eHub

Today's lab may have been one of the most active yet.
Not only did I complete the menial tasks that are apart of the job, and create a requested web element for a package for a story airing tonight, but I began working on an online project.
The project is the report the "most important story ever" conceived. I am going to ask people why we are here in a metaphysical sense. I will ask philosophy professors, biology faculty, people involved in physics and religious figures, as well as ordinary students. And through this I hope to compile some kind of composite image of what the hell human experience is all about.
So there's that.

Today I got a list of names of philosophy people that would be good to talk to. So I'll be working on that soon.

Every October you are bombarded with Breast Cancer Awareness fundraisers and merchandise. For me, this marks the one-year anniversary of when my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Dear Mister President,

For some time now, the Russian Federation has been governed by the manliest man on the planet: Vladimir Putin.  He's jacked, he was a secret agent (albeit KGB), he saves his cameramen from tigers and now he has an instructional Judo DVD.  I expect in his free time he gets into fist fights with wild bears a bathes with dish soap and brillo pads. 

Now, you'd have to be extremely gullible to believe that some of the things Putin claims he did (read: saved his cameramen from tigers) weren't staged.  The fact remains, though, that his popularity is ludicrously high.

Your job approval rating hit a new low last week, meaning you will probably leave office with your popularity on par with a middle schooler who doesn't bathe.  In the spirit of love, compassion, and a sincere desire for our President to be cooler than Russia's, I've come up with a list of simple over-the-top things you could (cough) stage (cough) to help save your legacy before you leave office in January:

1.       During a press conference in the Rose Garden, release a wild bull on the White House lawn.  Proceed to wrestle it to the ground bare-handed.

2.       Go on "WWE" and challenge none other than Hulk Hogan to a no-holds-barred cage match.  Be sure to emphasize how feminine Hulk is compared to you.

3.       Fly to Iraq and single-handedly/guns-blazingly beat the Mahdi Army, a la Rambo II.

4.       Give Dick Cheney a spanking on national television.

5.       Fly to Pluto, measure it, definitively prove that it is indeed a planet, then claim it in the name of America.

Any one of these simple tasks would, in my humble opinion, be enough to resurrect your public image.  Heck, if you accomplish three or more we'd probably let you run for a third term.

Hugs and Kisses,

Andrew

"France is happy to welcome Barack Obama," French president Nicolas Sarkozy announced before Obama spoke in Paris July 25. "First of all, because he's American, and the French love the Americans."

 

Come again, Monsieur Sarkozy?

 

After spending the summer in France and enduring hostility/mockery/disgust at my English accent and the typical "what were you thinking?" questions about the last eight years -- and only three varieties of Coca-Cola at the grocery store -- I'd venture to say most French people aren't too wild about Americans.

 

They do, however, love them some Obama.

 

On the brink of our most significant presidential election in recent history, it was fascinating to see how the French media was covering our political process. Particularly fascinating was the fervor with which the French support Barack Obama.

 

So why does a country so notoriously critical of the United States have such a crush on Obama?

 

In a Salon.com article, TIME journalist Don Morrison, who lives in Paris, attributes the infatuation to certain personality qualities the French perceive in Obama.

 

"This is a country that takes culture seriously," Morrison said of France. "[Obama] appears to the French to be somebody who values intelligence, education and culture. That makes him one of those idealized Americans that the French have always treasured, the ones who share the Enlightenment values that France did much to invent."

 

The French Support Committee for Barack Obama states that, as president, Obama would not only be the symbol of a new America, but also the symbol of new leadership, new tolerance, new progress in the entire Western world, of which France is a part.

 

During the summer, I asked my Parisian friend Jerome if he thought a black man could be elected president of France. He laughed. Then he said no.

 

I see France's interest in Obama as a desire to share in our change, our step forward, because France is not yet capable of taking such a step itself.  

 

With Obama as president, the United States would be France's flagship, and the country is not afraid or ashamed to praise our advancement and our change as its own.

 

It's an exciting time to be in America on the precipice of so much possibility. I found it equally exciting to be in France to witness just how much our decision this November matters on an international level.

 

I just wish I could've stuck around France longer, if only just to see how "lipstick on a pit bull" would be rendered in the native tongue.

Barack Obama's campaign has done about the most fashionable thing on the Internet short of a Twitter account (They already had one).  They have released an iPhone App.

On top of the just showing off your political tendencies to anyone who might look at your iPhone it allows (read: begs) you to call all of your friends and profess to them your love for your candidate.  The App even sorts your friends by their geographic location and its relative importance in the election.  Statistics are then compiled of your calling and you can see how you compare to other App users. 

This just served to illustrate, yet again, that of the two major candidates Barack Obama is the one whose campaign understands what it can mean to be a modern candidate. Although, to be fair, he hasn't had much competition in this respect.

Despite John McCain serving years in the senate on a committee that oversaw telecommunications throughout the country he only just got online and was proud of his new found ability to send simple email.

Given his understanding of technology maybe Barack can make the last step needed to ensure a win for him in the fall. That being dropping Biden and introducing a new ticket for November.

Obama/Jobs 2008 -- "iWin"

Politifact (a joint project between the Congressional Quarterly and the St. Petersburg Times) is putting an interesting spin on seeking the truth and reporting it.  They are quite literally doing just that: reporting claims made either by the candidates or their advertisements, double-checking said facts and either refuting or supporting the claims with hard evidence. 

The site pulls no punches; they even analyzed Joe Biden's flip remark that President Bush is "brain-dead."  They cited that even those who dislike the president agree that he still breathes and responds to outside stimulus. 

This website is the most refreshing batch of journalism I've seen in a long time.  For too many elections the American people have been held at gunpoint to absolute sensationalism.  The perverse and often baffling habit of the media seems to be merely reporting the back and forth of the elections and molding them to fit story lines, rather than focusing on the content.

 In 2000, we had stories that portrayed Al Gore as a pathological liar and Bush as a lovable dope.  These lines ignored the issues, and the public lapped them up ferociously.  In 2004, we had people lobbing flip flops at campaign rallies as news.  This brand of "soft journalism," turning the elections into a circus rather than a reasoned for debate and national decision, is a dragon that desperately needs slaying.

I applaud the Congressional Quarterly and St. Pete Times for making such an accessible outlet that inherently ignores bias and cuts straight to the issues at hand.  Last Friday's debate can't even come close to making that claim.

Actually, I must admit that I have fallen in love with the site.  In fact, if Politifact was a woman, I would marry her and have half-human half-robotic fact checking babies.  I would probably not get many grandchildren.

In a Diversity in the Media class, a professor once asked "If you were to need a quote from a member of the Asian community, would you pick someone below the poverty level or an upper-class professional?"

The question was obviously designed to show what horrible people journalists can be in their reluctance to broach the unfamiliar, but my immediate response was that one should choose the source with the best quote.

That statement may seem crass at first, but the philosophy behind it I think is one that can turn the notions of class-ism, racism, sexism, etc. on their heads.

As a journalist (or just as a human) one can peak through the curtains of all the isms and learn to view all people through an objective lens. The best way to do this sounds simple on paper, but it's quite obvious many people have neglected to try: expose yourself to something new. That's it. It can be done simply by taking an extra step to interact with someone you may not normally interact with, reading up on a culture that is literally and figuratively foreign to you, or by simply boning up on geography.

A study in 2006 showed that two-thirds of Americans 18-24 could not locate Iraq on a map. This might be great fodder for a Leno piece, but in the end it is shameful and, more importantly, shockingly easy to remedy. 

By taking in a little bit of everything, we can start to see the world how it really is: not as a T.V. dinner where each demographic is as different and separate as the enchilada entre from the vegetables and dessert, but as that scary looking casserole your aunt put on the Thanksgiving table, it is a sum of its parts, and each part is virtually indistinguishable from every other. Chances are, that casserole is better for you anyway, so put your fears and apprehensions aside and take a big bite.

When three photographers were arrested at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., they were identified as "having connections to the University of Kentucky's student newspaper" on kentucky.com.

Some might argue that their affiliation with a student newspaper gives them less privileges than a "legitimate" paper. There are those who might take that argument even further since, according to the article, the photographers went to Minnesota fully aware that any photos they took would not be used in their own paper.

However, the fourth estate does not come with a set of training wheels. Affixing the word "student" before their titles of "journalist" confuses the issue and diminishes the vocation they have thrust themselves into.

Labeling someone a "student journalist" is akin to labeling a fledgling pianist a student musician. There is virtually no difference between what these students are doing in their school days from what their careers will entail. From the jump, these "students" are engaged in an environment where their work is treated no differently than it will be when they are receiving benefits and sick time to do the same thing: inform their audience as accurately and objectively as possible in an effort to educate the public which greases the wheels of democracy.

The fact that these "students" braved the convention while knowingly going unpublished and unpaid shows that they're adhering to the calling of the fourth estate out of a sense of purpose and shear need.

If that doesn't give them the right to be taken seriously, I don't know what does.

The news media has hailed this presidential election as unprecedented. One for the history books. A huge step forward for America no matter how you slice it, Democratic ticket or Republican ticket.

 

But in this fete of supposed progressive thinking, one archaic practice is still being tossed around by both the news media and by the politicians themselves: isms.

 

Racism. Sexism. Ageism. Fanaticism. Liberalism. Conservatism.

 

Isms are a quick fix for our brains -- a simple, tidy way of roping a group of people with related opinions together, setting them to one side and saying there. That's that. I get what you're about.

 

Yes, isms make us think we understand others when in fact they actually hinder our ability to truly do so. To use an ism is to generalize, and to in effect deny the diverse rationales that can lead people to hold the same opinion. We stoop to using isms either because we're too lazy or too narrow-minded to take time to think out these diverse rationales.

 

It's so much easier to argue that anyone who doesn't like Barack Obama is racist than it is to dig deeper, start a dialogue, find out what could really be behind this opinion.

 

A reporter can fit together an easy, crisp little story around the fact that Barack Obama is black, that Sarah Palin is a woman, and that these qualities attract and alienate certain voters. It would be difficult, however, to go beyond the "ism" buzzwords -- beyond this gross homogenizing of the American people -- to discuss why voters hold the opinions they do, why they value certain things in candidates, why other things don't appeal to them.

 

The sooner we step up to the task of discussing what's behind our differing opinions rather than ism-ing them away, the sooner we can really take that huge step forward that we've all been hearing about.

 "-Ism's in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon, 'I don't believe in The Beatles, I just believe in me."'

- Matthew Broderick as Ferris Buehler

Elections are full of the much maligned -ism.  Every possibility if -ism is explored for each candidate.  If a candidate is white, then his or her potential racism is made an issue.  If the candidate is black then the racism of the public is central (Washington Post).  If the candidate is female then the country is too sexist to elect her.  If the candidate is male he may be too much a sexist to effectively govern a half female country.  There is so much ado about the -ism that one might agree with Ferris and want to be rid of them all, as if that were possible.

The truth of the -ism is that they are simple ideological constructions people erect in order that other people can understand a complicated idea.  Could Joseph McCarthy have rallied the country to almost tear itself apart over the state run program to forcibly reallocate property and remove rights of owners for said property for the United States? Not likely.  But he could rally people against communism.  At the most basic level and -ism is simple shorthand.  

The issue with the -ism comes when they are used to define people as opposed to ideas.  Once you label a person a communist, that is what they become.  That communist is no longer a person and become just a classification.  This can come in handy when we deal with scores of new people every day, but it is also an inherent weakness in our thought processes that conspires to damage our good judgement.  As an example of such a failure it is not widely appreciated how many Russians died defending their homeland in World War II (about 10.7 million).  They were communists and not even American communists.  By virtue of that fact they were far less meaningful to learn about in history class.

-Isms make ideas easier to digest.  But we must remember that some indigestion is good. It tells us what ideas are actually are worth eating.