/current trends (psychology and physical) and children. Kind of weird now that I just wrote it out. But here is how I see it... I could either talk about how the influence of current "trends" or what people classify as cool influences the attendance of youth at church, or I could either talk about how parents raise their children "now" influences the attendance of youth at church.
         I feel like there are lots of ways I could go about familiarizing myself with the topic. Interviews especially, I think would be a great way to go about this. I'm not so sure how BYU students would do for this, but I think I could find quite a few other people I could talk to. I also have some personal stories that I could draw on.... definitely just a starting point, but we shall see!

        

Blog Post 9

I picked option 3 because there are many topics that can be related to globalization. I haven't completely picked a topic to use, but I wish to talk about the topics of religion and education systems and somehow relate those to globalization. The steps I'm going to take is to first find an issue relating to either of those topics so I can create a question to answer for the issue paper. After I find a question to answer, I plan to look through a variety of credible resources to get more information about the subject I'm researching. Finally, I plan to analyze the information to support the issue I will create in the future. This is what I plan to do with the issues paper.

I chose option number three for my issues paper because it is very non-restrictive.  It's kind of the wild card of the bunch.  I'm sure almost anything can be tweaked to fit into the category of globalization.  So because my only true passion in life is art history, I thought that doing a paper within that subject would make this process less painful. I am having trouble coming up with a question that is specific enough, but I have some general ideas.  A topic that I think would be interesting to cover would be differences and similarities in art, so my research question could be "Has art become more uniform through increased globalization?".  To make it more specific, I could just focus on a certain country, like France, but that would be difficult because I would have to compare works from may different countries to emphasize the idea of globalization, so the essay would end up being about many places and not just France anyway.  I'm not sure quite sure if my question is specific, enough, but if so, I think I could "enter the discourse" fairly quickly because it is my major. I already am familiar with the general evolution of art, so the task for me would be to look back and see if and how the art has become less diverse and look to other people's opinions on the subject as well. I think that I could find some opinions on the general trends of art just by Google and the HBLL website to get my research started.

Blog Post Whichever.

So, as most of you know, I chose option 3 to write my issues paper. I've recently heard about a comedian named Dieudonne M'bala M'bala who has caused a big uprising of anti-Semitism in France. It has caused a ton of political and social issues in France and is spreading worldwide. It is being tied to the long standing Palestinian/Israeli conflict. So basically, the question i want to address and research in my paper is: Can globalization spread Anti-Semitist movements, such as the one in France, across the world? To familiarize myself with this, i definitely will have to do a ton of research. Watching news clips and reading articles of the progression of this movement will help me how it started, and how it got to where it is today. It would also be interesting to research who these anti-Semitist acts are primarily coming from, how prevalent are they, and if there has been an ongoing issue previously.

Tissues Paper...HA.

I’m not sure what my research question will be yet. I would like to go with option three, unless I can’t come up with a good research question, then I’d probably just fall back on option two. I would like to do something about soccer. Very specific, yes, I know. But if I have to do all this research and writing, it better be on something that I care about. It’s hard for me to come up with any “issues” I guess though. Before today I thought I was just caught up on the word “issue” and I actually had some adequate ideas, but now I’m not so sure… I also wanted to investigate the affects of the American soccer game, and how it has changed and grown. Maybe something like, “Has soccer increased in popularity in the United States over the last twenty years? Why?” This question is nearly identical to one of the example research questions found in learning suite so I would have to assume that it is acceptable. I guess I’ll have to just go with something like that for now.  It’s not very specific and doesn’t really seem like an “issue” in which there might be multiple sides to the argument. Maybe I can be more specific and look into the influence of Major League Soccer on the popularity of soccer in the U.S. Or maybe I will do my paper on something completely different. Only time will tell. Or me, it’s up to me so I’ll probably be doing the telling.

The topic I chose for my Issues paper is about African languages. I know it's pretty random but it's something I'm interested in. I'm still having a hard time figuring out how to make it into a research question like we're supposed to do for this assignment, but I have a few ideas. My main issue is that African languages are disappearing and I don't like it. This fits in with globalization because globalization is the reason they are disappearing. The African cultures are mixing together, they're mixing with whites, Indians and worldwide cultures and since these languages are very unique to Africa they are starting to become useless and are dissolving. For example, when I was in South Africa I became pretty good at Zulu, one of the clicking languages. I remember one time in a sacrament meeting where I heard an older man speaking Zulu then a younger man speaking Zulu. It was clear that the language was dissolving. The older man spoke solid, real Zulu and the younger man spoke a very watered-down version of Zulu. This is consistent with many other countries in Africa. My research question would probably be along the lines of "how can we preserve these languages." It would be persuasive because I would try to come up with a plan that we can do to preserve the languages. I'm already pretty familiar with the issue but I have a lot of South African friends that I can refer to for more information. I'm sure there are articles as well that can help me be more familiar with the topic.

Blog post 9

So I am still not 100% set on a topic yet, but I was thinking of doing option three.  I was thinking that my topic question could be something like about how the drug trade from south america to mexico affects those countries in central america in terms of violence, economy, etc.  I also might try to suggest some ways to stop it if it is damaging those countries.  Or I might find in my research that the drug trade benefits central america and it is better if it stays (probably not though).   Basically, the main thing I can do to come up with a discourse and try to familiarize myself with this topic quickly is to just do research on it.  I'm just going to research as much as possible and find out all the cool topics and most interesting facts and stuff and try to formulate a game plan from the things I find.  Really, I think that is my best option to try to familiarize myself with this topic quickly enough to come up with a plausible research plan.  Hopefully I will be able to come up with something soon though.

Issues paper idea

For my issues paper I chose to do option three. It took me a while to try and figure out a topic or question that I wanted to focus on, but then I remembered an article I had recently read. It was about the one game that the NFL plays in England. It talk on how it was getting more popular there and how the people liked it. Well then I started think how the Canadians have a type of football that is similar to ours and how Germany also has football leagues. So I thought up of an idea to bring all of that together. I thought how could American football become more popular with the world. Well the main football group (the NFL) should globalize. It should expand and include conferences from other parts of the world. Like Europe, the Pacific Islands, and maybe even Asia. So then I came up with a question. “Would allowing other countries to compete in the NFL increase the economy of the countries involved and increase the popularity of football?” now some places where I would look is at the cities that have the newest teams. See if having a football team has increased their economy and the number of jobs there. Also to see if that is related to how good the team does. Basically find if having a football team is beneficial to a city or not. Then I would take that info and decide if any countries who do get involved and make a team will be better off because of it. I will look at sales for football merchandise from the NFL and decide if the expansion would increase them. Basically I will want to make this expansion look the most attractive to the NFL's head commissioner Roger Goodell.  

Post #9 - Arcology, the self-contained city in a skyscraper

The concept of arcology was first introduced to me in Simcity 2000 back in 1994. The basics of arcology are to build an entire mini-city within a single large super-structure that is self-contained and largely self-sufficient as far as utilities such as power and water supply are concerned. At the time the idea seemed farfetched, but as technologies advance, such as hydroponics gardening, translucent solar panels, more advanced environmental control systems, etc... Another bigger idea behind it that drives the sustainability of such a thing though is also recycling, which is made even easier now with the advent of 3D-printing, not to mention the vast improvements in paper product recycling. This means that once an arcology is built, it no longer has any negative impact on the rest of the world around it, because it is all about renewability instead of increased consumption.

The idea is becoming more and more feasible every day. Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates is already experimenting with arcology skyscrapers, and according to Wikipedia, "Arcosanti is an experimental town under construction in central Arizona. Designed by Paolo Soleri, its primary purpose is to demonstrate principles of arcology." Those principles and technologies are what are being developed by the Russians who declared plans to build a base on Luna (a.k.a. the Moon) two years ago as well as private companies like SpaceX, who are dreaming even further out with possibilities of Mars colonies within this century. Other examples of space-faring arcologies are seen everywhere in sci-fi already from some of the starships in Star Trek to the citadel space station in Mass Effect, Pixar's Wall-E, and even Power Rangers: Lost Galaxy.

Currently the biggest questions remain: How cost efficient is such technology right now, to the point where there would be an economic return on investment? Is the technology itself ready for full arcological experiments?

For more info, here's an interesting interview with the man who coined the term "arcology":
http://www.nbm.org/about-us/publications/blueprints/lessons-in-arcology.html

So many to choose from...

I had the marvelous luck to find someone who had a mutual interest with me. So after a quick discussion we decided we would research green living. Particularly self sustaining green living such as hydroponics, solar panels and other various technologies. So from my understanding our Issues paper will cover the question "How does (or would) green technologies help or harm a high density community?" Luckily both I and him are familiar with some techniques or technologies that are associated with this research question. I work as a research assistant with a group who's research touches this subject, I hope that I may be able to use this to our advantage to gain extra information that we may not be able to find in any scholarly article.

Blog Post #9

Blog Post #9 Issues Paper

have chosen to write my paper with Alexis Williams. We chose to write about option #2 which is researching why young people leave the church. We are going to do lots of research for reasons why this happens. I don’t know if this is even an option but we could interview some teenagers and young adults and see if they give any good insight from their perspective. Someone asked on the google doc if we are able to use conference talks, I think that would be a wonderful resource as to why people end up leaving. Our research question is why do young people leave the church?  People leave the church for many reasons but for some it may be because they are either offended or feel restricted by rules. They don’t want to be forced or pressured into behaving a certain way. Alexis and I plan to familiarize ourselves with the information quickly by reading talks and addresses to the church. Luckily because we are LDS and we are also young adult, we will be able to relate to the experience and we have see this first hand in our lives. That will help a lot in formulating this paper. We are already connected and familiar with the topic and subject matter. I just hope we can find enough research to support our reasoning. Because this is such a common issue and each individual is a different situation, there isn't one particular reason why they leave. It is hard to pin point the why’s because  there are so many. 

Blog Post 9

I chose to use the second option on my issue paper.  My current research question, which I plan to use to help find information to formulate arguments, is simply, “Why are youth becoming less affiliated with religious organizations?”  This question is the means by which, at least at first, I plan to “enter the discourse community.”  I’m sure I will come up with more specific questions along the way, but this is where I will start.  Growing up in Southern California, I always lived around and went to school with hundreds of kids from a fair share of different religions.  I saw many come in an out of religious activity as well, especially in the LDS Church.  I feel like it is something I have seen first hand enough that I can easily formulate strong arguments once I just find some concrete fact details to work with.  I have 19 years of familiarity from working inside on the matter.  My own strong religious activity as the foundation of my life also gives me a very strong passion for this topic, so I should be able to easily present my paper with a lot of voice.  However, one tricky part will be that my audience doesn’t want to hear opinions.  I assume much of what I can discuss in my paper will sort of be theories based on what I’ve seen, which linger a little too close to opinion.  I need to make sure that I find enough statistics and facts to support my theories that they are not considered opinions and overlooked, but that they can turn into analysis on the trends my audience accepts and wants me to address.