Sideways (2004)
I watched sideways.
It was good.
Payne has a wonderful ability to depict real life situations in humourous and yet depressing style. In About Schmidt you see this man’s life turning out to be a lot worse then it was planned on being and
belated that is… i just woke up from a long stint of time wit Mary… I’m a little groggy…. i don’t remember everything that went on… but i do remember being deleriously happy.
I spent the christmas eve’s eve at my parents house enjoying both their company and Mary’s… then we spent the night in my old highschool bedroom… it was interesting… woke up and santa had been through interestingly enough…. i had given mary a bracelet the night before with an engraving of the auspicious drawing.. which means infinite love and infinite wisdom.
the bracelet resembles the links of chain and threads of silver bound by elven hands… i joke not… it really looks mythological…
all the same.. she has in fact gotten me a secret gift, and the world of warcraft video game COLLECTOR’S EDITION!!! SHE RULES!!!
seriously, she bent over backwards to get this, they made only 75,000 which sounds like a lot except that they had sold out several weeks ago. The only method of getting it is through ebay and she didn’t spend much money to get it or so she claims. apparently she is ebay savvy…
My parents got me this awesome digital camera. Here is the thing, this gift surprised the hell out of me. My parents spent way to much money on this gift. It can take actual movie film.. the camera rules…
i’m done with my tirade of gift recounting… all i can say is that so far my christmas break has been delightfully special…
Hillarious. The governor of illinois bantered on about his website geared to ban violent games in Illinois and when releasing the url he said .com instead of .org. Funny funny… just so happened there was a .com website talking about, you guessed it, how sorry it is that the governor decides to regulate the pruchases of individuals by blanket bans.
Among the games listed, interesting enough is a little book.
That book’s title is 1984.
Rutgers researchers may have stopped HIV
Associated Press
Sunday, December 12, 2004
Piscataway, N.J. — Researchers at Rutgers University have developed a trio of drugs they believe can destroy HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, according to a published report.
i say i found out myself.. i mean to say i found on the web on one of my many sites i visit on a regular basis…
Ever read a book called Earthsea? Ursula Le Guin wrote the novel. Apparently Sci Fi was producing a movie/tv thing and she has officially disowned it.
This is her sentiments:
“Having looked over the script, I realised they had no understanding of what the two books are about, and no interest in finding out. All they intended was to use the name Earthsea, and some of the scenes from the books, in a generic MacMagic movie with a meaningless plot based on sex and violence. (And “faith” — according to Mr Halmi. Faith in what? Who knows? Who cares?)”
Awesome if you ask me. When will hollywood learn. Never because people will still shell out the money to see this stuff and writers will always claim their ideas have been raped on the silver screen. It is a vicious cycle.
Why did i feel you need to know this since i don’t care about earthsea or it’s demonspawn? I point this at Trey who told me that this would be a great movie/tv thing almost comparative to Dune. I said wow.. hope it is good. my hope was wasted..
Tomorrow Mary comes over.. i’m staying awake to help wake her sexy ass up so she can catch the plane… don’t want her missing the plane… i figure we can sleep in each other’s arms after she comes here… too much info i know…
SO THEY ARE NOT JUST UNETHICAL, they know they are unethical…
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Posted, December 17, 2004
Journalists: More Ethical than People Realize?
Gallup finds journalists not trusted, but research indicates some highly developed moral reasoning.
By Kelly McBride (more by author)
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The American public thinks journalists are ethically challenged, according to a Gallup Poll. Yet another study shows journalists have highly developed abilities when it comes to moral reasoning. What gives?
First the studies. The American public doesn’t trust reporters. This according to Gallup’s most recent poll rating of perceived honesty among certain professions. Less than 25 percent of the people who responded the survey rated reporters’ ethical standards as high or very high.
This is really nothing new. Frank Newport, the editor-in-chief of The Gallup Poll, points out that journalists have been rated low since his organization began asking this question in 1974.
The numbers have bounced around, all the way down to 16 percent in 2000 and as high as 33 percent in 1976.
But for the most part, according to Newport, the conclusion has been the same: “Americans are suspicious of the news media.”
Other Gallup studies suggest this distrust is greater among people who are politically moderate and conservative, he said.
The Gallup poll stands in contrast to another study that suggests that journalists have higher than average abilities when it comes to moral reasoning.
Journalism professors Renita Coleman of Louisiana State University and Lee Wilkins of the University of Missouri set out to test the moral development of a large group of journalists.
They gathered a sample of 249 reporters from print and broadcast newsrooms across the country, and discovered that journalists look pretty good on Kohlberg’s moral development scale. As a whole, journalists rank fourth among the ranked groups, behind seminarians, physicians, and medical students.
Published in the Autumn, 2004 issue of Journalism and Mass Communications Quarterly, the journal of the AEJMC, the study is not yet available online.
Coleman and Wilkins also found:
No significant differences between men and women, broadcast and print or managers and non-managers.
The more autonomy a journalist reported, the higher his or her score.
The more highly journalists rated the importance of laws and rules, the lower their scores. (Some researchers suggest a strong deference to the law indicates rule obedience, rather than critical thinking.)
Journalists who do investigative work tend to display higher levels of moral reasoning.
Journalists who said civic journalism was part of their work also had higher scores.
Journalists were particularly adept at thinking through the ethical dimensions of journalism problems. (Which discounts the theory that journalists can apply moral thinking to others but not to themselves.)
Wilkins and Coleman point out that this study does not predict what journalists will do when confronted with a real-life ethical decision. In fact, other researchers have documented a disconnect between beliefs and practice in a number of fields and settings.
Newport, the Gallup editor, points out another gap: the one between perception and reality. “Perception is as important as reality,” he says. “Regardless of reality, if readers and viewers are suspicious of journalists they are going to treat what they write with skepticism.”
And it’s not as if we haven’t handed the public some reasons to distrust us. Journalism’s recent shame includes circulation scandals at the Dallas Morning News, Newsday and Hoy; plagiarism and fabrications scandals at The New York Times and USA Today; and such shoddy reporting on big issues as the CBS pursuit of President Bush’s National Guard records.
If you look at the two studies and all the recent scandals as sections of a puzzle that somehow fit together, the trick is to find the missing pieces.
Here are a couple possibilities:
The assembly line nature of putting out a newspaper or producing television news is a process built on production, not the values of journalism. It encourages speed and volume, rather than reflection. Often, when we want to think about the values that underpin our work, we have to deliberately stop the process and step back. Many journalists are good at doing this, but they do so in spite of the nature of the work. Some newsroom leaders have been successful at infusing values into the routine, making sure new hires get a decent orientation, building time for questions into the daily or weekly schedule and deliberately connecting decisions to values. But they are the exceptions.
Newsroom culture can contribute to sound and unsound ethical reasoning. In some newsrooms employees are encouraged to challenge authority, collaborate on decisions and seek contrarian voices. On the other hand, in the wake of the ethical failures at The New York Times and USA Today, investigative reports described a climate of fear in both newsrooms. Newsroom staffers expressed fear of questioning their bosses and peers about ethically suspect practices and behavior.
Economic pressures can interfere with journalists’ efforts to live up to their professional ideals. Staff cutbacks and the pressure to reach new audiences have combined as a sort-of one-two punch.
Coleman and Wilkins point out that the current collision of values in the newsroom could represent an opportunity for journalists to rethink how they do their jobs. As technology provides new opportunities for delivering different kinds of news, the systems of gathering information will also change, possibly for the better.
Kohlberg argued that wrestling with especially vexing problems presents individuals with a chance to develop more sophisticated coping skills and move to a higher stage of moral behavior.
Kohlberg theorized that, from infancy, most people climb a ladder of moral development with six stages. At the bottom is the childlike obedience stage, where morality is viewed as an external force. (You do what you’re told, as you’re being told).
At the second stage, called individualism, morality is relative. (What’s right for me might be wrong for you.)
The third stage is characterized by good personal relationships (live up to others’ expectations) and the fourth stage of social order (do what’s right for the group) is characteristic of teenagers and young adults.
In the fifth stage, called social contract/individual rights, a person strives to improve upon the social order, rather than just maintain it. In the sixth stage, universal principles, an individual seeks just solutions based on accepted values.
Journalism frequently operates at stage four and sometimes at stage five. In most decisions, we base our values on the current community standards. (We usually don’t show images of dead Americans because our audience considers it disrespectful.) But on some stories journalists have managed to move up to stage five, as many newsrooms did in the course of covering Civil Rights and the Vietnam War.
It could be that ongoing changes in newsrooms will eventually force us to see the work we do in a different light, elevating our core values above the pressures of profit and competition.
Functioning as a good journalist takes more than the ability to focus a camera or turn a phrase. The profession requires sophisticated moral reflection. The Wilkins-Coleman study shows that individually, journalists have the ability.
What do you think stops journalists from infusing more of their ethics into their work?
CORRECTION: This updated version of the article corrects findings about the moral reasoning of investigative reporters and clarifies some elements of Kohlberg’s moral development scale. (Dec. 17, 2004)
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http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=75962
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Tomorrow i go to Amanda’s birthday party, and the next day Mary comes home. The day after i study for my GRE and visit with Lydia. The wednesday i take said GRE and shove it up the asses of those involved in the testing process…. i hate tests btw…
Wednesday is also the day of my semi-longterm involvement with this strange woman who calls me lovah. A full three weeks of togetherness… This isn’t the first time we have done this whole normal relationship thing… on a whole the long term visits work out well.. the first week is bliss and then there are spastic fights about the necessities of “alone time” followed by the all to passionate recollected “together time”…
We are celebrating christmas eve on the thursday and on friday we wake up and open presents i believe… I will be giving Mary her present the night before Christmas Eve… I hope she likes it…
i know you could care less….
man she is grading papers so i am talking to you… this is the crux of my situation.
(more…)
being and time by martin heideggar was sitting on the shelf of eastern religions in barnes and noble… right between idiots guide to buddhism and the art of happiness by the dali lama… clerk/customer comedic act or ignorance?
no one will ever know…
i’m strangely tired tonight… been all over the city, doing all kinds of things… ate with mom, dad, amanda, and trey for supper. We went to bennigans…
Mary is going out tonight so i think i might just head to sleep… seeing as we can’t really talk…
i almost purchased another present for her… can’t wait till christmas is over so i can stop feeling this urge… or at least stop justifying the urge by the time of the year…
Here is a series of news bulletins that i found interesting to pass on to Trey and anyone else who happens to read this and enjoys video games…
– Anarchy Online is now FREE for a whole year! wooot. Download the client at funcom’s website create an account and let it go for a whole year… 2006 you have to start paying… this is interesting.
– You can also get into some interesting ghost-related conversations with Dawn Star and other students at the academy, foreshadowing later events in the Spirit Cave and the game’s overall story. Mind you, some of that dialogue will have to be subtitled, due to the game’s frequent usage of a fictional language created by Asian linguists.
– Nintendo Dual screen (DS for short) will be able to play movies and mp3s… interesting little application. It is going to compete with the psp being released by Sony.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=581&e=1&u=/nm/20041215/tc_nm/tech_japan_nintendo_dc
enough…
In other News i thought i should mention this.
– NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe is leaving to teach at LSU.
– In one of the most comprehensive studies that plants in the Northeast are responding to the global warming trend, Cornell scientists and their colleagues at the University of Wisconsin found lilacs are blooming about four days earlier than they did in 1965. -> CNN.
– Men are about to go extinct.. no honestly read this.. hehe (it is simply a potential.. i’m joking.. just read the story– and Mary… kiss my ass… here is the article… so now you and your skeptical beliefs can take a hike… i swear some people won’t even let you bring up a talking point without putting you to the torture systems to find out the sources and validate the potential truths.)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4225769
– Phones might be able to be used on airplanes. Not sure this is a great idea because i will put my phone next to my speakers and i hear the clicks and sounds coming from the speakers… hmm wonder what would happen to planes…
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