#maggiechristopher

[newculturesofwriting]

Personal Blog Interest: Capital Weather Gang

The blog I want to analyze is

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/ 

I like this blog because it brings together a lot of weather stories throughout the  nation and world, but also shows forecasts for parts of the US I probably would look at. 

[newculturesofwriting]

Guest Blogger: Art Through The Ages.

Benjamin makes a lot of points about how art has been changing over the years. One of this points that really stuck out to me was when he said; "The uniqueness of the work of art is identical to its embeddedness in the context of tradition." To me this line is really important when you go to art museums or ancient buildings. The ability to look at pieces of art and learn about a culture is something that has always intrigued me. You get to see into what the culture held scared and what they believed in, especially when it came to religious practices. 

The definition of tradition is: "the transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation, or the fact of being passed on in this way." Tradition is important, and art is important, to have them work together as a fluid being is also important because it means having a link between cultures. I think that knowing what people believed in the past helps us to learn about what has changed in our future. I think there is a strong connection between art and what we have learned about history, and that this is a key factor in what Benjamin talks about in his own writing.

Benjamin even mentioned how art changes meaning over time, different people see sculptures that were made 100s of years ago and hold them to a different importance then the people who build them. I believe from all of this that the best art is fluid. If it can flow between generations and still mean something the art will survive for centuries, and though it’s not strictly a point Benjamin makes, I think it's important. 

I find this to be an interesting problem, especially when tied to book writing. As Benjamin talks about, having the work be authentic is hard, especially when there are people who try to recreate it. I feel like this is a difference between physical art and writing. Physical art can break, old sculptures can crumble and we try to recreate them, but books are different, especially when there can be multiple copies. I don’t think having many copies is bad, mostly because we now have many more ways of keeps each copy the exact same.

[newculturesofwriting]

My name is Maggie, I am a meteorology major with a creative writing minor. (I know its weird.) I tend to use most types of social media. I have a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr. I'm definitely more connected to my twitter and Tumblr, because it allows me to write about things I don't necessarily want to share with everyone I know. I use social media mostly to connect with family or friends I haven't seen, I especially like using it to see picture of my new baby cousin. I hope to get a new point of view of social media out of this class. Recently I went to a meteorology  convention that discussed how social media is changing how a lot of aspects of watches and warnings. I'm interested to see how social media effects writing, and how I can ultimately connect that to my meteorology career in the future.

The one thing about the Wesch video that stuck out the most to me was the line "Who will organize all this data?". This struck because of the two things, the fact I'm a scientist at heart and the fact that there is a lot of stuff on the internet to sort through. I think that the more the internet and world expand the more there will need to be control over whats get posted. Plenty of times there is incorrect information posted, and rumors spread quicker on the internet than in real life. I think with the expanding virtual world there needs to be controlled what gets spread so fast. The more data the more that is available the more there will need to be quality control, just like for meteorology. The more you have, the more you need to make sure its correct.