"Blogs as Soapboxes"

In "Blogs as Soapboxes," Stefanac talks about the role of pundits in media and the blog world as well as their importance. Bloggers who freely write biased politics-- the opinion-based approach-- act as examples of their parties or lack thereof. An Libertarian will write about how crazy the two-party system is, a Democrat will write about whatever the Republicans are up to, and the Republican will write about whatever the Democrats are up to (of course, all three groups-- and the rest of bloggers who have different parties-- will speak of more than my example gives). In a way, these bloggers give American citizens and political figures/observers an idea of how the major parties are feeling about a certain person or situation or law (so on and so forth). These bloggers are vitally important for the transfer of opinions, where the goal is for universal knowledge. All McCain has to do to find out about the public's-- or a party's-- opinion of Sarah Palin is to type her name into any blog database. Pundits typically are at the extreme end of their party's beliefs, so blogging pundits are useful to guage the general opinion of political current events. I think that this is a very useful aspect of blogging, as most people can find time to read a blog before they tune into CNN or FOX News for an anchor's opinion.

Wagner

I had a difficult time reading Wagner's essay. As it was written in the 19th century, it does not follow modern standards of grammar: thus, several topics, definitions, and thoughts were long-winded, wordy, and flowing, without a discernable stop, into the next idea. However, I think that the most important part of this essay is that Wagner asserts that man is the primary perceptor of nature-- that is, man is able to see nature as a whole and can interpret it. This ability allowed humans, historically, to perform an interpretation of nature and the animals that surround it. From the perspective of our class' subject, blog writing, it possibly could be asserted that Wagner's essay alludes to the role of truth or mistruth in performance-- to a blog writer, that performance would be a blog, and he can choose how to perform his interpretation. This aspect of human nature can lead to a full spectrum of opinions, interpretations, and information: the soul of blog-writing. My interpretation could be completly wrong, but, as I said, Wagner's essay was a little over my head.

In my writing experience, I pretty much have always used a computer. Of course, I have lived in a time when the average person didn’t have any access to a computer, so I remember life without them—my first story was written on Post-Its (I was five). Since my mother has been involved with computers since 1974 (she programmed and controlled the attendance program for her high school), I’ve naturally been very adept with computers, due, simply, to exposure: she made sure my siblings and I had access to one as soon as we were old enough to learn.

Now, it has become so ingrained in me to write at the computer that it has actually become an issue for me to write on paper. Just last week, we had a practice essay-test in my film class, and the paper worked out fine—with a ton of cross-outs and scribbles. After getting really frustrated with myself—blaming my inability to write a coherent thought on not writing at all over the summer—I realized that I was so used to being able to having the freedom of a word processor. When writing on the computer, users have the option to write whatever they want: if it doesn’t work for the document, just delete it and rephrase (or copy and move). On paper, this method is not so practical.

My word processor of choice is Word. I shouldn’t say that this is a choice, because I’ve tried to switch to other programs and just can’t shake my slave-bond to Microsoft. I use it for every type of writing I do: essays, poems, stories, blog-writing, etc. It has come to be that I rely on Word to get my ideas out. While it is true that hand-writing ideas and essays takes entirely too long, that isn’t the reason for my junkie-like tie to Word. I see the empty document on screen and just start typing; after a while, I usually get my ideas out just by expressing my thoughts on-screen and then I organize.

However, I think the whole system is the reason I choose to write in Word: not only physically, such as using the keyboard, but I can also tap into any resource I want to help me formulate my ideas (Encarta, past papers, the Internet). Word pleases my stylistic needs, copies and pastes, corrects my spelling, and helps me put out an organized paper (this one excluded, as it seems to be more informal). Without Word, I don’t know if I would have chosen to be an English major; I like the idea of spending my workdays typing at a computer—it’s an individual activity, expressive, and includes a variety of projects to produce. Suffice to say, after this rambling narrative, that I love writing, but only on the condition that I can do it in Word.