Hw:21 Responding to Virginia Woolf

Dear cousin,

In chapter one of Virgina Woolfs "A Room of One's Own," Woolf first makes the introduction talking about what she will address in the book. She explains how she was asked to speak about women and fiction, and she makes a small point of saying, "A woman must have money and a room of her own is she is to write fiction, that is, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman ad the true nature of fiction unsolved. " She then beings to explain how the book will be about the past two days that proceeded her ending up where she was at that moment. Woolf also stresses the point that "I" has little importance to it. The narrative part of the book begins, and the narrator is sitting on a river bank of Oxbridge ,a university, and is thinking of women and fiction. She gets interrupted in thought by "the Beadle"(a security guard)telling her than women aren't allowed on the grass. She then wants to go to the library of the university but later finds out that women are not allowed in the library if they are not accompanied by a man of the University. She then gets angry and feels excluded from her surroundings. The narrator then talks about how she has dinner at Fernham. She describes the setting of the meal and the conversations amongst the people she is with. She then goes on thinking about the poverty of women and questions why women don't have never had that much money. She concludes the chapter with these thoughts.
The chapters point, is to show how different it was for women back then and how much more difficult their lives were.It shows how different it was than it is today for females. Setting the chapter on a college campus really gives the reader a feel for how different it was because we can compair with how it is today.Your teacher may find this book important to read because it is not only an educational book, but it is a classic piece of literature than can be learned and discussed a lot from. I found the reading actually more interesting that I expected. Although is was difficult to understand at parts, I learned a lot from how it was back then and how women were treated.

Sincerely,
Hannah

Hw 19: Web of Influence

The paragraph that I decided to write about was the last paragraph on page 91 of the chapter. The text explores how bloggers make people more aware of the causes and issues, and how it is portrayed different in the media. The paragraph first addresses how "bloggers purposefully harness the medium to promote wide awareness of their causes." Two experts Kenneth Roth, Human rights director, and Samantha Power, author and winner of Pulitzer Prize both set up a blog and Website called "Passion of the Present." The blogsite was to collect news and info about the genocide going on in Sudan. They both sought out well known bloggers to spread the knowledge. To put it in another way, eventually the whole blogosphere was informed on the issue since the "elite bloggers" spread the word. They also explained how Blogs let us tell offline media when we want. My conclusion, then, is that I felt that this paragraph had interesting and important information in how an issue as large as the the genocide going on in Sudan is being spread in throughout the blogosphere so that everyone is educated about this serious issue going on today in the world.

hw 18: least favorite post of the week

My least favorite blog of the week was on the blogsite "Women In the Media and News Voices"http://www.wimnonline.org/WIMNsVoicesBlog/?p=829. The blog that I disliked, was not because I disagreed with the opinion or because of the writing, but it was because the topic bothered me. The women that respond to the news I completely agreed with, but the topic is a bit of a shock. The Blog was about the latest news about Warner Bros. Productions. According to three different producers, The WB is no longer going to cast women as lead roles in any of their upcoming films. They blamed movies that the WB had recently done that were not successful on the female actresses that took part in the films. The response from a female on the article explained how "If that studio confirms that their policy is to now exclude women as leads, then my policy would be to boycott films made by Warner Bros.” -journalist Nikki Finke. Although there were many blogs that I came across with that I disagreed with, this one bothered me more than any other of the blogs that I read that were written within the past week.

hw 17b:Daily Kos

I thought that Markos Moulitsas Zuniga's Daily Kos was much more politically influential than Ana Marie Cox's blog Wonkette. If I were to choose a blog that was going to influence my vote on a coming election, I would choose Daily Kos because it a blog that gets thousands of views a day and it has all sorts of controversy on liberal and democratic views. The blog is also filled with up to date news stories that involves potitics. Marie Cox's blog, on the other hand is more of a gossip blogsite with different types of political views. I feel that the Daily Kos is not only has a more accurate viewpoint on politics, but it a more serious blog that is focused on the news. I found the Wonkette blog more entertaining because she talked more than just politics, but she talks about what she finds funny in politics, and the gossip around it. If I were reading a blog that I found interesting, I would choose, Wonkette, but if I wanted to read a blog that would influence my vote, I would choose The Daily Kos.

Hw 17: favorite blog of the week

My favorite blog of this week was on http://www.wimnonline.org/WIMsVOicesBlogs by a woman named Jennifer L Ponzer. This was a very interesting website because of how different it is compared to other ones that i have looked at. All of the blogs are by females and their opinions from everything from the what they think about the blogosphere to all kinds of current news in the media. Jennifer L. Ponzer is probably one of the more committed bloggers to this website she writes everyday about all kinds of issues and ideas. The blog that i liked of hers this week was "WIMN at JAWS - Journalism & Women Symposium." In her blog, she talks about a new group of women journalists in Wisconsin. "JAWS," which is Journalism & Women Symposium, is a conference being held about the issues of women getting heard in journalism. She is very interested and supportive about women getting their voices out there in the media and news, so she leads discussion groups about the issues. I don't only find this blog interesting, but all of her blogs have a lot of interesting thoughts to them which I will like to read in the future.

Hw 16b:5 pillars

In the interview with Robert Scoble "Blogs: Humanizing The Face OF Corporate America," Scoble explains the five things that he thinks made blogging as hot as it became. One of the "5 pillars" as he calls it, was "ease of publishing." This pillar means that no matter who you are your voice is easily able to be heard. Anyone is able to get their opinion out there and you don't have to be a journalist or on the news, it is so easy to publish something of your own. The second pillar was "discoverablitiy." This means that no matter who you are, if you have a blog that is worth something, it is not hard at all for you to become discovered. The 3rd pillar was "cross site conversation." This is so anyone can see who was linking you with track backs. The 4th was "permalinking." Permalinking is "where you can isolate a URL that will take you directly to a post" (Scoble 130). Making little things like this so easy for blog writers, it makes it more available for everyone including the reader. The last of the 5 pillars was "syndication." This is basically a group of people who run the blogosphere, and have websites that link many different blogs together.

Hw 14:Ito interview

As a result of reading Joi Ito's interview the "Japanses Blogger Champions Internet Democracy," i learned about blogging in a different perspective. Also, i got a good understanding of Ito's thoughts on blogs and how he believes the result of blogging and how it will change everything from music to media for the better. In the same way, the interview also gave me a better understanding about the changes blogs may lead to and what may happen with them. Along the same lines, Ito believes that there are no negative side effects to blogging and everything that may be bad is "easy to ignore, and the interesting blogs are easy to find"(Kline and Burstein 150). In conclusion, i found the interview with Ito not only interesting but full of different information about blogging that i wasn't aware of before.