Journal Entry 9/29/08

The best thing about fall is nothing. Fall sucks. I hate fall, it's too cold to swim but not cold enough to have the jolly wintery feeling. If I had to choose one thing I guess I could go with Halloween. I love Halloween because it is the only night where you can dress up as funky as you like and no one will comment. It's fantastic, but is still hate fall.

Journal Entry 9/25/08

My favorite childhood memory is of Christmas Eve with my relatives. On Christmas Eve every year, we all get together and do the whole bonding thing. It's fantabulous because people start off being warm and we all have light conversation but by the end of the night children are running and sceaming, someone has gotten hurt, the parents are being as loud as us kids over a card game, and the presents that we have to wait to open call to every minor in the house. I can still recall, my counsin Conor and I, organizing all the slightly younger kids into groups for the wars we'd have against each other. Then, before you knew it, laughter would ensue as you'd fight with your lousy toy sword and defend with a random toybox top.

Good times. :]

Journal Entry 9/19/08

If I could be a cartoon character I'd be Rocko from Rocko's Modern Life. He's super cool in his weird shirt. I also really want to work at Kind of a Lot O' Comics like Rocko does. That place is beast. Also, Heffer is the cooliest best friend that you could ever have. He's like a yellow cow thing that was raised by wolves. How cool can you be?! Oh and Ed Bighead would be such an awesome naighbor to have, he's always ticked off and it rocks. Rocko's life is so messed up but you have to love it, it is one of the most fanfreakintastic shows available for a kid in the 90's. Who wouldn't want to be Rocko, his show was amazing. So was Pinky and The Brain....

What Do Editing Skills Have To Do With Broadcas Journalism?

To properly do broadcasting you have to have many abilities. Some of them require you to be capable on the scene of your story. Some of them are for catching that big moment for your work but some are very important out of the field. Good editing skills are a must for broadcast, you don't want to put on raw footage, it won't look good. If you have good editing skills then your footage will look clean and clear. Bad editing skills however, will make your footage look jumbled, unclear, and hard to understand. Without good editing then our stories would not be appealing to view and probably not ever be paid any attention to. Editing skills are VERY important.

Ike's Here To Wrangle The Lonestar State

Hurricane Ike, said to possibly become a Category 4 hurricane by this Saturday when it strikes Texas, is hitting hard. Many evacuations have already taken place for the safety of Texas citizens. The Mayor of Galveston Island, a popular beach area for vacationing, issued a mandator evacuation for some of the residents on Galveston Island. Some people though, intend to tough Ike out. In Brazoria some residents may try to wether the storm, but the Sheriff of Brazoria, Charles Wagner, says that all residents choosing to stay will be completely on their own. There will be no local facilities or services for them until it is safe for return.
This story is an interesting one and of great importance, these areas may become disaster areas soon after the storm is over. It is frightening to think of trying to outlast a category 4 hurricane. I know I wouldn't be up for it, that's how you become a statistic. Coverage of this storm has been fantastic on pretty much all planes of media, not just CNN. Ike is a national issue at the moment and will likely be talked about for weeks after, if it causes severe damage. Presentation of this story was good and quite lengthy. I suppose the events will be covered as they unfold.

Here is a link: http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/weather/09/10/hurricane.ike/index.html

FBI And CIA In the Facebook Craze

The FBI and the CIA have been working on developing a website used for spies to share opinions and views much like Facebook and Myspace users do. The website, called A-Space, has been in testing for months and is highly anticipated by spies for the US. The website will be accessible to only intelligence personnel, so that spies may share important information on for example, a new video released by Bin Laden. By using this site it is hoped that communication between spies will become easier, and knowledge and ideas will be better known.
I think this is quite an interesting article really because I never really thought about how difficult it might be for the members CIA or the FBI to communicate analyzations on possible threats or issues for the country. This article was highly informational and made me think about how much of a benefit this will be to our agents in the future when it comes to having more ideas and thoughts expressed about situations. I think it's great that they are learning from social networking sites and are taking advantage of today's technology. Ironically enough, this article was on the internet as well.
The media's presentation was good, perhaps they took the idea a little less seriously because of it's similarities to myspace and facebook but they still got the story out and enough information about it for one to understand how this could benefit national intelligence agents.

Here's a link: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/ptech/09/05/facebook.spies/index.html

Doomsday This Wednesday?

This very wednesday, September 10th, Scientists in Switzerland will turn on the Large Hadron Collider. This machine is the biggest most expensive experiment in history. It is not large, but ungodly massive, it stretches 27km under the land between France and Switzerland. But, as I'm sure you are wondering, what on earth is this Large Hadron Collider even going to do? Well, in short it's going to recreate the Big Bang. By having Hadrons, a particle that makes up atoms, collide at almost light speed they hope to find the Theory of Everything. There are problems with this experiment though, other scientists argued to the European Court for Human Rights that by activating this device a black hole may be created and well I think you get it. However, Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith of Cern argues that the chances of producing something like a black hole are minuscule, and that even if one were produced, it wouldn't be large enough to swallow the earth and disappear quickly. Also, all the actual collisions won't take place until October.
I think the media did an excellent job of not only terrifying the snot out of me but getting both sides of the story out. It was presented over the internet which is always interesting because there are so many free flowing opinions over the internet. This entire idea could be a rather large and terrfyingly risky one so the entire thing is newsworthy and qutie frankly I don't understand why it isn't being broadcasted on NBC or something by now.

Here is a link to the article:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-large-hadron-collider-end-of-the-world-or-gods-own-particle-921540.html

Double The Fun?

E! News did a report on bassist Pete Wentz of 'Fall Out Boy' and his wife since may, Ashlee Simpson. They wanted to find out if the couple were perhaps having more than one bundle of joy. Wentz's friend Tyga appeared to have spilled the beans on possible twins but Wentz denies such a thing from being true. He insists that there is only one baby coming instead of the curious two.
E! did an alright job on presenting this article to the public, as to some (FOB fans or celeb gossipers) it is indeed newsworthy and important. However, E! was a little less than professional with the article stating, "Eleven days later the young rockers announced that Ashlee was preggers." As lovely a word 'preggers' is, I don't think it was necessary to use and quite crude wordchoice. As this goes, it's very likely that the idea of two new baby rockers is still but a rumour and only one child is coming to Pete and Ashlee.

Here is a link to the article for your viewing enjoyment: http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/marc_malkin/b27691_pal_ashlee_pete_expecting_twins.html

McCaine and Obama's "Change"

On cnn.com, I read an article about how both of our candidates were claiming to be agents of change. Each wants america to believe that by choosing them, then all the "change" we want will ensue. Upon reading the article (link at the bottom) I was a little taken back. I mean I knew both McCaine and Obama wanted us to vote for them but I never realized how desperate they both really were for us to jump on the Change Train. Originally, Obama was the man of change and it's been his campaign's theme from the beginning but lately McCaine has been claiming to be an agent of change as well. The desire for "change" and it's effect on the public is causing both candidates to bicker.
The article itself seemed unbiased and both sides appeared to be covered equally with the exception of there being no quotes from Biden on the issue of change. The article was presented fairly well because of there being less biase than I usuallly find within the media and it was quite newsworthy. Lately that has been what the race has been all about, change this, and change that. The country does need quite a bit of change, and the candidates both seem to think that they are it. The question is, is how much change exactly and who is really right for it.

Here's a link the to the article: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/07/campaign.wrap/index.html