HW 25: Intro to Riverbend

In the book version of Bagdad Burning, Ahdaf Soueif provided a Foreword and James Ridgeway provided an Introduction to Riverbend’s blog posts on the war in Iraq. In the Foreword, Soueif gives an overall overview of the material that Riverbend will be writing about in her blog. Soueif uses many quotations from Riverbend’s blog. He says that “Bagdad Burning makes painful reading. It also makes enjoyable--even fun--reading.” He also states that “English-speaking readers are incredibly lucky that this young Iraqi woman has written her narrative straight into English…” This makes Bagdad Burning earlier to understand because us readers will not be caught in the translation problems and we will be able to understand Riverbend better (Soueif, ix). I just disagree with one of Riverbend‘s quotations in the Foreword, “Why does being anti-Bush and anti-occupation have to mean that a person is anti-American?” (Soueif, viii). I think that you can still be pro-American and anti-Bush. We live in a society that respects civilians even if they dislike their president. In the Introduction James Ridgeway speaks mainly about the history of Iraq. He splits up the history based on the influence that major wars have had on Iraq, including World War I and World War II ,the Gulf War , the Cold War, and the 2003 War. Ridgeway also speaks about Riverbend’s blog. From his opinion, “…her war becomes your war. You begin to see things through her eyes and those of her family..” (Ridgeway, xii). I thought this was a nice touch to the Introduction because Ridgeway does not just feed dry information about Iraq. Ridgeway also gives the reader harsh realities of Iraq, mortality rates and other statistics. “… [after the reconstruction] just 2 percent of the $18.4 billion earmarked for the urgent reconstruction of Iraq had been spent. Not a penny was spent on healthcare or water sanitation.” (Ridgeway, xvii) Thus soldiers were handing out $100 bills to civilian for helping out on street repair. Overall both the foreword and the introduction give helpful information about Bagdad Burning.

HW 24: A "Room" of solitude

Woolf believes that a woman should have a room of her own and money to write fiction and I believe that I have a room of my own. I have my dorm room and my bedroom at home. But when Woolf says that a woman should have a room of her own, I don’t think that it necessarily has to be a room, but a place where you can be by yourself and think in solitude. I am from a big family and usually there are six other people in the house, so it is hard to think in my room when there is chose going on. I found this spot in the woods by a pond, that I would often go to. There I would take in the atmosphere and reflect on the thoughts I had gathered there. Then I was able to have a clear mind to write on my xanga or poetry. According to Woolf, woman must also have money to write fiction. Woolf writes, “…give her a room of her own and five hundred a year…and she will write a better book one of these days.” Woolf is saying that if Mary Carmichael has her own space to write and is given five hundred a year, she will be a better writer. I am fortunate enough that my parents can afford to put me through college, which is where the whole money issue ties in. I am able to write because I was taught how too and I perfected by writing in my “room.” Woolf states, “…there have been at least two colleges for women in existence in England since the year 1866; that after the year 1880 a married woman was allowed by law to possess her own property; and that in 1919-which is a whole nine years ago-she was given a vote?” (Woolf 112). I think that society also impacted woman’s inability to publish writing because they had no rights and no education. Just think Almost 90 years ago woman just received the right to vote. In my opinion education is like having a room of your own and without education you are unable to write adequately.

HW 23: "What Woolf May Say to Salon"

With Apologies to Virginia Woolf

Last night while educating myself with the happenings of the world, I stumbled upon most disturbing article named Roundup: Pole dancing for preteens at http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/index.html. I could not believe my eyes. We as woman must fight for are pride and dignity and here we have children as young as seven years disrespecting their bodies. FOR IT IS A PERENNIAL PUZZLE WHY (Woolf, 41) the mothers of these daughters are allowing this disrespect to our SEX. One mother PREACHE, "its not slutty or anything. I've seen pole dancing on TV and they don't do anything like that here. It's building up her strength ... She's much stronger, healthier and more confident." How could one EARNESTLY have such feelings? The world today views pole dancing as a sexual act and now our daughters are par taking in this act. I am disturbed. I also stumbled upon the article at Salon Sex under Durex. The title I thought was speaking about our gender, but as I read the article I found the article spoke about sexual acts. The author, whom is a woman I might add, is openly talking about unprotected and protected sex. This is strange. I am not used to reading woman’s work and let alone sex. This is just quite awkward. I am entused to read a woman’s work, but I think she should write about something more conservative.

HW 22: Patriarchy in England

In chapter two of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, Woolf discusses the topic of patriarchy. Patriarchy is where a father figure and males have authority and it refers to a social situation where men are dominant over women in wealth, status and power. At the time Woolf was writing her paper, England saw men as the dominate sex. In chapter two, Woolf discusses what women are not allowed to do. For example, women were not allowed to write books about men (page 27) and women must drink water while men drink wine (page 25) . Woolf wished that one day woman would be able to participate in the same activities as men and now they indeed do. Woolf stated,” The most transient visitor to this planet, I thought, who picked up this paper could not fail to be aware, even from this scattered testimony, that England is under the rule of a patriarchy” (Woolf 33). On the front page of the Boston Globe today, the President and the Dali Lama are featured on the front page. This could be considered to be patriarchy because our government is mainly made up of males. Every single President we have had has been male and only males have run for president except for Hillary Clinton.

HW 21: Dear Pokey

Dear Pokey (aka my little sis),

Chapter One of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, may seem hard to understand. It’s different than most styles of writing. Basically, Virginia Woolf is writing an essay from a different persona. Woolf believes that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." This also can be expressed as her thesis. What makes chapter one so confusing is that the narrator explains why a woman must have money an a room of her own if she is to write fiction. The narrator comes to this assumption over two consecutive days in October. The narrator also states some facts through the reading such as women were not allowed on the grass and were only allowed on the gravel. Women also were not able to enter college libraries unless they were with a man or had prior permission. The narrator visits two colleges in the first chapter, an all male college and an all women college. She made comparisons about the two by referring to the meal consumed. At the male college, the meal was spectacular with lots of wine and delicious meat. At the female college, the meal was mediocre with plain gravy soup.
I think Woolf means to explain why women should have a creative room to write fiction. She wants to share a story through her eyes. The random occurrences throughout the day show the restrictions woman had and how it was so hard to “write fiction” because woman were not seen to be creative.
Now how could this be important? Well you are learning about the rights that woman had many years ago. Woolf wrote this book in 1929 in her diary during the war. You are able to learn a great deal of history through this book. The message that Woolf wanted to get across was “I wanted to encourage the young women-they seem to get fearfully depressed.”
When I first read through this work I was confused myself. I had to go back and read it a second time to understand it better, but over all I thought the work was interesting. It is not the style of writing we are used to today. I think you will learn a lot from this work. I hoped I answered your question!

Your big sis,
Stephanie

HW 19: Use blogs to get fast information!

I analyzed the paragraph at the bottom of page 88 of Web of Influence. Although some readers may object that the blogopshere makes it less time consuming for the outside world to acquire information, I would answer that is false. In this paragraph, in short, the author is trying to get to the point that blogs allow us to acquire summaries in a very easy manner. Where if you were watching the news, it may take 15 minutes for them to cover the story you wish to view. Daniel W. Drezner and Henry Farrell say “ The comparative advantage of blogs in political discourse, as compared to traditional media, is their low cost of real-time publication.” In sum, then, traditional media will make more money off of the political world then blogs will. Also when blogs are confronted with an error it can easily be fixed by updating their post or correcting their post. Overall blogs are useful and very helpfully for getting information fast!

HW 18: "Plastic Mommies" can appreciate motherhood too

My least favorite post of the week appeared on Salon (http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2007/10/04/plastic_moms/index.html). The blog post, Plastic Mommies, is a response to a New York Times article about different surgeries to repair mother’s bodies back to new. These “mommy makeovers” or “mommy jobs” consist liposuction, a tummy tuck and breast repair. On the blog post, Carol Lloyd says “For me, the advent of the mommy makeover is dismaying because motherhood has offered many of us an escape hatch from self-consciousness. Suddenly your body, after decades of experiencing its value as societal eye candy, transcends culture. It becomes food, furniture; it makes a life. That women are now paying to cut those vestiges from their bodies -- to erase that history -- seems not only self-loathing but misanthropic as well.” From what Lloyd says, she makes it sound like you don’t appreciate motherhood if you get plastic surgery. These mothers are probably spending thousands of dollars to get plastic surgery because they don’t feel sexy or beautiful anymore. It’s not like if you get plastic surgery you’re a bad mother or you don’t appreciate being a mother. I think it’s great if a mother chooses to get plastic surgery and if she chooses not to that’s great as well. Pregnancy does a toll on a woman’s body, and it’s amazing that we now have the technology to allow woman to feel better about them self through plastic surgery.

HW 17b: Zuniga's influence on my political beliefs

I’m not quite sure how to answer the question regarding Marie Cox’s blog and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga’s blog, Which blog would be more likely to influence the way you would vote in a coming election? I don’t think I would look to a blog for political advise, but if I were to it would be Zuniga’s blog. On the other hand Zungia say’s “I don’t have many swing voter reading DailyKos,” so it sounds like it would be hard to be influenced on the up coming election by his blog. Anyway, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga first started his blog to vent about the Afghanistan war. His blog continued to grow and grew even more once Jerome Armstrong’s blog shut down. Zuniga is a democrat and it appears that he tells the truth on touchy subjects concerning both political parties. In the political world that is hard to find, so I admire that about Zuniga. The reason why I wouldn’t visit Marie Cox’s blog to obtain information about the upcoming election is that Cox’s appears to take everything as a joke. It appears that Cox does not take the political world seriously and she’s more concerned with sex scandals than politics. For example, Cox linked her blog to Jessica Cutler’s blog and Cutler was fired for writing anonymous sexualized adventures that took place in her office on her blog, Cox didn’t even feel bad that Cutler got fired. Cox stated “Plus it’s hard to feel bad for someone who’s that dumb.” I just don’t think Cox has the right to judge in this situation. Cox doesn’t even care if she ruins someone’s day. In my personal opinion, I would definitely choose to read Zuniga’s blog over Cox’s blog any day. Even if Zuniga’s blog didn’t influence me to vote democratic, I still think I would have learned something important from his blog. Where if I read Cox’s blog, I think I would just be wasting my time.

HW 17: My Favorite Post on Solon: Broadsheet

On Solon: Broadsheet blog at http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/index.html, Lynn Harris published a post named Planned Parenthood will see you now. In this post Harris announces that a new planned parenthood opens in Aurora, Illinois. This opening was originally delayed by a specious protest. These protester tried everything in their power to shut down planned parenthood, mainly because they perform abortions. Protester said that planned parenthood committed fraud by identified themselves as "Gemini Development, LLC.” Later in court, planned parenthood was found that they were not breaking any state laws or city ordinances. In Harris post it is said that most of the women that come into the clinic come in for health care services, contraceptives or STD tests. She says that the woman who come for abortions, usually don’t receive another because they are educated at the clinic about safe sex. These Protesters have a right to protest about how they feel about abortions, but they should remember to do it in a respectful manner. Luckily at this opening the protesters were peaceful. In Lynne Harris words, “Women exercise their right to receive legal health services; protesters exercise their right to protest. In that sense, everybody wins.”
What I found most entertaining about this post was a response by Jebldmm. Jebldmm left the comment, “Protesting at Planned Parenthood to prevent abortions...
...is like protesting at a cancer treatment center to prevent lung cancer.” I just thought it was a witty remark.

HW 16b: Scobler's view on Blogs

In Blogs: Humanizing the Face of Corporate American, an interview with Robert Scoble, Scoble explains what makes blogging “hot”(Klein and Burstein p.130). Scoble presents five pillars of conversational software in his interview. He first mentions that blogs were the first to “ease of publishing.” What Scoble means by this is that blogs are very easy to publish things on. Blogs are mainly free or inexpensive and blogs allow everyone to write about the weather, politics or their feelings. The list is endless. Second, blogs were “discoverability.” Blogs enable people to get discovered with music, businesses, and their writing. All of this was possible due to tags and pings, which allows easy access to topics. Third, blogs were “cross-site conversations.” This allowed the people with blogs to add links to other people’s blogs and vice versa. This permitted bloggers to see who was accessing their blog. Fourth, blogs were “permalinking.” This permits bloggers to directly access a post by just clinking on a link on their blog. Lastly, blogs were “syndication.” Bloggers are able to benefit from this pillar because it allows them to keep educated about the topics they want to know. In other words it keeps bloggers in the loop in a easy way. Scoble’s five pillars are just some of the benefits of blogging. Blogging over all is an easy way to find out information and express how you feel.

HW 14: Joi Ito Transitionrama!

Although Joi Ito uses his blog for many things, he mainly post questions and allows other people to comment to start dialogue. As a result he created a community of bloggers. It is true that Joi blogs for a living, but he refuses to let advertisers influence his blog. In Addition, Joi states “If it means that I have to have a day job to keep my blog the way I want it, then that’s the way I’ll do it.” In other words Joi rather write what he wants to write and not be influence by money just to write what others want him to write.
In comparison of blogs and phones, Joi finds that blogs give people a way to find out information that they would be afraid to find out through phones. For example, Joi speaks about his favorite blog, Reverend Akma’s blog, and left a message on his blog saying, “it’s all you religions tat believe in one god that are doing all the fighting, not like Shinto where we have multiple gods.” This resulted in a phone call of Reverend Akma explaining God to Joi because Reverend Akma was offended to hear this on his blog. Granted that Joi was uncomfortable with picking up the phone to call Reverend Akma, blogs gave Joi the confidence to find out the information he wanted to know.
Ultimately Joi is pro blogging, but he also recognizes the few problems that blogs do cause. For instance, Joi says “One risk for many of us is to delude ourselves into thinking that we are more inclusive than we are…So there is a risk of starting to think you are listening to everyone, even though those involved in your community actually represent only a certain part on the spectrum.” So what Joi means is that we shouldn’t get too involved with blogs because they only represent one idea, instead of a broad variety of people’s ideas.