Arabian Nights

1. I think twitter is a great way for people to keep their friends and family up-to-date on what they are doing right at this moment. It has no influence on me but I can see why some people might like it. In our world today it is difficult to keep in contact with all friends because of work, family, school and other obligations. So Twitter is a way for somebody to just enter information really quickly and everybody who follows the “Tweets” knows what’s going on in their friend’s life.
What bothers me about it is that everybody can see everything all the time. Some things are just private thoughts or feelings that should be discussed in person and not over the World Wide Web.
I have to say I was a bit affected by what my peers wrote, because it is interesting to know what people are thinking about at certain points in time. That’s probably something that they would otherwise never share during a regular conversation.
In reference to the type of time used at Twitter, I would say teleological because there is a purpose and a beginning and end to the posts. Most people posted what they were doing at the point or during the day all setup in linear time.

2. In the stories I read I would say that teleological time is used. In “The Thief and the Shroff” a thief tries to steal a bag of gold pieces from a shroff. He goes about it very cleverly and waits till the shroff is at home and leaves the bag with gold on the counter while he goes to the bathroom. After the thief presents his price to his friends, they convince him to bring the gold back so that the slave girl won’t be punished for stealing it. He makes up a scheme and goes back to return the gold pieces but in the end he saves the girl and keeps the gold. I think this shows a beginning of that particular story following through to the end. But as with all of Scheherazade’s tales, this one is interwoven with the next one and so forth which makes it entropic / chaotic time as well, because in the end, nobody knows anymore what the main story was and how we got to the last story. The stories are completely random. All she tries to do is keep the sheik happy and live another night.
3. I think in 1001 Nights women are portrayed as cheating and mean creatures but also as having wit like Scheherazade that can outsmart even a king by telling him 1001 stories in as many nights and bearing him 3 children while doing that.
A lot has changed for women in Arabian countries especially in recent years. They are now almost equal to men. They can work outside the home if they want to. I think the Islam has a lot to do with that because it teaches everyone to have respect for each other men and women alike. There still is the Sharia (Islamic Law) though that prohibits women in leadership, so that means only men are capable to lead. Arab women are also very underrepresented in parliament and other political institutions, but in my opinion that is still even so in the United States.
Then there are still areas in the Arabian world were women are not allowed to travel alone or must seek the consent of the husband when they want to leave the country (Example: the movie “not without my daughter” with Sally Field).