HW: 27 annoted bibliography

Baghdad Burning is a remarkable book written by Riverbend. Riverbend is a 24 year- old female that lives in Iraq. She first started this blog as a place to complain about the occurrences that are going on in her life. She had always wanted to start a web blog but she never thought anybody would read it, her blogs had become so popular that they were transformed into a book that is being read all across America. While reading this book the reader will learn important information about the background of Iraq and the invasion of the United States and how it has effect their lives. Riverbend will discuss what is going on in Baghdad and how terrible and frightening it can be to live there. This book has a lot to do with our course, A Blog of One’s Own, first of all the entire book is made up of different blogs that Riverbend has published online. It also ties into women and the digital revolution, it shows how popular blogs truly are, I find it extremely interesting to see that women in Iraq are aware of blogs and that we are able to communicate with them over the internet. This book truly does emphasize the fact of how important blogs are and how our society is constantly changing and women are gaining more and more power all around the world. After skimming the book and reading some blogs it is already easy to see what kind of writing Riverbend does, it is pretty casual and easy to understand. However, what she is writing about is extremely important and dramatic and can often be upsetting. She goes into great detail about the war and her own opinions about American and especially George W. Bush. Benefits from this book is that it has the potential to reach out to people all across the country and begin to see the war in a different light, even if people are not interested in politics and the war this book is a great way to get information and learn about what is going on around the world. Some challenges may be that is difficult to read because of how upsetting it really is, hearing about innocent people being killed, people that Riverbend know and having to always hear her talk about being scared in her own home.

HW 25: Riverbend and Iraq

I was surprised when I read the forward of Baghdad Burning written by Ahdaf Soueif. Forwards in books are usually somewhat boring and monotonous, however the author immediately had my attention at the beginning. Soueif starts out by describing Riverbend and what her blog is about. He states:

“Baghdad Burning brings us as close to the war in Iraq as it’s possible to be. And “close” does not mean just knowing about electricity cuts and water shortages, about street battles and raids on homes; “close” means right inside the heart and mind of young Baghdadi woman as she lives through the war.” (Soueif, vii)

By just reading the forward I already feel extremely close to Riverbend and her family, I find it so interesting about how her readers are all so dedicated to her blog and check it constantly. If they hear news about Iraq they always check her blog to see if a new post has been written to insure her safety. I am already excited to read her book and hear her stories about what it is like to live in Iraq, I also hope to look at her blog and see what kinds of things she has to say there.

The introduction is written by James Ridgeway, the context includes more of a background about the United States and Iraq. He goes into great detail about the United States relations with Iraq and other countries, he goes on to describe September 11th and what an impact it has made on both of our countries. It is important to read the introduction to get a sense of what is going on today in the Middle East and what specifically has caused so much violence. One interesting fact I learned from the introduction was that the United States was planning on invading Iraq even before September 11th occurred. He states:

“The Bush administration appears to have determined to go to war against Saddam as a primary foreign policy goal well before 9/11. Claims of fault UN inspections, weapons of mass destruction were stated as the reasons for attack; all have been proven clearly false.” (Ridgeway, xvi)

My own memories of the U.S. invasion in Iraq are very personal; I was only in 7th grade when the World Trade Centers went down. I remember being extremely confused and hurt that something like this had happened in our own country. There was obviously much more to our invasion then I had understood at the time, that is why it is so important for people to understand what is going on in Iraq, and Riverbend’s blog seems like a great way to do that.

HW: 24 A room I call my own

In chapter 5 Woolf goes into an explanation about how far history has come. In the begging of A Room Of One’s Own women were extremely inferior to men and had little or no rights. They had to attend certain schools and were only allowed to do and write certain things. Now Woolf notices a great change between men and women, she states:

“I had come to last, in the course of this rambling, to the shelves which hold books by the living; by women and by men; for there are almost as many books written by women now as by men.” (Woolf 79)

Today, women and men are considered to be equal, women are allowed to write whatever they wish to and can hold the same kinds of jobs and have intelligent conversations as men do. Today, there is not supposed to be any social difference between man and woman. Obvisouly there are always going to be people who are reluctant to think that men hold a higher status then women, however it is very hard nearly impossible to prove today.

“If we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think”
(Woolf 113)

Women have come such a long way since this book was written, and this quote stated by Woolf is something that she had always dreamed of. To me “A Room of One’s Own” is the ability for a person to have the freedom to write and think what they want. The comparison that she makes to a room is that back then it was not common for women to be able to express themselves It perhaps was not common to have your own room either. Today most people have their own room and women are finally able to be free of thought and write and talk about what they wish. Ironically, I do not have my own room, I have been sharing a room with two other people for three months now. I am however free to do what I went with my given space and I have room and time to write and think as I please.

HW 23: Jezebel and Woolf

“With Apologies to Virginia Woolf”

As most of you probably know I am extremely concerned about women and women’s rights. Women are constantly being mistreated and are often put below men. I have recently been keeping track of the blog jezebel. Which can be accessed at www.jezebel.com. What I like most about this website is that it is ultimately empowering women and giving them a place to share their thoughts and opinions. One of my favorite posts of the week was Return Of The British Bridezillas at http://jezebel.com/gossip/hells-bells/return-of-the-british-bridezillas-313638.php. This post just goes to show that women today have more control over events such as weddings, they actually get an input. I think of Jezebel as a place for women to write about topics that interest them and things that they are concerned about. After all every woman needs a place of her to write and think, and I think that Jezebel is just the place. “ A woman might write letters while she was sitting by her father’s sick-bed. She could write them by the fire whilst the men talked without disturbing them.” (Woolf 62) Blogging is a great way to be heard it brings me joy that women are able and actually allowed to express their opinions and get their voices heard. What I find most interesting is that people who are not writers still have a place to write and get feedback from their work. While this writing is much different from then what I am used to reading it is still relevant to this time period and the people that are reading it.

HW 21: Dear Sister

A Room of One’s Own written by Virginia Wolfe is definitely a difficult read. I also had trouble understanding the first chapter and what the author was trying to get across to the reader. In the first chapter the character, Mary is in distraught over the importance of women and fiction. She goes on to describe what she thinks this means she states, “The title women and fiction might mean, and you may have meant it to mean, women and what they are like; or it might mean women and the fiction they write; or it might mean women and the fiction that is written about them.” (Wolfe 3) This goes to show that Mary is contemplating what these two words mean and she goes on to show us that they can be interpreted in many different forms. When trying to describe “women” Mary compares the works of different poets, men and women poets. In this first chapter it is important to understand that women are not as powerful as men but they too still need a “room of their own” to express their ideas and perhaps write about them. Mary goes on and describes a river that she is walking by and a college, she reflects upon the images that she sees and ties that back into the question of women and fiction. I believe that your teacher felt that is an important book to read because it goes deeper into gender issues, you must remember that during this time period women were not as powerful and did not have as many rights as they do today. It is important to remember that women were not always considered equal, and this chapter goes into detail about how important it really is. My own personal reaction to this reading was that it was definitely hard to understand and interpret, perhaps because it is a new type of reading and the answers are not as clear. I think to fully understand what Virginia Wolfe is trying to understand I will have to look deeper into her work.

HW: 19 "Web of Influence"

Web of Influence written by Daniel Drezner and Henry Farrell was a very interesting article that showed the influences that blogging has had on our society. The paragraph that I have decided to respond to is on page 85 and continues onto page 86. I found it surprising that the authors argued that blogging couldn’t influence global politics. MY POINT IS that Drezner and Farrell felt that blogging has had a great impact on politics and the blogosphere is responsible for huge adjustment on our society. FOR EXAMPLE, he states “Blogs are already influencing U.S. politics. The top five political blogs together attract over half a million visitors per day.” (Kline 85) I found it surprising that they considered blogging to never impact our world globally. IN OTHER WORDS I personally think that blogging someday will go global and influence things such as politics all around the world. Another comment that surprised me was Farrell states “The typical blog is written by a teenage girl who uses it twice a month to update her friends and classmates on happenings in her life.” (Kline 85) Before entering this class that is what I thought blogging was primarily about, however now I feel that there is much more to blogs than providing a social life. Blogging has become people’s careers and I think that someday it will impact global issues.

*templates from Graff are in all caps.

HW 18: least favorite blog

I found my least favorite post at jezebel.com; the post was about models and what it takes to be one and what you have to go through. I found this post extremely disturbing and thought that is would be very unhealthy of young girls to read, especially girls who are self-conscious about their own body. The title of the post is Forbes: Models Are Starving, Financially Fucked & Computer Analyzed and it can be found at http://jezebel.com/gossip/business-models/forbes-models-are-starving-financially-fucked--computer-analyzed-308222.php.

Here is one quote from the post:
“Stop eating. Grow. Be at least five foot nine, weighing 110 to 120 Ibs. This would give you a body-mass index of about 16 to 18. "Models starve themselves, and we tell them to," says Richard Habberley, a top agent with Elite, which reps Victoria's Secret hottie Alessandra Ambrosio and Maybelline face Jessica White.”

This quote is degrading to women, it is enforcing the fact that women should look a certain way and if they don’t then they won’t make it as a model and they will be looked down upon from others. I think it is ridiculous that somebody would actually say this, he states “models starve themselves, and we tell them too” it is sad that somebody would admit to this especially when so many models and people have serious eating disorders that ruin their lives. We as a society should be trying to improve this impossible ideal body image, the last thing people should be doing is promoting it. I think that Jezebel is a fun website to look at and there are a lot of interesting topics, however this particular post I thought was extremely inappropriate.

HW:17b Cox vs. Zuniga

After reading the two articles in Kline & Burstein and visiting the two different websites, I think that Daily Kos by Zuniga was much more influential. First of all, he seemed passionate about blogging and his job. Blogging started out as a hobby for him and it literally turned into a career. I found it extremely interesting about how he kind of stumbled upon blogging and decided to give it a try so he would stop annoying the people who had to listen to him talk about politics everyday. He seems to have a lot of influence on the Democratic party and previous campaigns.

Zuniga states “I mean, all I can do, along with other political bloggers, is gather up my raders and talk about the issues, bounce ideas off each other, maybe offer some talking points, and then point them to things that need to achieve the political goals we want.” (Kline 48)

I found this quote interesting and I thought it told a lot about his personality. He is so open to ideas and truly is passionate about what he does. Another thing I liked about him was the layout of his blog. I thought it looked very professional and the writing was less casual than other blogs that I have looked at. I think the reason Zuniga’s blog is more likely to influence me when it comes to voting in upcoming elections is because I felt Cox’s blog and interview was much more informal. It kind of seemed like she did not care as much about what she was doing and was not as excited about political blogging and blogging in general.

HW 17: “Is It Every Little Girl’s Dream To Babysit? One Video Thinks So”

I looked at two different blogs, one was “Okay, That's It Ladies: Time To Buy A Playstation 3” which can be found at http://jezebel.com/gossip/dick-in-an-xbox/okay-thats-it-ladies-time-to-buy-a-playstation-3-301659.php and the other one was “Is It Every Little Girl's Dream To Babysit? One Video Game Company Thinks So” at http://jezebel.com/gossip/low-score/is-it-every-little-girls-dream-to-babysit-one-video-game-company-thinks-so-306751.php. What I found so interesting about these two blogs was that they corresponded with each other about a topic I thought was pretty rare. Both blogs discussed how girls are labeled as people who only like to shop, gossip, and are concerned about how they look but in reality girls like things that boys do too. In this particular case they discuss video games, and how girls like to play as much as boys do and how games are even becoming focused on girls more and more. ”6-14 year old females, to whom Ubisoft is marketing babysitting, fashion design and figure skating games: Maybe some of them will be pleased with these choices, but aren't you willing to bet that some of them would also like games where you kickbox, DJ, or blow something up?” This quote goes to show that people are definitely looking at girls from a different viewpoint. The reason I thought these blogs were so interesting was because it was a topic that I had not really heard much about and I thought it was good that people are breaking away from the stereotypical image of what a teenager girl is like.

HW 16b: Scoble's 5 pillars

Robert Scoble is very adamant about blogging. He states “To me, a good blog has two things: it’s passionate and it’s authoritative.” (Kline 125) He feels that blogs do nothing but good things for companies who allow their employees to blog about certain brands or products. He feels that there are 5 things that have made blogging “hot” over the past couple of years. They are ease of publishing, discoverability, cross-site conversations, permalinking and finally syndication. I think ease of publishing and discoverability are relatively easy to understand. Part of what has made blogs so popular is how easy they are to make and how anybody can publish a post anywhere and about anything. They are open to so many people that it is hard for them to not become popular, they have impacted many aspects of today’s society. I took discoverability to mean that is easy to become discovered when blogging. There is always somebody that will respond to you and blogging has made a huge impact on companies such as Google and Microsoft. It is easy to become noticed on the web. He said that cross-site conversations allowed him to see who was linking to him with trackbacks. Not only do blogs help you communicate with other people but you can see where these people are coming from and who is keeping track of your own personal blob. Permalinking was a term that was new to me, I think that Scoble feels it is so important is because he can isolate a URL that will take him to a post. I felt that this aspect of blogging made it easy to find other blogs on the web, it brings you right to something that you are interested in without having to search. The fifth topic is syndication, which allows you to view a large number of sites. This allows you to keep track of more things at once and introduce you to more things about blogging.