Saturday, October 27, 2007

Hw 25 Baghdad Burning.

The forward of Baghdad Burning by Soueif gives us information about Riverbend. He explains to us that this blog is closest they could possibly get to without actually being there. Riverbend goes through struggles that her and her family deal with on a day to day basis. Soueif explains to us that English speaking readers are so lucky to have this blog because in a sense it is the only truth they may get. The introduction of Baghdad Burning by Riverbend explains that Riverbend is a girl who lives in a middle class home in Iraq. She writes a blog of the destruction that is revolving around her daily. She is descriptive in her blog that she writes which she called “Baghdad Burning”. She gives us detail by detail of what it is like to live her life. Ridgeway gives us a good background of what has been going on in Iraq over the last four years, such as the gulf war and 9/11. Ridgeway explains how these events have led up to the mess that is occurring in Iraq today. On pg viii it reads how on October 7, 2004 many people felt badly for the troops who were stationed in Iraq did feel bad for these men. This was an awful thing that happened and these men are risking their lives being there.( Viii, Soueif)

Soueif,Ahdaf. Baghda Burning: London: the feminist press, 2004

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Hw 23 Feministe

“With apologies to Virginia Woolf” I choose the blog line Feministe which can be found athttp://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2007/10/17/newsweek-on-feminist-bloggers/#more-5971 to write about. Feministe to me is a very good thing because it shows that the mainstream media is showing feminist bloggers in action. This is a huge step for me because I’m not used to seeing women being treated equally. Of course there is a downside to this blog. I must say that this blog is defiantly an improvement but yet it still shows that there are still many things used against women. First it explains that the blog focused mostly on the activism and blogging of white mostly-middle-class mostly-heterosexual feminists. Than it says that younger feminists don’t really know what they are talking about and that there not focused on the right things. This topic really gets me mad because me myself being a young feminist I no fist hand that this not true. I think that people need to give women a lot more credit than they already do.

Hw 21 Dear Jess

Dear jess:
As you know I also have to read A Room of One’s Own by Virginia wolf for my blog class. I as well thought that the reading was extremely difficult. In chapter one the main character Mary, is attending college at Oxbridge place which is a very good school. It is said it the book that women needs money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. In the story Mary shows her anger towards this. Mary is sitting on a bank near the river thinking about the connection to women and fiction, and how she disagrees with the statement women and needs money and a room to write fiction. Mary gets stopped by Beadle and tells her that women are not allowed on the turf. Throughout this chapter she is not allowed to do certain things because she is a girl such as going into the library. She thinks and expresses her thought about her anger and women and literature. Your teacher might think that this such an important work because it talks a lot about how sex what such a huge issue and it will show us how much has been changes since than. I really did feel that this is an important read but very difficult as well.
Love Alex

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

hw 22. Virginia Woolf

I strongly agree that England is a patriarchy from Virginia Woolfs reading “A Room of One’s Own.” In this reading the think that made me strongly think England was a patriarchy was when the girl hung herself it seemed like they were happy and that the world would be better without her. Another example is on pg 29 its reads “wise men never say what they think of women? Wise men never say anything else apparently….. What is so unfortunate is that wise men never think the same thing about women. The reading talks about how men don’t think anything of women and how they are not as important as men. They wonder if they are even capable of things such as education. When I looked in the newspaper this past week I was actually surprised to see the newspaper showed many stories of both sexes. There was the movie section, sports section of both male and female, there was also a job section. None of these topics in my opinion were headed in the direction towards male or female. I think it was actually pretty equal.

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Hw. 19 Pg 86 The Influence on Weblogs

Hw 19 Pg 86
What this paragraph on pg 86 of Kline and Burnsteins Web of Influence really means is weblogs is very important because it explains how if a weblog focuses on a topic that is ignored or not talked about as it should be, blogs can bring this back. In other words when people see the blogs and realize how important certain topics are the main stream media will concentrate more on the topic because they need to. This is basically what the paragraph explains. It also talks about how blogs talk about national debates for example, racial profiling at airports and keeping the media focused on scandals that probably would have not been talked about if it wasn’t for bloggers finding this information important and taking the initiative to write about it. This paragraph also talks about how blogs are filled with teenagers which is great because this shows that people of all different ages can speak their opinions. Many teenage kids have great ideas but no policymaker would ever make the effort to hear them out. Blogs do just this; give many people the chance to influence policymaker’s decisions which is great for our country.

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Hw 18 Sexy Anna Rexia

My least favorite post in “ the blogs I’m watching” this week is Eek, it's Sexy Anna Rexia! The link to this blog is http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2007/10/04/anorexia/index.htm. This blog was most disturbing to me because they are basically making fun of anorexia in this article. Anorexia is a huge disease among girls especially in this day and age. I think that is absolutely horrible that someone would go as far as making a joke costume out of it. I had a friend who went through anorexia and if she ever saw someone wearing that costume it would have been extremely hard for her and have made her even more uncomfortable. I don’t think this is a very funny joke at all. “But of course, it's not supposed to be repugnant and chilling, but sexy and so, so fun” This quote is especially disturbing for me to even think that someone who is anorexic could be considered sexy.

Hw 17B Which blog would be more influential

Ok. Well I’m a little confused on the question” which blog would be more likely to influence the way you would vote in a coming election. I suppose the interview with Markos Moulitsas Zuniga would be more inflectional to me in the way I vote for a coming election. I mean it sounds as if Markos really has his stuff together and takes it very seriously. His blog is doing fantastic and it keeps getting better. This is even more impressive considering this is his second job. For his blog to be doing this good on top of another job really shows he knows what he’s talking about. Ana Marie Cox on the other hand, who I feel like is kind of just taking a long term vacation, is In a way just having fun with her job, not doing a great deal or work and just taking some time to be lazy. This is defiantly not a bad thing. She just take her job a lot less serious than Markos does so obviously going with Markos on this would defiantly be the better choice.

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Hw. 17 Not Funny

I chose Not Funny By Jill on Business on “Blogs I’m watching” I thought this article was very informative in many ways but, In the first sentence it says “this woman has been stalked..” whose this women? It was very well written. All the grammar seemed to be used in the right way. This post was actually very disturbing to me. I feel bad for this lady. She must have gone through a lot within the last year. Being stocked is definitely not a joke in any way. This lady must have been extremely offended when she saw this shirt. The blog I got this off of is called “charlotte observer” and I found it at: http://www.charlotte.com/news/story/293341.html "Some say it's stalking, I call it love." This was the quote on the T-shirt. This is certainly not funny because being stoked is very different is than being loved. Love is mutual but being stocked is certainly not welcome by any means. I picked this blog because I find it very interesting what this lady has to go through and how this shirt upsets her very much.

Hw 16 B: Five Pillars

Robert Scoble believes that there are five main pillars of conversational software that made blogging hot. To start off Scoble talks about something called RSS which is the technology that corporations should pay more attention to than even blogging. (Kline and Burstein 130)RSS stand for "really simple syndication" which basically just means it allows a blogger to offer his Weblog for people to subscribe to, as well as to integrate links and news from other websites. This is where the five pillars come in. the first pillar is called “ease of publishing” in order to have a blog that people want to use you need to make it easy and simple for them to use the blog. The second pillar is called “discoverability” you need to make your blog noticeable, you need to make it easy for people to discover. Make it interesting and well liked by everyone. The third pillar is “cross-site conversations” make it so you don’t have to stick to one topic. Make it so that people aren’t sacred to change the topic. The forth pillar is “permalinking” which will make it easier to bring me directly to a post. And the fifth pillar “syndication” This helps you see a large number of sites. This helps you out when your blogosphere starts to get bigger.