P.A.M. for Wiki Project

I chose to work on Blogs because I did not know what they were before this class. I went from not knowing what they were to creating one of my own.

My first draft was rough. I have since then added a heading with colored text and subheadings with colored text to organize my page better. I broke up my definition of blogs into a bulleted list to break up the chunkiness of that paragraph and increase its readability, as suggested in the hot text readings.

I decided to add a link to Lindsay's FTP page in my how blogs work section so the reader could understand the FTP process better.

I changed the wording of some of the sentences to make them clearer. I moved the screen shot of a blog down a couple of lines instead of being flush with the text in order to improve the spacial appearance.

I changed the citation to the one supplied by the article because I did not notice it when I wrote my first draft and it contained some information that I did not know. This created several lined boxes in between my text and the citation. I went into the source and figured out how to remove the extra boxes in between the text and citation and I also moved the text and citation closer together to decrease the large amount of empty white space.

My background research consisted of my work on producing my own blog in our first project for the class and reviewing the "How stuff works" cite (several pages) and some You Tube presentations as well.

The relaxed language I used was for the audience of future students taking these writing course. I tried to explain things in a simple conversational tone instead of a formal technical tone. I felt this would be understand better by future students. I did include a definition of blogs because I am a student and did not know what they were and I found that many students (English majors in particular) don't use the internet alot for social networking purposes.

I encountered some challenges with my revising. I had a hard time finding information for my bridge page. I had a hard time editing my page because the markup was different than what we have been learning in the book. I did figure out how to remove the boxes though. I wanted to remove some of the white space after the image of the screen shot. There is too much empty space before the text continues. I did not know if the margin and padding commands will work on the wike source because it looks so different from the html we have been using.

What Is Rhetoric

What is Rhetoric

What is Rhetoric

Question of the Week #4

4. How is writing for the web different from writing for print?
Now that you've blogged, and analyzed bloggers and their bloggy ways, what have you learned about how writing for the web is different from writing for print media? Reflect on your own experience drafting and developing your Blog Genre Analysis. How was this writing similar to/different from the sorts of writing you usually do? (You might think about the rhetorical triangle - audience, purpose, context, your image as a writer -- or about the ways the production process and delivery system changes your work process as a writer.)

Blogging on Time Themes in Television Shows

Americans are obsessed with time. Many popular television shows and the blogs about them revolve around or contain time themes. Viewers are so obsessed with the mysteries of time that they blog about them in between episodes of the television shows they follow.

• Can we manage time or does time manage us?
  




• Does time revolve around our lives or do we fit our lives into the constraints of time?
  




• Many feel pressured or stressed out from the fast pace of time.
  




• If we could just stop time or at least slow time down a little.

Many television shows include different themes involving time. Some even experiment with the idea of time travel. Time travel has fascinated people and scientists for decades.

Life on Mars

One of the most recent shows involving time is ABC’s Life on Mars. This show is centered on Detective Sam Tyler. Sam is hit by a car while rushing to the scene of a crime.

Sam wakes up in 1973 at the same age he is in the present. He is a detective in 1973 also. The twist to this show is that his body is also in a coma in the present.

Sam receives glimpses of the present while he is stuck in the past. He sees himself on TV or hears a message from the present over the telephone.

The other detectives in 1973 have appropriately nicknamed him “spaceman.” Little do they know, Sam has traveled further than any other astronaut.

This show brings up many questions. Can a person co-exist in two different times and at the same age? In one episode, Sam sees himself as a child in 1973.

• Can the same person exist in the same time period at two different ages?
  




• Can you interact with yourself in the past?
  




• If you meet yourself in another time, wouldn’t you cease to exist?
  




• Is Sam able to do this because he is different ages and therefore a different form of himself?
  




• Perhaps the past is interacting with the present in the setting of the past.

Sam thinks that he is in 1973 for a reason. The question is- can you change the past? If you change the past, how does that affect the present and the future? What is he supposed to accomplish? Can he accomplish anything?

Sam receives calls from an unknown voice telling him that time is running out for Sam to figure out why he is stuck in 1973. To get the answers we have to keep watching Life on Mars. Or visit technorati.

Lost

The characters of ABC’s Lost have discovered that the island is like one big time machine.

The entire island disappeared at the end of last season when it was moved by Benjamin Linus. Ben had to push a big wheel that looked like a cross between an old wagon wheel and the helm of an old ship. Perhaps this is a symbol of Ben steering or turning the wheel of time.

Locke and Sawyer are trying to make it across the island and keep getting interrupted by flashes of light that signal they are in a different time. They even travel to times before they were on the island.

Richard Alpert (also the name of an actual person who studied physics) seems an important part of the mystery. Richard is only one of the show’s many references to actual scientists as well as frequent literary references. There is even a section of the official Lost web site about the literary references. Richard seems to be present in many of the time periods the characters visit. He always appears to be the same age.

Lost has always shown flashbacks from the past of the characters. Time has played an important part in the show all along. Time just becomes more important as the show progresses.

Some of the flashbacks about Locke show Locke as a child. It is strange that Richard Alpert visited Locke when he was a young boy and Richard was the same age then. Why is Locke older now and Richard still the same age?

There is something going on with a compass being passed between Locke and Richard.

• Could the compass be a way to control time or direct them to the time period they want to travel towards?
  




• If the compass came from Richard does that mean he can control the direction of time?
  




• Richard must have the answer to some of these mysteries because he is the only character that stays the same age in all time periods.
  




• Is he immortal, or has he figured out a way to escape the aging effects of time?
  




• Can he and his body stay static as time swirls around him?

The past must hold the answers to some of these mysteries because the show keeps flashing back to the past. The characters found tapes of the Dharma project from the past and Ben seems to be the connection of that past to the Oceanic survivors. Who knows where Richard came from?

Another question is how the island can bring back people who are dead, like Jack’s father. How can the island heal people like Locke who was in a wheelchair? On the island he is a macho -hunter- tough guy. Bernard’s wife Rose had cancer and now she says the cancer is gone since she is on the island. If the island has all these positive healing powers, why are pregnant women doomed if they stay on the island?

Do the survivors need to make peace with the ghosts of their past in order to get the present and the future in the proper place and anchor the island where it belongs?
Follow the Lost blog.

Ghost Whisperer

Melinda Gordon practices making peace with ghosts of the past. She is the main character of CBS’s Ghost Whisperer. She can see, hear, and communicate with ghosts . Most ghosts want her to help them resolve an issue from the lives they led. Melinda helps them make peace with the people still living so they can move on “into the light.” Why do changes from different times always involve flashes of light?

People are obsessed with Ghost Whisperer because most people have somebody in their past that they would like to communicate with. They want to believe or imagine that it is possible.

This subject has expanded in the Ghost Whisperer when Melinda’s husband Jim was shot and died. Jim’s spirit refused to move on and jumped into an accident victim’s body so he could return to the time of the living. He obviously has unfinished business with Melinda. She is the love of his life and they were trying to have a baby before he was shot. The problem is he doesn’t remember anything. See if Jim gets his memory back by following the Ghost Whisperer blog.

Monk

Adrian Monk is also stuck in the past on USA’s Monk. Monk is a brilliant detective whose only unsolved case is the murder of his wife, Trudy. The death of Trudy has left Monk damaged. Monk suffered a breakdown and his OCD symptoms are uncontrollable since Trudy’s death.

Monk needs to solve the mystery of Trudy’s death so he can move on with his life. His nurse Natalie lost her husband to death as well. Maybe she is healing her own issues with life while she is taking care of Monk. You can follow the hilarious adventures of the obsessive detective on the Monk blog.

Desperate Housewives

The characters of ABC’s Desperate Housewives have their own themes of time. The narrator of the show is Mary Alice. Her death still remains a mystery to viewers. Talk about secrets going to the grave! The question is-will the secrets stay there?

Desperate Housewives has flashbacks into the past of the characters. We are constantly reminded how the past directly affects the present even if you don’t realize it.

This season includes another manipulation of time because it begins four or five years after the last season ended. The past is always lurking in the shadows threatening to reveal its secrets though. The new character of Edie’s husband, Dave, seems to have some sinister secrets in his past.Find out what is happening on the Desperate Housewives blog.

Keep spending your time following these shows about time and blogging about all your thoughts on the many subjects of time.

Contact the writer of this blog:

dltheghost96@gmail.com

	Life on Mars	Lost	Ghost Whisperer	Monk	Desperate Housewives
The Dead React with People in the Present		x	x
Time Themes	x	x	x	x	x
Flashbacks to the Past	x	x	x	x	x
Skipping Forward in Time	x	x			x
Actual Travel Back in Time to the Past	x	x
Unresolved Issues with the Past	x	x	x	x	x

Table Tutorial

QOW Comment

"Anonymously Wanting to be Known"

Most bloggers are anonymous posters with no real identity. When we view a post from a blogger we don't really know who the person is. They may be using a false name or a creative nickname. Even if they use their real name, we don't see the face of the actual person. We don't know who they are by reputation as we would if we were reading something say by F. Scott Fitzgerald, for example. Even though we don't know him personally, we definitely know who he is and perhaps even some personal history.
We can get to know a blogger by seeing their posts regularly. We can get a sense of their feelings and opinions and can usually sense if they are passionate about something from their response. We can get clues from their language and the way they use it, even from their punctuation and use of abbreviations. We can guess from the frequency of their posts : How much spare time they have, How lonely they are, If they talk about their family, Maybe they are obsessed with blogging, The subjects they blog about, How current are knowledgable they are about the subject they are blogging about.
We can also get an idea if they are slightly unbalanced when we come across a totally off-the -wall post.

Question of the Week #2

2. Bloggers blogging about blogs and blogging...and ethos
Now that you're tracking some blogs, it's time to start thinking about how the bloggers you're following construct their ethos. What kind of personas do you see on the blogs you're following, and what strategies do your bloggers use to project positive ethos (good will toward the audience, good sense, and good moral character.)

"Art Imitates Life"

My response to the Question of the week is that "Art imitates life"