Dr. Wayne McMullen responds to earlier entry (Feb. 24, 2006):
For those whose appetite has been whetted by the documentary on fast food (posted earlier on this blog), Super Size Me, two books invite the reader to explore further the sometimes disturbing consequences of how and what we are eating. The first book, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal,by Eric Schlosser, deals specifically with fast food. The second, 'Food Politics,' by Marion Nestle (she is not affiliated with the multinational food conglomerate of the same name) has a wider focus. Part of Dr. Nestle's book is an investigation the individual and social/economic impact of the sometimes too-cozy relationship between the food industry and governmental agencies who are supposed to protect the public's health.
Ed. note: Schlosser available in Vairo Library at TX715.S2968 2001
Nestle available thru I WANT IT at TX360.U6N47 2002
A more recent Nestle book is available in Vairo Library:
Safe food : bacteria, biotechnology, and bioterrorism
RA601.N465 2003 2003
The LeMoyne College/Zogby poll of troops in Iraq was made public today at http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1075. Here are the opening lines from the website survey announcement:
Le Moyne College/Zogby Poll shows just one in five troops want to heed Bush call to stay “as long as they are needed”
While 58% say mission is clear, 42% say U.S. role is hazy
Plurality believes Iraqi insurgents are mostly homegrown
Almost 90% think war is retaliation for Saddam’s role in 9/11, most don’t blame Iraqi public for insurgent attacks
Majority of troops oppose use of harsh prisoner interrogation
Plurality of troops pleased with their armor and equipment
It is interesting reading, and likely will get at lot of press attention.
With more time on his hands, Lawrence Summers may want to add to his reading list, The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter by Katherine Ellison. Ellison reports on neuroscience research that suggests motherhood helps stimulate brain development. The multi-tasking and hormonal changes associated with motherhood develop skills in five areas: perception, efficiency, resilence, motivation and emotional intelligence. They may not be rocket science; but they are skills most fields, including science and higher education, require. (Vairo Library HQ759.E463 2005)
Take note of a new movie arrival at Vairo Library, the documentary film "Super Size Me". This film is best known for the filmmaker eating 30 days of nothing but McDonald's fast food. However, the movie is much more than this. As the filmmaker (Morgan Spurlock) makes his way around the country, he interviews different people (lawyers, doctors and chefs, etc) in order to uncover the very unappetizing truth behind what we are really putting in our bodies. (He also goes beyond the fast food industry to examine school lunch programs). The movie also delves into fast food marketing to children, and corporate responsibility. This may all seem pretty basic, fast food = fatty unhealthy food. Then why are we, as a nation, still eating it? The movie still provides a much needed wake up call for an obese, unhealthy nation.
As one person said to me, and as many reviewers have also said: she will not eat fast food. Ever again.
Reviews also recommend this for any school health class in America. It is that shocking and informative that it may stop children from starting bad habits.
Some scenes will be graphic, you have been warned!
(See also entry for 2/28/2006 for more on this topic.)
If you enjoyed the forensic descriptions in Bone Woman or are a fan of CSI, you might want to read Dead Men Do Tell Tales by William R. Maples and Michael Browning. Dr. Maples had dealt with the remains of Tsar Nicholas II, President Zachary Taylor, conquistador Pizarro, the Elephant Man, and the unknown victims without names. He explains how he uses science and experience to piece together the identities of both victims and criminals. It is fascinating, sometimes yucky, reading. (Vairo Library GN50.6.M36A3 2001)
Vairo Library just acquired a new book titled "Ethics at Work: creating virtue at an American corporation" by Daniel Terris. This is a timely work that discusses workplace ethics; the book is unique in that it presents a case study of Lockheed Martin.
The author "spent two years researching materials and interviewing Lockheed Martin ethics officers and ordinary employees". The author notes the unique "board game" Lockheed Martin has started to encourage individual ethics at the company (based on the comic strip Dilbert). However, while they focus on individual employees, there is not much emphasis on "the impact of the corporation's broader policies on local, national, and global communities".
This would be a good read for any business major needing a case study for a report or project.
Call #: HF5387.5.U6T47 2005
Prescription For a Healthy Nation: A New Approach to Improving Our Lives by Fixing Our Everyday World , by Tom Farley and Deborah Cohen, asks the question:
"In America we spend more than twice as much for health care as any other nation. So why are we among the sickest people in the industrialized world?"
The book argues that Americans have certain assumptions about the sources of disease and health; that we fix the disease from within us after the fact, but we really need to look to how we have set up our American society and the world around us, before we get sick. The authors feel that each person needs to take responsibility for their actions and decisions, but the book is mainly about public health policy changes that would make for a much better life for all of us:
"The authors make a case for legislating, regulating, and/or taxing such things as salty, high-fat, and sugary foods, guns, alcohol, and highway speed limits. In addition, they suggest improving the recreational value of neighborhood parks, redesigning walking- and biking-friendly communities, and integrating our neighborhoods. If we can create an environment that makes us sick, they contend, we can create an environment more conducive to good health."
(Booklist review)
If this all sounds like common sense - it mostly is. But to put theory into practice is another story, and the authors hope to motivate people to do so. This sounds like an insightful, interesting book if you are interested in public health policy, or if you're simply interested in ideas for living a better, healthier lifestyle.
Call #: RA445.F27 2005
Paul Pillar, Georgetown professor and former CIA officer, has a much talked about article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs. He decries the selective use of intelligence in the leadup to the Iraq war. He urges reforms going forward so that policy makers use the information to shape policy rather than the reverse. The article is available in paper in the Vairo Library or at the website http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060301faessay85202/paul-r-pillar/intelligence-policy-and-the-war-in-iraq.html
Athough written in 1999, The Shadow University: the Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campusesis timely and provides fuel for those who want to document the political agenda of the American higher education. "The shadow university...hands students a moral agenda upon arrival, subjects them to mandatory political reeducation, sends them to sensitivity training, submerges their individuality in official group identity, intrudes upon private conscience, treats them with scandalous inequality, and when it chooses, suspends or expels them." (p.4) The authors, Kors (Penn) and Silvergate argue professors as well as students are intimadated. Regardless of where you stand on this issue, this book is worth reading. (Vairo Library LC72.2.K67 1999)
Today, being Valentine’s Day today, seems an appropriate time to mention an article discussing how “online dating has becomes an enormous social experiment”. This article, titled "How Do I Love Thee" can be found in the March 2006 issue of The Atlantic Monthly.
The article talks of new compatibility and love research being done for, and through, those infamous dating websites (E-Harmony, Chemistry.com, PerfectMatch). What is interesting to note is that there are behavioral scientists behind those websites and their quizzes/matching system - an anthropologist, a sociologist and a psychologist. What I found most interesting about the article was that we are given a “behind the scenes” look at how the quizzes (and matches) are formulated for each of the different websites (one website utilizes Myers-Briggs personality types in a unique way).
Students or faculty who are interested in psychology or sociology might want to explore this area further through a research paper or project. The article provides a good starting point for ideas; the research/formulas discussed in the article promise to unlock the secrets of attraction and what makes long term compatibility and commitment happen.
(The article is available in paper format in Vairo Library, and will soon be available full text through ProQuest.)
"...the Internet these days all too often resembles New York's Times Square in the 1980s. It was exciting and vibrant, but you made sure to keep your head down, lest you be offered drugs, robbed, or harangued by the insane." This analogy is on the opening page of David Talbot's "The Internet is Broken" article in Dec. 2005/Jan 2006 issue of Technology Review. Talbot interviews MIT's David D. Clark (and one time chief architect of internet protocol) who calls for a rethinking of the basic architecture of the internet. A "clean-slate approach" is called for to build an internet that is secure and robust, and less fragile. The article also identifies some major research efforts underway that are redesigning the internet. There is a quiet race being run between those efforts and a Katrina scale internet disaster. (Available in paper at the Vairo Library or online in ProQuest.)
Be sure to catch the front page article in the Feb. 9, 2006 New York Times, "Panel Explores Standard Tests for Colleges" by Karen Arenson. Arenson interviews a number of members of the Commission on the Future of Higher Education, which was appointed last fall by the Secretary of Education. The Commission is considering assessing the effectiveness of higher education in response to the Department of Education 2003 National Assessment of Adult LIteracy which "found that less than a third of college graduates it surveyed demonstrated that they were able to read complex English texts and draw complicated inferences." The Commission's report and recommendations are expected next August. You can see the article online if you go to the Lexis-Nexis database thru the E-Resource List at http://www.lias.psu.edu/alallpsu.html, and Select Today's News as your category, and put Arenson in the author box. If you want to search it after today, pick General News as your category, rather than Today's News.
Secrecy by the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan is not a new book, but an old (1998) book worth another look. Moynihan argues that, "Analysis, far more than secrecy, is the key to security." (p.222) While he recognized that some secrecy is required, Moynihan felt it was overemployed and detrimental to keen analysis, and harmful to policy making. He provides examples of how secrecy damaged U.S. policies in the latter half of the twentieth century. His examples include the Venona intercepts (even President Truman was not informed), the Pentagon papers, the Cuban missle crisis, the fall of the Soviet Union, the Iran Contra Affair and several other major events. Makes you wish Moynihan were still around to help us analyze the current situation.
(Vairo Library JK468.S4M68 1999)
With the news filled with the tension between privacy and national security, No Place to Hide is a timely arrival on the new book shelves. Written by Washington Post reporter, Robert O'Harrow, Jr., the book details "how the government now depends on burgeoning private reservoirs of information about almost every aspect of our lives." The government is not the only customer. O'Harrow details how Amy Boyer's stalker and murderer compiled a dossier of information about her and her movements from information brokers that charged him less than $100. Whether or not you think you have anything to hide, read this book to see if the burgeoning public and private information industry makes you feel more or less secure. (Vairo Library HM851.O4 2005)
If you paid attention to the State of the Union address, you know President Bush is calling for initiatives in science, technology, and math/science education to help the United States keep its competitive edge. Many of these ideas seem to spring from a report issued last October by the National Academies Press. Entitled Rising Above The Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future, the entire report is available on the web at http://books.nap.edu/catalog/11463.html If you don't have time to read the entire 500+ pages, there is a 10 page executive summary.