Assignment 9: Due Monday, December 2nd at 9am Eastern Time.
You may e-mail me your answers:
you may have your answers in the text of your email, as long as the format
is correct--note that question 11 must be double-spaced; send the email
to yourself first to see if it comes out right before sending it to me;
or you can email me an attachment in Word or Word Perfect or a format easily
converted by Word. If you intend to send an attachment but forget actually
to do this (a common occurrence), that is no excuse, so you might want
to copy the email to yourself when you send it to me, so you can know if
it was sent properly. I will send an email confirmation upon receipt of
your answer, so if you don't get one, check back with me. Alternatively,
you can slip a hard copy underneath my door (MHA 113) or hand it to me
in person.
Answer the following questions and give proper bibliographic citations for the sources of your information using MLA format, which you can find online.We will do the first several questions in class. Whatever we don't get to in class, you will do as your assignment. For this assignment, you are not permitted to work together in any way (research can be a lonely task!).
1. Get a copy of Paul Butler-Smith et.al., "Gender differences in mate search effort: an exploratory economic analysis of personal advertisements," Applied Economics 30:1277-1285 (1998) (you needn't print it out, you need only get to the point where you could print it out with a click of the mouse).
2. John Stuart Mill's father wrote an entry in the 1823 Encyclopedia Britannica on prisons. You need this for a research paper. What is the exact title of the entry, and how will you get a copy?
3. Suppose you use a paper shredder to shred important documents that establish that you are guilty of a crime, and you leave the shredded documents in a garbage bag, placed in your garbage can, which you leave on the curb. The police, without a search warrant, grab the bag from the can before the garbage truck comes by, piece together the shreds, and use this evidence to arrest you. Have they violated your 4th Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures? Find at least one court case that addresses this issue and properly cite it.
4. You are doing a thesis on a hot topic in sociobiology, namely, whether homosexuality is genetically determined or not. Provide citations for 5 quality sources (preferably academic press books or peer-reviewed journal articles) that address this question.
5. You are doing a thesis on John Stuart Mill's views specifically on capital punishment. There are dozens of books by scholars about Mill's political thought that mention Mill's views on capital punishment, and you've already got these, so this question isn't concerned with these books. But you need to find out if anyone has ever written an article that is likely to discuss this topic in detail, if anyone has written a dissertation focused on Mill's views on capital punishment (or just punishment), and you need to find everything Mill ever wrote directly on capital punishment. Provide complete bibliographic information.
6. About five years ago in Southern California, two Korean men stomped the wife of one of the men to exorcise evil spirits from her, crushing and displacing her internal organs, and she died. What happened to these gentlemen?
7. What was the voter turnout for the nation and for the state of Florida in the Nov. 2002 election that just transpired? (Stipulate whether your figure is the % of eligible voters who voted or the % of registered voters who voted--incredibly, not everyone who is eligible registers to vote; and cite your source)
8. You have to write a seminar paper that addresses the question of whether capital punishment is an effective deterrent to crime. Provide citations for the 2 most authoritative sources you can find that argue that it is, and the 2 most authoritative sources you can find that argue that it is not.
9. Harold Tucker Webster was a cartoonist who wrote a series of cartoons featuring a character called Casper Milquetoast. You need to use the resources of the library system to get each and every one of these cartoons (or as many as is possible) and study them for your thesis. Where are they and exactly how do you get them?
10. How many people live in Florida according to the 1990 Census, with breakdown by gender and race? According to the 2000 census? Same questions, but now limit yourself to the 33458 zip code.
11. This last question isn't just a research question, it's also a writing and thinking question. Find out what the Chinese Room Argument is (it is a famous argument in philosophy concerning artificial intelligence), give the citation for the source in which the argument first appeared, explain how you could secure a copy of this source if you wanted to; and finally, clearly explain the argument in your own way IN NO MORE THAN 150 WORDS, double-spaced, in your best and perfect prose--show off what you learned this semester about writing with clarity and grace and how not to plagiarize. To avoid the risk of plagiarism, read enough explanations so that you understand the argument well enough to explain it to your roommates, and note the sources you read, then some time later, without consulting any of these sources, or any notes, explain the argument in your own words, giving due credit to the sources you used to learn the argument. (I'm tempted to ask what you think of the argument, but as this isn't a philosophy class, I won't; but you're welcome to tell me anyway, just for fun.)