Next stop - Winchester Bus Station

As a student living in Andover and studying in Winchester I have to commute - since I do not want to live in a student corridor or student apartment somewhere, I rather spend my spare time outside of the wonderful world of University with my boyfriend, family and friends. There are basically three ways for me to get to Winchester.

1) The easiest alternative would be by car, because I could decide when I would like to come and go and not wait around for different services to pick me up at different stations around Hampshire at different times. But, as a student I can not afford the luxury of an own car that needs to fed with petrol, needs to be insured, needs to have a parking space for the cold British nights and all the other lovely details that go with it. I would also need to park around the University somewhere, and as my dear friends have told me, this is a nightmare. So, naah, I don't think that car is an alternative for me.. And oh yeah, by the way, the main issue with a car is that people in this country freaks me out by driving on the wrong side of the road...

2) Then there are trains. This would be a very comfortable choice and convenient as I could use the time I travel to finish off the different tasks we get from University every week. Unfortunately there is no such thing as a fast direct train between Andover and Winchester so if I was to choose this option I would have to go via Basingstoke and wait around for quite some time before eventually arriving in Winchester. There is also the cost for it. Hugely expensive! Prices that I can not see any student able to afford.. Not if you want a decent life outside the train journeys anyway... So naah, no train for Maddie either...

3) I guess that leaves me with the lovely buses. (Notice the irony.) Stagecoach. Prices are alright, quite a few buses that leaves from both places each day - with exceptions from Sundays, when there are no buses whatsoever, and after 6pm when they obviously go to bed. At least it gets me to where I want to go, it picks me up and takes me back home again. But it is definitely not safe. As a Swede I am used to safe transport, whether it is on your own - in your own vehicle - or if it is with the transport society offers you. But here, bus drivers drive as if to break their own personal record for a specific journey. No seat belts are to be found even though a lot of the journeys include motor ways. Terrible seats where you can not rest your head against anything - don't want to think of what might happen if the bus crashes... People standing up, getting thrown around because of the speed and the care for the travellers some of the drivers seem to lack... I am very surprised there are not more accidents reported around the UK...

With this said though, I find it very relaxing to travel by bus - as long as I don't occupy my mind with above mentioned flaws. For the future, I do hope that Stagecoach manage to get some lights in the buses though so that us passengers can read a book or a newspaper even though darkness consumes all the light usually surrounding us...

Cheerios

Maddie

Robert Fisk - Conversations with History

I would strongly recommend everyone who is interested in how a journalist lives, works and survives in a war zone to watch this interview with Robert Fisk. This is a recording from 2006 where Mr. Fisk describes what he has been doing throughout his career and how 30 years as a Middle East correspondent, for the Independent, has shaped and formed him to be who he is today, both as a journalist and as a private person.

As a journalist trainee, I found it very inspiring to listen to Robert Fisk as he is a man with lots of experience and when he talks about his life there is a passionate drive that explains how he has managed to get as far as a journalist as he has. But alongside with the passion there is also an anger that seems to drive him that extra bit further to make his stories something special. Something extraordinary.

So like I said, watch it. Now.

Red-topped Broadsheets - The Future?

Win. Free. Sex.

Newspapers report. Their main purpose are to tell us things that we can not see or hear on our own. They are the link between events out in the world and us being somewhat stuck wherever we are.

Newspapers report. At least the broadsheets. The 'real' newspapers a friend of mine once called them. Then we've got the red tops. The 'newspapers' with a red masthead. The Sun, the Daily Star, the Daily Mirror etc.. More known to deliver entertainment than raw news. But can we actually say that they deliver news - whether it is raw, important news or entertainment - when we do not even know if what they put in their newspaper is true or not. Really, it seems they would do anything to report on an event. Even report on something someone tells them without even checking their sources and confirm them to be true...

Win. Free. Sex.

But why do we read these papers then? If we actually do not know whether the stories are real, fake or spiced up a bit? Chris explained in The One Show that tabloids, and especially the Sun, are like fast food. "It's spicy, it's cheap, it's great fun. But if you only ever ate fast food, you'd have a problem. And if you only ever have read the Sun, you'd also have a problem."

Win. Free. Sex.

Anyone who bought the Sunday Times yesterday? Or at least saw it in the supermarket? To be honest, I was well surprised by the front page. FREE DVD inside and ...SEX... welcomed me to the Sunday edition. I did not just get the Sun, did I? Because these words are what I expect to see when picking up a copy of one of the previously mentioned red tops. But I do not expect to pick up a broadsheet and face a red-topilisation of it.

Win. Free. Sex.

The only word I could not seem to find grazing the cover was the word WIN. A red top seems to be built like that. With these three words to lure readers to pick their 'newspaper' - because who does not like to Win Free Sex?

Win. Free. Sex.

So what is actually happening to the Times? Has this been going on for a while? Have I just come to realise that the Times have used this red topped method for quite some time? Or has it sneaked in there this Sunday only? I'm very eager to follow this up. Can we stop the newspaper society turning red topped - or is it already too late?

To understand war..

For me it's very hard to understand war. And I think I'm not alone to feel this way.

Yes of course there are reasons, or at least so we hear everyday. This is what media, society, well everyone tells us. Reasons like politics, economy, oil, terrorism, fatigue.. the list could probably go on forever. I can kind of grasp this. Conditions that in the long run makes it unbearable for a human being to live their life and this somehow results in a revolt - whether it is a smaller demonstration outside work or a world war between several major nations..

What I do not manage to grasp is how we actually get to the stage where the reasons for war stretches so far that it takes the life of other human beings, just like me and you. I can not understand how a world inhabitated and ruled by ordinary people - because I do believe that everyone is worth the same, whether we are born in Sweden, the UK, Afghanistan, Pakistan etc. - can end up in major devastation, similar wiht something I'd expect hell to be..

Maybe I've been protected well from thoughts about war and devastation and human beings suffering around the world. Being born into a neutral nation such as Sweden might limit my ways of understanding why people can't agree and find friendly solutions instead of being forced to bring up their children, their future, in a gun populated country..

I don't know. I guess it's really hard to understand anything that you haven't been through yourself, and even harder when it has such a clearly negative effect on humans such as myself.. So when hearing the other day that it is expected that we will send another 500 troops to Afghanistan, I can't help but think what difference will it actually make?

What do you think? Can we grasp and understand what is actually going on in a war zone, and will 500 troops more or less solve or help solving the massive war that haunts both the Afghan population and all the families and friends to the soldiers being sent over there?

Marge Playboy?

Wow. Can't help but laughing when seeing this on BBC's homepage http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8300463.stm ... First time ever a cartoon character is gracing Playboy's cover. Marge Simpson posing on her playboy chair, seducing the camera in a way that only ... cartoon characters can do? Anyone turned on?

Philosophy- the Individual and the Church

Many great philosophers have managed to make themselves a name thanks to theories or innovations etc, and these are usually the people that we may think of when someone mentions the term 'philosophy'. It is definitely the way my mind works anyway. Ancient Greeks. Italian masterpieces from the Renaissance. Roman emperors. Danish and Polish astronoms. People. Individuals.

What I haven't really thought of before reading the book 'History of Western Philosophy' by Bertrand Russell is the influence philosophy had on the Church, both the Catholic and the Christian. I do know that philosophy has a huge influence on everything, whether we like it or not. It's there and exists around us all the time. It's as normal as breathing or sleeping. Philosophising.

But it's not only philosophical reasons that has formed, and still do influence the Church. Factors such as the political and economical climate, as well as the new multi cultural society we live in have always played a big part. I would say that one of the biggest sources for changes both to the better and the worse is the multi cultural society, a term more relevant to this discussion now than ever before. This thanks to - or maybe because of - the many possibilities the world is offering us today with for example the EU.

Let's look back in time. We don't need to look far. Say 100 years. A time before mass media were developed to the enormous proportions they exist in today. When people didn't have the chance to update themselves on what was going on in the world or in their country. Maybe all they could do was keeping an eye (or ear) on what was going on in their closest surroundings, and maybe, if they were lucky, they could manage to listen to a radio somewhere in the village. The church was usually the place to gather. To meet people. To communicate. To gossip. To feel safe. To have a social life outside your family and your own home. Of course it was also a place to practice your religion.

Today, due to the open doors all around the world, religion has in one way moved on. People still believe, and will probably always keep believing. But today we're familiar with many more different types of religion. We know of Christians, Catholics, Muslims, Hindus.. and the list could go on forever. But from a philosophical perspective, we all believe. Whether we believe in a god, many gods, God, Allah, Vishnu or maybe we believe in nothing at all - we are all still human beings inhabitating this planet called Earth. Whether we decide to go to church on Sundays or stay at home in bed (where we actually can watch church services live from somewhere in the country we are in at the moment!), we are all equally valued in today's society (and thank God for that).

Society and its habitants have developed new ways of living, their traditions have changed and so on. Church doesn't play as big a part today as it did 100 years ago. I'm not to judge whether this is for the better or worse, but I do think religion today is not as powerful as it once was, both for state and individual.

I'm not quite sure what I wanted to say with this blog post.. Society changes, both for individuals and institutions over time - it would be well weird otherwise. It will be very interesting to see where we are in another 100 years time and what kind of role the Church plays then and how the relation between State, Church and Individual will have changed.

Cheerios
Mads

10 of 60 mins commercial break. Sigh.

On Thursday's "How to produce for radio" lecture we were given some preparations to do before the next lecture coming up this Thursday. Among other things we're supposed to listen to a radio station for at least 30 minutes and think of what we hear, what happens, how does the presenter make you feel special enough so that you don't turn him off and leave him alone out there in media space? Also, we were told to preferably listen to a radio station which we normally don't listen to but since I haven't really been listening to radio since I moved to the UK I just decided to pick a random radio channel on my Sky box and go for it..

0107

Absolute

So an hour and a bit ago this the channel I got tuned on to. A commercial station that seems to survive on nothing else than commercial breaks and competitions every frigging second for people to pay a pound to enter with a 1 in a million chance to win a laptop.. Fair enough. After all, this is a commercial station and I do expect commercial breaks when listening to it, I would be sort of silly if not - but I was not expecting one sixth of the broadcasted time I listened to, to be commercial commercial bloody commercial breaks.

I ended up listening an hour because it feels like I would be able to give a fairer picture of the station the longer I would listen to it. So, 60 minutes ended up containing 10 minutes commercial breaks together and 9 minutes of win this fab prize if entering this contest. 19 minutes out of 60. That's a lot!

I have actually never thought about commercial radio like this before. And with this hour session I have realised that I do like the TV licence more than I thought I did an hour ago - because there is no silly commercial breaks. Long live the TV licence!! Hurray!!

Or would media work just as well without it..?

Hmm...
Mads

Thesis+Antithesis=Clashy Synthesis?

Let's start with part three instead. Just throw ourselves into the middle of history, cuddle up with a cup of tea, a penguin classic written by Emile Zola and wroom - here goes History and Context of Journalism - part three.. I guess first parts are over rated? Or just time consuming? ...both?

Anyway, start of part three it is. As class went on, I found myself most interested and inspired by the idealistic philosopher Hegel. His thoughts and ideas were complicated, mainly based on life, society and how the world all evolves around changes. His main idea suggests that there are no objects, all there is is change. Change seems to develop from two opposites (thesis and antithesis) clashing and erupting into something new, some kind of 'togetherness', or as Hegel would say, synthesis. This could easily be described, as Chris pointed out in the lecture, as two football teams, a home team (thesis) and an away team (antithesis). When these two teams meet up it results in a football game - the clash (synthesis). As we can see here, out of two opposites, the final result is change.

To take this theory to a higher level we can instead of the football terms refer to the ancient times and the Greek state (thesis) and the Roman fall (antithesis). When these two nations clashed history resulted in war (synthesis). 

But even after this change, there is according to Hegel additional changes that will build the future. So, with war there will be peace which will lead to victory and so on in all eternally...

When I started reading the Emile Zola book, Germinal a week or so ago, I found this similar way of thinking reflected in the story about the coal mine worker in France. Here we get the opportunity to follow the citizens daily work and life in a very violent and emotion filled society. As poverty and famine like conditions hit the society, the miners decide to strike in hopes to get their employer to once again rise their wages in order to support their families and themselves. But the tactics do not quite go according to plan as mayhem breaks lose and people will have to fight even harder to survive...

So; mining society vs powers ruling above the miners clashing together and gives us strike. It might not be exactly what Hegel gave us with his theory of how everything changes, but traces can definitely be found in how society do change according to people, the interest in surviving and having a worthy life even though there is a higher power ruling them in society. I think this still in some ways occur in our society with strikes, demonstrations and such, and it will probably exist as long as the humankind is alive and ready to defend themselves and their human rights...

To make a long story short; nothing stays the same as everything changes all the time... Like I said, well confusing..

Weyoo

Mads