Inception

Last week we watched Inception, the new Christopher Nolan movie, and it was very good. In some ways it's similar to Avatar and other Matrix-like movies in that there is an alternate "virtual" world. In this case it is the dream world. It may start a new trend for movies just as the Matrix did when it first came out. Since Joseph Gordon-Levitt was in it, I've been watching 3rd Rock From the Sun this past week. I forgot about that show, and I realized that I didn't even understand the full premise of the show, particularly the fact that Sally was supposed to be the military officer of the bunch. The people who made it also made Wayne's World. Wow!

White Fox

I am excited about the arguments between the White House and Fox News. I am bemused that Fox is trying to compare Obama with Nixon because of an alleged "enemies list." On the one hand, I think it's a stupid argument, since one man's news is another's bias. At any rate, MSNBC is undeniably biased the other way, although I'd argue in a less destructive and flagrantly lying way. On the other hand, it's about time we stop pretending Fox is really a news organization. Indeed, these days I just read Fox sometimes to see what's going on "on the other side" and what kind of crazy lies they're obsessing about now.

NYTimes article

China Correspondents

New York Times and the BBC have really bad China articles mostly because of their bad China correspondents. What makes their China articles and correspondents so bad?

The articles themselves often imply that China is a threat, Chinese nationalism is a threat, and things like the food shortage and global warming are China's fault. This xenophobic view of China is mostly sensationalism so in my view, it's bad journalism, but that's the industry standard these days. What is more annoying is that almost every article becomes an editorial about censorship and restrictions on journalists and the lack of democracy. The worst part is when they claim to represent how the majority of Chinese people feel about Tiananmen Square in 1989 and the Chinese Communist Party.

They do this by using Chinese correspondents who are meant to be more credible since they are Chinese. However, these correspondents are more often than not people who have bad history with the Communist Party. Some are pro-democracy activists who have been kicked out of the country. However, they do not really have a following in China. Some are even seen as traitors.

Take this New York Times' article.

Here is a comment in response.

As a former Tiananmen protester living in the States, I believe that "The future of China is in the hands of ordinary Chinese." Unfortunately, Ma Jian's view does not reflect views of ordinary Chinese no matter how many western media or their readers like his views. The bottom line is that Chinese people know what are their best interests during their cause leading to prosperity and democracy. They certainly do not need others to remind them what to do and how to do to achieve their best interests.

Some selections of the discussion about this BBC article in Chinese from the BBC:

Black Horse Liu's article? He was one of so-called "four scholars" during 6.4 Tiananmen event. He used to state that China would have been much better off if it had experienced real colonialism under Great British like HK. No wonder BBC still recommend his opinion after so many years.

Liu and his ilk have been long marginalized in China, political power wise. Now their sole role is to serve western media as dissent voice of "Chinese people" to pacify their readers' thirsty for hope of transforming China with "freedom and democracy".

Only Western people listen to these people as if they are really credible, but Chinese people know who these people are. It's like if Chinese people quoted Ralph Nader as an expert on what Americans think. Another example is when people quote the Epoch Times, which every Chinese person knows is a Falun Gong newspaper that publishes outright lies.

Good Magazine

literally

i saw it today at whole foods. it was "the China issue"

Western Coverage of Tibetan Protests

http://www.anti-cnn.com/ exposes some of the mistakes that free and unbiased Western news outlets made about the protests.

Tech TV?

http://techtv.mit.edu

MIT Student Cable

I am starting to learn how to do cable broadcasting and stuff like that. i think it could be a good way to spread ideas. me and some people are going to be broadcasting today 5-7pm.

Citizen Journalist

comparison of legislative accomplishments of clinton vs. obama

Propaganda Campaign

Something I am thinking about doing in the future is to do media advertising to promote things I think are important like sustainable energy. I'm not sure, but I think this is a graphic design company that does that, although I don't want to just make media but design campaigns like political campaigns. That's what real advertising companies do, anyway. Everything is very coordinated.

Obey Giant Propaganda

They made an Obama poster.

Common Ground Similar Design

When I was in San Francisco, we found this magazine that had a similar design idea as my logo for the event! It's called Common Ground.

It was the cover of their Jan 2008 issue.

Mainstream media covers horse race

Perhaps obvious, but now some numbers behind it:

In all, 63% of the campaign stories focused on political and tactical aspects of the campaign. That is nearly four times the number of stories about the personal backgrounds of the candidates (17%) or the candidates’ ideas and policy proposals (15%). And just 1% of stories examined the candidates’ records or past public performance, the study found.

The press’ focus on fundraising, tactics and polling is even more evident if one looks at how stories were framed rather than the topic of the story. Just 12% of stories examined were presented in a way that explained how citizens might be affected by the election, while nearly nine-out-of-ten stories (86%) focused on matters that largely impacted only the parties and the candidates. Those numbers, incidentally, match almost exactly the campaign-centric orientation of coverage found on the eve of the primaries eight years ago.

Via Paul Krugman's blog.