Channel 5 news bulletin review

This will be my review of the Channel 5 bulletin from last night, i'll try and go into as much detail as possible! Overall I thought that it was well done.

Floods: Flooding story didn't really have much in the way of natural sound - maybe some gushing water would have worked well. I noticed a lot of cross dissolves being used to hide the cut ways but then they may just be a visual thing, I've personally never used them.

Good shots of people struggling with the floods, makes it very personal and people will react to that. The interview with the person in the house was amazing, it definitely made it more interesting to see the reporter shouting across a pool of water to a man leaning out of his window - brilliant and impressive improvisation

People taking shelter in sports hall - good because again it shows distressed people which will make an impact, however I didn't understand having the back of the reporters head in the shot and in some cases having the gun mic in clear shot.

Sickness: The story about the norovirus had a good use of graphics but there was the same shot re-used with the medical staff in the background with a microscopic image of the virus imposed over the scree - it was a good thing but maybe find something else to use as the second shot. It also seemed to make it out to be more than it was, yes it's bad but it's not nearly as bad as it was made out to be.

The news recap after the break was good, kept people interested and it is for the benefit of people who maybe didn't catch the show from the start, it was a very charming feature.

Nadine Dorries story: Seemed to me that it was just to have the novelty of being in Westminster in the shot when they didn't actually get her after the event or anything, it was nice but was somewhat lacking in a sense.

Yasser Arafat: This story was interesting from the get go and it was easy to be involved with it - as it stands to be a very profound aspect that they are investigating and I found it to be a great story. Furthermore, the interviews used were very memorable and strong, they had a good impact on the story and the footage of them looking through his personal effects was a nice touch.

Sports Personality: Liked the use of Chris Hoy being there and about to deliver his answer, then cuts out to keep you interested, very nice touch. However, I think that maybe more people could've been used to judge and maybe delay as much as possible to give off the big reveal, just to keep people that much more inclined to listen to the story and see it to the end.

General overview: I liked it really, just the main thing that I took issue with was having the reporter talking and being in shot during any interview, this also applies to the gun mic being in shot. However, this may be a style thing that has become the norm but I found it to be odd, as I'm never in shot during an interview.

Sometimes the framing of the shots we're not all that great, some people didn't have their heads or were just having the side of their face shown while talking to someone who was standing in front of them with the camera to their left - it just looked strange to me is all. Furthermore, I wasn't entirely sure about the cross dissolves, but again maybe just the norm - it didn't look bad by any means but it just seemed odd.

I liked the use of having the reporter's twitter account in the strap line - very good same goes for the OOVs, ver nice shot of the crane collapsing.

The recaps were also a very nice touch - just kept the news fresh in the viewer's mind and it held interest.

Modernism

This blog post concerns modernism, aesthetics, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. The notes are a bit bare but this is only really for my understanding, hopefully you all get it!

Aesthetics: Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy which concerns art, beauty, and music - the process of making it and enjoying it. From the late 17th to the early 20th century Western aesthetics underwent change into what is often called modernism. European thinkers placed a very high profoundness on beauty as the key aspect of art and would go as far to see art as necessarily aiming at absolute beauty and art it is the closest thing we can get to absolute beauty - this idea of absolute beauty is linked heavily with the form theory.

For Hegel all art or beauty is a matter of "absolute spirit" showing itself, changing to a perfection that only philosophy can approach. Art is the first stage in which the absolute spirit is manifest immediately to perception. For Schopenhauer aesthetics is a way for people to understand what beauty is and for one to lose themselves in it, as sort of a coping mechanism to an extent - which allows people to hide from a harsh world. therefor Schopenhauer saw it one way to fight the suffering of people.

Nietzsche - Philosopher of Music: Nietzsche wanted to understand why somethings are considered beautiful and some are not: this is heavily linked again to Plato's cave and forms theory - the idea that there is a perfect woman or chair or table out there somewhere but we cannot perceive it but we do know when they are close to them. One of the most outstanding features of Nietzsche's work is his ornamental poetic language. He liked to be seen as an artist and to be judged solely on that fact. 

Man is the main balance in the universe and this balance is struck by people using their language and ideas to shape the way they live. For Nietzsche, art is not the imitation, but more of a metaphysical complement that will allows nature to become more than it is, to transcend itself and art is the highest form of human activity. From this it is understandable to say that artists are the closest people to the forms.

Furthermore, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Wagner believe that music is the very purest and profound form of art and aspect. This can be linked back to the aesthetics approach to why people find things beautiful and their own personal preference to what beauty is.

Schopenhauer: Schopenhauer's book "The world as will and representation" mentions the 'will' which, linked to his possible Hindu roots, is the Hindu God Brahma. For Schopenhauer, human desiring, "willing,"  just ends up causing suffering or pain. A temporary way to escape this pain is through art or aesthetic contemplation. Aesthetic contemplation allows one to escape this pain because it stops one perceiving the world in one way and to see it in a better light - you get lost in it.

He believes that people have to overcome desire, when you experience this - that is the will, which can be linked to the 'force' from Star Wars and denial of the Will is the only way to be perfectly and absolutely happy. The Dionysian view of being perfectly happy would be to use intoxication on yourself, just to numb the pain of a harsh world by getting drunk, taking drugs and over indulging yourself, but these will all have their own drawbacks, for one they are only temporary releases - you will sober up eventually. Contrasting with this is the Apollonian way, the "healthy" option, for example losing yourself in art or music or something that you find beautiful - this is known as a healthy intoxication.

Economics

This is my stab at the economics lecture from a couple weeks back, again, this is very late so i'm trying to catch up! Have fun reading them - if they make sense that is. Enjoy!

Adam Smith: Smith was a contemporary of Hume and was named one of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment and is best known for his two original works - "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" (1759) and "The Wealth of Nations" (1776). The Wealth of Nations is usually deemed Smith's most prominent and profound piece of work as well as the first modern work which detailed economics and it addressed why one nation is wealthier than another. Smith looked at China and why it was a 3rd world country - he came to the conclusion that due to far too much government intervention, for example the Great Wall of China was built to protect them, which ultimately failed and bankrupted the economy.

In terms of wages and labour, Smith stated that in societies where the amount of labour exceeds the amount available for waged labour, then competition among workers is greater than the competition among employers - this means that eventually the wages will fall. However, if you were to flip this on its head, then it means that where revenue is abundant, labour wages rise. Smith argues that, therefore, labour wages only rise as a result of greater revenue disposed to pay for labour. 

Adam Smith says that basic human morality is everyone is living for themselves in order to gain happiness or some sort of ego boost. For example in terms of people donating money to charity, Smith states that people don't donate to charity in order to help other people, they do it so that they can feel superior or develop some sort of standing as a charitable person in society. His ideas are linked very closely to Utilitarianism - maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain - in terms of donating money, it is explained through the amount they donate and this is determined by how highly they value the feeling they gain from it or how little they value their money.

That being said, Smith hates the idea of charity - it leads to what he calls the law of unintended consequences. This in terms of charity, he argues, makes the person receiving the charity more dependent on the welfare and the charity which gives them little to no incentive to get off a system of welfare and get their own jobs.

David Ricardo: Ricardo was a British political economist and stock trader. He credited work, among others are systematising economics, and he was one of the most influential classical economists, along with the likes of Malthus and Smith. Ricardo is noted as being the contribution of the law of comparative advantage - which is a key argument in favor of free trade among other countries. Ricardo believed that there is a mutual benefit from trading - even if one of the people involved with the trade are far more productive.

Thomas Malthus: Malthus was very pessimistic  he stated that it is our destiny to eventually starve to death. This is because there will always be unlimited wants from the people and we only have limited resources which we will blow through in no time. He also claims that we are perpetually on the brink of extinction, for example if we ran out of petrol resources, we wouldn't be able to drive to the shops to buy food or ambulances would stop operating. He says that people being married is a good thing as it would reduce the birth rate which would impede the inevitable starvation - less food would be required and people would be able to hold on to rations. Contraception is also credited for being a huge help to lowering the birth rate, but then this has it's own flaws as we know.

Malthus was heavily criticised by the "moderns" when he talks about the idea of every new mouth needing to be fed and cared for. The moderns pick up on the fact that with every new mouth comes a new pairs of hands.

The Moderns: Adam smith said that money was solely a way to keep score and it has to be kept the same for everyone but the money will not affect a human's nature in any way. Moderns would oppose this view and say that money does have a deep, a very profound impact on people and their choices. War is always good for the economy and it managed to remedy the great depression - this is because it created a multitude of jobs and everyone had something to do - this also managed to rid the world of the "superstition" of gold, this replaced gold with actual notes, coins; real currency (ration slips).

Governments would print extra money, they would give this to factory owners to secure the workers that they employ. This in turn meant more people would have jobs and more people were earning money - this lead to more money being spent which gives the economy a very nice boost which would continue to cycle.  The money that is being fed into the government is taken out and turned into taxation - which is implemented to control spending patterns which means the government would be greatly involved in the market.

Logical Positivism and Karl Popper

The Logical Positivists: The logical positivist were a group of highly influential thinkers before the first world war and their philosophy combines empiricism with a form of rationalism. Logical positivism, began from discussions of a group called the Vienna Circle which gathered during the earliest years of the 20th century in Vienna. After World War I, Hans Hahn, a member of that early group, helped bring Schlick into the mix. The Vienna circle took it upon themselves to rid the world of Hegelian metaphysics and they tried to apply science to philosophy

The opposition to all metaphysics was a key aspect and stance of the Logical Positivists, especially ontology and synthetic a priori propositions; they rejected metaphysics however not as wrong but as having no meaning; and they came to this conclusion based on Wittgenstein's work; the idea that all knowledge should be codifiable.

The whole idea was demarcation- splitting the world into metaphysics and actual science to try and gain the absolute truth. They believed that any statement that could not be verified are just plain nonsense, for example the Hegelian idea of the Ziet Geist leading history. The main question was - can we prove this claim, if not it was deemed as untrue. The Cogito by Descartes is rejected, as it cannot really be proven - it contains a non-verifiable induction. The Cogito was re-written by Ayer as "there are ideas" this is verifiable unless solipsism applies.

Karl Popper: Popper was born to Jewish parents and fed the Nazis to the University of London - he lived in Vienna during the golden age of the city: the Vienna Circle. Popper didn't see himself as one of the logical positivists and many of the logical positivists saw him as a direct opposition to the positivists.

Popper's main addition to philosophy was his theory of falsification - which holds the principle that if something cannot be proven, then you must disprove it.

Popper's concern was with distinguishing scientific from metaphysical statements. Unlike the positivists, he did not claim that metaphysical statements must be meaningless. Popper profoundly said that a statement which was metaphysical and unfalsifiable in one century could, in another century, be falsified which in turn makes them scientific. Popper stated that people should not rely on induction when it comes to science however most scientists think that science does rely heavily on induction. This is known as the problem with induction.

Popper eventually realised that everything was potentially untrue as people such as Newton had been proven wrong by Einstein - he says you have to assume what knowledge we have is incomplete and we will strive to be exact as you possible can.