Critiques, and there are many, of blogging see the medium as "self-absorbed, narcissistic, and pretentious".
I agree that blogging can be that. Still, they can also be experimental writings for readers to comment on, and challenges of unorthodox positions and ideas wherein the blogger is expressing ideas and positions outside the traditional media that design at challenging the mainstream thinking and opinions.
Here is what I am trying to do here
In an earlier post in this blog on the 14 of July
at
http://connect.nmmu.ac.za/Blogs/Developing,-Problematizing-and-Testing-An-Applied/July-2014/Middle-East-problems
on the Middle East Problems I wrote
The Palestinians are being denied their most basic freedom of movement and freewill, because of the fear and traumas of the Israeli Jews who are living the traumas of their collective history. The Palestinians are forced to pay a collective price for the terrorism of the few.
The Jews are seeking their own piece of haven and their own self-determination in their biblical homeland. They do so after two thousand years of exile and diaspora, which entailed a complete and utter dependency on other nations and people, and suffering horrific persecution and systematic killing and butchery, the latest of which being the Shoah (holocaust). In their biblical homeland, they are met by the Palestinians who do not think they should pay the price for this ill justice that happened far away.
--
Two main events dominate international news at the moment:
1. Israel-Gaza and
2. http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/jul/22/ukraine-train-carrying-mh17-bodies-arrives-kharkiv-video
I had a conversation yesterday, Sunday the 20th of July, with a holder of the nationalist Zionist position where I presented the piece I wrote here on the situation.I tried to give him the contradictory discourse to the traditional national Zionist discourse and doctrine.
The traditional national Zionist is very simple, predicted and predictable.
Jews suffered in the diaspora, Jews go to their biblical homeland. Jews have the right to defend themselves. Israel is right. The Arabs are wrong. Anyone who challenges this is an anti-Semite, if a non Jew, or a self-hating Jew trying to please the majority and survive in the diaspora, if ethnically Jewish.
The result was an interaction that completely failed the Turing test in the sense that the other side inserted responses to my contradictory challenges that might have been written or scripted by a computer, AI. I was fascinated as I never had an interaction that failed the Turing Test
I am an Israeli Sabra researching Ontology. I am becoming more and more fascinated with propaganda and indoctrination
Prof Karl Rogers, the director of the Dewey The John Dewey Center for Democracy and Education
asked me
how do we avoid the partisan assertion of bias (propaganda), self-indulgent solipsism, or the retreat into relativism?
And I am reflecting and posing very difficult questions that clash with everything the Zionist narrative is emerging into as this conflict gets out of hand.
This is my personal blog that helps me with my own research and teaching practices, and does not represent my institution or its views. Except that I live by and abide by my institution welcoming of democratic, pluralistic discourse, freedom of speech and critical thinking and challenging. Never again we shall have an apartheid here in South Africa and anywhere in the world that is combined with propaganda, indoctrination and terror. Challenging and criticism of the mainstream view is essential.
As you know, I have a Research Tips moodle wherein the aims and wishes are as followed:
I wish to help with scholarship, scholarly writing and research. Practitioner-oriented students and staff seem to be overwhelmed by research and the research components of their courses. Research is the number one cause of drop out. I wish to make research exciting as a significant contribution to knowledge and scholarship.
The aim here in this forum (moodle) is to support Masters and Doctoral candidates and beginning and intermediary researchers in their research programmes.
To provide tips and advice, as well as resources and materials. I
To provide spaces for questions on and discussions about the degree programmes and research practices and careers.
The main objective is to provide an answer to the alienation and loneliness that many Masters and Doctoral candidates experience as they conduct their researches and to ensure that they get their degrees as quickly and smoothly as possible and in a manner that is pleasant and enriching for them
I have put this tip this morning in my moodle at
http://learn.nmmu.ac.za/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=10623#p35064
A researcher must know to critically reflect on his/her actions, intentions, plans and feelings and experiences. There is no research inquiry without this that should become natural and should practiced again and again.