HW 21: Dear Sista Sal

Dear Sista Sal,
Reading Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own can be hard to understand with its complexity, don’t be fooled by it’s density, but rather look for the point behind it. Woolf explains through narration about her thoughts on Women and fiction. She explains right off her thesis that she believes that in order for women to write fiction they need money and a room of their own. (Woolf 4) Woolf addresses this question by trying to change people’s opinion that women have automatically become inferior to men. Woolf uses dramatized interruptions of women during their thoughts to show that women are constantly interrupted, held back, and unable to continue their thought processes, freedom, and what they want to do. This is where a private room comes into play in Woolfe’s thesis. Women need a private room to write fiction where they are uninterrupted and can think what they want. What Woolf wants the reader, that’s you sista Sal, to understand is that women being denied the right to think is part of the educational culture that has restricted the range of a women’s intellectual exposure. Not only this but throughout chapter one Woolf’s narrator has not only been denied her right to her imagination but the right to go certain places such as the library, the grassy yard, or only allowed on a thin sidewalk. These are examples of women not being able to have the freedom of a female mind. How can a female write fiction when she can’t use fiction in her own life?
Your teacher might have considered chapter one of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own an important reading for you because it resembles what women went through and how far they’ve come. Women have worked so hard to have the status that we have today. We can write fiction, we can have an imagination, and we can be treated equally, for the most part.
I think the reading was dense and hard to understand at some points, but it helped to reflect on what I just read. Overall I understood the point of the chapter and I hope I helped ya out!
Your sis,Emaline

HW 19: Long and Lengthy Article

After reading the long and lengthy Foreign Policy article by Daniel Drezner, I found that the first paragraph of the article had the most important information and it set up the rest of the article perfectly. But don’t misunderstand me. My point is not that the first paragraph is the only informative piece of information but the reason I chose this paragraph is because it was very informative. It explains the content of international media as well as the World Wide Web, and how they work together to make an elaborate network. (Kline and Burstein 84.) I concede of course that the ret of this article what somewhat hard to understand and follow. Nevertheless, the material is important because not very many people know the significance of how far blogs have come and what they are becoming. To put it another way, they are no longer just an online journal. Many people use these blogs for debating, important information, etc. This article was an eye opener to how blogs are expanding.

HW 18: My Least Fav Blog Post of the Week...yuck

Over the past few days I’ve been keeping an eye on the three blogs that I have linked to my original blog. I think it’s not hard to decide that my least favorite blog is “Arts and Letters Daily” http://aldaily.com/I chose this blog to write about because first of all, it’s not very appealing. The actual site just doesn’t catch my attention, it doesn’t seem interesting. Not only this but the articles aren’t very interesting either. Compared to Jezebel, the site isn’t trendy, it doesn’t have very many interested posts. Jezebel is fun to read, I like to got to the site on my own time. I felt forced to look at Arts and Letters Daily. As I look at it now while I’m writing this blog, I just think, “uh gross” to myself. I feel that it’s targeted towards an older aged group of visitors. This blog probably wasn’t a very good blog to keep an eye on to link to my blog. It’s just boring. An example of a post I didn’t find too interesting was “Some Like it Hot” http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/10/07/some_like_it_hot/?page=full This post was too lengthy, and lost my attention by the second paragraph. This alone made me not like the whole post in length. Furthermore, the subject of the post was just pointless. I felt that it was a post the one reads when they’re absolutely forced to. Who reads about hot sauces on their free time? I just didn’t like this specific post, or the blog in general.

HW 17B: Cox Wins Me Over ;-)

After reading “Blogging the Presidency: An Interview with Markos Moulitsas Zuniga” and “Sex, Lies, and Political Scrapes: An Interview with Ana Marie Cox” by Kline and Burstein, it wasn’t hard to side with which blog would be more likely to influence the way I would vote in a coming election. Now even though Markos Moulitsas interview was very professional and informative…It didn’t really catch my attention. I wasn’t interested. This is why I decided to side with the interview with Ana Marie Cox. Admittedly, her responses were short, however they were to the point. Furthermore, they gave the reader her, “badass” look. After all, it seemed like she was trying to give off this aura that she didn’t want to fit in, she didn’t want to be the typical journalist. By contrast, Cox wanted to be herself and anyone who didn’t like it, could take a hike for all she cared. In conclusion, her interview compared to Zuniga’s interview was more enticing and enjoyable to read. I felt that Zuniga’s was too lengthy, too formal. And maybe that’s what some people like, and would choose to read his blog and be influenced to vote for an election over Cox’s. Maybe his blog should be the blog that influences me to side with him…but I don’t. Ultimately Cox caught my attention and I enjoyed reading her interview, and would side with her any day.

HW 17: Jezebel Says I Could Work At Hooters!

After keeping an eye on the blog Jezebel http://jezebel.com/ this past week, I chose to write about this blog for the homework assignment, HW 17. I chose to view Jezebel because it’s fun to read, keeps me interested, has some pretty funny blogs and comments, and I like the fact there are a lot of pictures. A specific post I thought interesting was about girls working at Hooters. The name of the article is “What Does It Take For A 32A To Get Hired By Hooters?” http://jezebel.com/gossip/breast-intentions/what-does-it-take-for-a-32a-to-get-hired-by-hooters-307020.php
This post was about, “what it takes (besides big tits!) to get hired as a down-home Hooters girl” ( Jezebel 1). This post had an interview of many different Hooters employees explaining how to get the job. Interestingly enough, they claim that to work in the Hooters in NY, you don’t need big boobs! All you need is an awesome personality…Very friendly and able to multitask. Sounds easy enough…Maybe I should try to apply considering my mom didn’t bless me with her bust. :-P I liked the article, it was fun to read.

HW 16: An A for Jezebel!

After reading both interviews with Robert Scoble and John Batelle by Kline and Burstein, I thought it would be fun to respond to option A, “Who’s following Scobles’ rules of engagement..for the blogosphere?”
I first picked to view Jezebel off of the list for “Blogs I’m Watching” to compare a few of Scoble’s 20 principles to.
After reading a few articles from Jezebel I believe this blog lives up to a few of Scoble’s principles. For example it is very easy to see that Jezebel posts fast on both good and bad news. One can see this on their site because they have many positive and negative articles. There are articles on Brittney Spears and her children, posts on new magazines coming out, etc. It just has the lastest news, whether it disturbing (such as the article on abortion) or funny (drunk women being arrested and flashing police officers.) Another principle Jezebel follows from the 20 is having a thick skin. This means not to be too offended when people say bad things about the site, or what you’re writing on. Many people write negative comments about the posts because there are so many people in this world with many many different opinions. An additional principle Jezebel follows is using a human voice. All the posts are easy to understand and they don’t get ahead of themselves. They aren’t too “fancy” and you know “lawyers and PR professionals [didn’t] cleanse [there] speech” (Kline and Burstein 133). The posts are put up quick; they are concise, funny, and to the point. Lastly I’d like to point out that Jezebel has kept the same url which helps them keep their regular readership which is another one of Scoble’s 20 principles.
I am not completely positive on where Jezebel might not be following some of the 20 principles, but if I were to take an educated guess, I’m sure they aren’t telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Obviously this blog is about gossip, and gossip is never true. I’m sure there is accurate information, and posts based on “the talk around the town” but in my own opinion I can only imagine that all the posts on Jezebel are telling the complete truth. My last assumption about Jezebel not following one of the 20 Scoble principles would be linking to their competitors and saying nice things about them. I haven’t seen anywhere on the site where they’ve linked to their competitors, and this is why I came to the conclusion that that is one of the principles they don’t follow.I believe these principles of the Corporate Weblog manifesto are applicable to Jezebel, most definitely. I definitely don’t think Jezebel should be following different standards. They know how to catch the attention of the reader and keep it. They do very well! :)

HW:14 Denton Interview, Concise and to the Point!

To put it bluntly, I really enjoyed reading, “Take an Obsession, Then Feed It!” the Nick Denton interview (Kline and Bustein). Despite the fact that the interview was really short, I liked it because it was to the point and kept my attention. For instance when Denton was asked why he claims “[he’s] not really sure there’s a real business in blogging – or at least [he’s] not really sure how big a business it will be yet [he’s] a blog entrepreneur”, he simply answers, “I don’t see why that’s controversial”. Regardless of how blunt he answers the hard interview questions, when he does answer these questions they make sense. For example when Denton was asked why he hires unknown writers for his blog sites he makes the reader realize that hiring unknown writers is the only way to go. That is, he explains how un-experienced writers want to write more, they are, “hungrier” (Kline and Burstein 152) to write for him. After all, he informs the reader that established journalists don’t do well writing blogs because it’s a different format (Kline and Burstein 152). Likewise he explains that bloggers don’t make very good journalists either…It’s not an easy transition. (Kline and Burstein 152). As a result of reading Dentons Interview, I learned that he is a very “to the point person”, and I really enjoyed reading his responses from the questions.