Book Assignments

week 2, website (from p. 49) response:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/correspondents/nickrobinson/

The header to this page is quite visually appealing. Simple, but engaging as Nick's face is featured against a dark gray background color. The tag line reads:

Political editor
Welcome to Newslog - come here for my reflections and analysis on what's going on in and around politics

This gives a viewer a quick summary of what this web page holds, allowing them to decide whether or not they are interested in browsing further.

I really like the layout of this website. The headlines and quick blurbs in the main body of the page allow the reader to quickly scan through and choose which articles they are most interested in. Upon clicking a headline, the full story is presented to the viewer along with a photograph or two and an option to view comments or post a comment. On the right of the article is links to Nick's other articles, and a list of the most popular BBC articles. At the bottom of the article is a widget with links to articles that relate to the article the viewer has clicked, which is really helpful to readers that are searching for as much information as possible.

On the main page is an about me section on the right side of the page is great insight to where Nick came from, which is helpful in allowing to allow the reader to learn about his background in order to further understand how he forms his thoughts.

My Chemical Romance at The Fox Theatre - Bakersfield, CA

This past wednesday, May 25th, in Bakersfield, California, a group of the most intense and loyal fans, arguably, on the face of the planet, filled the sold out Fox Theatre. 

 

My Chemical Romance's Gerard Way motions for the crowd to liven up and join him in a sing-a-long.

  

Having arrived late, I unfortunately missed the set of Kansas City, MO band, The Architects. I was quite disappointed with my timing, since I have heard many good things about this band.

Until this night, I have had a sort of silly and biased bitterness toward PA band, Circa Survive. I learned this night in Bakersfield no never assume or hold a band accountable for their fans' actions ever again. Simply, Circa Survive blew me away and out of the water. I'm pretty sure my jaw was literally on the ground in awe 90% of the set, and the other 10% it was jumbled in a sort of whimpering smile. Singer, Anthony Green, hit a chord somewhere deep inside of me that I've only recently discovered. His eyes seemed to look right through me the few times I managed to catch his eye from the 2nd row of the crowd, making me feel both uncomfortable and at ease at the same time. As for the music, his voice is angelic in an unnerving way, how you would imagine a fallen angel to sound after the long journey from heaven to earth. Sounding more like an instrument than a voice, Anthony writhed his way through the set and around the stage, commanding the energy of his band, the crowd, and seemingly of the whole earth with a wave of his hands. As a ringmaster of sorts, this man was very much the most captivating aspect of the band as a whole. 

 

Circa Survive: Anthony looking toward the sky seemingly harnessing the powers of the universe to explode out of his body and back at the crowd.

 After Circa Survive vacated the stage, the crowd's anticipation built incredibly. Not one body in the whole 1500 capacity theatre seemed to be still. Legs were bouncing, girls were fixing their hair and makeup, children were pestering their parents. 


Finally, the house lights retreated and screams that seemed to blast past the theater roof and into deep space erupted from, not just the teen girls in the crowd, but everyone in the whole building. From the minute the band took the stage, My Chemical Romance effortlessly held onto every thread of every human's attention for the entire set. 


Opening with the ever-catchy, always-stuck-in-your-head "Na Na Na", MCR rocketed through an 18 song setlist without really taking even a second to breathe. Fans were pogoing and dancing maniacally, even in the seats, not letting themselves be confined, letting the music take them over. 

The boys in the band were not disappointed, and further encouraged everyone to just let loose. The two bouncy dance songs, "Planetary(GO!)" and "Destroya" brought out the most energy from the fans, as well as the most sweat. The historic theater vibe was temporarily turned into a vibrating electro-night-club feeling, everyone moving in the same ways to the same beats and bonding through and through due to a shared love of this band.

 

Quick clip (shot by me) of the band playing "Summertime".

A very heartfelt moment came when Gerard dedicated "Summertime" to his wife, Mindless Self Indulgence bass player LynZ. The whole crowd seemed to let out a collective lovestruck sigh at the sound of this. Another moment that pulled at my own heart strings was when Gerard stated simply, "Bakersfield, it's alright to be proud of where you're from. But it's also alright to run away and never turn back", launching the band into performing one of my favorite songs "SING", where the climax of the song became a collective cry of assurance to "keep running!".

The band closed out the set with "Bulletproof Heart", and left the crowd pleading for more. As houselights rose again, some fans scattered while some waited around with hopes to catch a guitar pick, drumstick or setlist. Those lucky few let out squeals of satisfaction, throwing their arms in the air with excitement.  If ever you have the chance to catch this band live, whether or not you are a fan at the start, you will certainly be by the end. They bring a belonging to everyone involved, without even trying they just relate to everyone.

"Learning to love the new media" response

In reading this article, a lot of concerning things caught my eye. The first being how focused on the here and now that the whole of the country is becoming. To quote the article, 

"Sometimes it's difficult to keep everybody focused on the long term. The things that are really going to matter in terms of America's success 20 years from now, when we look back, are not the things that are being talked about on television on any given day."

This hit me pretty hard because I am not super involved in learning about "what's going on" in the world - I don't watch the news much and I am very picky about the "news" that I do let myself read. I believe that this quote is a good part of the reason I don't pay much attention to the television news, or the front page of yahoo.com (or other news sites). They are too busy reporting about Britney Spears' new haircut, or which celebrity couple has broken up, gotten together, or exploded in a firey drunken rage at so-and-so's hip-and-happening club on the boulevard. 

These are not things I concern myself with, and if I'm being completely honest, it makes me terribly sad that a lot of the general populous fool themselves into thinking that they do care about these things. That in their daily life, the style of boots that Bratt Pitt is wearing will affect how they go about doing their chores. They believe, since they are told to believe, that these are the things that matter.

I'm not sure if this is to do with the obsession with celebrity that America has, or that America is trying to distract the populous from the real news, the real issues, the things that will, in fact, inform a citizen's daily life. It is probably very much to do with both of these things, the celebrity obsessed probably stems and grows from the want of the government (and others in power) to keep citizens at ease, controllable, and easily impressionable.

I'm currently re-reading the book Farenheit 451, and it is fascinating how a book published in the 50's could speak so well to how actual life has turned out to be abouf 60 years later. The populous with the "seashells" (headphones) in their ears, listening to what the government and the social media wants us to know. Paying most attention to what they want us to feel is important. Watching their television-walls and relating to their "family" of characters being projected at them. 

It also fascinates me how this book is a required reading in many high schools, and still nothing is changing. It seems that readers do realize and recognize the similarities and frightfulness of those similarities between the book and our current world, but somehow can shrug it off as coincidence, or as something that isn't to be concerned with. It seems so unlikely that we will ever have "firemen" who burn our books and arrest us for owning books and thinking on our own, but I'm not sure if that thought is actually such a ridiculous one at all.

I'm certainly getting off track, here, I'll try to reign myself back into my response to the article "learning to love the new media", while still relating it to my previous almost-rant.

Another quote in the article,

"We have created a technology that has wonderful potential, but increases our ability to lie to ourselves and forget it is a lie."

This is a particurlarly scary thought. And a thought that has already proven itself true many times, through the quick spreading of rumor on the internet. Many times already have people read and heard wrongs on websites and passed on the information to others, believing it to be truths. Whether or not the website has made a mistake, or whether it is a cruel joke, many internet rumors grow and grow, are passed and passed (similar to the childhood game "telephone") until they are however skewed and very much believed to be truth until, hopefully and finally, they will be proven to be either true or false.

An upside to the internet being always editable is that when a rumor has grown into what is believed as a truth - it is usually just as easy to set this rumor to rest by posting the actual truth to the internet, where the cycle starts over and hopefully passed along and along through the same sort of path and correcting everyones' previous untruthful beliefs.

As far as I forsee, there isn't really a solution to this problem. The internet exists, and every individual will just need to be more and more aware of where they are getting their information, and whether their sources are trustworthy.

Roberta Morris Pannel Notes

Story Is Everything.



Greek Storytelling - Builds up to a crisis moment in the middle, winds down from crisis into solution.

Interactivity in journalism (and everything) gives the user control - the user likes to be in control.

Trouble with interactivity: a story sometimes takes us places we don't want to go.

Trouble with "choose your own story" the author always writes every outcome, the user never writes their own story, just chooses an already written direction.
 
In an interview, silence allows an interviewee to sit in awkward silence, while breaking down their resistance to answering the posed question.


Blue is a color that people trust - it is natural.


Roberta said this, "We (artists) tend to get there before we figure out why we are there." This speaks so much to my life, I am always arriving at my destination before I know why I've brought myself there. I speak and act before I think. I make art in certain ways, then figure out why they work afterwards.


She also said "we can be smart, instead of nosy" in relation to interviewing - but I wish more people would apply this to real life as well. I am always trying to get stories out of people, not because I am being nosy but in order to learn things through their experiences. I know I can't have every experience in the world, but if I can learn through others' experiences - I know I will have a more rounded knowledge of the world whether or not the knowledge was obtained by me or passed on to me by they who had experienced it.




end.

Journalistic Standards

 

Additions:

Intellectual principles of the science of reporting:

1)  never add anything that was not there.

2) never decieve the audience

3) be as transparent as possible about methods & motives (explain why)

4) rely on own original report

5) exersize humility

Dave Jenett Research

Korean War:

The Korean War (25 June 1950 – armistice signed 27 July 1953^[28]) was a military conflict between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China (PRC), with military material aid from theSoviet Union. The war was a result of the physical division of Korea by an agreement of the victorious Allies at the conclusion of the Pacific War at the end of World War II.

The Korean peninsula was ruled by Japan from 1910 until the end of World War II. Following the surrender of Japan in 1945, American administrators divided the peninsula along the 38th Parallel, with United States troops occupying the southern part andSoviet troops occupying the northern part.^[29]

The failure to hold free elections throughout the Korean Peninsula in 1948 deepened the division between the two sides, and the North established a Communist government. The 38th Parallel increasingly became a political border between the two Koreas. Although reunification negotiations continued in the months preceding the war, tension intensified. Cross-border skirmishes and raids at the 38th Parallel persisted. The situation escalated into open warfare when North Korean forces invaded South Korea on 25 June 1950.^[30] It was the first significant armed conflict of the Cold War.^[31]

The United Nations, particularly the United States, came to the aid of South Korea in repelling the invasion. A rapid UN counter-offensive drove the North Koreans past the 38th Parallel and almost to the Yalu River, and the People's Republic of China (PRC) entered the war on the side of the North.^[30] The Chinese launched a counter-offensive that pushed the United Nations forces back across the 38th Parallel. The Soviet Union materially aided the North Korean and Chinese armies. In 1953, the war ceased with an armistice that restored the border between the Koreas near the 38th Parallel and created the Korean Demilitarized Zone(DMZ), a 2.5-mile (4.0 km) wide buffer zone between the two Koreas. Minor outbreaks of fighting continue to the present day.

With both North and South Korea sponsored by external powers, the Korean War was a proxy war. From a military scienceperspective, it combined strategies and tactics of World War I and World War II: it began with a mobile campaign of swift infantryattacks followed by air bombing raids, but became a static trench war by July 1951.

(from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War)

PTSD:

Posttraumatic stress disorder (also known as post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD) is a severe anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to any event that results in psychological trauma.^[1][2][3] This event may involve the threat of death to oneself or to someone else, or to one's own or someone else's physical, sexual, or psychological integrity,^[1] overwhelming the individual's ability to cope. As an effect ofpsychological trauma, PTSD is less frequent and more enduring than the more commonly seen acute stress response.

Diagnostic symptoms for PTSD include re-experiencing the original trauma(s) through flashbacks or nightmares, avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma, and increased arousal – such as difficulty falling or staying asleep, anger, and hypervigilance. Formal diagnostic criteria (both DSM-IV-TR and ICD-10) require that the symptoms last more than one month and cause significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.^[1]

Military experience

Schnurr, Lunney, and Sengupta^[40] identified risk factors for the development of PTSD in Vietnam veterans. Among those are:

• Hispanic ethnicity, coming from an unstable family, being punished severely during childhood, childhood asocial behavior and depression as pre-military factors
• War-zone exposure, peritraumatic dissociation, depression as military factors
• Recent stressful life events, post-Vietnam trauma and depression as post-military factors

They also identified certain protective factors, such as:

• Japanese-American ethnicity, high school degree or college education, older age at entry to war, higher socioeconomic status and a more positive paternal relationship as pre-military protective factors
• Social support at homecoming and current social support as post-military factors.^[52] Other research also indicates the protective effects of social support in averting PTSD or facilitating recovery if it develops.^[53][54]

There may also be an attitudinal component; for example, a soldier who believes that they will not sustain injuries may be more likely to develop symptoms of PTSD than one who anticipates the possibility, should either be wounded. Likewise, the later incidence of suicide among those injured in home fires above those injured in fires in the workplace suggests this possibility.^{[citation needed]}

(from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptsd)

My encounter with Dave Jenett:

My initial reaction when meeting Dave Jenett was, simply, “wow.” The minute I locked eyes with this man I could feel the enthusiasm that he holds for just plain life. I could quickly tell that he would be one of the kind of people which I very rarely meet in life that allow me, stressed by inclination and habit, to calm down for a minute and smile. To allow myself to be convinced that, hey, maybe the world isn't really all that bad, after all. And if and when that proves not to be the case all the time, at least it is in the few moments of recollection of good, bad, exciting and interesting times in Dave's life.

I don't normally pay much attention to war and politics, since I generally don't believe in them, so I was expecting this interview to be confusing and taxing for me, but I must say it was strange hearing Dave's experiences through his optimistic eyes. He very often used the words “exciting” and mentioned “laughing” quite a bit. This was jarring to me, I would never expect that fighting in a war would allow a second for laughter, excitement in the form of fright, sure, but not laughing! His appreciation for the little things, and eagerness and willingness to laugh in the face of danger was quite inspiring. 

I related very well to his belief that he says, “Here I am, 85 year's old, and I'm still a kid!... I never grew up!” I often feel this way, finding myself laughing at childish jokes, or thinking things silly and off topic while I daydream more often than live in the real world. This, I think, may be the key to happiness. One of them, at least. If I can hold on to my child-like outlook on life, and somehow force myself to adopt the appreciation of life that Dave holds, and allow myself to laugh in the face of danger, maybe then I will truly be happy and live a very long and rewarding life.

I learned from speaking briefly with Dave, that I have been living my life in some ways that will let me grow to be similar to him in his old age, completely appreciative of having been able to experience all the things he has. I am a strong believer of living for the moment, and living in spontaneity. Life gets too damn boring, otherwise. I also learned which things to tweak in my life in order to push my appreciation for plain and simple living just a little bit farther. Even if Dave had a childhood void of self-confidence, he grew into himself and learned how to make the most of life.