Rationale – Film Review
What I wrote was a film review on the newly released Sherlock Holmes, directed by Guy Richie. I wrote this as a critique from the daily mail. My intention of this piece was to show that Guy Richie tried to turn Sherlock Holmes into a hardboiled detective and failed. To begin with I tried to adapt the tone and language of an average film reviewer. I did that was by adding a lot of descriptive adjectives as I summed up a part of the movie, and I feel that worked quite well. I then began to compare the genres hardboiled detective and classical detective. I discussed how the two types are perceived and concluded that in this case, the director had failed properly fuse the genres. I went listed some of the traits of the characteristics of a hardboiled detective, to further show that Sherlock Holmes had not been turned into a hardboiled detective. I then made sure not to completely destroy the movie, as I quite liked. Instead used misdirection in that I had the audience consider the fact that Guy Richie was making a commercial movie, which there are limits to. I then spoke to both the plot and narrative, and how the movie has failed to provide an open plot that continues beyond the point that the narrative ends, which a true hardboiled detective story does. One thing that really frustrated me in making this piece was the fact that blue banner newspaper readers do not necessarily care about genre, which I was obliged to speak to. Otherwise I like my finished product, and I feel that I successful proved that in spite of Guy Richie’s strong attempt to turn Sherlock Holmes into a hardboiled has failed.
Monday, 8 March 2010
Monday, 1 February 2010
DOHA Prep - G77
Ministerial Decleration
- The goals of the WTO is made extremely clear, and the EU and US should know what they are entering with this conference.
- There should be no confusing between the EU and US during the talks. - Should've been resolved before it.
The Wrecking
- The arrogant, walk-out attitude is the one that wrecks these talks
- Most interests seem to be that of special political ones, instead of those for the common good
- Farm-talks have always been the most contentious, and caused the collapse of DOHA
- Small groups have been proved to be more effective, with less fuss and more speed
- The fact that we can't reach an agreement, may well pose a threat to the trading system as a whole
- The talks changed dramatically, leaving most rich countries feeling as if they had to sacrifice their own interests to the foreigners
- America will only undergo radical changes, no minor ones.
- The longer the talks go on, the more the WTO will get to insult the western nations, which will only lessen the chances of success
- The world leaders assembled to try and make the world a better place. They failed.
The global trade talks have collapsed because the world's biggest economies prefer failure to compromise. What comes next?
- Countries with emerging economies are against reducing their own tariffs
- The EU and big emerging economies want a compromise, the US want a complete slash in trade agreements
- DOHA lite is insufficient due to EU's poor proposal
The WTO Doha Development Round
- Every member has a veto in the final say
- EU accused of being insufficient by the US, only offering to reduce tariffs by 39%, as opposed to the proposed 54%
- 8% of world trade is agriculture - 2.5 billion in the industry, mainly in the developing countries
- Developing countries unable to compete with the vast subsidies in Japan, US, EU
- EU offered to cut overall-trade distorting subsidies (OTDS) by 75%, US only wanted to cut 53%, which EU then argued would lead to an increase in subsidies, since they would then spend 22.7 billion instead of 19.7 billion. The WTO permit is 48.2 billion.
- The goals of the WTO is made extremely clear, and the EU and US should know what they are entering with this conference.
- There should be no confusing between the EU and US during the talks. - Should've been resolved before it.
The Wrecking
- The arrogant, walk-out attitude is the one that wrecks these talks
- Most interests seem to be that of special political ones, instead of those for the common good
- Farm-talks have always been the most contentious, and caused the collapse of DOHA
- Small groups have been proved to be more effective, with less fuss and more speed
- The fact that we can't reach an agreement, may well pose a threat to the trading system as a whole
- The talks changed dramatically, leaving most rich countries feeling as if they had to sacrifice their own interests to the foreigners
- America will only undergo radical changes, no minor ones.
- The longer the talks go on, the more the WTO will get to insult the western nations, which will only lessen the chances of success
- The world leaders assembled to try and make the world a better place. They failed.
The global trade talks have collapsed because the world's biggest economies prefer failure to compromise. What comes next?
- Countries with emerging economies are against reducing their own tariffs
- The EU and big emerging economies want a compromise, the US want a complete slash in trade agreements
- DOHA lite is insufficient due to EU's poor proposal
The WTO Doha Development Round
- Every member has a veto in the final say
- EU accused of being insufficient by the US, only offering to reduce tariffs by 39%, as opposed to the proposed 54%
- 8% of world trade is agriculture - 2.5 billion in the industry, mainly in the developing countries
- Developing countries unable to compete with the vast subsidies in Japan, US, EU
- EU offered to cut overall-trade distorting subsidies (OTDS) by 75%, US only wanted to cut 53%, which EU then argued would lead to an increase in subsidies, since they would then spend 22.7 billion instead of 19.7 billion. The WTO permit is 48.2 billion.
Wednesday, 11 November 2009
Haiku
On the muddy forest floor
The dry amber leaves decay
Spreading for a shoot
Icy wind is calm
Shivering in terror, waiting
A bomb trembles the earth
Dark streets, lit by orange
Filled with death and scary ghouls
Children eating candy
The dry amber leaves decay
Spreading for a shoot
Icy wind is calm
Shivering in terror, waiting
A bomb trembles the earth
Dark streets, lit by orange
Filled with death and scary ghouls
Children eating candy
Monday, 2 November 2009
Friday, 25 September 2009
Wednesday, 9 September 2009
Modest Proposal
- Big problem: Poverty
Since poverty is high in much of the eastern world, and that lately adoption has decreased, a game-show has been established to, not only get the interest in adoption regained, but also solve poverty in given regions through India, China and African countries. Three trainers will each pick thirty children each; thirty black people, thirty Chinese and thirty Indians respectively. These are all children from poor villages. The entire western world will be the core of this show, since it will vote to keep certain children in the show. In the first week, the children will have been trained by their assigned trainer to look good, but 25 of these will get sent home, leaving 5 left for each region. As the game then progresses, these children will undergo vigorous training in weekly categories, where after the watchers will vote for their favorites. The idea is to train this children into be more suitable for adoption, so that the last child will be near perfect. Whenever a child is forced to leave the contest, he/she will be auctioned off, and the money will go to his/her society.
Since poverty is high in much of the eastern world, and that lately adoption has decreased, a game-show has been established to, not only get the interest in adoption regained, but also solve poverty in given regions through India, China and African countries. Three trainers will each pick thirty children each; thirty black people, thirty Chinese and thirty Indians respectively. These are all children from poor villages. The entire western world will be the core of this show, since it will vote to keep certain children in the show. In the first week, the children will have been trained by their assigned trainer to look good, but 25 of these will get sent home, leaving 5 left for each region. As the game then progresses, these children will undergo vigorous training in weekly categories, where after the watchers will vote for their favorites. The idea is to train this children into be more suitable for adoption, so that the last child will be near perfect. Whenever a child is forced to leave the contest, he/she will be auctioned off, and the money will go to his/her society.
Wednesday, 3 June 2009
Precis Final
Précis
The media’s job is to produce news, unbiased and truthful and put it into the hands of their audience. We expect that some do this more than others, which “respected” newspapers such as the Guardian, the independent and the Observer is more honest than others. But exactly what are we basing this judgment on? We base this on nothing that has some real validity, but just that it’s an up-market newspaper. In this book, David Edwards and David Cromwell speak of the surprisingly many points in which the media has failed to meet their promises to their audience, having instead turned to exploitation of their loyal readers.
The first examples they use are those of the government. In the UK, the government owns the large TV station BBC. You would think that this would just be good as it would work in the interest of the country, but that is not the case. Seeing as politicians face elections every 4 years, they will use the media for propaganda, in order to give them a head start for the next year’s elections, but unfortunately, that is not all. The government will use the control over the media to either promote war, or disguise their ethically questionable actions. In the invasion of Iraq is just one example of this. When Tony Blair first announced that Britain would take part in the invasion, he used reasons such as ‘Saving and liberating the people’ and ‘Ending Starvation’, however the official reason was that the Iraqi was too armed, and this was an invasion to disarm them – or so that BBC said; however, they failed to mention that in the previous year this had already happened in a more peaceful manner. The US and the UK had indeed already done this, taking 95% of all Iraqi weapons. There was absolutely nothing about this in the newspapers, all they spoke of was about this ‘disarmament’ that was about to happen, trouble was that there no weapons to take. It does not take long to realize the true intentions of this invasion: Oil. And despite Blair’s predictions, the completely opposite happened: School, hospitals and infrastructure was destroyed in the bomb showers, leaving the Iraqis to starve. Strangely enough, this was not mentioned in the newspapers – the starvation was, but not the root of the problem. The UK government, having control over the media then blamed this famine on.
In order to control this, the government will have to control one person at the newspaper: the editor. Not a single article gets published without sifting through the editor’s brain. And he’s the one who works for the corporations/government. You could also refer to the government as the corporations, seeing as in the world today, the governments are largely dependent on these corporations for funding, and so whatever the government does is in the general interest of the corporations. The editor has every incentive to do his job well, because if he does so, he will become the highest paid person at the office, and if he does it incorrectly, he will get sacked. So in other words, everything published will have been filtered by a corporate editor, who would not want anything bad being written about his firm, so he cuts it out, or adds a more controversial topic close to this, completely obliterating it in importance. This is known as misdirection, where the attention is being taken off the original area of importance, and onto something seemingly more important. This is also known as normalizing the unthinkable, which is where the newspapers, in the process of making a story more understandable, adds a certain amount of doubt to the story, if the story would have otherwise been displaying a too severe corporate crime.
The owners of these businesses do not consist of greedy, fat republicans, but in many cases fathers and mothers who care about the world they live in as well. Their dilemma; however, is to work in the interest of the shareholders and maximize their profit. This is of course a common misconception, but although this statement makes them seem innocent, do we just let them go?
In the past 20 years, the media has been overshadowing the greatest threat to humanity of all time. It all started with a great change in 1988, when scientists suddenly realized what was going on. People were already dying from strange natural disasters, and people were already starting to blame it all on the excessive CO2 emissions of the globe. Although people knew the big corporations were to blame, no one bothered asking what the motives were for firms to oppose the reality of this climate change. And soon the media began to blame it on American and China as a whole. NAM, a gathering of over 3 million of the world's biggest firms opposed the climate change, significantly. But what is even more significant is that the Independent and the Guardian never mentioned it in their newspapers.
So what is happening now, is that the media has drowsed something that shouldn’t have been, since it can led to the very extinction of human kind if we do not react fast enough. Actions that should already have been dealt with are being postponed, because of current economic interests. A wise man said ‘We are short-run creatures living in a long-run world’ and if the media continues to shrink the awareness, we will run ourselves into our graves.
The media’s job is to produce news, unbiased and truthful and put it into the hands of their audience. We expect that some do this more than others, which “respected” newspapers such as the Guardian, the independent and the Observer is more honest than others. But exactly what are we basing this judgment on? We base this on nothing that has some real validity, but just that it’s an up-market newspaper. In this book, David Edwards and David Cromwell speak of the surprisingly many points in which the media has failed to meet their promises to their audience, having instead turned to exploitation of their loyal readers.
The first examples they use are those of the government. In the UK, the government owns the large TV station BBC. You would think that this would just be good as it would work in the interest of the country, but that is not the case. Seeing as politicians face elections every 4 years, they will use the media for propaganda, in order to give them a head start for the next year’s elections, but unfortunately, that is not all. The government will use the control over the media to either promote war, or disguise their ethically questionable actions. In the invasion of Iraq is just one example of this. When Tony Blair first announced that Britain would take part in the invasion, he used reasons such as ‘Saving and liberating the people’ and ‘Ending Starvation’, however the official reason was that the Iraqi was too armed, and this was an invasion to disarm them – or so that BBC said; however, they failed to mention that in the previous year this had already happened in a more peaceful manner. The US and the UK had indeed already done this, taking 95% of all Iraqi weapons. There was absolutely nothing about this in the newspapers, all they spoke of was about this ‘disarmament’ that was about to happen, trouble was that there no weapons to take. It does not take long to realize the true intentions of this invasion: Oil. And despite Blair’s predictions, the completely opposite happened: School, hospitals and infrastructure was destroyed in the bomb showers, leaving the Iraqis to starve. Strangely enough, this was not mentioned in the newspapers – the starvation was, but not the root of the problem. The UK government, having control over the media then blamed this famine on.
In order to control this, the government will have to control one person at the newspaper: the editor. Not a single article gets published without sifting through the editor’s brain. And he’s the one who works for the corporations/government. You could also refer to the government as the corporations, seeing as in the world today, the governments are largely dependent on these corporations for funding, and so whatever the government does is in the general interest of the corporations. The editor has every incentive to do his job well, because if he does so, he will become the highest paid person at the office, and if he does it incorrectly, he will get sacked. So in other words, everything published will have been filtered by a corporate editor, who would not want anything bad being written about his firm, so he cuts it out, or adds a more controversial topic close to this, completely obliterating it in importance. This is known as misdirection, where the attention is being taken off the original area of importance, and onto something seemingly more important. This is also known as normalizing the unthinkable, which is where the newspapers, in the process of making a story more understandable, adds a certain amount of doubt to the story, if the story would have otherwise been displaying a too severe corporate crime.
The owners of these businesses do not consist of greedy, fat republicans, but in many cases fathers and mothers who care about the world they live in as well. Their dilemma; however, is to work in the interest of the shareholders and maximize their profit. This is of course a common misconception, but although this statement makes them seem innocent, do we just let them go?
In the past 20 years, the media has been overshadowing the greatest threat to humanity of all time. It all started with a great change in 1988, when scientists suddenly realized what was going on. People were already dying from strange natural disasters, and people were already starting to blame it all on the excessive CO2 emissions of the globe. Although people knew the big corporations were to blame, no one bothered asking what the motives were for firms to oppose the reality of this climate change. And soon the media began to blame it on American and China as a whole. NAM, a gathering of over 3 million of the world's biggest firms opposed the climate change, significantly. But what is even more significant is that the Independent and the Guardian never mentioned it in their newspapers.
So what is happening now, is that the media has drowsed something that shouldn’t have been, since it can led to the very extinction of human kind if we do not react fast enough. Actions that should already have been dealt with are being postponed, because of current economic interests. A wise man said ‘We are short-run creatures living in a long-run world’ and if the media continues to shrink the awareness, we will run ourselves into our graves.
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