Blog #2

The blog I will be covering for this semester is http://www.bipolarnation.com/, a media blog created by Dan Kenitz. The blog's mission statement is partly the reason why I decided to cover it. The goal of this blog involves bringing EVERYONE together, regardless of things like political stance, culture, beliefs, and so on, to discuss various events. Although the site does not appear to garner as much traffic or hold as much involvement as some major blogs (perhaps due to the forum aspect described below), it offers an interesting attempt to look at issues from multiple viewpoints, including those on a political level. The actual structure is very simple. The author of the blog (usually Dan Kenitz or Aaron Robertson) constructs a post describing and occasionally taking sides on a current issues. After presenting some background information mixed in with the author's individual thoughts, a link is provided to a designated forum topic where the post can be discussed or commented on in greater detail by visitors. In this way the traiditional method of leaving a comment is not used. I presume that the forum method is used to force less anonymity and allow greater flexibility in any needed moderation, due to the encouragement of responses from a wide variety of people. The issues discussed tend to concern mostly serious issued concerning the United States population. Given that the primaries are an important (and popular) topic many recent posts have been examining candidates and big issues surrounding the primaries such as health care and the economy.

Blog #1

Hey everyone. I am Matthew, and this is my MCS222 blog. When not debating some obtuse point I am usually reading mystery, fantasy, or science fiction books. When the semester workload is not at insane levels I also enjoy playing video games with friends (I note however that MMORPG’s such as WoW have not pulled me in…yet). Let us all hope that Smash Bros. Brawl does not get delayed again so that it will come out in time for Spring Break. That would be really nice. I also enjoy strategy/war-like board games, or in other words, less like Monopoly and more like Axis and Allies. The picture above shows me in one such board game setting, with my Romans leaping forth to hold back a Germanic Tribe invasion. Guerilla Roman tactics… history works in strange ways sometimes.

Moving on to more educational points, I have always been a fan of writing. Although I have written the occasional fan-fiction I usually find myself working on non-fiction pieces. This love of writing has led me to enter college so that I may continue to develop my writing skills. Having obtained an AA in English back at Howard Community College I transferred to UMBC last fall where I work on a dual-degree in English plus Media and Communication Studies. I tacked on the latter degree for a few reasons. The first being that as an English Major I was giving much thought as to what I would supplement said major with. After some research I noticed the wonderful opportunities that the MCS major provided, and how it coincided with both my interests and academic goals. Although writing is important, I feel that the ability to communicate writing across rapidly growing fields of technology is essential. Knowing your audience is important in a variety of fields, including writing. Naturally the MCS major lead me to taking this course. I imagine that in order to understand the aspects of communication that this major leads to, an understanding of the topics that are introduced in this course will be important.

Although I like to write, I also like to avoid unexpected autobiographies when possible so I think this is a good spot to conclude. I leave this initial post with an amusing youtube video for all the Lost fans out there.

Until the next blog.

~Matthew Morgal