My third feed was an easy decision for me to make because espn.com is the world wide leader in sports and I love sports. One would think that the feed for espn.com would just be stats, numbers, and final scores, but that is definitely not the case. The staff of writers includes former professional athletes that also have a love of journalism. There is also, of course, daily scores of the world of sports, but all of the columnists have a blog page where they clearly state their opinions of the situations of many teams in all sports. They rant and raid on how a team is doing something wrong, or complain about something that needs to be introduced or taken out of a certain sport. For example, many writers have voiced their opinion on the need for instant replay in major league baseball. Some say it is a necessity to keep the game well officiated, some say that it will slow the game down even more is unneeded. For any sports fan, the espn.com feed is a great thing to keep in touch with all of our favorite pass times, sports.
July 25, 2008
Opinion of the New York Times
Like the L.A. times opinion, the New York Times opinion focuses on Congress and politics and so on and so forth but a feature I found in this opinion feed was a page called Contributors, and it consisted of articles written by writers that live throughout the country and contribute to the N.Y. Times opinion page. These writers talk about the weather, environment, and most of all, the opinion of the area they live in. This enables this opinion page to give a view of what it is like outside of New York. One of these contributors writes from Iowa, chronicling his experience of setting up sandbags during the horrible floods that dreaded the mid-west in June. The amount of articles produced and placed in the reader can be a bit overwhelming with eleven everyday columnists, plus the editorials and contributors, and letters sent by readers. These columnists have many years of writing experience and use many rhetorical devices in their works. They have also appeared on television and radio shows including Meet the Press and National Public Radio. These writers made my reading experience great one.
July 25, 2008
Opinion of the LA Times
The Los Angeles Times Opinion page focus’s mainly on the outstanding housing and gas prices, congressional matters, and the political trail of John McCain and Barack Obama. There is a whole section entitled Opinion L.A., which focuses on the “happenings” of Southern California, which targets on citizens of the southland, one of the downsides of the feed. However, the rest of articles are very thought provoking and target the rest of the nation and world. The opinion writers challenge many things including the rulings of courts, like on the Editorial page, writers questioned the necessity of rules that shield the public’s eyes of indecency on television and the internet, when courts are sure to reject those rules. Plenty of analysis has been made about the political campaign, even about the candidate’s position of topics out of this world, like in an article about how McCain and Obama look at mars and our future there. This feed was a very enjoyable one, and even though most of the topics were specifically toward Angelinos, I still was able to have a few good reads.
* An Angelino is someone who lives in Los Angeles
June 28, 2008
Task 1
Blogging has become ever so popular in U.S. high schools and is now a key and essential part of the learning process. Teachers can easily post assignments and students can just as easily respond to those assignments on their own personal blog. Writers, poets, students, and anyone or anything else in-between can use blogs and all inherit the common name of Bloggers. But why do they blog? Do they blog because they have to in order pass a class? Or do they blog because they enjoy expressing themselves through those blogs? And how do these writers present their thoughts? Do they do so in an organized manner? These are just a few questions that separate mediocre blogs from excellent blogs.
iThink, a creation of a BHS student, is an ideally organized blog, highlighting many current topics. When first viewing the blog, the reader is greeted with an overview of the purpose of the site, which helps the reader understand who the author is and also explains the design theme of the blog. Upon further reading of the blog, I came across topics I was not aware about and topics that I was well aware of, for example the unnecessary and unwanted blocking of many websites on all computers on campus at BHS. Through this post titled Unnec*ssary Censorshi*, I was able to find common ground with the author, which was another reason why I found this blog to be so great. This blog also compelled me to search onward on its topics and offered challenges to its readers, like when it put forth the challenge of contacting our local senator about the outrage in Berkeley, California, of the lack of support for our heroic troops.
Another BHS creation, a blog named Behind the Fridge, is a well-written analysis of the authors readings and discoveries, uncovering truth about the writers own personal world, which is a great explanation for the clever title. The blog lives up to the name in the post Great Expectations which explores the expectations in our lives given to us from parents and teachers. In the passage, the author argues that instead of setting extreme and high standards for ourselves and for others, we should set more realistic and achievable goals. This shows a more truthful and real side of this particular argument and definitely lives up to a sub-title of the blog, is this were the truth’s been hiding? Another truthful insight the blog expounds on is in the post, The Perfect Doctor. The author brings up two different personalities of doctors, one being doctor Gregory House, a fictional character in a hit T.V show who is quite impersonal, and the other a more personal doctor, a “gushy” doctor with empathy and compassion. But, as the post goes on, the author realizes that these two doctors are not at all different and gives deep details and examples explaining her thought process. This was yet another accurate and truthful claim.
Newly Ancient, an award-nominated blog, is the third and final blog I have chosen to evaluate. The author is a 15 year old high school student from Vermont, who writes that he enjoys developing web applications and philosophizing. The author’s running theme in his blog, Newly Ancient, is student life and learning, and also writes on how he thinks we can better our schools. In a post named The 26 Hour Day the author lives up to the theme of student life by explaining the toll and damage a ten hour school day could have on a student. He goes on by saying that in order to complete daily activities, have a decent night sleep, and go to a ten hour school day, there would have to be a total of 26 hours in a single day, hence the sarcastic title. In terms of organization, navigation of the blog is somewhat difficult, due to the fact that there is not a clear cut page containing just posts or just links. However, there are tabs on the top of the page, one entitled Colophoning-a smart and sophisticated version of an about me page. Colophoning comes from the word Colophon, which is a publisher’s or writers distinctive emblem on their work. By doing this, the writer displays a excellent vocabulary and astonishes his readers by the fact that he is only 15 years of age.
I have learned many things regarding blogs while reading these three excellent cites. They have compelled me to respond to, react to, and recall things I have learned in the past, and has also enticed me to do further reading on those subjects. Some subjects I have not totally agreed with but still bring up a great and reasonable argument. No matter what the subject, these three blogs have opened up an umbrella of thought for me and hundreds of other loyal readers.
Amy. “Great Expectations.” Behind the Fridge 20 Feb 2008 21 Jun 2008.
Amy. “The Perfect Doctor.” Behind the Fridge 6 Feb 2008. 21 Jun 2008.
“Berkeley’s Black Eye.” iThink. 11Feb. 2008. 19 Jun 2008.
“Edublog Awards 2007 Finalists Announced!.” The Edu Blog Awards 26 Nov. 2007. 27 Jun 2008
Erea, Arthus. “Colophoning.” Newly Ancient. 24 Jun 2008.
Erea,Arthus. “The 26 Hour Day.” Newly Ancient. 17 Jun 2008. 24 Jun 2008.
John Michael. “Unnec*sarry Censorshi*.” iThink. 23 Feb. 2008. 19 Jun 2008.
May 16, 2008
Conflicting Testimonies of Clemens and McNamee
Since the Mitchell report came out, Roger Clemens and Brian McNamee have taken their case to Congress were while both under oath, a single lie could put either of them in jail. In front of the Congressional lawmakers, Clemens stated that McNamee has injected him with only vitamin B-12 (a legal substance) on three occasions, but never with steroids. McNamee came back and said that he injected Clemens with testosterone, a steroid named Winstrol, and human growth hormone. “I’ve never given Roger B-12,” McNamee told the House Committee on Oversight and Government reform . (“Clemens says he got B-12 shots…,” 2008 )
But when both have conflicting testimonies, one of them is not telling the truth.
