Monday, October 12, 2009

Upper Deck

After much delay, both tragic and comic, I'll be flying back to the UK this Wednesday.

I'm feeling terrified coz I'll be entering the final year of my PhD, reputed to be the most depressing of all stages. Bob says that he's been losing weight and feeling sick all the time as he writes up. I'm scared that I'd cope by bingeing on assorted sweets as I crap out 1000 words/day, which is my personal goal for my writing.

But a part of me is also very excited for the travel and the adventure and the fall/winter clothes I've been dying to wear (I supermiss wearing scarves). And I'm thrilled coz I'm flying on the new A380 of Singapore Air. And on the second floor too! With all the bookings and rebookings I had to do, I must say that Singapore Air has totally amazing customer service, with the most accommodating and respectful service agents I've ever encountered. I don't think I'll be using my Marco Polo anymore; it's Kris Flyer from here on out.

Goodbye for now, Manila.

Sunday, May 03, 2009

Ms California Reconsidered

What might be the deeper significance of Ms California's use of "opposite marriage" rather than "heterosexual marriage"? Might she have a more progressive politics than we had initially thought? This thoughtful vlogger reconsiders our favorite runner-up's answer.

Oh the fun of readings, misreadings, and rereadings. Always look for what's not being said!

(Thanks to B for the link)

Saturday, May 02, 2009

Perfection is Zefron

Just when I thought Zac couldn't get any prettier, we get this swoontastic photograph:

Though it must be said that Rey and I are a bit concerned with his body. Overly muscled on a small frame, our boy Zac needs to get a little beefier lest he run the risk of looking like those weirdly developed gymnasts and bodybuilders.

New GQ with Zefron out now!

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Let's Give a Beautiful Bride-to-Be the Right to Choos!

Friends, students, former lovers of our dear Nicole, this is our moral imperative! Jimmy Choo wedding shoes or bust!


Friday, March 06, 2009

Chinese Olympic Gymnasts 'Like Robots', says FIG President

Talk about racist! Orientalism lives on!!! Clearly, 'these Asians' are robots as they're naturally good with sewing machines and mathematics and manufacturing Nike shoes! Grr!

Sorry, Mr Grandi. I've never seen robots move as gracefully and photograph so well like these:

Compared to craptastic Romanian gymnastics (of recent years, at least):

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3 March 2009
Grandi: Chinese Olympic Gymnasts 'Robots'
From International Gymnast Online

FIG President Bruno Grandi criticized the Chinese gymnastics team and said there was "strong circumstantial evidence" of age falsification at the 2008 Olympic Games.

In an interview with German gymnastics magazine "Leon," Grandi said the members of the gold medal-winnning Chinese team in Beijing lacked aesthetic elegance.

"The Chinese gymnasts were robots," he said. "From a geometrical point of view the moves were very well done, but compare with the way [Nastia] Liukin performs a single movement with artistry. You can see how she continues to move through to the end point. The other is a perfect geometric figure. But a Code [of Points] will never be able to completely reflect aesthetic moment."

In Beijing, the Chinese women took its first ever Olympic gold medal in the team competition. He Kexin won the gold on uneven bars, and Yang Yilin won the bronze medal in the all-around and on uneven bars. Veteran Cheng Fei won bronze medals on vault and balance beam.

Grandi said it was conceivable that China had cheated in Beijing, alluding to the accusations that He and Yang were under the minimum age of 16.

"There was strong circumstantial evidence, certainly, but these investigations are not my job," said Grandi, in his fourth term as president of the International Gymnastics Federation. "I'm not the police or Interpol. If I find that there was cheating, then I can act."

After the Olympics concluded, the International Olympic Committee called for an independent investigation into China's six female artistic gymnasts and sought documentation of their birthdates. The IOC cleared the Chinese team after finding no evidence of age falsification.

"I had everything sent to the IOC and the IOC has carried out its investigations and the figures were the same," Grandi said. "The IOC gave us its findings, and we checked them and there was nothing. When people on the Internet find fake documents, you need to legally prove that these are fake, and that's not my job. I have to respect the documents that the Chinese government gives me. What else should I do - declare war on China?"

Sunday, March 01, 2009

Resonance


I was reading Ben Okri's Booker Prize-winning yarn In Arcadia (2002), when I had to stop to reread and reread a passage that so thoroughly struck me:

"If you believe in something, your very belief renders you unqualified to do it. Your earnestness will come across. Your passion will show. Your enthusiasm will make everyone nervous. And your naivete will irritate. Which means that you will become suspect. Which means that you will be prone to disillusionment. Which means that you will not be able to sustain your belief in the face of all the piranha fish which nibble away at your idea and your faith, till only the skeleton of your dream is left...

The world--which is to say the powers that be--would listen to your ardent ideas with a stiff smile on its face, then put up impossible obstacles, watch you finally give up your cherished idea, having mangled it beyond recognition, and after you slope away in profound discouragement it will take up your idea, dust it down, give it a new spin, and hand it over to someone who doesn't believe in it at all.

That's the world. Take it from me."

It struck me because I can relate to it, having experienced recent loss and disappointment myself. And it struck me because it's a reminder of a world as it shouldn't be, of a world as it shouldn't seem. To me, or to anyone.

No, Mr Narrator. That is not how it is. Existential moping is so 1999.


I always find it special when our media, while pushing us outwards, taking us to new places and surprising us with the unfamiliar, can just as quickly shift trajectory and draw us back inwards, holding up a mirror and asking us how we see ourselves. Our media are part of our very own 'working through', as we confront our fears (just as my tarrying with In Arcadia) and affirm our longings (just as I silently applauded Isla Fisher's testimonial in Confessions of a Shopaholic).

So when was the last time you were struck by a film, or a book, or a play, and why? :)

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

ICA Media Ethics Conference

Geekgasmic! And not just because I'm in it! :)

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Media Ethics Preconference

Sponsored by the ICA Philosophy of Communication Division. Cosponsored by the ICA Journalism Studies and Mass Communication Divisions, and by New York University’s Department of Culture and Communication and the Council for Media and Culture

Thursday, May 21, 8:30 – 17:00

The preconference will bring together communication scholars, media theorists, journalists, and practitioners to collectively consider the question of media ethics. Ethics has recently emerged as a central concern in the humanities and social sciences, as well as in various subsets of media and communication studies. An increasing number of scholars are now involved in issues directly pertaining to the relation of media and ethics while drawing on various philosophical traditions. While ethical issues have accompanied the development of media studies from its inception and, agreement on a broad conceptual framework for media ethics is still to be established and a broad dialogue between theoretical perspectives on ethics and contemporary media practitioners yet to be achieved. The preconference will provide a platform for such an attempt.

8:30-9:00 Breakfast and registration

9:00-10:30 Opening plenary: Perspectives on Media Ethics: Ronald Arnett, Lilie Chouliaraki, Clifford Christians

10:30-10:45 Coffee Break

10:45-12:00 SESSION 1: Media and Morality
• ‘Local Cosmopolitanism’: Media Ethics for Diasporic Youth – Ingrid Volkmer & Esther Chin
• Political Discourse Cultures and Transcultural Media Ethics: Media and Morality in European Political Communication – Andreas Hepp, Michael Brüggemann, Katharina Kleinen-von Königslöw, Swantje Lingenberg & Johanna Möller
• The New Visibility of Body Horror on the Internet: Ethical Stakes and Implications – Kari Andén Papadopoulos
• Children Watching Children: How Filipino Children Represent and Receive News Images of Suffering – Jonathan Corpus Ong

10:45-12:00 SESSION 2: Accountability
• Distinct Responsibilities: Why the Responsibility of Media and Journalism Isn’t the Same – Klaus-Dieter Altmeppen
• Metacoverage as an Accountability System? A Framing Model of Election News – Paul D’Angelo & Frank Esser
• Covering the Duke Lacrosse Case: Professional Perspectives on Journalism Ethics – Glen Feighery
• Arguing for Accountability: Toward a Cross-Cultural Discourse Ethics – Steven F. Rafferty

12:00-13:15 SESSION 3: Audience Involvement and Participation
• Structural and Individual Horizons in Politics of Pity: Mediatised Advocacy for Asylum Seekers – Karina Horsti
• Politics of Disrespect, Ethics of Care: Towards a Normative Framework of Mediated Multiculturalism? – Mirca Madianou
• Emotional Ethics: Media Ethics Through the Lens of Critical Emotion Studies – Brent Malin
• Media Ethics as Field Strategies: What Do Audiences Do With Ethics? – Tim Markham

12:00-13:15 SESSION 4: Objectivity, Truth, Rationality
• A Definition of Journalistic Objectivity as a Performance – Sandrine Boudana
• Narrative Virtue in Times of Moral Uncertainty – Nick Couldry
• Objectivity and Truth: Anatomy of an Endless Misunderstanding – Juan Ramón Muñoz-Tores
• Rituals of Rationality? Lessons from the Mohammed Cartoons Affair – Risto Kunelius

13:15-14:15 Lunch Break

14:15-15:40 SESSION 5: Media, Event, Otherness
• Badiou’s Ethics and the Documentary Enterprise – Garnet Butchart
• Television and the Cognitive Distance From the Poor: Emmanuel Levinas’ Humanism of the Other: Reduction of the Self to the Other –Jae-Hong Kim
• Media Witnessing and Shared Humanity – Amit Pinchevski & Paul Frosh
• The Virtue (-Based) Ethics of Interruption – Piotr Szpunar

14:15-15:40 SESSION 6: Emerging Trends in Journalistic Ethics
• “Everyone’s A Journalist” – Or Are They? Exploring the Ethics of Communicative Practices by Citizen Media – Anne-Katrin Arnold& Lokman Tsui
• Journalism Ethics in Perspective: Desirability and Feasibility of a Separate Code of Conduct for Online Journalism – Christel van de Burgt, Klaus Schönbach and Richard van der Wurff
• Talking to/About Itself: Ethics and News Media Self-Coverage – Stephanie Craft
• The Possible Self-Defeating Quality of the Idea(l) of “The Average Citizen” – Gitte Meyer

15:30-16:15 SESSION 7: Market, Law, Politics
• Hatim El-Hibri – Ethics, Dangerous Media, and the Case of Fitna
• Tina Tomazic – Covert Advertising in the Context of Media Ethics
• Tai-li Wang – Challenge the Myth of Product Placements: The Impacts of Product Placements on News Credibility in TV News Programs
• Bruce A. Williams & Michael X. Delli Carpini – Real Ethical Concerns And Fake News: The Challenge of the New Media Environment

15:30-16:15 SESSION 8: Cosmopolitanism and the Global
• Universal Ethics: New Approaches, New Principles – Clifford G. Christians & Stephen J. A. Ward
• Discourse Ethics and Transcultural Deliberations Analytical Dimensions of “Pathologies of Communication” – Thomas Haeussler
• Global or “Glocal” Media Ethics? – Shakuntala Rao & Herman Wasserman
• Journalism for a World of Strangers: A Cosmopolitan Approach - Wendy N. Wyatt

16:45-17:00 Coffee Break

17:00-18:00 Closing Plenary: Daniel Dayan