Roberts/Research Question

My research question as of now is,
What are the effects of overfishing?
I have also considered doing a research paper on one interesting person, but I have not been able to decide on who yet.

I believe that my first question easily fulfills Robert's recommendation to write on something unusual. I believe that it would be interesting to write about, because I know almost nothing about overfishing now.  A friend of mine told me that they wrote a paper on fishing and it's effects overall, and I was particularly interested in the overfishing aspect of it.  With this paper, I would talk about the effects of it in the future, and where it could lead us.  Will it eventually lead to no fish in our lakes, and if that happens, what will the effect on our lakes and fresh water supply be? How is it different in our country as oppose to others? What can be done to solve it? Should we put a quota on the amount of fish that fisherman can catch? Is it a problem/risk just for freshwater lakes, or must we worry about overfishing in the oceans too? I hope to answer all of these questions in my paper, I believe that the only risk with this is that it is too broad.  I may need to narrow it down to overfishing just in freshwater lakes, or maybe just overfishing in the united states.  I want to keep it broad because it would be easier to get the length requirement, but I do not want to run the risk of staying on the surface of everything.
I do not know my main point for it yet, but I believe that I will think that overfishing is a threat, and that something must be done about it.  I am afraid that this view is not what Robert's would like me to do, considering I thought of this view off the top of my head, so I will put more thought into it once I know more on the topic and see if I can have a more abstract view on it.

Something Borrowed

In the piece "Something Borrowed" by Malcolm Gladwell poses the question, "Should an act of plagiarism   ruin a person's career?" Throughout his piece, it becomes evident that Gladwell believes the answer to the question should be no, but in the case of literature, the answer is more and more often no.  He gives specific examples of situations where someone has plagiarized and their career has been ruined.  Although the laws are getting more strict about what can be accountable plagiarism, Gladwell believes that they should not be as strict. When a play writer plagiarized his work, he was flattered, but did not feel as if he was stolen from. He also gives many examples of how plagiarism laws are much stricter in literature than they are in the music industry.  Throughout the piece, he shows how plagiarism is hard to define.
Personally, I have never thought about plagiarism further than citing sources in my papers so this piece was very interesting.  I agree with Gladwell's opinions, that the reasons for a person plagiarizing should determine the case.  I thought that the piece was well written because it brought the reader through clear examples that further backed up his point with each example.