Quarter In Review

Blogs were a very new thing to me this quarter. I have never wrote in them before and have never really read them until this class. It was a fun and interesting experience; one that will have a long lasting effect on my writing. I think personally that my writing has gotten better with every entry along with writing our essays.

Keeping up with writing in blogs and with each draft was a major hassle. I had never really had a writing agenda until now. It seemed hard to keep up with it in the beginning but then I got into a groove for a little. I know that I had forgotten to write some things which will teach me not to get behind in things because that could mess up my groove. I thought of writing in blogs as a weekly chore to write in which I never really had an interest in doing because sometimes I would forget about it when I was busy with other things.

I think that writing these blogs will help me in the future with writing because I was never really a strong writer. Also the feedback you gave helped me figure out where I was with my writing and helped with improving my writing skills which I can notice have gotten somewhat better but I still lack some writing abilities. So all in all I really enjoyed this class and this blog writing experience and who knows maybe I will consider continuing writing in my blog!!!

New Experiences

At the beginning of this quarter when I had first heard we were going to be writing in blogs it was a shock to me because I never really have been associated with them for academic reasons. I was never really interested in them because I thought they were just about technology and politics. Also another generalization I had was that it was only really nerds who wrote in them and had no other life than that. I guess that the only blogs I was ever on was a high school sports forum that talked about all the different sports, but it was really big to me during football season to see what people would say about us. At the end of the quarter now I realize that blogs are written in by journalists who tell big news stories, along with some other big name reporters who have good knowledge about other major topics in news. So in my mind weblogs are used for news, enhancing writers’ abilities, and just chatting about certain topics.

Blogs can be great mediums between television and newspapers that you can read articles faster and they will get you to the point of the topic or story you want. “We think of a medium as the thing that delivers content. But the delivered content is a medium in itself. Content is just a medium for interaction between people” (Rushkoff, 2000). I think that Rushkoff is saying that blogs are a way for people to discuss topics and debate their sides. Like he said that “Content is King” (Rushkoff, 2000), because with no content in blogs you have no conversation and therefore you will have no blogs. Now blogs are a very important thing is peoples lives because it can provide them with the information that they want and find out new information; for example sports blogs because you never know if someone gets caught for drugs or had possession of weapons and had been suspended. So blogs are a good medium between television and news papers, but remember if there is not content then there will be no blog.

Another way blogs are useful is that they can enhance your writing and can help you with not making the same mistakes as usual. Now I am sure that there are some people who just go around on blogs just looking to correct people’s mistakes in their writing which can help a new struggling blogger/writer become better overall. Now some people think that blogs add nothing to the web, “That they contribute to the poor writing quality the internet suffers” (Talbot, 2001). Which I think is true, because people who write in blogs are like people who chat on AIM, which is AOL Instant Message, by not using grammatically correct forms of words and have many sentence problems. But on the other hand Rebecca Blood says that blogs make people better writers because in her book she says that, “It’s easy to write poorly, but it’s hard to write poorly everyday” (Blood, 2002). Now I think that if you write the same everyday I don’t see how you would get any better by writing the same way. I would have to agree with Talbot when he says that it allows shitty writers to get their bad grammar on the net. They enhance writers’ abilities by enhancing their thoughts and have them become more aware of their surroundings and what people are talking about around them.

Blogs allow you to just talk about whatever you want which is the neat thing about them. You can find blogs about any subject or topic you want. There are people out there who are experiencing some of the same things you are in which you can connect with them in that spectrum. But sometimes I think that they can be too long which can turn my attention to them off and on to something else. They can give some pointless information and will just get you lost in what it is they want to say. But overall I think that they are a cool think to get information and other helpful things done.

The blogging experience was fun. I learned many new things about the web and learned how to use blogs as a tool for information. This was definitely helpful to me so I can gather resources from other things rather than the normal search engines. My view has taken a total 360 degree turn and now I know some of the main reasons people use them and they are to receive some type of news or information, enhance people as writers, or for just an occasional chat about whatever topics are on your mind or ones that you’re interested in.

Steroids in Movies???

Are steroids in movies? I think so; after watching some movies this weekend I wonder if they use steroids in all of these war and sports movies to make these men look larger than they actually arei in real life. Movies like Troy, Rambo, Any Given Sunday, etc. are examples of movies that could easily in my eyes have steroid usage in them. Those are all great movies to me, some of which are my favorites, but taking them just to look buff in a movie just doesn't seem worth it to me. They could still have plenty of effects on them later in their life or could easily effect them right away and could potentially have heart problems while filming.

Now I know in the movie 300 they had some ridiculous workout plan where they did 300 of everything thing they did to get ripped for the movie. Now i think that if you did what they did for every movie that it would make the movie much better in my eyes.



Steroids is just a way to cheat at something so that you can get bigger than anyone else. I mean i guess in movies it is ok for them but to some people it may ruin the impact of the movie.

Essay 2

Alek Stemen
Mr. Boczkowski
Intensive Reading and Writing 109.02
6 February 2008
Essay #2

This blog I read was by Adam Newton a sports fanatic who gives his view on what he thinks on this whole steroid controversy. At the beginning he says that he had never really been part of organized athletics until he had reached high school. But throughout his younger years he watched sports with his family and friends. He talked about how he was never really the athlete who stayed out on the field after practice, or workout in the weight room for the whole day he just basically was there did what he had to and just left when everyone else did.

Now a days he watches games with his brothers, friends, and roommates where they have heated debates he says. Mainly it is how the United States Congress is not doing what it can to take care of this whole steroids situation. He states that steroids have been around sports for around these past fifteen years. Football and baseball are the two main sports that are directly involved with steroids but with the harsh punishment of football penalties players don’t get in trouble with them along with basketball too. Baseball is the main sport where steroids are the most caught. Also he states that it is basically grown men trying to get an edge on one another and must bear the consequences of their actions.

Then he goes into this metaphor where he uses an office and basically says that if someone breaks the rules and does whatever he or she wants in order to produce high-quality work that is enjoyed by your consumers and co-workers and asks if that is cheating just because you are breaking the rules. To me I think that if you break the rules to make a consumer or co-worker happy then it is okay to do.

After that he basically talks about how shitty the MLB and Bud Selig did in getting steroids out of baseball. Also says that he wants steroids out of all professional sports and that the punishments should be greater. He states that the Mitchell Report is the closest thing to intervention that we have witnessed with a public institution. He thinks that baseball should have harsher penalties for steroids. And he ends with saying that the whole sports entertainment business is all fake athletes instead of the raw natural athlete.

To me this is a good point of view from someone who came from a limited athletic background. He made a lot of good points which I agree with. With me coming from a very strong athletic background I have seen some things that this guy may not have seen. Coming from a school enriched with sports I was around them all the time whether or not participating.

Steroids in my mind is a way of cheating yourself because the results you see at first will look good but at the end the end up turning bad just from the affects it does to your mind and body. I have seen steroids around me before because they don’t normally drug test in high school and people will do whatever sometimes just to get that edge on others. I had always watched sports growing up especially with my dad and always wondered how these professional athletes got to be the size they were. I hadn’t really heard about steroids until the late 90s when they were talking about Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire and the monster seasons they had in baseball that year.

I think that sports should be all natural working out to be the better athlete. You should work to gain the edge without using roids. I know of people who use things such as like whey protein and like creatine and all those other pills and powders which to me is perfectly legal. All those do is just hydrate you and helps build muscle faster so that you get the results you want faster. I have used a protein powder before and I can see the difference after awhile. It is amazing what a little hard work can do. I mean look at UFC fighters those guys train for hours at a time and for years to get at the best physical shape possible for them and the sport that they are competing in.

Finally I think that steroids should be taken out of all sports and if caught they should have the harshest penalty there is. And if you work hard you should have the advantage over everyone so that everything is even and there are no cheaters.

Do Steroids effect length of play?

The other day Brett Favre had retired from seventeen years in the National Football League. He will go down as one of the best quarterbacks in NFL history. He went out on a record breaking season and will most likely make it into the Hall of Fame his first year on the ballot.

Along with Brett retiring, Sam Cassell signed with the Boston Celtics basketball team the other day. He will be ending his fourteenth season with the National Basketball Association this year. Throughout these years he has been with multiple teams along the way.

Barry Bonds will be entering his twenty second season in Major League Baseball. He currently holds the home run record* and is now a free agent in the MLB. He has only been with two teams in his career and who knows if anyone will sign him now because of the whole steroids controversy.

What do all these people have to do with exactly? Well steroids can have the effect of players lasting longer in athletics becasue they will always have energy to perform every game. Now I am not saying that all these players had used steroids or HGH but it could be a possibility just because of the length. There are many other players the I could have pointed out but there are to many of them to name. It is just remarkable how they can stay in the game this long and still perform at their best.

The Guest Blogging Experiment

I felt like my guest blogger did a good job on acting as me for this guest blog. The length like Derek said was basically the same as my usual post but he also noticed that the style was different. I can see some similarities to the guest post and mine but there were some differences in this too.

His style was much more grammatical than mine I feel. Also his had a better flow to it and sounded smoother when you read it. Unlike me he used the press conference as a tool to write this post because of the press conference with Andy Pettitte to tie in with this whole Roger Clemens steroids case. Another difference I had noticed was he had done more research than I usually do with reading up on this article. He did a good job with research and if anything the guest blogger may have done a better job writing and planning out this post than I normally do. Well done guest blogger.

Having this guest blog gave me some more ideas on where to take my blog. I should follow his ways in writing these because I think that this was a great post. Overall with all these guest blogs and all I could tell some similarities and differences in the actual posts and guest posts. I think that we all did good jobs on guest blogging. We all have come a long way with these blogs like Derek said.

Guest Blog by: SSR

Andy Pettitte, pitcher for the New York Yankees and long time friend of Roger Clemens, provided a deposition before Congress last week on the use of performance enhancing drugs - steroids. Pettitte admitted to using human growth hormone (HGH) between 2002-2004. Pettitte also provided information that Roger Clemens had talked about steroid use in the past. There were a lot of reports that Andy Pettitte's father received the human growth hormone from a guy Andy Pettitte went to high school with. More and more people keep getting drawn into the steroid controversy.

I think if Roger Clemens were to come clean and admit that he used steroids, everyone could move on. His wife was accused and has since admitted using human growth hormone to look good before posing in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue 4 years ago. Pettitte was forced to betray his friend and now Roger's wife has been linked. The longer this goes on, the more people won't believe a word Roger says and more people will be hurt. All he has to say is; it was 10 years ago, it was a mistake and I regret doing it. His character has already been questioned and not many people seem to believe him so I think he is better off just admitting it.