I LOVE Blogs!

I believe blogging weekly instead of writing a research paper was beneficial for several reasons:

-Blogging required students to think critically about numerous topics, events, and ideas stressed in class. A term paper usually sets focus on one topic that an individual must research by itself or they already knows information about. Blogging allows numerous ideas to be stressed.
-Blogging is new to many students including myself. Term papers are not. New things are exciting and inspirational for ideas.
-The weekly blogs that required reflection of class activities gave evidence to Mr. Tofias and Dana who was in class and participating.
-Blogging also allows students to write their opinions without being blasted for stupidity in front of the class

I do think the blog was a very good idea to judge participation and dedication to the class, however, I found it very difficult to participate to the extent that the syllabus required. Many people chose not to blog at all, some don't have responses from back to September. This was frustrating for me because it was hard to respond to others' blogs, and I felt I was responding to the same ones. I feel that those who did not blog weekly really hindered everyone else's experience and made the exercise seem unimportant.

I tried to blog weekly and participate in others' blogs. I did miss a couple blogs, including last week's which was about sorting(it slipped my mind,) but I feel as if i did a good job keeping up with class and providing a discussion for other students. I would give myself a B for the blogging grade because my few slip-ups did not affect greatly my participation, understanding and keeping up with class.

Critical Era

I feel like the 90's could be classified as a critical era in "slow-mo." There are particular requirements for an era to be classified as "critical" and many events have taken place to reflect these requirements in the 90's. However, these events have not not been rapid, and stability seems a little far off. To focus on the behaviors and public opinion, presented are a few reasons to why I feel one could consider the 90's as an "almost" critical era.

Public opinion and behavior seems to have flip-flopped in small shifts between right and left wingers. Bill Clinton won votes because of his domestic policies as opposed to previous international policy to contain the Soviet Union. After his term, the votes seem to reflect the shift to a less domestic focused policy to the pre-emption strategy of George W. Before Clinton, partisanship was greatly influenced by military, in the 90s I feel like this had worn off. The public's beliefs and actions show slow, moderate changes that have yet to climax into what our book describes as a traumatic event. In the future, I believe if Barak Obama and Hilary Clinton continue to have political influence that black and white partisanship may change drastically. The number of minority voter will increase and may have dramatic, traumatizing, results. I also believe that Guiliani may have the ability to attract moderate democrats with many of his political views and this may lead to shift in partisanship as well.

However, because the last few presidential elections have been so close, I feel there hasn't been any major shifts to classify the last two decades as critical. Until the point of a consistent majority is reached, I feel we are unable to determine whether or not we are stable or at what point we were at a critical era.