Bits of the Media, Part Two

Part One

True to the lessons of this summer, I continue reading international news sources. I'm not being consistent with it by any means (all of this stuff comes from what I read on Monday DURING LUNCH), but I'm doing more of it than I did before May, so I've progressed a little bit, at least.

1) I'm completely new to this news source. This is Xinhua News Agency, an official media outlet of the Chinese government. It's like the BBC in that way, in that public money supports it. It's quite different, however, in that it reports directly to the Communist Party of China's publicity department, so some say it will always favor the party line (as in this article discussing China's partnerships with Latin America and this one reporting a protest of a "separatist"'s visit to Australia). (So, it really isn't much like the BBC.) You should not ignore what it reports, though. Because China is becoming more important in the world, I'd say it's near-required to pay at least some attention to it. You can learn a little about how the party thinks and acts, you can read & watch relatively independent reports of sports & natural disasters, and you'll get the chance to read about things like Shenzhen's experiment in "the separation of powers". (Although I can't stop thinking about The Onion's riff on this aspect of Chinese media.)

2) This one scared the bejeebus out of me.

My J110 professor sent this Nation article to my science writing professor over Facebook. (The wall-to-wall post showed up in my news feed.) Although I've seen everything in the article before (whether in both professors' classes, in my internship, or even in the international reporting class), but to see it again, all synthesized into a Nation article, made me cry a little inside. By what my limited experience can tell, all of it is true, and by what my limited experience can feel, all of it is terrifying as I try to enter the field. It ends with a little bit of cheeriness, and as I read it I thought of the Science Media Centre's work in this regard; but nothing can end well enough when the penultimate paragraph sounds like this:

In light of the media upheaval, scientists can no longer assume that a responsible, high-minded press will treat their ideas with the seriousness they deserve, delivering them to policy-makers and the public for sober consideration. Instead, partisan media will convey diametrically opposed versions of where science actually stands on any contentious subject--consider, for example, the difference between how Fox News and NPR cover climate change--even as most of the public (and many policy-makers) will tune out science more or less completely, besieged by other information options.

3) Okay, now for something funny. We need a bit of that every now and then. (Not too much of it, but at least a little.)

My favorite on-the-scene reporting to watch is in inclement weather, and nothing provides inclement weather like a hurricane. And nothing is more fun than to watch reporters try to play cool (or give up the charade!). Time collected the ten best.

That’s a wrap of what I’ve read on the Internet recently. Enjoy your own reading.

Kill the Blog!!!1!1

Check out the London blog. There should be something new there, namely THE HAND OF GOD smiting the page at your command!

It's a NetDisaster. I posted a link to it on my Facebook account a while back, back when you could puke on, worm, zap, or nuke any Web page you wanted. Unfortunately, some major Web sites mistook the most clever application of JavaScript ever as a phishing scam and asked its take-a-chainsaw-to-Paris-Hilton functionality to be taken down. (Phishers: This is why we can't have nice things.) The developer, however, has found a way to let people disasterize their own Web pages by allowing them to plug some of his script into their page's code. I, being a fun-loving and slightly nerdy person, decided to try it. I loved it!

I'm e-mailing the developer back & forth (his name is Denis) about parts of it that don't work so well. (For example, a viewer can't remove the disaster in Firefox or Safari on a Mac, which makes clicking on links a bit difficult. When you scroll down & away from the disaster, though, everything works fine.) I sent him a link to the London blog with the God Almighty disaster plugged into it so he can take a look and see what can be done. If everything works out, it should be widely available, and I can put it there, here, and on an upcoming portfolio Web site. In the meantime, have fun shooting lightning bolts at my writing!

Some Old Writing of Mine

There's this thing I do every once in a while. It's called a FreeWrite, and it's my version of journaling. (I guess. I've never really had a definition for it.) I take out my laptop, open Microsoft Word, and type whatever is in my head, full and unadulterated.

I started doing it in January of my freshman year at IU after reading A Writer's Coach by Jack Hart for class. He said Roy Peter Clark (another important guy in my writing development) is a "plunger;" he writes a "vomit draft" of anything that comes to his head about a topic, and after about fifteen minutes he's found something to do a story about. "In more polite circles," Hart adds, "that's called freewriting," and it's a good way to "muzzle your internal critic and start writing, as fast as you can."

I did it a lot of FreeWrites in the early days, writing about anything that came to my mind in both public and private spheres. In that way, I separated it from its role as a method of finding a topic to write about, and I turned it into something to separate my thoughts from myself so I could look at them objectively and see if I was right or just crazy. Once my writing load increased throughout the year and into my sophomore year, I regrettably wrote less of them. I still write them every now and then, though, especially if I need to empty my head of some issue or look from a distance at a problem. Most of them won't ever see the light of day unless 1) I become famous enough that historians, etc. want to analyze everything I write (Ha!) or 2) the contents apply directly to a current situation (MUCH more likely).

The following falls into the latter category. It's a FreeWrite from 5 March 2008, after a Sunday of shorts weather was followed by three days of crap. Even before today, I had planned to post this because it was enlightening about my thought process and, more importantly, not embarrassing (!). When I was talking with a family friend after Mass today, though, I immediately thought of this, because it pretty much confirmed that there's some substance to what I was thinking that day in March 2008. He didn't use the same analogy (no analogy at all, in fact), but the message was the same: You can't stay satisfied.

(Warning: I talk to myself. Also, I still haven't thought of a better name for the analogy. Also, the explanatory hyperlinks weren't in the original FreeWrite. :-P)

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I think God’s toying with us.

Or at least with me. It’s this weather, this changing between “OMG, it’s spring!” and “Damn, I forgot my umbrella” and “I never thought I’d say this, but I don’t like snow,” that He’s using to mess with my mind. That, combined with the close proximity to spring break and the light workload I have right now, is making me a little crazy.

However, this may be a good thing. I’m referring to the Life According to a Cell analogy I developed in AP Biology. You know the one (at least, if you’re Me from a later date, you know the one), but I’ll refresh your memory.

The Life According to a Cell analogy (I’ll try to think of a better name if at some point I decide I need a better name) applies the workings of a cell and its organelles to the workings of a person’s life. I’ll start on the level of the cell. There are many processes in a cell (movement across membranes, making ATP, etc.) that are working toward equilibrium, that hallowed state where a cell may say, “I’ve achieved the goal.” That goal remains perpetually elusive, as its surrounding environment supplies new particles and moves existing ones around so that equilibrium cannot be reached.

Though this “hallowed state” is one toward which a cell continuously works, it is dangerous for a cell to reach equilibrium. In fact, if the cell ever has the exact-right concentration of all substances with no movement across membranes and thus reaches said equilibrium, the cell dies. It dies because there is no impetus to continue the processes necessary not only to attain equilibrium, but also to maintain life. There is no polar difference between the surrounding environment and the cell cytoplasm, potentially sending the gradient-dependent cell membrane out of whack; there is no concentration difference between the separate areas of mitochondria, preventing the machinery that makes ATP, a cell’s primary energy source, from working; without the possibility of a controlled environment, a cell cannot provide the necessary conditions that allow peptide strands to fold into necessary proteins. In a state of “comfort,” the cell does nothing and dies.

I’ve noticed myself working in the same way. Just as cell processes function when there is a difference between its present state and equilibrium, so also I function when there is a feeling of dissatisfaction with something. That dissatisfaction can come from many sources: internal uncertainty or just being antsy, a busy schedule, competition, or something missing in a social environment. Whatever the source, I feel compelled to do something by the imperfection of a situation. And just as a cell would die if it ever attained equilibrium, so I find myself “dead” to the world when I seem satisfied with what I have done or when I do not feel the need to do anything. If I feel no pressing need to do anything, and there isn’t any “imperfection” with something that garners my attention, I don’t do anything.

I found evidence of this analogy working in other people. In one example, a story I read in The Indianapolis Star, I believe, examined kids’ workloads with camps, extracurricular activities, music lessons, sports teams, and homework. One of the people quoted, a parent of such a kid, said that he did better in college when he had a busy schedule compared to a lax one, because he was more primed to do work and to do work well. This was not long after reading ahead in AP Bio had revealed to me the aforementioned analogy, and I thought as I read it, “Hey, that jives with my metaphor.”

In light of the Life According to a Cell analogy, I’m starting to question whether this crazy weather is actually God messing with my head. (Oooooo, I should have left it at “me head.” I would have sounded so much like a pirate!) Maybe, in that mysterious way he seems to have trademarked, He’s helping me make the most of my time. If he is, then “Thank you!”; if not, then it doesn’t change the fact that I feel like working now, which is always a good thing.

701 words in 30 minutes

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