Shawn’s Review

                The first thing that pops out at me from Shawn’s article is that it is very practical. The information that he provides in the article is something that is not often thought of. Many Americans I believe have some strange inherent distrust in the weather service that is well warranted to some extent. Shawn’s article does an excellent job of dispelling this feeling much more by showing his readers through a great deal of logos that the weather service is not as inaccurate as most people believe it to be.  There is a very big issue that I have with this paper and that is that it does not have any color. The topic is very engaging at first because everybody wants to know if the weather man really is just a dummy or not, but the paper needs more engaging content as it continues. I found that it became very hard to continue reading this paper because it is a lot of facts and a little bit of commentary on those facts. I would suggest maybe putting a few fun stories about the weather as it pertains to meteorology just to keep the reader interested. The most engaging things in this paper are some of the facts which is obviously a good tool, but the human element is nonexistent and it needs to be fixed to make a more engaging paper. Shawn did a very good job with his grammar and writing for a draft, there were no immediate errors that shot out at me it was. Overall it is a good paper with a strong base and as long as Shawn can find a way to add more color and put in a human element it will an be excellent paper worth reading.

Research Paper Reviews

Kelly’s Review

                I liked Kelly’s topic a lot, she provided insight into many problems with gender the only problem is that I was not sure exactly what she was trying to prove. She does a very good job of pulling in interesting facts about her topic, but the problem is that they do not seem to lead anywhere or go in a single direction. I felt myself questioning what this paper was about a few times and then when I felt as if it was going somewhere it would change direction again. The paper speaks about gender inequality, gendercide, and treatment of the transgendered. I think that if Kelly takes one of these three topics and roles with it the paper could end up making much more sense. A more realistic approach would be to somehow connect all three topics, maybe talking about the three different topics and relating them to how gender discrimination is a huge problem in today’s world and must be stopped. She could even expand on this by saying what is being done at the moment to stop it. Additionally there are some grammar and writing mistakes that should be improved upon before the final draft is turned in. The last thing I would say is that Kelly’s paper needs to have more of an argument from the other side and then she needs to dispute this argument. When talking about male versus female gender discrimination she makes it seem as though males and females pretty much are the same, which is not necessarily true looking from a biological standpoint. She could start by proving that the two sexes are not the same with some biological evidence and empirical studies. From here she could go into how while we may not be the same exactly it is not right to treat women as an inferior race of people.

Annie’s Review

                Annie’s paper was very engaging. She had a solid introduction with a good deal of imagery that had me wondering what her paper was going to be about until the very last sentence when I got a pretty good idea. The topic is an interesting one because of the fact that many people want to know about lucid dreaming and how to do it. There is a good balance between information and personal experience. One section seems a bit out of place the part about the medicine Galantamine. The paper goes into this, but it feels like it should not be there unless there is going to be more done with it. Also it says that she plans to do use it if all else fails and she did not mention it again. She also contradicted herself at this point because she said that she will not pay for it, but then a few sentences later says that she will get it if needed. In all honesty the paragraph about the Galantamine seems out of place from the rest of the paper. It is definitely related, but it does not feel like the Galantamine should be there. Another thing that I liked about this paper is that when Annie could not lucid dream herself she found a primary source of someone that has. She talked to her friend who used to have lucid dreams, but eventually stopped as she got older. I think this is a chance to expand a little bit, maybe do a little bit of research on if it is more likely for children to lucid dream than it is for adults and so on.  All in all it is a very good paper the topic is interesting, it is well written, it is engaging and at the same time well researched. 

FIFA Paper Next 600 Words

FIFA, short for the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, was born in Paris on May 21^st, 1904. It originally governed most of the major leagues in world soccer except the English league who joined later. It has now risen as the most powerful organization in the world of sports with the biggest money maker, the FIFA World Cup. The first World Cup was held in Uruguay on July 18^th, 1930 and has now become the most popular event in the world of sports, so popular that even Americans feel forced to watch it, every once in a while. The two most recent World Cups exemplifies the terrifying power that FIFA has over the host countries.

The 2014 World Cup was hosted in Brazil a country that produces the biggest soccer fans and many of the best players in the world. Naturally they would be ecstatic for the upcoming World Cup to be hosted in their home nation, right? Wrong, Brazilians responded to the news of hosting the 2014 World Cup with mass rioting across the nation. They also set a lot of things on fire and not just because setting stuff on fire is fun, they actually had a good reason. The Brazilian government was spending over eleven billion dollars on preparations for the World Cup because they are held to a certain standard of excellence by FIFA.  Eleven billion dollars is a whole lot of money, but when you think about it that price is justified, the FIFA World Cup is the biggest sports event in the world and something as big as that should bring in just as much money in tourism, taxes, tickets, and a multitude of other things but here’s the catch. Brazil does not make the money, FIFA does. FIFA’s criteria for letting a nation host the World Cup is exemption from all taxes at any level that means local, state, and national taxes (Oliver). This is absolutely baffling and really gives a taste of what FIFA is like. Someone really should not be allowed to compare a nonprofit organization to the mafia and be very convincing, comparing FIFA to the mafia should be like comparing a pineapple to a paper towel, it just should not make any sense. Because of this the only reason to host the World Cup is the prestige of it. At least for a little while that host country is brought on to the world stage. Going back to FIFA the mafia like tendencies do not stop at tax exemption. FIFA actually forced Brazil to make a new law for them. In 2003 Brazil banned alcohol from soccer stadiums because of the enormously high death rate among fans, which in all honesty seems like a pretty good idea (Oliver). This changed because of FIFA, one of FIFA’s sponsors is Budweiser and to make more money FIFA wanted to be able to sell beer. Brazil was then pressured into creating the Budweiser Bill, which allowed stadiums to once again sell beer. FIFA’s secretary general had this to say on the, “I’m sorry to say and maybe I look a bit arrogant, but … we have a right to sell beer.” The implication of this law is potentially deadly, but it is really all about money in the end so who cares? In the 2010 World Cup in South Africa we can see another example of FIFA’s ridiculous power. FIFA forced the creation of the World Cup Court, which first of all sounds completely ridiculous but nonetheless they prosecuted with striking speed to the point where there was barely a trial. After two Zimbabwean men were arrested for the robbery of two journalists they were sentenced to fifteen years in penitentiary in less than a day (Oliver). That is not enough time for a trial to a fifteen year jail sentence and is very unsettling.

                

Intros

                The summers in Qatar are hot, really hot in fact the temperatures can reach up to one hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit this weather is not safe to be walking in much less play soccer in. On December 2^nd, 2010 FIFA, the world governing body of soccer announced that the 2022 World Cup would be played in Qatar. A country with no soccer history and incredibly dangerous playing conditions in summer when the World Cup is traditionally played. Not only that, but the country is known to have very little rights for migrant workers and by 2022 by two conservative estimates say there will be at least 4,000 dead migrant workers from working on building the stadiums. People across the World were flabbergasted by the decision, but that quickly turned to outrage. The decision made absolutely no sense so why did it happen, where did FIFA go wrong? The fact is that FIFA did not go wrong, FIFA is rotten. FIFA was and still is aware of the huge problem that the Qatar World Cup brings, but that does not matter all that matters to FIFA and its executives is money and there sure was a lot in this. It is painfully obvious that FIFA executives voting for the upcoming World Cup host were bribed and despite major outrage across the world FIFA has remained in support of Qatar as the 2022 World Cup host. For years it has been clear that the governing body of soccer across the world is corrupt, so how do we know this? Where did it start? And what is being done to stop it?

                When he was young all Sepp Blatter wanted to be was a footballer. The soccer fanatic had a chance too, he worked hard every day for hours to become the best he could be and eventually went to a trial for a local club and was offered a contract. Not soon after young Sepp’s dreams were crushed by his father who told him, “No son of mine will be a footballer,” and refused to sign Blatter’s contract. Sepp Blatter did not give up on his dream and found a way to have a life filled with soccer ironically though the little boy who loved soccer so much has become the man who is ruining it. Sepp Blatter is now seventy nine and the president of FIFA. FIFA is the nonprofit, world governing body of soccer with over one billion dollars in the bank. FIFA under Blatter has faced countless scandal and seems to have drawn up a business model designed after the mafia’s. Under Don Blatter bribery seems to be a common affair in the inner workings of FIFA and that is really just the tip of the ice burg. FIFA itself may be responsible for the deaths of over 4,000 people in Qatar and its executives have broken countless laws in multiple countries as they seem to think they are above it. Now if this is all true what is being done about it? Why is Blatter still in power and why is FIFA allowed to continue operating like this?

                Alexis Sanchez grew up in the Chilean mountain town of Tocopilla and he was dirt poor. Alexis had nothing, his father left him when he was a toddler, and his mother worked several jobs to support her four children, but Alexis did have one thing soccer. While soccer was his love and his escape from the world that he lived in he could not focus on it as from the age of six he had to get a job to help support his family and also attended school. Despite these obstacles Sanchez played and he practiced every day and he got good, real good. Sanchez was signed by a local club at the age of sixteen and was seen as a nobody there, the players didn’t understand who this kid was until his first game. The team was down 1-0 and struggling so the coach decides to put in Sanchez in as a second half substitute. Sanchez went on to score eight goals and proved what he could really be. From there it was smooth sailing all the way up to FC Barcelona and now Arsenal FC. Alexis Sanchez’s story is repeated all over the world, but it might not be so easy for some kids. Recently FIFA, the world governing body of soccer, has banned over four hundred children from playing soccer because they are foreign in the nation that they play in. FIFA is a corrupt nonprofit organization that cares more about making money than trying to fix the problems in the world of soccer. It has been surrounded by scandal and bribery for years and is ruining the game loved by billions of people around the world. 

FIFA Research

                In my paper I would like to fill it with information on three things what FIFA is, the multiple scandals it has had and the players in that, and how the FBI has messed all of FIFA’s corruption up and just generally been awesome while also managing to strengthen my faith in the American legal system. While there has always been scandal surrounding FIFA there has never been proof until an American FIFA official named Chuck Blazer gave it all up. I plan to use Blazer’s claims in my paper. On top of this there have been a few authors on the NY Times who I have found who have been following the FIFA indictment story since the beginning named Stephanie Clifford, Matt Apuzzo, and William K. Rashbaum. All have a few stories on the investigation that will be helpful to my paper. I can also focus on FIFA’s biggest scandal, the Qatar scandal, which by conservative estimations will be the cause of over 4,000 deaths of Qatar migrant workers by 2022. There is also the incredible number of bribes that the FIFA executives have taken from biding nations to get their vote for the host World Cup nation. On top of that FIFA executives are huge idiots who have said and done a multitude of things worth talking about to make the story more interesting and funny like Chuck Blazer getting an apartment complex in Trump Tower for the use of his cat. Then there is the FIFA president, Sepp Blatter, he is a Swiss man who has allowed the corruption of FIFA to go on since he has been in office, which has been a very long time. Blatter has won almost every election under very shady circumstances that scream bribery. Finally I would like to talk about the role of the FBI and how they made the whole world a little bit happier that the United States is around, which is good considering that most of the world doesn’t like us very much. The FBI is in the process of taking the corruption out of FIFA and they are doing a good job of it. They are working on getting Blatter and once they get him that will be a huge step towards eliminating the corruption from FIFA.

America’s Wandering Families Analysis

America’s Wandering Families by Loretta Schwartz-Nobel is an emotional piece about the growing number of homeless families in the United States. I really enjoyed this article because it is very human. While many articles that we’ve read focus greatly on statistics this article was very emotional and made you feel for the people; they were more than just numbers on a page they had faces, names, and stories like the rest of us. This kept me incredibly interested throughout the article and was a great strategy to keep Nobel’s readers engaged. This great deal of emotion meant that the article was filled pathos catered to anyone who sympathizes for people going through hardship making it a pretty good use considering there aren’t many who don’t sympathize with that. In this sense I think that the author really did a great job of making a one-size-fits-all article. She made an article that can be understood by most by most people and she gets them to see her way of thinking not so much by stating a multitude of claims and proving them, but simply by getting her readers to feel for the homeless in their community and all across the U.S. Because of the mass use of logo in this article there is not a lot of room for logos. While this is true and for many can be crippling when convincing a reader towards your way of thinking, it does not seem to matter as much for this article. The emotion in this article is heartwarming at times, but turns on a dime to absolutely crushing because it really makes you feel for these homeless families and a great amount of facts and statistics would just take away from that, it would leave the reader feeling desensitized to the whole ordeal to a point.  

The author adds herself as a character in this article as well, which adds to the way that she convinces her reader. This is the ethos part of the argument. We see the author researching and really making and effort to get to know the people that she meets, which makes the reader feel as if she knows what she’s talking about.

                

One Thing They Aren’t: Maternal Analysis

                One Thing They Aren’t: Maternal is an article by Natalie Angier about the different ways that animals take care of their young.  Angier’s article is challenging to decipher. The article’s original purpose seems to be something informative and fun at the same time, but it has an underlying theme to it. It starts by praising mothers, the article speaks of how great mothers are and the praise that they deserve, but from there she almost seems to refute her claims. She moves on to talk about the way in which so many other species of animals are not very motherly. For instance pandas are not as cute and cuddly as we might like to think; the majority of the time a panda mother gives birth to two babies and then only takes care of one using the other as a backup in case the favored child gets sick, damaged, or dies. Facts like these are very interesting and are useful tools that the author uses to keep her reader engaged, but why does the author contradict herself taking it the complete opposite direction from mothers are to be worshipped to they are awful creatures? The thing that we must pay attention to is this, the author never once mentions the human mother except in the first paragraph when she is praising them and while she still ends on the bad note of rabbit mothers who barely spend any time with their young it is still a significant occurrence. The author wants us to appreciate our own mothers because our mothers never left us in a dark nest to only see the light for two minutes every day and our mothers never pitted us against our siblings for a fight to the death. She wants to stress the importance of our own mothers by comparing them to truly terrible ones so that we know just how lucky we are to have the mothers that we do. Angier’s article is engaging and informative, but ultimately teaches us of the importance of our own mother and makes us see just how lucky we are.