Paris buildings

13Oct06

While perusing my RSS feeds in Google Reader, I stumbled across this photo of Paris buildings from [daily dose of imagery]. Takes me right back to that weekend last summer in Paris.

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New theme

11Oct06

I’m trying out the new unsleepable theme.  I was never really satisfied with the old one, and this has a nice simplicity.  I don’t know how much of a fan I am of the date formatting, but I might get used to it.  Comments, reactions?

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What I learned today – a roughly named new series

11Oct06

 I’ve been meaning to start a “What I Learned Today” feature for awhile now, but I’ve got some free time so here’s the first in what I hope to be a series of many.  I’ll definitely need to work on an improved title.  Here we go!

Dr.  David Mindich visited Grady College on Friday to give a lecture on “Tuned Out” Youth.   His lecture centered around six primary points:

1. More young people are tuned out than ever before
   1. The median viewer age for the news is 60
   2. The Daily Show’s median viewer age is 34
   3. Without an informed populace, decisions are based on hunches
2. It’s neither exclusively the fault of the youth, nor of the media.
   1. The decline of internationalism, sound byte tendency, sensationalism and more is hurting journalism, though every day great journalism still happens
3. Entertainment is a culprit
4. When news tries to out-entertain entertainment, it always fails.
   1. this era is marked not by the fact that few things command our attention, but instead by “inattention to a national conversation”
5. We can change journalism.
   1. Offer more road maps
   2. Avoid talking down to the audience
6. We need to look at a world outside of journalism.
   1. We must build a news and political culture focused around awareness and activism
   2. We must focus on media literacy: stop breeding cynics and loyalists.

I enjoyed the lecture, and Dr. Mindich definitely offered a well-rounded explanation of the causes for the move away from news awareness, as well as visible effects.  My only complaint was that there wasn’t much discussed in the way of practical solutions, though time limited further discussion.   Obviously a vibrant activism and awareness of news is essential to democracy, but how can that be established when there is so much media saturation and choice?

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Swim practice

28Sep06

Tonight was my first swim in a week:

15 minute warmup

10×125s on 2:20

20×25s on :35/:30/:25/:20

100 easy

It definitely feels like I’m going to be extremely sore come 8am tomorrow morning.

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Jenga!

26Sep06

Between hours of work and studying, we spend our free time playing Jenga at the professional level.

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naming

24Sep06

I’m no longer in England, and it definitely isn’t Summer 2006.  The blog name/layout might be due for a change sometime soon.

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Sunday morning

24Sep06

After a long wait for breakfast, I’ve spent the morning doing design work for my New Media class. I’m not too happy with the font and header design yet, but hopefully I’ll be able to get everything worked out soon. Work all day, then I’ve got to get psyched up for what is sure to be another long week.

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the mp3blog

22Sep06

I’ve decided to start posting some of the recent songs I’ve been enjoying on a separate blog.

Visit now!

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Game Weekend

16Sep06

The Dawgs are rollin’ in for the big 1 o’clock game. As we walked to North Campus, we passed a guy on the corner of Clayton with a guitar playing a guitar while singing “GO DAWGS!” STRUM STRUM STRUM “GO DAWGS!”

Oh, how I love football weekends!

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Camping in North Georgia

09Sep06

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