hw25: baghdad burning

The main focus of the foreword and the introduction in the book "Baghdad Burning" is the war in Iraq and the history behind it. In the foreword we are told about a girl who is known as Riverbend. Throughout the book, the young girl tells her story about what it was like to be living in Iraq during the war. Souief says that Riverbend’s story "makes painful reading", he goes on to say that "it also makes enjoy-able– even fun reading." and that it is "certainly necessary reading" (Souief, ix). The introduction is much different than the foreword. The introduction, written by James Ridgeway, is a basic outline of the war on Iraq. Ridgeway does a good job of writing about the beginning of the war and all of the details that surround it. He goes in depth about the specifics of how many people are effected by the war and the invasion on Iraq by our country. My own interpretations of the war on Iraq are similar to those in the text. I am not personally effected by the war, but I do realize what is happening and how this is an on going battle that is effecting many people’s lives. I am interested to continue reading about the life of Riverbend during the time of the war.

hw24: a room of my own

I have a room of my own, I actually have two rooms of my own. Both of my rooms sum up my life in general pretty well. My room at home is an average sized bedroom with the normal bedroom furniture in it. What makes my bedroom at home different from the one I have at school is that it has more of my character and personal touches to it. By personal touches I mean that there are more pictures of things that I love, like my family and friends, and there are more things in there that sum up my accomplishments in life. There are also little nick-nacks in my bedroom at home that show more of my personality. This isn’t to say that my room at school is boring and has no personal flare, but it just doesn’t have as much. I feel like I can’t bring everything from my room at home to my room at school because there isn’t really as much room here as at home. It’s also more difficult to bring little things from home and put them here because I’m sharing this room with another person and she has to have some room to live too. I do still have pictures of family and friends and things like that all around my room at school, just not as much as I do at home. I feel that Virginia Woolf would be able to appreciate both of my rooms because they are anything but boring and bland and they show a lot about how women’s lives have come a long way. It seems as though that the room she was put in was boring and bland and there wasn’t much to it because women weren’t really allowed to have their say in anything, especially what they wanted their rooms to look like. Woolf writes "if we escape little from the common sitting room and see human beings not always in their relation to each other but in relation to reality.." (Woolf, 113). It seems to me that Woolf believes that women and men should not be constrained to one particular way of thinking or living and that they should react toward the opposite sex and anything that happens in their live realistically. Woolf further supports my opinion of wanting to live life realistically by saying "Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen" (Woolf, 82).

hw21: dear ethan

Hey Ethan,
I know reading the first chapter of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own is kind of tricky, but I’ll help you get through it. At first, I didn’t really understand what she was talking about either, then I read it over again, slowly, and finally understood it. Basically, in the first chapter of this book, Woolf is talking about women and fiction. She says that a woman should have her own room and money to write fiction. Woolf spends most of the first chapter on a river bank at Oxbridge wondering about women and fiction. She talks about women and college and how the whole idea of it started and wonders why women have always been so poor. The weird thing about this book, is that the narrator isn’t Virginia Woolf herself, she says that it doesn’t really matter who is telling this story.. that’s why it’s still a little confusing to me. Your English teacher might find this book to be important because it’s a different way of showing a person’s opinion and their feelings. She also might find this an important piece of work because it shows a different type of insight into the accomplishment of women over the years. I hope this helped you a little, if you need anything else just let me know!
-Em

hw17: cox and zuniga

I enjoyed reading the second article with Ana Marie Cox. I felt as though Cox had some funny things to say. Although I have never gotten the chance to actually see Ana Marie Cox or read any of her work, I think that they would be interesting to read and watch. It seems like regardless of how many different jobs and different experience Cox has had, she still manages to make light of the subject and to have a good time doing it- and I think that is the best way to approach things. I found the other interview with Zuniga a little boring and not all that exciting. Politics and things of that nature do not really appeal to me unless they have a direct impact, so I can not really understand where he is coming from and why things like that are so important to him. I do however, enjoy reading the interviews in this book- I feel like they are a good way to show how blogging is used by different people doing different types of things with their lives.

hw18: least favorite blog post

I personally did not enjoy any of the bloglines that I am watching this week. None of the blogs seemed to interest me at all for some reason this week. I feel like on every blog post I read, they all were talking about the same things- whether it be about Hillary Clinton, or sex scandals in a men’s bathroom. To me, none of this was interesting or worth reading. I do not really like how on some of the blog posts, they are only a short paragraph, I feel like sometimes that is not enough for me to get a good opinion or judgement about the post to decide whether or not I liked it. I hope that next week there are more interesting and exiting blogs worth reading and posting about, I am anything but thrilled about this weeks bloglines posts.

hw16: what a laugh

One of the blogs I chose to watch was the Wonkette: DC gossip. I found an interesting post about Hillary Clinton’s laugh and how much it apparently bothers some people. I find it slightly amusing that people are more concerned with a person’s laugh than with what they have to say. Sure, I agree that sometimes the laugh can be a little annoying and not something I would necessarily choose to listen to, however I will listen to her opinions and beliefs on running our country and I will give her the benefit of the doubt. In this blog post, the writer is assuming that she laughs when she lies. Something about this post makes me a little concerned with how the voting may turn out in the upcoming election. If people are voting primarily based on looks, or laughs in this case, then I’m not too sure how things will end up next November.

hw16: five pillars

On page 130 of Kline and Bernstein’s "Blog!", there is an interview with Robert Scoble. One of the questions he is asked is about "RSS" and why it seems to be so important and how it will help the evolution of blogging. Robert goes on talking about the five things that have made blogging hot. He says that there are basically five pillars of conversational software. They include ease of publishing, discoverability, cross-site conversations, permalinking and finally syndication. It is to my understanding that the ease of publishing and discoverability most likely would mean how simple it is to start a blog about whatever you would like, and how easy it is for someone to discover your blog. Cross-site conversations most likely means that throughout the blog site, it is easy for people to talk about the different blogs they have read and start up new conversations and ideas for other blogs. Permalinking is simply just being able to place a link in a blog that will link the reader to that specific topic. And finally, syndication is to make multiple copies of that blog post or blog response. These five pillars help to describe the blogging world at its best.