HW 27 Baghdad Burning

After prereading and skimming the book “Baghdad Burning” by Riverbend it allowed me to get an idea of what the book may be about and what I may learn from the book. I think that I will learn a lot about the war going on in Iraq. But not just the about the stuff we hear in the everyday news, like the number of causalities or what part of Iraq is being rated next but what its like to be living in these conditions. For example, when skimming the book I found information on how females are not allowed to leave there house alone, they must have two larger males escort them to where ever they may go (Riverbend, pg 16). In the news we don’t hear about the terrible living conditions not only the females have to live in but everyone in Iraq. I also think this book fits into our course because it is about a young women who is blogging. She is using blogging to be able to communicate and show others the difficulties she has to live with that no one from America or any other country can witness.

HW 25 Baghdad Burning

After reading the foreword and introduction to “Baghdad Burning” by Riverbend it allowed me to get a better understanding of what Iraq and the its people are going through with the war. The foreword talks a lot about what is going to happen in the book and what its main points are going to be. It describes Riverbend and her family and how she posts blog not about the causalities or the American soldiers but what its like to be a normal Iraqi living through these terrible times. While the introduction talks about all the events leading up to the war in Iraq today. For example, the introduction talks about how all the following wars such as the Gulf war have effected the war that is going on today. Many say that Iraq had never fully recovered from the Gulf War and that is one of the main problems why Iraq is without electricity, food, and jobs today. Without electricity doctors are not able to perform the proper surgeries and don’t have enough medicines to cure everyone. Without enough food many children are dying because they are not malnourished and without jobs people are not getting enough money to support themselves and their families.

HW24 A Room's of Ones Own

After reading the final chapters in “A Room of One’s Own” by Virginia Woolf I have considered what Woolf says about where we have come in history and I believe she thinks that things are changing and women are beginning to have the same rights as men. For example, she states “Also, I continued, looking down at the page again, it is becoming evident that women, like men, have other interests besides the perennial interest of domesticity.” (Woolf Virginia, pg 83). This shows that women are now able to publish books but have different ideas than men do. Also she always says "Intellectual freedom depends upon material things. Poetry depends upon intellectual freedom. And women have always been poor, not for two hundred years merely, but from the beginning of time. . . . Women, then, have not had a dog's chance of writing poetry. That is why I have laid so much stress on money and a room of one's own." (Woolf, Virginia pg 108 ) This is why she believes that women were so unfortunate because they didn’t have the money that men did so it left them with less opportunities.

HW 23 Responding to Virginia Woolf

“With Apologies to Virginia Woolf”
After reading “A Room of One’s Own” by Virginia Woolf I have gotten the impression that Woolf is a very outspoken and opinionated writer. For example, after she was rejected from the library because she wasn’t a male or wasn’t escorted by a professor she became very angry and said she would never step foot in the library again. And after I looked at this weeks blog on jezebel I found one that I thought Woolf would appreciate. The name of the blog was “A Lifesaver Called Plumpynut" and had talked about how the malnutrition of poor children and women have been killing million of people each year. I think after Woolf read this post she would think that it was unfair that only the children and women where suffering and the husbands and fathers were doing nothing about to help them. I would also think that she would she would criticize the fact that a male has found this new product that is saving millions of lives. She would joke, saying oh of course a male found it, women aren’t smart enough and don’t have enough talent to every make something of this power.

HW 22 Responding to Virgina Woolf

After reading chapter two of A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf I see why she thinks that England is patriarchy. I think that Woolf said the paper proved that England is a patriarchy because it talks about how men always have the power. For example, she talks about how Professor von X has the power to control everything. “ Nobody in their senses could fail to detect the dominance of the professor” (pg 33) this quote proofs that many people had believed that the professor was very powerful and they would listen to anything he said. After looking at the New York Times I don’t believe that the United States is patriarchy. When looking at all the articles on the front page there was a huge diversity, from articles about true love to what’s going on in Pakistan. This shows that both women and men have the same say in the United States and there is a freedom of speech.

HW 21 Responding to Virginia Woolf

Hi John,
After reading A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf I understand that it is a little difficult to follow but I will try to give you my interruption of what happens in chapter one. Virginia has been asked to talk about the topic Women and fiction. She goes on to state “a women must have money and a room of her own if she wants to write fiction”. I believe when she says this she means that a women needs her independence and needs to escape from everyone to be able to explore. Also in the first chapter Woolf is not able to go into the library without a male or a letter giving her permission. After being rejected she becomes angry and says she will never go back to the library. She later goes on to go to lunch where she feels it is different and not as same as the lunches before the war. This gets her thinking about how women aren’t very wealthy and don’t have many possessions. For example, when they get money they give it to there husbands which leaves them with nothing. I think English teachers might consider this important work because the way Woolf goes into detail is very important. She describes everything so elaborately it gives the reader the feeling that they are there in the story with her. And because of this it is difficult at times to understand what exactly she is trying to get at.

HW 19 Applying Graff chapter 10 to Drenzer and Farrells "Web of Influence"

After reading “Web of Influence” the Foreign Policy article by Daniel Drezner and Henry Farrell (Kline and Burstein 83-97) I found the paragraph that had talked about how blogs affect politics in regimes where there is no thriving independent media sector to be very interesting and important. For example, it had talked about how in many countries there were few ways to express your feelings on politics but blogs had become a popular way to do so because they were harder to control than television and newspaper. Although blogs aren’t as easy to control the governments are still finding ways to block blogs by restricting internet or by using the punishment of others as examples. In other words in the next couple of years blogs in other countries are going to be just as easy to control as television and newspapers. I believe that this is importance because politics play a huge role in how your country is ran and I think that everyone should have a say in what they believe in. In conclusion I think that its is important that people are using blogs as a way to express there feelings and I don’t think that should be taken away from them.

HW18 Your least Favorite Blog of the Week

After looking online at www.globalvoicesonline.com I found many of the blogs to be very significant and helpful to the average person. But one blog caught my eye, Sumo Wrestling Takes a Beating by Jens Wilkinson. This post talked about sumo wrestling and how ““Japan’s traditional sport” was being harmed by the influx of “foreign wrestlers” and “Japan’s traditional sport.” It had also talked about a former sumo wrestler,
Asashoryu who had faked having a mental disorder do to criticism but had preceded to go back to his home town and play soccer. I found this blog to have little significance. This Blog I believe had little effect on people and did not help anyone. I also believe that blog was poorly written. It was very short and did not have much detail to it. That is why I believe that the blog Sumo Wrestling Takes a Beating by Jen Wilkinson was my least favorite blog of the week.

HW 17B Applying Graff to chapter 9 to Cox or Zuniga

After reading “Blogging the Presidency” and “ Sex, Lies, and Political Scrapes” (Kline and Burstein) and looking at both Wonkette and Daily Kos I think that “Blogging the Presidency” along with Daily Kos would influence they way I vote in the upcoming election. This is because Markos Moulitsas Zuniga blogging seems to more serious and contains more usual information than Ana Marie Cox’s blogs. I don’t believe that Cox’s blogs are useless but to me they seem like they are directed at a more personal level rather than political. For example,she had linked to Jessica Culters link that had descriptions of sexual scenes in her office where as Zuniga is blogging about how the democrats are more greedy than the republicans. When I got to vote I’m not going to go look into the persons personal live I’m going to look at what they have done to effect the communities around us and what they are doing to help the world. That is why “Blogging the Presidency” by Markos Moulitsas Zuniga would influence my decision when voting in the next election.

HW 17 Your favorite blog post of the week!

After looking at the three “Blogs I’m Watching” I found that http://www.globalvoicesonline.org had had the most interesting posts. This post was named Hondura’s: Hurricanes Felix Creates a Blogstorm (http://wwwglobalvoicesonline.org/2007/09/04/Honduras-hurricane-felix-creates-a-blogstorm). Honduras: Hurricane Felix Creates a Blogstorm was a blog that had talked about the recent hurricane that is approaching the Nicaragua shore and dangers it may bring to the community. For example, because Felix is moving inland across the mountains of Honduras the Honduran government evacuated tourists and over 2000 people from both Honduran island of Roatan and the other low-lying coastal areas (Honduras: Hurricane Felix Creates a Blogstorm). Also on this post Aaron Ortiz talks about some of the most major hurricanes that have effected the islands in the past. For example, he talked about hurricane Mitch that hit down in 1998. Mitch was a category five storm, lasted for three days, and had killed only ten people. I thought this post was interesting because it would have never occurred to me that there where post about weather and other natural disasters. It also had a lot of helpful information about when the hurricane was suppose to touch down and the strength of the storm. I also found this post was helpful because it was like a support system for the people who where dealing with this terrifying issues.

HW 16 Response to Batelle

After reading “Blogs: Humanizing the Face of Corporate American- An Interview with Robert Scoble” (Klein & Burstein 124-134) it allowed me to have a better understanding of what the five things that had made blogging hot (a.k.a five pillars) mean. One- “Ease of publishing” this means that the publishing of a blog is a lot easier and more open for editing than books. Two- “discoverability” means that its a lot easier for other people to discover your blog or product a lot faster because it is posted on the internet for free and is easier to locate. Three- “cross-site conversations” is when you are able to see who has been tracking your link and what they have to say about it. Four- “perm linking” is when you are able to isolate a link that can take you right to a specific post. Five- “syndication” is something that allows you to watch several sites at once which makes it easier for you when you have more than a hand full of links to keep track of. I got the following information from the interview with Robert Scoble.