Friday, October 19, 2007

Group K: Nina E-tivity 2

..uf, I just got back from very long trip around the blogosphere. I have to say that I do feel overwhelmed with information right now. There is just so much out there to explore, read and learn about. After (literary) hours of clicking from one link to another, feeling a bit lost in space, I want to show you the blogs that are pretty nice and interesting.

The first one is a blog about anthropology. You can find many interesting articles about any topic that concerns anthropology. This might sound a bit confusing due to the big variety that the field offers; however it is not. They use a very useful system of adding a ‘filed under’ and ‘tags’ section under each article. So then you can easily find the way to the blogs or articles that concern your interest. I’ve looked at the article called On the Evaluation of Language, which lead me to other Linguistic Anthropology blogs.
The design of this blog is very simple and neat. Usages of simple colors, not overwhelming readers with too many links, colors and other ‘things to click on’ at once make the blog look very well organized.

Have Fun * Do Good is the second blog to be presented. From the title you can pretty much guess what it is about. It is “a blog for people who want to make the world a better place AND have fun!", as it is explained in the bolg itself. This blog really made a great impression on me. It is also very well organized. It uses some nice techniques that I didn’t see in other blogs, like the elements ‘Blogs I read’ and ‘Podcasts I listens to’, so you can see what the author is interested in and with whom he or she works, in other words, you get more into it☺. I highly recommend this blog to anyone who is interested into human rights!

My observation about the language used in blogs is mixed. I haven’t seen a blog only using formal language, for example. I feel like the language differs from post to post and it really depends what the author writes about, to whom he addresses the message and what is his/her general aim.

3 comments:

Laura Zock said...

Hi Nina!
You are absolutely right…it was a great effort searching for something original on the Internet but it was worth…I think you found something really interesting!
The blog I read with much pleasure was the second one both for its important content and for the clear structure (very similar to our English blog!). I was particularly interested in the interview of a director (Shalini Kantayya) who underlines the importance a film can have to change the world. I agree with her because a film can educate and inform the audience of problems and social injustice. Just an example, have you already seen “Blood diamond?” it deals with illicit trade of diamonds in Sierra Leone…incredible!
The links of this blog (UNICEF, UN Online Volunteers…) are very useful and well done too.
You did a great job!
Laura

Caroline said...

Hi Nina!
First of all, I have to say that it was difficult for me too to find those blogs. There are so many of them out there in the blogsphere...Anyway, you made a really interesting choice! I really enjoyed the first two blogs about anthropology.I read the articles about the genome institute and the neandertal-genome. It is, indeed, difficult to understand and get into the topic. But nevertheless, it is very interesting!! I think that these two blogs can actually help to improve the language as there are many unknown terms and because it's scientific language. You know, usually, we hardly get to read scientific articles and therefore, as far as I'm concerned, I definitely should be reading that blog more often!! I realised that while reading those articles... So thank you very much for these two blogs!!!!

Crazy Journalist said...

Hey Nina
I've got to say you picked some serious stuff, eh? Well, it's pretty cool you're into anthropology. When I first read Freud's 'Totem and taboo' I was totally fascinated by etnography and anthropology. I thought that somehow going back to the roots of civilization might explain some traits of human nature (assuming that some sort of 'intresiacally human' sort of qualities must exist and never relly change). Of course this is more 'cultural anthropology' while your link was more genetics-oriented, but still it was interesting. Not at all an easy piece of reading, though! By the way, did you know that Chinese anthropologists and archeologists disagree with the generally accepted theory of the evolution of the human species starting from Africa? Apparently, Chinese scholars maintain that they, the Chinese (or Han, as they call themselves) do not descend from the first African homo sapiens but from other hominids who evolved in prehistoric China. Crazy uh? But then, who knows?...