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After reading the introduction to ‘Baghdad Burning,’ I thought it was very interesting.  Although I have not followed the war in Iraq as closely as I should be, I still feel that I have strong opinions about what has been going on.  Just from the beginning I knew that her blog was going to be extremely painful to read.  In the beginning a quote that really stuck out to me was, “Normal day today. We woke up at teh early morning, did the usual, “around the house things,” you know- check if the water tank is full, try to determine when the electricity will be off, checked if there was enough cooking gas.”  This caught my eye at the very beginning because it makes me feel like we take so many things for granted.  Like, even here at school I leave the lights on in my dorm room all the time, I eat and do things I want to all the time, when people in Iraq wake up every morning feeling so unsafe about the day in front of them.  I think it’s interesting how much we take for granted, and how the majority of our population doesn’t really know what’s going on in Iraq.  To be honest, I do feel like I should know more about the war but it’s something that I have chose not to.  I think this is going to be a hard book to read, but it will also be very informative.

After reading chapter two of Virginia Woolf’s ‘A Room of One’s Own,’ it seemed to have more of a topic that chapter one.  She speaks about men and the inferiority over women.  How men have always just used women as something delicate to look at, to cook to clean, but in reality they are much more than that.  She asks herself timeless questions about why women were treated this way?  After her library visit, she stumbles upon many writings from men, about how they think, why they do what they do.  She finds it interesting, and begins to think about why women have been stuck in the house for all these years?  Is the man really being inferior over the woman, and is the woman doing less strenuous work that the man?  All these questions are being raised through out the text, none which are actually able to answered in full.  Everyone has their own opinions.  I thought that chapter two was a little more easy to follow than chapter one, just because she didn’t just jump from idea to idea.  She responded to the questions that she had brought up, and it made it easier to read.

At first when I began to read Virginia Woolf’, ‘A Room of One’s Own,’ it was very confusing.  It wasn’t like any other book that I’ve read.  I’m used to a thick story line, that the author sticks to rather than a series of ideas.  It is difficult for me to read, because I feel like even though I’m finishing paragraphs in the text, that I’m getting no where.  She speaks about Oxbridge, and Fernham and compares the two places in which she had been.  She tells the reader about what she ate at both colleges, which leaves us to many different thoughts.  She compares the two places, saying Fernham’s meal doesn’t compare to what she had eaten beforehand.  She seems to be all over the place in her writing, like she isn’t sticking to what she is writing, but letting her thoughts take her other places instead.  She wonders about women, working situations, and money.  She has unanswered questions that leaves the reader questioning them also.  Overall, the first chapter of this book was a little too all over the place for me, I feel like it didn’t have strict story line but was rather a series of thoughts that were difficult to follow.

When I was looking through the blogs to see which one that I found interesting, I found a blog on Jezebel that was titled, “Sometimes It’s Mom, Not Media- Who gives girls eating disorders.”  This interested me because I wanted to see what story was going to be told.  It turns out that when a little girl was growing up, her mother whom was extremely thin herself since she was bulimic started telling her six or seven year old daughter that she was gaining too much weight.  This story interested me because I had never heard of a mother doing this to her child before.  I went on reading, and it turns out that since the young girl’s mother was so thin and worked out all the time, it was time for the daughter to lose some weight too.  The daughter then got extremely worried about her weight, and became bulimic like her mother.  Since her mother was doing it as well, she never felt threatened that someone would find out.  It turns out that the mother pressured her daughter so much that she began losing a lot of weight.  After her mother moved away, claiming she couldn’t take it anymore the daughter then turned to hard drugs.  I thought this was extremely interesting because I had never heard anything like it before.  It was a scary story, and it really made me think. 

After reading Kline and Burnsteins ‘Web of Influence,’ one specific paragraph stuck out.  On page 85, the second paragraph it talks about how politics are being deeply influenced by blogs.  It even went on to say that, “The top five political blogs together attract over half a million visitors per day.”  It’s interesting that people are visiting these sites, and reading what others are saying about the election, rater than newspapers, or news sites.  Like any blog, it is giving people a chance to read what others are thinking regarding the election, and giving themselves a chance to really say what they think either regarding who they plan to vote for, or breaking down why they are not voting the other way.   I thought that this was interesting because I didn’t know how many people were actually blogging.  The number surprised me and it made me think that maybe I want to see one of the sites that were listed, it would be interesting to check out one of the sites and see what people are saying. 

After reading both blogs I think it was obvious which site would sway my opinion towards a particular vote.  I think that the wonkette.com site was definitely more persuasive than the dailykos.com site.  Although in reality I think that Obama might be my choice, I think the way in the which Hilary’s site was set up had the ability to change my mind.  Even the layout was more friendly, and interesting to look at.  I liked the pictures, and the way that it was first seen as humorous.  Opening with the funny e-mail was a great way to get the readers attention, on a not-so-funny topic.  Typically I would think that the site with the most information would be the one I chose as something to sway my opinion, but since I don’t know much about politics I thought this site fit my personality a bit more.  Overall I think that Hilary would win my vote- just from comparing the sites, but in reality Obama steals my vote.  

After reading Scoble’s principles, I then went on to find an article from Jezebel.  The article that I found most interesting was “Real Housewives of New York: Fabulous Homes, Fabulous Vacations, Fabulous… Husbands?”  This article is about a new reality television show about five housewives whom live in Orange County, and whom have all the money they could ever dream of.  There is one odd wife out, who lives in a house in Brooklyn and who has a husband most would find extremely questionable.  I think that by reading this article I was able to see that some of Scoble’s principles are being followed.  Such as, using a human voice.  It seems to be a normal journalist, someone who knows that they are talking about and how in fact has most likely watched plenty of reality television shows.  It shows all the people who have responded to the blog, and how they are excited to watch the show- or think it seems downright ridiculous.  I think that this blog might also be following Scoble’s principles because in number eighteen he says Link to your competitors and say something nice about them.  The journalist says how it could be more addicting to watch than even ‘The Real Housewives of Orange County.’  One way in which this blog is not following Scoble’s principles is in number nine, it says that you should under-promise and over deliver.  In this paragraph it seems to get the readers very excited, maybe it could have given the reader less of a taste of what the show will really be like, that way in case it doesn’t live up to what was written the readers won’t be let down.  I think that mostly this blog does follow the Weblog Manifesto.