Bush Library: Do I care?

There were a lot of debates among students and faculties about Bush Library in SMU campus.

I personally don't care whether Bush Lib will be constructed or not. However, I do care about my parking spot and time consuming to find a parking space. During the regular semester, it is already difficult to find a parking space. However, if the library is established and cars are forced to move to other parking lots, then it will be much more difficult to find one and even, be in class on time.

When I first found out that there will be a Bush Library on campus, I thought that it might be good for SMU to gain more reputation as well as popularity. I read SMU Daiy Campus and a junior student, Andrew Hemming argued that "the presence of the Bush Library and Institute would increase the academic reputation of the school, giving it 'name recognition.' Hemming began his presentation by reading the university's mission statement, which states, in part, that the university 'is to be a leading private institution of higher learning that expands knowledge through research and teaching.'" I was totally agreed with it at first, so when I heard that there were so many protests or opinions against the library, and I wondered why.

SMU President Turner said, “It is indeed an honor for SMU to have reached the next stage of the selection process in preserving and sharing historical documents and artifacts, the George W. Bush Presidential Library at SMU would be a tremendous resource for the study of presidential decision-making in this post 9-11 era. If selected as the site of this resource, SMU would welcome visitors, students of all ages, and scholars from throughout the world to its campus and to Dallas. We look forward to further discussions with the selection committee on the details of this historic project.”

I saw the establishment of the library in good way at first, however, as I heard more and more opinions on that issue, I became worried about that the Bush library will affect on students' research in different way that the builders didn't expect. For example, for person like me -- who doesn't like Bush -- might worried on future such as Bush Institute, or effects on university's policy making. The decision can be more conservative than it used to be, in my opinion.

Last semester, I took Senior seminar in International Relations major, and a student who was working at the admission office said that people called them a lot saying their sons or daughters planned to go to SMU or other schools, but if the Bush Library is built, they will or will not let them go to SMU." Bush Library is not about the library, but about the criticism and reputation on the President himself.

Rathergate and blogging

*What happened?

September 8, 2004
Dan Rather reported on CBS 60 Minutes that in Lt. Col.Jerry B. Killian reported that Bush failed to obey an order to submit his physical examination and was found unfit for flight status during President Bush's Texas Air National Guard Service in several report.

September 10,
The Washington Post, The New York Times, and other media examined the documents' authenticity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Rather#Killian_documents

Rather claimed that the documents had been authenticated by experts, but CBS reported that the source had misled the network about how he had obtained them.

Rather retired as a CBS News anchor due to this scandal.

*Perspectives

As a news consumer
Rathergate provoked distrust on the media in general. Bloggers were more accurate on information gathering, and the big media somewhat ignored them and degraded their information.

As a journalism student
This is an issue on ethics. As a journalism student, I learned how important ethics is related to the media (of course ethics is important on every issue), and also, I learned the impact of the media on the public sphere. Dan Rather violated ethical issue on this scandal, and as a journalism student, that was a good example not to follow, and never consider as a choice to broadcast.

As a voter
Actually, I'm not a U.S. citizen so I probably cannot feel the same as Americans, but anyway, as a person who live in the United States, I think the Rathergate Scandal is an incident that the media assaulted people who trusted the media as truth.

*Weblog and the media

The media cannot always be fair. It shows balanced perspectives but somewhat subject. It cannot be totally objective. People understand that point, and in my opinion, Weblog is useful in that context. Putting people's own perspectives and opinions, they can share opinions and see the whole picture much more easier by understand or critique others opinions.
By blogging, people can absorb more different viewpoints, and even more unknown information that did not aired. It also can act as fact checkers, and I think, the role of blogger becomes more important for people in the world of technology. It is now the world that people lead the media, not the world that the media lead people.

Combination of video journalism and blogging.

I learned video journalism and blogging are two different things even though the boundary is blurring.

The blog, “A Small Victory” is consists of two parts: a personal blog,“A Big Victory” and another blog, “Faster Than The World” that are full of articles and journals. Also when I clicked the blog, I could see a combination of video journalism and blogging: the master of the blog used youtube videos in his/her blog
It was interesting to me because the blog did not seem like a blog that “supposed to be.” My expectation of a blog is something like mine: pictures with opinions.
Articles and journals are in a Website, not in a blog. “A Big Victory” was a blog in my definition of a blog, but “Faster Than The World” was not.

Now I am confused. What is a definition of a blog?
Can a Website with periodicals and articles be a blog if everyone can post their opinion underneath the posts?

violent games and mental problems

Not only children but also adults have fun time playing video games. Technology is developing faster and faster, and there are more demands for more realistic games day by day. I am not going to say that all the video games are bad – of courses, it is one way to get rid of stress.- I am not going to say that they are all good neither, but for me, I am more on the negative side personally. What good effects do video games have other than blow people’s stress??


What I’m focusing on is war simulation games. It came out to train soldiers with less money. Purpose was brilliant! But as technology is developing more and more, more realistic simulation training games came out, and old games are opened to the public. Then? You can see the result. People are hilarious on theses simulation war games, and game industries create those kinds of game that are more realistic than those in soldier training system/program.

In my opinion, all human being have violent propensity in them, and those war simulation games stimulate disposition to be active. For example, there is a high school student, and he was given hell from one of his teachers. He comes back home and play a shooting game thinking that the bad guy in the game is the teacher. I might be a stress buster, but it activates his violent nature and lures his demand to kill the teacher like he did in the game.

Teenagers are learning what is right and what is wrong. They are in the process of learning the world, and for them, video games are also something to learn from. By playing those games, they take what’s going on in the games as a reality also, and are confused on what is real and shat is not real. Well-known example of this situation is Columbine.

This kind of confusion does occur not only to teenagers but also to soldiers. In South Korea, one of the soldiers, Kim, shoot all the co-trainees in his dorm room at night while all of them were sleeping. He was sentenced to death, but what he confessed made the nation astonished – “I thought I was playing a simulation game.”

According to the journal "Video Games and Aggressive Thoughts, Feelings, and Behavior in the Laboratory and in Life" by Craig A. Anderson, the more exposed to those violent games, the more aggressive people are.

Video games are not evil things, but if they cause problems in the society and harm people, then people have to think about the side effect of those carefully.

50 minutes lecture with Mark Cuban

“Here is Mark Cuban~!”
I didn’t know he is that famous person among students…
He owns Dallas Mavericks, and HDTV/HDnet, and for me, that was his business, not mine.
I thought he could buy and create those businesses because he was born as a billionaire, but he wasn’t. He was the person who started one’s life from the bottom!
He impressed me by appearance first: He wore a pair of jean and old-looking T-shirt!
I expected him to wear a nice famous-brand-made suit, but he didn’t: He was somewhat special.

He talked his thoughts about blogging, and I totally agree with his definition on blog.
“Blog is a personal diary website. And it requires discovery experience. Everyone is a discoverer and subscriber. It is easier for people to get involved.”
He also said that as a technology reporting person, one has to be a writer, and at the same time, that person has to be a reader.
That is right. A person who read his or her writing carefully trying to be as much as objective can avoid biased writing and understand people’s thoughts more accurately.

He told us that follow the traditional way or thoughts are trite life style. He thinks differently, and I think that it is one of the ways to achieve high succeed life.
Well, freeing oneself from common way or thought is somewhat necessary but too much freedom can be the shortcut to corrupt also.
That might win much recognition later, but there have been many examples that couldn’t be admitted in the days when the thoughts or idea came out.
What I agree with him is those different thoughts help promoting one’s life, but people shouldn't underestimate its side effect.

“A person who didn’t try one thing, or has no experience cannot say about that.”
It was the most impressed saying for me.
There are so many people who just adapt other’s thoughts and tell about those things like their opinion without knowing them exactly. It happened all around the world. Even in everyday talk among people, it often happened. As a reporter or a journalist, we, students have to avoid that.
That’s might be the reason why TV news or newspapers ask people who actually have experience or is experiencing one issue to report about that directly.

Media is more and more opening to the public, I think. Sometimes, reporters just pick what they want to report even though the whole situation doesn’t mean that -- like Mark Cuban’s cases. However, now we have our own media, blog, to raise that issue again, and can tell the truth. It developed our freedom of speech.
On the other hand, too much freedom of speech also can harm other people. If a person publishes his or her thought about another person, one has to care about that person’s reputation and human right. Even though the blog is his or her personal diary, it can’t be used as a mean to disgrace other people.

Mark Cuban is a person who enjoys his freedom and uses that as much as he can. And he succeeds on that. I enjoyed his lecture and I wish I can follow his way of thinking just a little bit but not too much.^^

Katrina

Katrina, the messenger of race discrimination?!

*New Orleans
New Orleans is the land which is placed below sea level, bordered by the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain.





*Preparation
Assuming the chance that New Orleans can be under water, two days of warning was not enough for people and government to prepare for the happening. It was obvious that people will need drinking water, clothes, shelters, food, and so on, but the nation underestimated the power of Katrina.





*Aftermath/ Results
Extremely powerful Katrina hit New Orleans, and everyone lost their mind because of the unexpected strength. Not only people in the Big Easy, but also all the people in Louisiana shocked and flight to the secure places wishing their sweet ghettos’ safety. Unknown amount of people lost their homes, families, relatives, properties, etc, and it took more than 4 days for government to provide public toilets, drinking waters, electricity, food, etc. Experts assume that complete drainage will take more than 80 days, and complete recovery of the city will take more than 10 years.

*Problems
When a natural disaster comes, visible thing that people have been making for their safety, benefits, lives are destroyed first such as houses, hospitals, buildings. After that, invisible things break down like law, order, manner, and so on. People loot, rape, robs to make their lives, and for them, their satisfaction comes first than anything else.
When the disaster happened, I thought about 9/11. Compare to Katrina disaster, 9/11 was a disaster that is an unexpected attacking by people, targeting to kill people, and people from enormous countries passed away, but restoration and aids were pretty fast. Katrina disaster occurred by expected natural power, most of the victims are residents, and aids were not fast enough and satisfied enough. I saw lots of pictures of victims, and it was hard to find white people or other races on the picture. From there, discrimination controversy comes out. As a non-American person, I met many people who ignore blacks, Asians, Mexicans, and so on, and at this point, I can’t tear this thought away actually. Will it be the same if most of the residents are white people? I know that I cannot get the answer to this question, but I put charge on the US government about late aids, late actions, and late preparation. If the government cared about the people more carefully, then the damage of "people" might not be this huge.

The influence or the telephon on American life.

Telephone is not a luxury or an accessory but a mandatory and a necessary method in today’s world.
Before telephone was invented, the main communication unit was family. News was slow, and people knew what was going on by newspapers mostly. To contact with people who live far, people used letters or even doves.
When telephone is invented, it was a symbol of luxury. Telephone was not a common accommodation, and rare people have it.
After telephone became common, people had their own telephones in their houses, and people also can use public telephone to call anyone.
Now, cellular phone is invented, and house phone became an accessory. Also public phone started to disappear. Almost everyone can talk to anyone in anywhere at anytime. Now, the main communication unit became the world.
Telephone narrows the wide communication space and time. In the past, the world was really a vague place, but today, the world is just like a country. People send a letter to someone else who lives in another country, it used to take 10 days to go and another 10 days to come. However, now, people can call anyone in any country immediately. Moreover, with cell phones, people can check their e-mail or news on demand, and they can even listen to music through MP3 players that are in their cell phones.
The invention of telephone improved people’s life; people can know what happened in the world faster, and the world became a town. However, too much development produced cellular phone, and it intensified individualism. People started to make their own world, and refused to communicate with other people; eventually, cellular phone narrows social communities.
I also have a cell phone, and if I lose it or disconnect it, I might feel isolated and uncomfortable. Everyone has their own cell phone, and some of them even don’t have their home phone. Telephone is placed deep not only in American society but also in the world society.
There is not influence that Americans only have because of the telephone. As I said above, the world is a town these days. Influence of telephone is worldwide. Individualism spread all over the world, and it is still spreading. I think the invention of telephone makes our life easier and more comfortable, but I don’t think it only have bright sides.