Pre-Research

My Question is: Why don’t more engineers work on global development projects?

General Information Sources:

http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20101105221936787

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/media-services/single-view/news/engineer_shortage_a_threat_to_development_underlines_unescos_first_global_report_on_engineering/#.VGo98PnF-ao

These article are about the shortage of engineers in global development.

http://www.theprospect.net/experiences-of-a-girl-studying-engineering-19493

First hand account of a women studying engineering in college.

http://techpageone.dell.com/business/study-women-stem-careers/

dell info page on the decisions women make for their careers.

https://www.nae.edu/Publications/Bridge/51063/51093.aspx

National Academy of Engineers on what type of people study engineering.

Mini questions:

Why do engineers decide to study engineering? Why did I choose to be an engineer?

-are engineers greedy?

Why don’t engineers think about careers relating to international development?

Would having more female engineers help the cause? Why are most engineers men?

Exactly how important is engineering to global development?

keywords for searching that I used:

Engineering, shortage, international aid, types of engineers, engineering organizations, npo engineering, engineers without borders, female engineers, demographics of engineers, international affairs, I.A. demographics.

Disciplines related to my question:

Psychology: How do engineers think? What differentiates the mind of an engineer from that of the many that work in international development? Do I fit the same mold?

Engineering: Need to be informed/inform the reader about the different types of engineering and the difficulties/unique qualities of it.

Sociology: What makes up the demographic of engineers/global aid workers? What kinds of barriers create a possible over representation in a certain discipline? (i.e. males in engineering)

Anthropology: Is there something about the interactions between developing nations that prevent engineers from contributing more to global development? How has the involvement of engineers resulted in the past?

Ideas and some exploratory writing.

why isn't engineering a bigger part of international development?

-doesn't technology have arguably the biggest role in developing impoverished countries?

-why don't people who are studying international affairs or helping with global development attempting to receive a background in engineering?

-why don't engineers think of roles they could have in global development sooner?

      As a computer science major, I can attest to the fact that many engineering majors don't consider their potential roles in global development, at least as an undergraduate freshman in this course. I didn't either, before this course started.
      What's interesting about this is that engineering is extremely important in international development, both is teaching other people how to advance their countries through technology as well as finding efficient ways to make global development cheaper and more successful. I think it's important to explore why engineers choose to be engineers, and why international affairs majors or in general many people who want to dedicate time to international development don't perdue at least a partial education in engineering.
     I think its useful to explore why I decided to be a computer science major. Although it doesn't have "engineering" in its name, computer science is usually taught at engineering schools and contains most of the principles that other majors do. I remember taking a college level computer science course in high school and doing very well in it, but even then, what were my motives for taking the course? What is it about who I am that allows me to enjoy something that's both extremely technical and difficult? Why hasn't the idea of helping international aid efforts ever crossed my mind before taking a class on it?
     I never really cemented what I know to be my personality to myself until the later years of high school. Up until then, I more or less though I would follow the footsteps of my father and become an English major and eventually an editor or columnist. I like reading and always have, but I never really LOVED writing on my spare time. The main reason I fooled myself into thinking I would pursue English was because I was good at reading and writing at a young age.
     In my junior, I took a computer science course purely out of curiosity. I had always spent a lot of time on my computer, and playing video games and whatnot. Fortunately, I ended up loving it. It blended the concepts of proper grammar in the English language, the logic of many principles of mathematical, and the freedom of creation like music or art. Most importantly, computer science and programing has an extremely high skill ceiling. This is addicting to me TBC

Response to Wallace

This article is about the annual Maine Lobster Festival, its activities, and its participants.

The article begins with some background information of the festival, as well as some background information on the lobster as a species. He gives a relatively neutral description of the lobster festival, followed by the history/ evolution of eating lobster.Wallace introduces the idea that lobster is desired because its one of the freshest food there is due to it being cooked alive. This idea brings up the main concept of the article: Is it morally alright to cook a live lobster?

Wallace spends a good deal of time elaborating on whether or not lobsters feel pain, and it they do, whether they experience pain in the sense that humans do. I  actually think he spends too much time on this point. While the answer to this question is important to whether or not its morally okay to cook a lobster alive, I think he should have touched upon the fact that we are cooking them alive without definitively knowing whether or not they experience pain the way we do. Wallace also asks why we aren’t thinking of what we think of the process’ morality.

I think this article is well written. While he does come across as a little preachy, he is very convincing because he uses a combination of discrete facts as well as personal narrative (which is often humorous) to convey information as well as his opinions. I think PETA would be more effective if they used the same strategies that Wallace does to convince the reader that cooking lobster alive is wrong, and that its pretty disappointing that the people attending the festival as well as cooking lobster alive anywhere aren’t thinking about whether or not what they are doing is ethically acceptable.

Response to Walker

     This is a very dense, and powerful essay. Each sentence is an incredibly moving statement worded so precisely and accurately that you can re-read several times over and appreciate it more each time for its both complexity and poetic style.

     Walker begins by talking about about the role of black women in the United State's until around the 1920's (and sometimes a little afterwords). She explains how these women were subject to torture, sexual abuse, and essentially were so spiritual and had such powerful minds that they were like "saints" in a sense. They tried to escape their bodies, which were damaged and abused, and live only through their mind and the hopes and dreams they had for themselves and their ancestors, knowing that they would never have these dreams, but hoping for the future anyway.

     These women were the grandmothers of many African American women today. Walker's essay thoroughly compares and contrasts the ideas of several works, and what each work has to say about these women, specifically how black women were artistic or creative and how they spread this creativity through the next generations that lived on.

     This was hard for me to read. Not only is the topic chilling, but in order to understand many of both Walker and her source's arguments and details you need to spend a lot of time thinking about some horrible situations. The language is amazing and powerful, but it took me a lot of time to understand the things Walker was saying at times, as well as how she could kind of contradict things she said previously but citing a different source and comparing ideas.

Response to Rodriguez article

   I didn't really enjoy reading this article. I thought the structure was inconsistant, and the autheor makes some statements tht are either irrelevant or unjustsified. The story makes off transitions between narrative and history telling. Most of thes details he includes don't really help the arguemnt that much in my opinion. 

   The biggest thing I didn't enjoy reading was the description of Silicon Valley workers being simply just an inconvenient group of poeple who are threatening the ability to be proud of one's body. There aren't many specific examples or facts, and I get the feeling that the author is simply picking a bone with a generation/demographic that is just really foreign to him. The fact that many suburbs of California are filled with intelligent, wealthy, young people isn't so bad. Additionally, these poeple are in positions of high technical skill, and they're usually not simply wealthy just by inheritance.

   I under stand the author was trying to use the narrative part of the story to give some real-world details into the story, but they aren't implemented well and don't add enough to the article to be effective. The writing overall just left me a little dissattisfied as though I had wasted some time reading information that wasn't really that connected to the are of focus.

Medium 5 P essay

There are many different mediums to present arguments supported by both qualitative and quantitative information. However, there is no single medium that is objectively the best medium for all types of arguments and questions. One of the most well known, and possibly overused mediums, is writing, specifically in the form of an essay. Despite being similar is many critical ways, a narrated podcast was an overall better choice for my project. The differences of these two mediums is ultimately what made my choice: while the formally written essay is better at laying out large amounts of concrete information, it is substantially worse at conveying real emotion, and is less accessible to most people.

An essay has its biggest advantage in how it can contains large sets of both qualitative and quantitative information, and still be legible by a reader. The reason for this is that when reading an essay, the reader can go back in the document to find specific bits of information as well as reread anything is difficult to understand the first time around. When listening to a podcast, or some type of spoken medium like the radio, the listener often cannot physically re listen to what is being told to them. This is where writing is advantageous. The writer can include large amounts of information that might be confusing to hear live or spoken, without having to worry about whether or not the reader will be able to understand it the first time through.

While they certainly can be, Emotions are not transferred as well through paper. Readers cannot truly hear the author’s voice and tone when reading their works. In a podcast or listening to the radio, a listener can hear when the author/speaker is excited, nervous, confident, or whether or not they passionately care about something. It’s the ability to contain emotionally charged words regardless of what one is saying that makes this aspect so powerful. Spoken words appeal to pathos more because the author has an easier time showing the reader how both they feel themselves, as well as how they want the reader to feel.

Arguably the most important aspect of the spoken podcast or radio segment is its accessibility. For most readers, reading a deep, well written essay takes time and effort. However, as mentioned above, because of limits on the amount of data that can be conveyed effectively, narrated podcasts are easier to understand and don’t take as much work to extract concepts from. This makes it better for a general, or more casual audience. In reality, most people find themselves able to listen to the radio while performing other tasks because not only is it easier to understand, but you can listen to it while moving or looking elsewhere. This is why it lends itself to general newscasts, sports commentating, and storytelling. These types of spoken vehicles are general not densely packed with information when being told via radio or podcast.

When an author is deciding what medium to use, these pros and cons are what impacts their decision. Generally speaking, when an author is deciding between a written essay and a podcast, they need to weigh how much information they want to include versus how much they want to appeal to the audience’s emotions. For my project, the latter was more important.

Reverse Outline

To do List for medium presentation

1. get sources - set the meetings and record the conversations of the people that you think will be helpful (embassies, museum employees, organization representatives and employees).
2. outline narration and detail responses to each question
3. select images and/or music which you will elaborate on in the podcast
4. determine how to word each specific piece of information
5. Write the podcast
6. Choose how to convey each concept and information effectively with voice.
7. Narrate podcast
8. Add images/music clips appropriately

Potential Resources for Research

A good part of my research will be focused on the comparison of cultures. Generally speaking, I will compare the culture of first world/ third world, as well as that of happy/sad countries.
-National Gallery of Art
-cultural tourism DC - a non-profit organization that could definitely have a potential primary source to talk to. They additionally will put on shows and have plenty of information to offer on international cullture.
-Various embassies in DC
-National museum of the american indian
-American History exhibit at the smithsonian: people, information and technology

project web

Ideas Concerning Project 2

I’m going to try to answer the question “Does quality of life affect happiness?” I think are several things that are very important that are part of determining the answer to my question. I want to analyze how people from different countries, incomes, and cultures react to adversity, how important relativity is in determining the potential for people to be happy; that is, how well off they are relative to people in their community or to the lives they know exist elsewhere. I’m most interested in studying how quality of life affects the formation of culture, and how much culture impacts happiness as a whole. I plan on looking into talking people who focus on cultural studies as well people who have an extensive knowledge of the mental health of both Americans, whom I am fairly familiar with by this point, and people of other countries and cultures.

What sparked my question was the constant barrage of information claiming that Americans are some the least happy people in the world. However, I rarely hear statistics about whether not people in developing countries are struggling to be happy. I wondered whether or not this is because its hard to gather information on this, or is they are in fact happier than many people who live in the first world despite having worse living conditions. I decided that perhaps culture has a big deal to do with the answer, and because culture is greatly affected by living conditions, I concluded this would be an important part of formulating an answer.

I think to gather information I need to specifically look into meeting with someone who works for the non-profit organizations Cultural Tourism DC to hear what they have to say on how living conditions have affected the development of culture. Additionally, because I’m living in Washington, I’ll probably try to speak to embassy workers to hear their opinions on how culture affects the happiness of people. It helps to have a diverse teaching staff at GW, where many professors (and students as well) are international. I’m unsure how to go about the psychology portion of this. I’m sure I’ll find some more good primary sources over times, but less come to the head than when I think of culturally rich people I could potentially talk to.

I’m definitely having trouble deciding what I’m going to do for the project. I’m either going to write a musical composition for guitar, write a short story, or narrate a podcast.  I've narrated projects in the past and had a lot of fun doing it, so I’m probably leaning towards that. My voice can be deep and convey information and ideas coherently and effectively. This way I could also include a great deal of factual information. However, because my topic of interest is culture, I may end up writing a composition that I would record on guitar or finale, or write a short story. Both of these more artistic formats would allow me to use different styles of writing and music to represent aspects of different cultures and their emotional power. The good news is that I feel comfortable with doing any of the above, and I can decide which to use once I get the general idea of how the answer to my question would best be displayed.

Response to Graham

I was overjoyed by the fact that someone shared my feelings for the overuse of literature based essays in high school. I always that we spent too much time analyzing literature and not enough time on real world problems and doing formal research. I understand that it is necessary to read and analyze the greatest works of all time, but that should never the exclusive topic of student’s essays.

I agreed with Graham in his thinking that most essays in high school and college are based too much on whether or not the paper argues well versus whether or not they are right. This is because of the origin of the modern essay stemming from legal documents created by lawyers. The biggest difference between the essays we write today and the way essays are supposed to be written, according to Graham, is that modern essays are written to another reader to convince them of something, whereas a true essay is written for the sake of oneself, in an effort to answer a question. The reason that a person would write an essay rather than simply think about their ideas is because ideas are formulated by writing. Writing forces a person to sit down and think about how to logically express ideas, and that is how one comes about the answer to a question.

I’m excited to put this concept into practice in my next work. I want to find a question that I really don’t know the answer to, and try to discover the answer by writing rather than using clever writing to convince a reader that my opinion is the correct one.

Response to Group Annotated Bibliography

The first source I read was a poem by Alice Walker named Calling All Grand Mothers. The poem attempts to empower grand mothers and tries to inspire them to become leaders and think differently about life and change their thoughts on the world. I thought the main reason that Walker wrote the poem is because she recognized the connections that the elders in a society have a lot to say about whether or not the people younger than them accept changes to their lives and thoughts. This is primarily because if someone is old and has lived their entire life with a set of social norms and ideas than they are less likely to change how they think than a young person. However, if they do, than it shows that anyone is capable of change, especially those who are younger than them.

The second source I analyzed was a TedTalk with Martin Rees from March of this year. Rees describes how with the way things are currently going, humankind is doomed for good, in much thanks to the misuse of biotechnology. A big point Rees makes is that the mentality of someone who helps is a huge deciding factor as to whether or not someone helps, and achieving this mentality is simple; one simply needs to decide they will help. I think this kind of logic can be applied to anything. In order to continue learning at an increasing rate after high school, one just needs to decide to go to college. Once they’re here, they become absorbed with their education and are forced into doing work due to grades and a competitive environment, where they may or may not have done this by trying to read and use online resources in their own time at home. I think the same logic applies for people who join international development organizations.

The third source was a photocollage by László Sós and Éva Kémeny made in 1982. The photocollage displays American commercialism well, while drawing a disappointing connection between the contrasts of lifestyles of those in the developed and undeveloped world. Unfortunately, donations to third-world countries from large corporations in the United States are usually used to control the American market for a product by building the corporation's image.

The last source I used was a narrative of a member of the USAID. The man basically dedicates his entire life to helping people for a cause he believed in. Even through post-traumatic stress disorder and the constant disapproval of several governments, he refused to stop fighting for what he belived in. While this a good example of someone going against what others say to fight for their cause, many times this sort of action can be malicious. It’s important if you're someone who is hellbent on their goals like the man above to look at both sides of the argument at hand and make sure you are doing the right thing.

Works Cited

Staff, Harriet. "Alice Walker, Health, Happiness, and Sanity." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 13 Oct. 2014.

Rees, Martin. "Can We Prevent the End of the World?" Martin Rees:. TedTalks, Mar. 2014. Web. 13 Oct. 2014.

Sós, László, and Éva Kémeny. "László Sós, Éva Kémeny. Fido Pâtée Pour Chats (1982)." MoMA.org. N.p., 1982. Web. 13 Oct. 2014.

Johnson, Kirk W. "The List." Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics. N.p., 15 Aug. 2013. Web. 13 Oct. 2014.

Reflection of Group Collaboration

Piece 1: From Victoria: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2010/10/alice-walker-health-happiness-and-sanity/

Piece 2: From Ashley Grund:  http://www.ted.com/talks/martin_rees_can_we_prevent_the_end_of_the_world

Piece 3: From Emily Green: http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=8212

Piece 4: From Jake Mikesell: https://www.guernicamag.com/features/the-list/?src=longreads

   Academic articles and data-based reports are limited in many areas related to this course's content. Their most glaringly problem is their inability to describe how important it is to have a diverse culture in the world. Academic articles are good at proving points with data, but the different things that make up culture such as language, music, social norms and customs usually cannot be represented well with numbers/facts. The true value of culture can only be understood by experiencing it first-hand, whether it be through traveling to a country and taking part in its people's everyday life, or looking at artwork and listening to music from another culture.
   If I were to create an artistic response to this course, it would probably be a music video compilation of different countries and their various customs. During the video would be a song that was written to sound like the different styles of music from the cultures that are being represented on the screen. Video footage would be a combination of both modern and past clips, and would be centered around peace making moments in history or just interesting foreign customs. While much of what we have learned in this class via our own research so far is fairly dark, I think videos like this one are more effective at getting people in combination with legitimate research on the world's problems to remind us what we're helping to preserve in this world.

Summaries for Group Bibliography

UW Group Annotated Bibliography Summaries

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/27511af8-23b3-11e2-a46b-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2BAeKWbvW?src=longreads

This article is about how Brazil is one of the B.R.I.C. nations (along with Russia, India, and China) that will make an enormous economic impact in the 21st century. However, whether or not the make the transition into an efficient, respectable democratic country depends greatly on whether or not they can support large ventures such as the holding of the world cup this year as well as the olympics in 2016, while additionally improving the situation of the favelas across the country and specifically in the large city of Rio de Janeiro.

The favelas outside of Rio were formed out of complete neglect by the government. While this is the way that most impoverished areas in developing countries are formed, Rio stands out in a sense in that it is directly outside of the city, where as usually these neighborhoods are several miles away, or in completely remote locations. Additionally, Rio de Janeiro is home to several of the richest people in the world, and had many or the wealthiest subdivisions of any city in the world. Right now, the government is making efforts to clean up the favelas in time for the 2016 olympics. Whether or not Brazil is able to keep drug lords from running the city in time will decide their fate as a major economic player in the next century.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/article/239458

This is a link to some prose written by Etienne Ndayishimiye. It’s very thought provoking writing regarding how his home tribe in East Africa valued poetry. Ndayishimiye escaped his village by running away to the Democratic Republic of Congo. He faced difficulties when returning his tribe because it was unacceptable to be enrolled in school to many of these people who believed that they should be living in the forest without receiving a proper education.

Ndayishimiye cherishes the idea that poetry can be extremely effective in expressing the problems and needs for struggling countries and tribes like his own.

http://www.ted.com/talks/iqbal_quadir_says_mobiles_fight_poverty#t-164986

This TedTalk is about how simply giving aid to developing countries has actually decreased the amount of power that civilians have and increased the amount of power that authorities have in developing countries due to little regulation of the allocation and use of the funds they receive.

Smartphones/cell phones are an effective way to increase foreign development because it allows people to network, and in turn, create business by the people and for the people. This is a better way to improve the conditions of the inaction of people than by simply giving money to the unorganized governments of developing countries.

http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AAD%3AE%3A27802&page_number=1&template_id=1&sort_order=1

This is a photo of an XO laptop, which is the outcome of the One Laptop per Child program. The photo shows the products innovative and efficient design. The laptop shows that it needs to be durable, cheap to produce, and multi-functional to be effective as a vehicle for learning in third-world countries.

Clearly access to technology is extremely important to the developing countries because without good public education systems, computer and smartphone software and internet resources can provide education across the globe without a physical teacher.

Response to Bateson

Response to Bateson

Bateson begins by introducing his disagreements with the Memorandum written by a Committee of the Social Sciences research Council regarding their strategies for creating categories of culture, and the interactions between cultures. Bateson first points out that the efforts to create categories for culture are a somewhat irrelevant because there was no clear problem to be solved using the categories. This supposedly made the argument for the categories they created weak because they weren't necessary. He insists that it is first necessary to formulate a better idea of the problems for the categories first.

    To state it simply, the council is looking for ways to get groups of people to adapt aspects of another culture. Of the main problems with the original categorical scheme was that its based on the economic profit, willingness to accept foreign values, and ethical and religious practices of the country which is to be accepting culture. However, the only things impact the development of culture is the mechanism of satisfying sexual needs, enforcing social norms, or to supply individuals with food. The former are simply abstractions which are used to describe cultures in words.

    When two cultures are in significant contact with each other, they must either completely fuse communities, persist among one another is dynamic equilibrium, or one or both groups must be entirely eliminated. Bateson describes in detail how aspects of culture contribute to the drastic outcomes of culture contact.

    I thought this writing was very well crafted. It's accessible and driven by, for the most part, 

reasonable logic. He connects his writing to social issues that are relevant in both the 1930's and 

to a lesser extent, today. There are definitely plenty of controversial ideas, but looking at this 

excerpt from an author's standpoint, it's very well written and supported.

Reflection on Writing the Research Paper

1. To begin my research process, I googled a bunch of articles on my topic to make sure It wasn't going to bore me enough that I would be tempted to switch topics. Sure enough, it seemed as though it was moderately interesting, and I decided I would have enough information to support my stance on the topic. I then used databases to try to get away from the sensationalism and often unsupported bias of major news websites.

2. I chose a somewhat difficult argument for my paper because knowing people who were affected by the problems I was elaborating on, I absolutely had some personal bias in the issue. My bias was actually against the side I was arguing for. I usually argue against my first impression for scholastic papers because not only do I feel that I can support any argument successfully, but I also feel my counter-argument is strengthened through this process.

3. I wrote the majority of the paper the night before it was due. I wouldn't attribute this to being lazy, but rather to the time constraints I had for getting my research done. I spent probably about 10 hours glued to my computer writing it, only leaving my seat to go to the bathroom or to buy more coke. Coke is a great cram-session drink because it has a lot of caffeine and sugar, and it helps to remind me that I''m still a young even though I'm tackling such important issues in the world (ha). I tried to make my paper become more and more fact-oriented overtime, starting with the manifesto and ending with the research pages. Overall I was fairly happy with the result of the composition of my paper for a first draft, but my vocabulary needs work and I lacked enthusiasm that would've helped me be more efficient while writing.

4. There were many spelling mistakes in my paper. I did a horrendous job proof-reading. I realized that more factual evidence would have the initial parts of my research paper feel less dull and discursive. Probably most important was the addition of citations to my paper. It was a long strenuous task that was one of the least enjoyable things I've had to do over the course of my entire educational history. Most of my revisions to the body of my paper was better phrasing of statements and facts, and being more formal.

5. I messed up a multitude of times, but nothing compares to my disorganized gathering of information. While this had relatively no outcome on the draft of my paper, when I had to create in-text citations for the final draft, it was extremely bothersome. I needed to re-read all of my documents to find where I got the information from, and spent a great deal of time formatting the citations correctly. My research could have been better; it was extremely difficult to find many exact numbers on the amount of children who are trafficked due to international adoption. However, even a few reliable estimates would have made a huge difference for my argument's credibility.

6. I want to retain the general skill of arguing more effectively. I don't even like arguing, but arguing successfully is necessary across all disciplines of life, unfortunately. I don't know too many specific skills that I used for this project, but I want to retain the insight to organize my facts better for my future papers to my research more accessible to myself.

International Adoption Outline

Intro:

Summarize main points:

-Self-Sanctification drives international adoption

-Child Rights are non-existent in the third world

-Orphanages play a huge role in child trafficking

-It can help both Countries if child is adopted domestically

-System can be reformed by better informing American people of the role they play in trafficking, and through intervention of National Governments to restrict intercountry adoption to an extent.

Body Paragraph 1 :

-U.S. citizens adopt children from other countries for several reasons: to help kids, to

feel better about themselves, and to superficially appear as a kind person.

-U.S. parents create a demand for international children to be their adopted children.

Body Paragraph 2:

-Child rights in the third-world are non-existent

-Governments in developing countries are either corrupt or lacking in the power necessary to make a difference.

-International law is not enforced anywhere and means nothing in these countries.

Body Paragraph 3:

- Orphanages play a huge role in child trafficking

-children are kidnapped by orphanages and sold for money

-American’s parent’s demands for children offer an incentive for more trafficking to occur.

Body Paragraph 4:

- It can help both the country of the parents as well as the foreign country if a child is adopted domestically instead of internationally.

-There are plenty of children in similar situations in the United States who can be adopted

- Address counter argument that international adoption is necessary to build stronger and more peaceful relationships with other countries

-adopting children from other countries may improve relationships slightly, but helping countries develop in general with international aid will strengthen bond more, and

Body Paragraph 5:

-Inform potential adopters that they run the risk of increasing kidnapped/trafficked children by adopting internationally

-Change mindset that its more noble to adopt internationally than domestically

-Use increased government intervention to reduce the number of internationally adopted children, and help strengthen international law and develop the third world through more effective aid to end the problem long-term.

Conclusion:

-Summary of points

-Closing statement

Initial Sources for International Adoption Paper

5 Sources

http://congressional.proquest.com.proxygw.wrlc.org/congressional/result/pqpresultpage.gispdfhitspanel.pdflink/http%3A$2f$2fprod.cosmos.dc4.bowker-dmz.com$2fapp-bin$2fgis-hearing$2f4$2f8$2f0$2fb$2fhrg-2002-hir-0025_from_1_to_87.pdf/entitlementkeys=1234%7Capp-gis%7Chearing%7Chrg-2002-hir-0025

The above source is a congressional hearing before the Committee of International Relations on the solutions to problems related to international adoption. It's dense; about 100 pages long, but formal and factual as well. Written in 2002.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/16/world/international-adoption-saving-orphans-child-trafficking/

This the article that drove my interest in the subject area. It gives a broad idea of what’s going on and a few specific examples of children who have been trafficked because of international adoption.

http://sks.sirs.com/cgi-bin/hst-article-display?id=SNY4426-0-7796&artno=0000296685&type=ART

This article gives information on chinese children being sold for the purpose of adoption fees.

http://search.proquest.com.proxygw.wrlc.org/docview/204006434?pq-origsite=summon

this article gives some incorrect forms of government intervention in terms of adoption. I will mostly use this for my counter argument.

http://search.proquest.com.proxygw.wrlc.org/docview/305082389/1C36D2A920DD45B8PQ/14?accountid=11243

another article for general information on transracial adoption.

Initial Research

By Dan Coen

The driving force behind international adoption in First-World countries is the belief that our lives are better than those in developing regions. At a first glance, one’s reaction to this is concept is often: “Well, of course they are. ” To an extent it’s true; we have access to many basic needs and amenities that others don’t, such as clean water, proper shelter, and advanced medical technology. However, keep in mind that in the instances where these needs are met, the rest of the attributes that contribute to one’s well-being, such as wealth, skills, and attractiveness are all relative.

There are many issues of international adoption to be discussed, but perhaps the most pressing is the blurred lines of child rights across the world. The UN’s Declaration of the Right’s of a Child are non-existent in most developing countries. Generally speaking, a country determines its own legal code for acceptable living standards for children. In the third-world, these standards either don’t exist or are irrelevant because of little government enforce. Because Of the neglect of children in the third world, international adoption is popular. Unfortunately, current levels of corruption and greed have not yet made this a more viable option than adopting a domestic neglected child.

In Africa, one of the most frequent occurring hidden forms of child trafficking is the sale of children in foster homes. The adopting parents, looking to aid a child in need, unknowingly pay for a child in foster care that had been kidnapped from his family and sold away for cash. The willingness of people to adopt child from impoverished nations unfortunately leads to the continuation of this practice. What’s worse is that the government’s of these countries can be corrupt, and will turn a blind eye to the sources of the children in these foster homes because s some instances they can receive up to ten thousand dollars in a “development aid cost” for giving a child to parents outside of the country. In fact, Guatemala was closed to US adoption specifically for the reason that children were being coerced and kidnapped to meet the US demand for adopted children from third world countries. Before they closed to US adoptions, 1 in every 100 childbirths in Guatemala were adopted. After they closed, the adoption rate dropped ninety percent. As a result of no longer having Guatemalan children to import, the number of Ethiopian children adopted by American parents increased by 500%.

Generally speaking, for first-world parents who want to help children in need, it’s a better idea to adopt a child from a home country and give any remaining money to a proper international  development program than encourage the trafficking of children to meet the needs of the international adoption market.

Position Paper Topic Ideas

I' currently looking into the impact of international adoption on the United States. Specifically, I'm researching whether or not the practice is doing more harm than good. It seems as though the impulse to adopt children from other countries is driven by primarily self-sanctification; people feel good about themselves thinking that they are saving the lives and sanity of children by bringing them out of homes that that they presume couldn't compare to the United States. However, child rights laws and other ethics related problems, such as families having a fallback for having a child they decide they don't want to raise and the current abuse of compensation to parents who give away their children in developing countries make this a large problem worldwide.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/16/world/international-adoption-saving-orphans-child-trafficking/

http://www.examiner.com/article/adopting-a-child-international-adoption-good-or-bad

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/no-logic-to-foreign-adoption-development-aid-285161.html

Response to Sample Position Paper

While reading this position paper which focuses on the strategies and effectiveness of the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), I payed close attention to the style of how the position paper was written. Having mainly read formal essays and articles this far into the class, it was interesting to read a paper that was in a much different format.

The most obvious difference of the position paper in contrast to essays is that there is less of a focus on the use of language to appeal to the reader’s senses; the argument of the position paper is supported purely by facts. These facts are cited frequently and properly, and there is no time wasted on useless metaphors because the paper tries to establish the point early and stay on topic with plenty of information.   Additionally, the preci of the paper is stated repeatedly.The goal of a position paper appears to be to confidently convey an idea using concrete sources of evidence. In general, I prefer the format of the position paper more than most formal essays and articles because most of the reading I do myself is strictly for factual information. As a reader, I want the facts given to me, and I like to make my own opinions about them.

It is an audience with a similar mindset that this paper is targeted to. The author assumes that the reader is somewhat knowledgeable of the subject matter already and wants a great deal of information organized efficiently. This can be more effective to defend a position on in certain situations because if one has enough concrete factual evidence to prove their argument, there is no need to persuade the reader using complex analogies and syntax because there are numbers, graphs, and first-hand accounts that will do the persuading for them.

Response to Lysaught

The article "Medicine as Friendship with god: Anointing the sick as a Theological Hermeneutic" makes an interesting claim concerning bioethics and theological politics. Lysaught's main argument is that the practice of theological sacraments, specifically the anointing of the sick in catholicism, is an effective way of supplementing modern medicine to create a changed world which is built heavily on theological politics.

Lysuaght elaborates on how there is a general negative opinion (specifically in the United States) on the role of theological related practices in medicine. Lysaught, after stating this, loses some credibility because he includes a great deal of biblical information and interpretation which comes across as circumlocution more than it does supportive of his argument. As an agnostic who was raised catholic initially, his argument is fairly ignorant in my opinion. Not only does he fail to mention any other religions (aside from a weak reference to Judaism, a fellow Abrahamic religion) in the article, but hailing Catholicism in the traditional way that Lysaught does makes for an unreasonable foundation for changing the political environment we have now.

The article comes across as a selfish way to spread catholicism rather than an honest effort of someone trying to benefit the world. This is unfortunate, because there are undoubtedly benefits of spirituality. A more reasonable goal would be to spread the ability to use theology in general (not just through the catholic deity) to create an optimal combination of physical and mental treatment for the unwell. Regardless, Lysaught's article lacked organization proper motives to be effective.

Summary of Ly

Response to Ly

By Dan Coen

The article "Individual Preferences Over Development Projects: Evidence from Microlending on Kiva" is analyzes what effects a donor or philanthropists' decision to give money to specific charity organizations. This research includes viewing the effectiveness of publicly visible projects, the time time it takes to fulfill different types of loans, and the reasons for lenders fulfilling these loans more quickly and frequently than other projects.

Generally speaking, donors like to donate to publicly viewable charity projects and organizations. This is common sense because philanthropists want to make sure that the money they're giving is being used effectively, or to a specific cause that they can see the results of their donations from.  Probably the most interesting result of the research is the time it takes to meet the donations of loans based on the poverty impacted problem they are related to. The loans that were fulfilled the fastest were ones that were related to education and health. These loans were given 76% faster than donation requests to agricultural purposes. Extremely interesting to me was entertainment loans being met the third fastest out of any category, which is likely due to donors being interested in international culture.
Kiva returns loans with 0% interest, which gives reason to believe that people really are donating solely for the desire to help people. However, it's important to note that often philanthropists will donate to projects in which they are more surely going to be repaid (areas like personal consumption are minimally funded).  This article gives a good foundation of the reasons for which P2P users donate to specific projects, but as stated many times throughout the article, there is still much research to be done to on how philanthropists view projects as effective, and why their opinions differ so greatly from that of development organizations.