HW 27: Annotated Bib

Riverbend. Baghdad Burning:Girl Blog From Iraq.The Feminist Press. New York 2005.

Baghdad Burning is about an a girl from Iraq that writes blogs about her daily life and the dangers she endures while living in Iraq during the time of war. Her blogs are so enticing that many of her readers begin to use them as their most important news source about things going on in Iraq. This book fits into the course Blog! because is the course we discuss how blogs are such a large phenomenon now and how many people do use them as a news source just like a newspaper and this book shows that the things we discuss are true. From reading this book, we will learn what it was like for this girl to live during the time of war and try to understand what war is like for anyone that's around it through their perspective. Many people think that Riverbend can not honestly be Iraqi because she has Internet access and the knowledge of how to use it but these are just horrible stereotypes that have been made about Iraqis.

HW 25: War, War and More War

In the foreward of the novel Baghdad Burning: Girl blog from Iraq written by Riverbend, the author whom is also the narrarator discusses her blog in which she writes about her adventures in Iraq. "I wish" "every person who e-mails me supporting the war,safe behind their computer, secure in their narrow mind and fixed views, could actually come and experience the war live" (Riverbend, vii). Riverbend is basically stating that although people may agree with the war, they really should experience the type of situations people in the war are placed into before that agree for it and send people out to fight. Her point of the foreward is to tell the audience that throughout the novel she is going to be telling her point of view on the war as it is experienced in her eyes. In the introduction, Riverbend describes her own characteristics and information about her blog. "And to many of her readers, these entries have become perhaps the most important source of news from Iraq" (Riverbend, xi). Riverbend does say that her blogs are important to others but this quote reaffirms that her blogs are so in depth and captivating that her readers use it as a news source. I think it is amazing that her blog is so interesting to other people that they are encouraged to learn and want to find out what is going on with the war instead of just agreeing or disagreeing with it. Riverbend also goes on to describe the Gulf War which occured during her teen years. She also discusses the war during 2003 which is still going on. Basically by the end of the introduction, Riverbend has discussed many important wars that have gone out throughout her life which she writes about in her blog on how it affected her life and why she now is in Iraq.

I support Soueif and Ridgeway when they say that after the war of 2003, the US never regained control to try and win or even stop the war, everything just got out of control and turned into and even bigger disaster then needed. With all the tragedies that had happened throughout the war, none of the money was spent on healthcare or sanitation in Iraq to try and help any of the people that got hurt within the disaster, all the money was spent on more weapons of mass destruction.

HW 24: A Room of My Own

We have made much progress since these which can easily be seen by how many books have been written by women, and simply the fact that women can do and go anywhere that they please without consent or being accompanied by someone. In the very beginning she finds a book written by Mary Carmicheal that she sits down to read. In the library she says "There are books on all sorts of subjects which a generation age no women would have touched" (Woolf 79). She is saying that a while ago all these books in this librarby would have never been toched by women until now because they were not allowed into the library.

As for a room of my own, I have two. I have one which is my dorm room and another at my home in Mass. Both rooms are extremely comfortable and a place for me to go an relax or just hang out. My room is a very important place to me because i spend so much time there whether it be doing work, watching television, or hanging out with friends. "The rooms differ so completely;...are hard as horsehair or soft as feathers" (Woolf 87). This quote may not be very important but to me it seems that she is saying that a room can be anything. A room can be calm or is can be thunderous, if a room is full of candles and beautiful aromas, it peaceful and calming. But if you walk into a room and it is dirty with loud music and dark, it's thunderous. My room is a light pink, with a black white and pink comforter,many pillows to match, pictures all over the wall and a large closet, to me it is peaceful to other people it may seem girly, or sporty with the trophies up on shelves, everyone has a different perspective on how a room may look to them.

HW 22: Patriarchy

Woolf said that the paper in England proved patriarchy because it is proving that men have more power and are more important then women. "A film actress had been lowered from a peak in California and hung suspended in mid-air" (Woolf 33). After she says this quote, she talks about the man in charge of the paper and how he can control almost everything in the world except for how foggy it is. When she says "With the exception of the fog he seemed to control everything" (Woolf 34) it shows how much power everyone in England really believes how much power this man has over all of the people. Although women do not have as much power as the man and it is foolish for them to even wish they had that same power, it seems as if all men are always writing about women. So although women are not as "important" as men, people are always talking and writing about women as if the world revolves around them.

I went and looked at the New York Times and I do not think that it would give someone the idea that the US was ran like England under a patriarchy. On the front page of the paper, it does not focus much on women vs. men or anything along those lines but mostly on government related topics.

HW 21: Dear Taylor

Dear Taylor,
I agree with you 100% that this book is extremely difficult to read, not to mention that the beginning of books are never very intersting so it makes it harder to keep reading and comprehend what is happening. In the first chapter, the narrarator introduces herself as "Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmicheal or by any name you please-it is not a matter of any importance". She is basically saying that knowing her name is not imporant because it is going to be her that is known not necesarily by her name. She starts by discussing women and fiction and what is can mean. "A women must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction" (Woolf 4). What she means by this quote is that fiction is unsolved, it has many mysterys that anyone can interpret the stories how they want to and everyone person will do so differently. "Mary" attends a luncheon, at which she overhears a man humming a song about women and war but not in a positive light, which offends her. When hearing the song being hummed she thinks back to how at college, Oxbridge and Fernah, the women are inferior to men the women cannot even enter the library without a letter allowing them or the company of a student at fernham. After the luncheon, she then goes back and thinks to herself what she should write about, women and fiction but what to actually write about. Basically this chapter talks about the difference between men and women and how men were shown to be more powerful and important then the women back in these days. I as well am having a hard time understanding the completely basis of the chapter but I hope I helped you out!

HW 17B: DailyKos or Wonkette?

DailyKos would be more likely to influence the way I would vote in an upcoming election because the writers take it more seriously then the writers at Wonkette do. Markos Zuniga talks about how writing for DailyKos is more like a job because so many people read it and because it is such an important part of his life. He gets roughly 500,000 visitors daily to his site because he is so passionate about the elections that he writes about it is as if he is an expert. Ana Cox however discusses how while she is writing for Wonkette she can be lazy and not have to work very hard. Basically in that statement she is saying that it is not that important to her and that she does not do much where as DailyKos is a very serious blog site. Cox also says that she likes how the people that read her blogs feel like they have a connection or relationship with her but her writing for Wonkette is not the real her "Wonkette is me after too many margaritas". I just think that saying that also reduces any important value that people had of her blogs and kind of reduces her amount of people reading it because she is basically saying it's almost like made up stuff.

HW 19: Web of Influence

On page 85, Daniel Drezner and Henry Farrell in the second paragraph, talk about how blogs are having such a large impact on US Politics. Many blogs have discussed how peoples posts can have such a large impact on the outcomes of votes nad political elections and things but I just find it so hard to believe. My point is that although many people can go on and comment about who should win the election or what to vote on with their school board and things like that it seems that just because blogs are written and people are reading and commenting on them does not mean that people should be persuaded by something that a random person wrote on the internet. Trent Lott resigned as a U.S Senate majority leader in 2002 because of the inflamtory comments he had made at Sen. Strom Thurmonds 100th birthday party that people had been talking about in an online blog that had recieved major media coverage. Essentially, I am arguing that clearly using Trent Lott's issue, blog conversations really do have a large impact on people and the media but people should not be easily swayed with their opinions and decisions just by what has been put on the internet.

HW 18: Torture in the USA

I read a blog written on Feministe called Torture in the USA and I did not like this blog because the basis of it was just a little disturbing.http://www.feministe.us/blog/. This blog reports people kept in secret foreign prisons with no connections to lawyers or legitimate rules of the law. In these foreign prisons, the guards watch over the prisoners with cattle prods, stun guns and dogs in case they get out of line or act up. The guards use foul and unnecessary language when talking to the prisoners yelling out orders at them just to watch them suffer. Many of them men are ordered to strip naked while doing the orders for the guards so that when they do not do it right and a dog bites them of they get shot with the stun gun, it does more damage to their body. I acknowledge that it is important for people to know about the secret prisons and what goes on in them so that they can be stopped but it is just a disturbing article to be written about and they include a video showing what exactly goes on. I also think that Feministe does not have the reputation to be writing about prison camps and the brutality that goes on in them. It just seems weird that this blog was written on this particular page especially with such a disturbing video.

HW 17: Girls destined to be Babysitters?

I chose a blog called "Is it every little girls dream to babysit? One video game company thinks so" from the blog Jezebel.http://jezebel.com/gossip/low-score/is-it-every-little-girls-dream-to-babysit-one-video-game-company-thinks-so-306751.php I find this blog intersting girls love to shop and love clothes and who doesnt find babies adorable? But this blog discusses how becaues of stereotypes, girls dont like cars and war and so therefore they won't like bloody, or racing video games. But recently studies have shown that women own gaming consoles (they often hold many of the high scores). World of Warcraft is atleast 40% shopping but shopping is not only what girls like. Shopping is definatly one of the popular things that girls love to do, however; it is not the only thing that they do in their spare time and video games made for girls should not only support those stereotypes of typical girl video games. Ubisoft games that have been made for girls ages 6-14 have mostly been games promoting, babies, fashion design and girly sports games which many girls may enjoy to play but some may prefer other games. Alice Taylor argues that just because babies and clothes are popular with any age girl, that Ubisoft's new line of "girl-orientated" video games is basically supporting the stereotype of girls only liking girly things.

HW 16: Five Pillars of Conversational Software

Scoble discusses five things that made blogging hot, these five things he refers to as the five pillars of converstional software. The first pillar that he talks about is "ease of publishing".When Scoble refers to what made blogging hot and says that it has a lot to do with the ease of publishing, it means that it is simple and a quick task to write a blog and have it published. Publishing a blog can take up to 3 minutes, where as publishing a book can take years. Blogging is an easy way for people to put their opinions out there without taking a longtime, therefore their thoughts can be published easily. The second pillar is "discoverability". If a person writes a blog for the public to see, anyone can read it, a journalist, a movie director and keep track of them over time if the blog catches their interest. If a director is reading someones blog everyday, and he see's potential for that person as a writer or actor, that person could easily be discovered as was Scoble by a Microsoft executive because the executive followed his blogs for five months. The third pillar that made blogging hot was "cross-site conversations". When Scoble refers to cross-site conversations, I am not sure directly what he means but he says that he can see who is linking him with trackbacks. So I assume that it means if someone is to read his blog they can go back and forth and recieve updates for when Scoble writes a new blog so that they can go read the blog immediatly. The fourth pillar was "permalinking". Permalinking means that if a person is looking for a blog written about a certain topin, they can type in any key word that may be used in the blog and it will take them directly to a post written about or using the key words. Such as when looking for something using Google, a person types in the key words that they need to find information about and many links come up. The same thing can be done with blog posts. Then the last pillar that Scoble chats about is "syndication". Syndication is a large word that i am not famliar with but Scoble says "I never had to give any marketing information or my email address and it just organized itself" (Kline and Burstein 130). It makes sense to me that when Scoble talks about the fifth pillar syndication, he means that he can see many peoples blogs, and possibly even comment if he feels the need without having to give a the blog writers all of their information to just lookover their blogs. Basically because this person has a blog and it is open to the public eyes, anyone can read it without having the writers permission and having to give them all of their information. These five points, also referred to as the pillars of conversational software by Robert Scoble, are the five important things that made blogging such a hot phenomenon.

HW 14: Joi Ito's Interview

In Joi Ito's interview they ask him what he thinks about the blogging phenomenon of 2005 and he says that the tools to create and publish content have become affordable where as it used to require a good amount of money to become any type of creater or publisher. In other words, years ago to become an investore required money, a good education and many other things, but now you can have any type of job and manage to be a blogger, creater or anything without being wealthy. Along the same lines, Ito discusses how things are the computer are connected to the network so they are basically not in the owners control, any computer can get virus's and spam regardless of what protecters they have set up on the computer. In addition to people being able to read about, write about, and comment on whatever they want, in blogs it is very easy to ignore something that it not important to the reader, or if someone writes something interesting it is easy to find it.