Thing #7 Commenting

Commenting is especially useful and meaningful in the world of blogs because an author can see an almost immediate response to his or her posts. Unless they are on a fairly extensive and interactive book tour, authors do not generally have the opportunity for such immediate feedback from their readers. Not only do blog comments give an author immediate feedback, they also allow for the blog's readers to interact with each other, expounding on common interests and digging deeper into the subject at hand.

Blog readers, unlike book readers, have the capability and the opportunity to comment and interact with the blog writer and its other readers instantaneously from all over the world. A positive aspect of the commenting capability is that a reader might feel more comfortable expressing him- or herself in a blog via commenting rather than in person. This could make for more interesting interaction on the blog, and hopefully, if well received, the commenter might gain some confidence in his or her opinion and be able to see that change can be effected this way. On the other hand, it is very likely that someone could use the commenting capability to do very unhelpful things. I would guess that this is why many bloggers would reserve the right to regulate the comments before they are published. Some might take issue with this, too, because it might show a bit of "oppression" in their opinion.

I have enjoyed reading the comments on my blog and on others of classmates here. I find the interaction encouraging and thought-provoking.

Thing #6

Here is the bottom line: I'm too interested in too many things, and setting up Google Reader for me is like someone gave me the first rock of crack for free. Information crack, that is.

Life for me is pretty busy and full of energy-sapping activity (My husband and I have a 3 month old son, and we both work full time), so I am trying to determine if having my favorite web sites skimmed by Google Reader will make my limited internet time more or less efficient. My first instinct tells me that it will make things less efficient, simply because I might get sucked in with all of it right there at my fingertips, the steps of having to enter the URL address skipped over . . . just one click on one site, and I can look at NPR, NY Times, BBC News, etc.

I love sharing relevant information with friends and coworkers because I know that not everyone has (or takes) the time to pursue continuing education. Sometimes, our interests get lost in life as we know it. As a new parent, for the first time in my life, I can fully understand and empathize with that reality. So, the "Add Star" and various "Share"/"Email" features of the Google Reader that could be VERY helpful in that respect -- you can share what you know your friends/family/coworkers will find interesting right from the Reader.

Thing #5: Using Google Reader -- NY Times

I love reading the NY Times online, and I used to be a subscriber to the paper edition, but I simply could not keep up with it -- and then, it seemed that I was subscribing solely to contribute the newspapers to the recycle bin. Senseless, because all content was offered to me free online, wherever I had an internet connection (virtually everywhere these days). Anyhoo, NY Times is my home page, and I allow myself to skim over the front page daily -- once I start reading, though, I am sucked in for a while. So, of course, I made it one of my Google Reader feeds. It might make the skimming more efficient for me. Here is the article that drew my attention today: Understanding The Anxious Mind. How do you NOT read that article? It deals with a study done by Harvard psychology professor Jerome Kagan, in which, in 1989, he took as his subjects babies whose temperament and its effects he wanted to observe in a longitudinal study. He opted to track the babies' temperaments based on a single dimension: whether or not they were easily upset when exposed to new (unfamiliar) things. His hypothesis was that the most edgy infants would grow up to be the most inhibited, anxious, and shy adults.

Throughout the article, he refers to "Baby 19." In his study, the first eighteen babies proved not to be "high reactors" to the unfamiliar stimuli, but Baby 19 was visibly distress, flailing, crying, and arching her back. Kagan goes on to share results of an interview he did with Baby 19 when she was a fifteen-year-old high school student. She tells the interviewer at first that she does not know what she worries about, but then pauses and goes on to share a laundry list of all of the things in her life/surroundings that provoke worry and anxiety in her: social issues, performance issues, how she will deal with the world when she is grown.

The articles notes that four significant long-term studies are in progress which have all, with minimal differences, determined "that babies differ according to inborn temperament; that 15 to 20 percent of them will react strongly to novel people or situations; and that strongly reactive babies are more likely to grow up to be anxious." The author notes that cognitive behavioral therapeutic interventions appear to work with children as they do with adults. Therapists try to teach anxiety-ridden clients to replace the tendency to ruminate with a more rational inner voice.

One interesting finding in Kagan's study was that higher-reactive kids appear to avoid some of the traditional pitfalls of adolescence. He says that because the higher-reactive kids are more restrained, they are less likely to experiment with drugs, to get pregnant, or to drive recklessly. Interesting.