HW 42: Third and Final Podcast

Gabcast! A Blog of One's Own #56

HW 36: Podcast

Gabcast! A Blog of One's Own #5




Our Podcast is Episode #5

HW 35: Letter to My Readers

Throughout the course A Blog of One's Own, I have maintained this blog over a 13 week period because it was involved with my homework assignments. From doing so, I have become to understand why blogging has become such a huge phenomenon, because it's so simple. When my teacher first mentioned blogging I thought "Oh no" this is going to be so much work to read and write a blog about it, but it turned out to be the complete opposite. For the future, I hope that my blog can help other students enrolled in this class that need help understanding the reading or just to get an idea of how the blog is used for the class. As well as I hope that my blog is informing and interesting for any other people out there reading it. I feel most proud about on all the blogs, I was able to fulfill the requirement easily, after doing the reading even if I did not understand the chapter completely, I was still able to complete the assignment with the knowledge that I did have of the story or chapter. After this course ends, I do not think that I will continue to write blogs but I will not be deleting it. I think that I will keep the blogs up so that later on I can look back at and kind of like an old photo album that are juts fun to look back at or like a diary from when you were a kid that you can look back at and remember the things you discuss in it. There is not much else I wish to tell me readers except that blogs are a simple thing to use for any type of communication that you want to have and that writing in a blog is not necessarily something you can explain but kind of like something you have to experience for yourself.

HW 34: Why Gold's So Important and What evening tea means to Iraqi's

All cultures and all people love gold, it's pretty, looks delicate and is a nice gift for any occasion. In Iraq gold is a way for the people to say money or earn money becaues the value of gold does not fluctuate like the value of a dollar does. "People began converting their money to gold-earrings,bracelets, necklaces-because the value of gold didn't change" (Riverbend, 100). Often times, when the houses get raided, the troops clain that they take the gold because they find it hard to believe that people "like that" can actually own gold. But often times gold is given as presents at wedding and baby showers, etc. just like they are in our society. As a way of not getting their gold taken during the raids, many families often if they know there is going to be a raid put on all their gold jewelry and try to cover it up with their clothes such as bracelets that can be covered by long sleeves. Like gold, evening tea is also a large part of their life in Iraq. Tea is drinken at breakfast,midday,evening and with dinner. "Iraqi tea isn't a simple matter of teacups and teabags. If you serve "teabag tea" to an Iraqi, you risk scorn and disdain-a teabag is an insult to tea connoisseurs" (Riverbend, 108). Although Riverbend states the evening tea is not as formal as it sounds, the fact that they make tea a special way and serving teabags is unacceptable shows that evening tea is still quite important to their daily lives. At evening tea they have casual talk like families all over the world, but they also discuss blockades, war strategies, bombings, and politics. Reading this book has increased my knowledge of cultural literacy because even tho people say that everyone is unique and each place has it's own culture and is different, that is not necessarily true. Although we may do things different most places often do the same type of traditions but in a different form.

HW 33: Podcast, Challenges at a Girl's School

I chose to watch the podcast called "Challenges at a Girl's School in Baghdad". It was made on May, 21, 2007. The podcast talks about the Al Safina Middle School in Adhamiya serves kids all over Baghdad. In the podcast, the children discuss how regardless of all the violence going on that their education is very important and they plan to keep on learning and keep going to school. The director of Al-Safina, Jinan Jamal Mahmoud discusses that not only schools in Adhamiya have issues but schools in all districts because when the Americans are searching the area, certain roads and bridges are blocked off preventing the children as well as teachers from getting to school on some days. They question on of the girls and ask her if she is afraid of explosions and shooting that she hears and she answered "No" because she is used to the sounds. In many of the district schools, numbers of girls has dropped out and been forced to go to different schools because of the difficulties in getting to school and how is they miss school, it is hard for them to keep up in their studies. When they show the outside of the school, it has murals painted on the outside but not much color, faded almost, not many people outside because of the dangers.

For a viewer watching this video, it can show them the fears and issues that this war is having on young children and how it is even affecting their education which is unnecessary because education is one of the most important thing in a child's life.


http://aliveinbaghdad.org/2007/05/21/challenges-at-a-girls-school-in-baghdad/

HW 32: KBR

On page 78 in Baghdad Burning written by Riverbend, the Ministry of Oil tells S that if he is not part of KBR he should not bother to do anything. Everyone was wondering the same thing, who is KBR? What do they do? E. believed the KBR was a committe type group like the CPR, Riverbend though it was just another company. They finally learned after about a week that KBR stands for Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidary of Halliburton (Riverbend, 78). KBR works with construction and engineering for the communtiy. KBR is know for more then just constructing, in fact in 1997 KBR was sued 6 million dollars for overcharging the American army on Plywood. The Rashid Hotel is know the headquarters on Kellogg, Brown and Root. Riverbend says, that in other words, foreign companies can never own all of the oil industry but they can have a job in running it, just like they could never fully own Iraq but they can have a part in running the Governing Council.

HW 31: Al Amriyah Shelter

In Baghdad Burning Riverbend discusses the Depleted Uranium which I had no clue what it was. Riverbend said that the Depleted Uranium was a term that all Iraqi's knew of and that it had something to do with the rising cancer rate in Iraq. Riverbend dicusses how the depleted uranium poisoning affected children being born with no face, a single eye, or even three legs (Riverbend 47). After reading what Riverbend had said about the DU, I still was confused, after some research I found out that the DU is what is left after the removal of an isotope Uranium-235 (Wikipedia). In past year the DU has also been known as Q-metal, depletolly and D-38. Although it contains only Uranium, it is barely radioactive but the external radiation is about sixty percent of the same mass of uranium with the isotope. The DU is used for military weapons and because of its radioactivity it is toxic to mammals because of the compounds that are inside it. The organ that is at the greatest risk of being affected by DU is the kidneys. However, Wikipedia states that because it is weakly radioactive, the Depleted or Natural Uranium has never been proven to have resulted in human cancer.

HW 30: Citizenship Symposium 1,2 and 3

The Symposium at Keene State College that I attended was called "Citizens Gone Wild" and the speaker was Nancy Tobi. Nancy first started off by talking about Moses who led his people to freedom by democratic law. Nancy grew up in Lexington, Ma which is know as the birthplace of liberty. Nancy's speech mostly discussed about how the state of New Hampshire votes, and how their votes are counted. In New Hampshire all votes are supposed to be counted and sorted in an open meeting, but most often are not. Eighty-one percent of NH votes are counted by a secret vote counting software, which is not good because the only things that are supposed to be counted in private are the ballots. There are two ways that she discussed on how votes can be counted, a hand count vote with community counters, which is only about nine percent of how NH counts, and then the Diebold count which is eighty-one percent of how the voted are counted. In 2003, a CEO Wally O'Dell created the Diebold count and said "It's not who votes that counts, it's who counts the votes". However; the people that run the Diebold count are not able to be fully trusted for these reasons, one is an embezzler who was caught for alterating computer forms, another was involved with the Watergate burglary and another one was also a cocaine trafficker. So are the NH votes really be counted correctly? How can we be sure that the vote counts are not be changed? We can't be positive, but one way to get the votes to be counted in an open meeting is to bring it up with a petition in your town meeting. What I took from her speech was that votes are extremely important to the well being of our country and that the ballots should be counted by hand and not machines because they have a larger chance of having "the glitch" and needing to do a recount. There is a 4.4 error rate in using machines to count votes, which is unfortunate because that error rate is part of the eighty-one percent of the NH votes.

The second Symposium that I attended was "Citizenship and Responsibility" by Tom Lantos. Tom Lantos is a Holocaust survivor in which I think it was incredible just to hear him talk because although the Holocaust was such a terrible time, it is still interesting to meet people that could survive a time like that. Katrina Sweat, Tom's daughter introduced him as one of the only holocaust survivors to be elected to serve int he US Congress. The main topic of the speech was "America did not teach men the idea of freedom, she taught them how to practice it". At first i did not understand what he meant by that by by then end of speech i realized that he meant that in America everyone is free and welcome to their own beliefs and morals and are not forced to anything where as in other places in the world they are not as lucky. However, America did not create freedom but it is one of the places that it is allowed to be used. Throughout the speech Tom discussed America's history and how we achieved our freedom. At the end of the session, Tom closed the speech by mention the two main things our upcoming president may do. Bring our country together domestically and rebuild the prestige. In the whole speech, just by listening to him, you could tell that Tom was enthusiastic about everything he mentioned, he never made his speech boring and I was interested throughout the whole symposium.

The other Symposium that I attended was called "Iraq Body Count: Real people Fake numbers". I was interested in this speech because first it was by Steve Clark, an professor here at Keene State and because, while reading Baghdad Burning I realized that I do not know much about the issues going on in Iraq and that this speech would give me a little more information to what is happening. One thing that Steve said was that "Iraq is not as dangerous than our nations capital Washington D.C which was quite shocking to me to hear because it meant that both places are almost the same. He proved this point by showing the statistics that just as many people that die in Iraq from the war is about the same amount as people that die in DC.

HW 28: An Open Letter to Riverbend

In Baghdad Burning, you discuss all of your interactions and feelings that you had to go through living in Iraq during this time. Reading some of your blogs I am shocked at how you handle yourself, because I know that if I were in many of those situations I am not sure what I would have done exactly but I would not have reacted as calmly as you have. "Today a child was killed in Anbar...Do they show that on Fox News or CNN?" (Riverbend 8). I think that this is a horrible thing that kids so young are being a killed and you are right by saying that no one even notices because they never talk about this like this on the news which are just as important as what cities have been bombed and the attacks. On page 11, when you and your brother E hear the bullets, and you immediately start guessing how far away what kind of gun and whether it was "them" or "us", I think it is incredible but also extremely sad that you hear those thing so much that you have started to determine all the information about the gun shots. "Females can no longer leave their homes alone." (Riverbend 16). That statement right there is absolutely ridiculous, yes there is war going on and it is very dangerous to be out of the house, but to completely take away a women's freedom is just unfair. Yes it is one way to protect a young girl or wife from getting beaten and have bad things happen to but it's just another way for them to show that they have more power over you. April 9, 2003 as you said, was a terrible day for you, your friends, family and all of Baghdad. I however, do not know much about it which is unfortunate. You say that American troops were everywhere, killing, bombing explosions all over the place and Iraqi people getting hurt. Since this was such a tragic day for people in Baghdad, i think that it is important for people in the the US to know about it and have knowledge about days like this however I was completely unaware of this day. Living in the US who you happen to be at war with is weird when reading your blogs, because as you describe everything that you have been going through many of the occurrences that have happened people here as well as I are uninformed about some of the tragedies that have been going on there.

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.