Write Stripes

I decided that instead of an article, I'd talk about a website that is VERY much pro-net neutrality. It's www.itsournet.com. I feel that it really slants the facts, for example:
"If you are a consumer – a Mom looking for healthcare information to protect your family; a home-school parent using the Internet as part of your education plan; an email user staying in touch with your family and friends – you will have a degraded slower Internet experience with certain Web sites. Some Web sites will even be unavailable unless additional fees are paid."

While all this is true, it definitely doesn't disclose all the facts. And pointed questions like: "Do you want the phone and cable companies to block online movies or cheaper phone service over the Internet? Do you want the phone and cable companies to decide which blogs or political sites you can access? Do you want phone and cable companies to give preferential Internet access to companies who pay more for “premium” delivery? Do you want phone and cable companies to keep new innovations off the Internet?" reinforce their objective.

I just wanted to show an obviously bias set of opinions--and since this issue is mainly about the Internet, I feel that websites are going to play a HUGE part in getting information to voters and to the interested public (since they'll be ON the internet...)

I read an article that talked about a TV show in PBS about net neutrality: "The Net At Risk" led by Ben Moyers. It claims that "if big business gets its way, changes in who controls the Internet could have serious consequences for America's ability to compete in the global marketplace, on the unfettered exchange of ideas online, and on broadband services that could improve quality of life for millions." The show doesn't want what happened to TV and radio to happen to the Internet--which is a few companies dictate what the public sees and hears. This show is a great way to get the word out about this issue--however, I'm not sure that it showed both sides of the issue. It appears very bias against net neutrality, but the article also mentioned that there was a speaker from SaveTheInternet.com which perhaps balanced the opposing views.

link

I found a very anti-net neutrality editorial about Google's buy-out of YouTube. It claims that "The Internet's beauty has a lot to do with its freedom, and the ability for anyone with a great idea or an innovative approach to come to the forefront. But if large companies have their way[meaning if net neutrality legislation is passed], it will soon be over. And we will have lost a lot more than a free YouTube." I feel that this is the wrong way to look at net neutrality. The government should have a hand in regulating---but where things get foggy for me is how much control should they have? I feel that charging for faster bandwidth is just an economic theory at work--but I also dont' want to see great sites like YouTube to disappear or become highly regulated like Napster. So, it's a tough balance.

link

I found this really great article about how institutions of higher learning are putting their opinions in about net neutrality. They support it because they are worried that "collaborative online research and long distance education will suffer" if phone companies favor commerical websites that can pay the money for faster connections. The associations have sent letters to Senator Ted Stevens from Alaska and Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii because both Congressman have moved to vote on the HR 5252 Bill (the telecommunications bill) in the Senate soon.

article can be found here

An article with the title “National Poll Reveals American Consumers Overwhelmingly Support Net Neutrality; Divisive Content Control Issue Prompts Consumer Outcry” was published in the 19 October 2006 M2 Presswire (available through the Factiva database from the library’s newspaper page). The poll was sponsored by the Electronic Retailing Association, so it has some underlying motivation to make it seem that net-neutrality is more popular since they stand to lose big if they must pay for heavily multi-media sites.

I will present the results from the poll below:

* 86% of the respondents agree with the statement: “I believe cable and television companies are more concerned about increasing their profits than innovation.”

* 72% of the respondents agree with the statement: “I believe net neutrality helps promote the vision of the internet as a place where the little guy can compete on a level playing field with the big guys in terms of getting their ideas, products and services out into the marketplace.”

* 45% indicated pro-net neutrality position comes closest to their opinion

* 41% say the anti-net neutrality argument is more in line with their thinking

The results above had a marking of error of +/- 3.1%, so the sensational headline that American’s “overwhelmingly” support net-neutrality is not true since the difference between those that support net-neutrality and those opposed to it is not larger than the margin of error (the third and forth results above).

My next steps to be completed are the website and editing the flyers. The website is the most important need, and will be mostly completed by the middle of next week. Editing the flyers and the website will then be the focus next weekend before our presentation the following week. Both Candice and I will be distributing the brochure and a survey next week in order to test our voter’s guide on a sample of college students. We will then analyze the responses, adding their information to a statistics page Candice is creating for the website. Then, with there responses, we will edit the guide materials before our presentation.

The status of our collaborative project is a little different from our first goals, but we are still on the right track. Below are the shared responsibilities that we have completed, and also, my tasks that have been finished:

Shared Responsibilities
· Research
· Evaluate Initial Survey & Recognize Gaps in Information

Meredith’s Responsibilities
· Find Unbiased Sources
· Create Initial Survey
· Make Graphs and Charts of Statistics

Our due date is coming up, so we must be sure to stay on track with the final tasks over the course of the next couple of weeks.

Ali and Michaela- Immigration Issues

We are getting close to finishing our webpage. With the new format using Publisher, it is starting to look very professional and complete. We need to decide what information is most important to our readers, because so much is available that it is overwhelming. We are going to include links to the sites that have a vast amount of info. Our flyer is almost complete as well. We just need to add a little bit more info and possibly the image we are working on in Photoshop. The card that we will hand out is so simple that it will only take a short time to make.

The next steps that we will take will be finding the rest of the info we need and adding it to the webpage and flyer. Then we will make the info card. We need to complete the image formulation as well. The critical needs right now are to finish the things we are currently working on.

We are on track with our proposal for being done on time. We have completed our initial researching gathering, almost finished creating the rough drafts of two of our three different media, and we have completed the rough draft and the feedback testing for one of the three media. Our timeline for the next few days needs to focus on wrapping up the final version of the rough draft for our website and table tents, finding pictures to photoshop to add vareity and visual intrest to the website, and to format the actual text into reader-friendly layouts on the webpage. We also need to field test our website and the table tents, keeping in mind we probably need at least a day to revise them according to our feedback. Today in class our goals are to finish up the table tent, and make the revisions from the feedback testing to make the final version of our flyer. After that, the flyer will be completely finished and ready for distribution.

At this point, we are 85-90% done with our project. We need to focus on doing some field testing for our table tents and website ASAP, so that we can start to edit and produce the final copies. Ideally, we will be done with all the field testing by next class period so we can work on editing and developing a plan for distribution. After that, the last step will be to distribute the materials and present the final project to the class.

Already completed steps:
-research
- initial survey
- distribution of inital survey
-analysis of inital survey
-flyers

What my next steps are:
-finish brochure
-work on my pages for the website
- distribute final voting guide
- ask for permission to use images
-work on presentation

Currently, we have completed the initial surveys, and we have finished our three flyers. We are working on completing the website and coming up with a field test to see how people’s views have changed after viewing our website and others. Today we will try to add an FAQ section to our website, post what the two party’s stances are on our issue, and developing a field test. We need to finish the website before we post the Facebook flyer.
Sam, Courtney, Kandace

Update:
1. T-shirt. We have completed the design, however we lack the resources to pay for the costs.
2. Poster: Just have to print it out on the plotter.
3. Newspaper advertisement: Need to give the ad to The Tiger to publish in an upcoming (next week) edition
4. Brochure: Gathering information
5. Door hangers: Gathering information and then making it as concise as possible.
6. Website: Design is complete. Need to fill in content and links. This includes our revised proposal to include a "measure" of student's knowledge of the subject.

Next Steps:
1. Create survey to be placed on website.
2. Complete research for brochure/door hanger and assemble.
3. Finish content on website.
4. Contact The Tiger.
5. Print poster at plotter and post on campus.


~Russell, Andrew, and Katie

This article, "AT&T Adds Net Neutrality Promise To BellSouth Deal", seen in Access Intelligence, LLC., discusses a small victory had by net neutrality supporters. AT&T added a promise of adherence to the FCC's open Internet principles as part of the conditions package aimed at getting approval for its takeover of BellSouth and their Cingular Wireless joint venture. This indicates that net neutrality is definitely becoming a common term in contracts, and just in general. The exact clause that was put into the contract was:
"consumers are entitled to" access to the Internet content of their choice; to run applications and services of their choice; to connect their choice of legal devices that don't harm the network; and to select from competition among network, application, service and content providers. The commission didn't adopt these rules but it pledged to incorporate the principles into its ongoing policymaking activities."
Net neutrality is gaining strength.


article can be found here: http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/document?_m=dac72bd3ca7cd1b1bca5adebc19bf749&_docnum=1&wchp=dGLbVzb-zSkVb&_md5=1a15579eee3d1533471197891505fea0

I found a very good article through LexisNexus (published Mondaq Ltd.) from August 25. This article had a lot of general information about net neutrality: a definition ("In its simplest terms, "net neutrality" means an Internet structure that does not favor one application over another. The Internet serves as a platform for competition among applications - for the best application to win, the platform itself must be neutral.") and it explained what bills included net neutrality in them (, and who exactly was voting against/for them.

The most interesting part of this article I found was this: "The telecom and cable companies, who have invested in the Internet's infrastructure, argue that they must be allowed to create a tiered pricing system, creating, in essence, a fast "toll lane" for those who will pay to deliver their content more quickly. This, they assert, will fund new investment in cable and DSL." I thought that this was a very different way of looking at the net neutrality issue in that sometimes you can't really tell which side some of these companies are on.
This information will most likely show up on the website.

Ali and Michaela- Immigration:

When we peer edited the Stem Cell group's work, we learned a lot about creating an effective website. We had originally been building it from scratch, which is somewhat difficult! They opened our eyes to the technology that is available to us! Now we are using Microsoft Publisher and using a template to build a really cool website. We will have different pages that link to different kinds of information, images, and other websites.

The main thing our group saw that we need to change about our project is our website design. The other group's designs did not have large paragraphs of information like ours did and seemed to be easier for a college student to read. We will try to include and FAQ section in our website, and a section on what the Republicans and Democrats want to change about our energy policy, and how voting for one of them would change things. Also, we need to include a section on how college students can conserve energy and save money on our website.

sam, kandace, courtney

The main thing our group saw that we need to change about our project is our website design. The other group's designs did not have large paragraphs of information like ours did and seemed to be easier for a college student to read. We will try to include and FAQ section in our website, and a section on what the Republicans and Democrats want to change about our energy policy, and how voting for one of them would change things. Also, we need to include a section on how college students can conserve energy and save money on our website.

sam, kandace, courtney

What we learned by looking at other group's projects that will help us with our project:

We learned that presenting opposing sides is very important--we should present to the students their options of how they can change the current situation. Also, concisely presenting information is more effective than presenting excessive info that probably wouldn't be read. Including useful information as well as eye-catching graphics will encourage people to visit the website to learn more.
Surveys of what students know before and after visiting our website are needed to measure how effective our materials have been.

~Andrew, Russell, and Katie

Healthcare Reform: Candice and Meredith
We learned from looking at other groups that we need to use stronger images on our flyers. Our flyers are conveying good information, but are not good at grabbing the audiences attention. We need to utilize pathos and get people emotionally involved in our issue. Also, we need to find more information on what each party wants to do to change the healthcare system. We realized that we need to try to spice up our information because even though it is very important it is boring for college students. To do this, we will try to simplify and compact the information. In this way, the information isn't such a hastle to read.

Our group (the stem cell group) reviewed the immigration Group. The main thing we liked about their project was their attention getters. For one of their media, they are handing out a small card to students with an attention getting picture and a website, and not much more information. We think that is a good idea- it will make students really curious and more likely to visit the website. We also really thought some of their sources were really informative, as well. They had a really great graph from the census bureau that showed the percentages of Americans in 2010 and then again in 2050. Our group should look for some pictures or graphs from very trustworthy sources to grab attention and quickly present some facts on our website's main page.

San Francisco has added two new hydrogen fueled vehicles to its conglomeration of cars. These cars are being added to one of the biggest fleets of alternative fuel vehicles in the US. This addition will make the city the second in America to begin using hydrogen powered vehicles. The number of hydrogen fueled vehicles used in San Francisco is now thirty-eight. This is just a small step to helping the nation become more environmentally friendly.

http://www.sfenvironment.com/articles_pr/2003/article/092603.htm

At the First International Biorefinery Workshop in Washington, D.C., a new alternative fuel was introduced that could go straight into a diesel engine and run a car. This fuel is call Sunfuel and is produced from waste plant matter. This new fuel was made by Choren Industries at the Freiburg pilot plant in Hamburg, Germany. The workshop was held to discuss the replacement of petroleum fossil fuels in the US and Europe. They want to replace these fuels that harm the environment with renewable fuels made from plant matter, municipal solid waste, and other biomass sources.

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20051001/bob10.asp

I read an article called "The third national reports on healthcare quality and disparities in the United States: national data for targeting improvements," which discusses the 2005 report of the US. The National Healthcare Quality Report focuses on how we are doing with patient safety, healthcare effectiveness, timeliness, and patient centeredness. The National Healthcare Disparities Report focuses on the same four components, along with disparities in access to healthcare. The reports showed for 2005 the quality of healthcare has improved, but very little. The disparties that minorities face with the curren healthcare system have decreased for all minorities except for Hispanics. Even though the quality of healthcare in the US increased by 2.8%, many people are still not receiving adequate healthcare. The report states that "over a third of smokers hospitalized with a heart attack report that their doctor did not advise them to quit smoking." Minorites are not facing as many disparties with healthcare, for example the rate of black women with late stage breast cancer decreased more than white women. The purpose of this report is help intitiate change in the healthcare system starting with nurses because they work in many different settings and can help make a difference. http://sys.lib.clemson.edu:2088/servlet/HWRC/hits?docNum=A151845316&year2=&year1=&aci=flag&tcit=1_1_0_1_0&locID=clemson_itweb&rlt=2&origSearch=false&t=RK&s=1&r=d&items=0&secondary=false&o=&n=10&day2=&day1=&l=d&month2=&month1=&c=2&bucket=per&SU=health+care+reform

“Election Results Could Alter Direction of Telecom Legislation Next Year” published in the 16 October 2006 Telecommunications Review (available through the Factiva database) indicates that an overwhelming shift on net-neutrality policy is not likely as the likely democrats to take over the key committees in both the House and Senate are fairly moderate in their views. Also, the democrats would not be pushing for some legislation that the Republicans are currently pushing for which would open the door for some net-neutrality legislation – right now it doesn’t look as though there will be any broad-based bills for the legislation to be appended.

I read an article that discusses the health care cost in 2005 on the Center for Studying Health System Change. Heath insurance per person increased by 7.4 in 2005. Impatient hospital care, doctor visits, and other services spending increased greatly for 2005, while the amount spent on prescription drugs and out patient care did not increase as much. The reasons for the increases in spending in 2005 include, specialty referrals of doctors and obesity. Some estimate that 27% of real per capita growth between the years of 1987 and 2001 was spent on the number of increasing individuals. The article provides graphs and charts that demostrate the changes in health care costs.http://hschange.org/CONTENT/879/?topic=topic01

Steven Levy, a columnist for Newsweek, wrote an interesting article this past week concerning net neutrality that you can find here. He starts the article telling about a celebration called OneWebDay that the creater hopes will become something like a 'geeky parallel to Earth Day.' It celebrates the freedom of the internet as it is now as every bit that crosses the internet is treated the same. Levy goes on to talk about how the telcos and cable companies want to charge the large companies to provide their information at high speeds that Levy compares to an 'elite toll road alongside a free but crowded interstate.' I thought this was an interesting comparison since the other traffic on the internet would all be treated the same, but those large companies that can afford to pay a premium price can have their information provided at a higher speed if the telcos get their way. Yet I think it is important to remember that those large companies had to start somewhere, Google did not become Google overnight as it had to start small and grow into what it is today. If Google had to pay premium to provide its services to compete at startup then it very likely would not be where it is as the price would have hindered their growth, if not prevented it completely due to lack of funds. The innovation we have today, I think, is due to companies being able to put up services for the public without having to pay the providers more money to get their content to the public at a speed that can rival existing services. Levy goes on to tell how Ted Stevens who heads the commerce committee in the senate said the net neutrality legislation 'is unnecessary government regulation' and that it 'is an attempt to shift the high costs of innovations from large companies to everyday Americans who log onto the web.' I find this interesting since a lot of the innovations we have today had to start small, not all innovation comes from large companies. I think that the innovation could easily slow if small companies who could be very innovative cannot operate due to having to pay in order rival the larger company's speeds. Stevens goes on to say that a survey shows Americans don't care about net neutrality. But as Levy points out the survey did not explain what net neutrality was, how the internet currently worked, or what could happen if net neutrality is not protected. He also points out that Verizon, who could benefit from not having a neutral net, funded the survey. I think this article, while biased towards net neutrality, makes some good points and makes you think some more about how you feel about the topic.

In the article “Where is Congress on Health Care Reform?” the current state of health care in the United States is discussed. Currently, health care is a major issue, but it often seems that few steps are being taken by the federal government for real change. On the other hand, many states are now becoming more proactive with regards to health care reform. However, there is only so much that state governments can do within the boundaries set by the federal government. The basis of the article is that, though it is wonderful that the state governments are working hard to improve health care, little change will occur until the federal government takes a more active stance with health care reform. The article also included some very convincing facts on the necessity of health care reform in the United States. This helped to further the article’s persuasive influence.

http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061008/OPINION03/610080310/1110

Instead of advancements driven by stem cell research, and new possibilities for its application, which has been in the news for the last couple of months, I found an article about the political side of the stem cell research issue. This article mainly talks about the Missouri rave for a senate seat between Democrat Claire McCaskill, and Republican Jim Talent. Mainly, the article speaks about the stem cell debate issue, and how the candidates really are not speaking about it. The author believes that this is due to the small number of undecided moderate voters, who neither candidate wants to offend by making remarks about this issue which can be very divisive. Also, the article closes by comparing similar races in other (mostly more liberal) states, including California, and how in these states, democratic candidates have used this issue to their advantage, by dividing the republican party, and further tying the candidate to the current President on their stances and platforms.

“Tacit Silence on Stem Cell Research in Missouri Race.” The New York Times. October 15, 2006.