Winol Week 8 and 9- perfecting our packages

Like promised, I managed to improve my £20 food budget feature. It took quite a lot of time but I can openly say that I am very proud of it. Spending up to 13 hours a day at the university was definitely worth it. Editing was a lot more enjoyable this time as I could see it getting better and better. The main change I have done was shortening it extremely from 7 minutes to 3 minutes, making it less chaotic and more interesting. I got rid of boring pieces to the camera and I recorded a voice over- therefore I had a chance of telling the story properly. It made the piece look more professional. The piece was supposed to be based on the Channel 4 documentaries, I feel like I have reached the target. I think the feature had a clear point and it was explained well throughout the film. In the voiceover I talked about Poland to clarify where my accent was from. I also thought that the audience would be interested to hear some fact about different culture. II also decided to get an advice from Julie Rowles who works in the university canteen. She was very nice and wanted to help. She gave me a basic idea of what I could eat and how much it would cost me. I can honestly say that I could never afford to eat there for a week on £20. My favourite bit is the montage of a shopping basket being filled up with food. In the other piece I had a very long, boring piece of a self check out.

The structure of the piece was well planned. It started with an introduction to the camera, then the story was being told in the voiceover, I tried to stick to the point I made at the beginning. Then the piece ended with a conclusion to the camera. It was definitely the first feature I planned so well.

Things I have learned from improving my feature:
1. Always make a detailed plan before you go out filming AND before you start editing your piece.
2. Don’t try to use every single bit of your footage you have on the tape. Even if you spend 3 hours filming one thing, 2 seconds of it will be enough to make your piece interesting. Everyone will know that you have put a lot of effort and time into it.
3. Don’t complicate your life by trying to be more professional than you are. Simple things look professional and great if you use a little bit of your imagination.
4. Voiceovers are much better and more interesting than pieces to the camera. So try to use them as much as you can! 
5. Living on £20 a week probably be possible if you manage not to get tempted by takeaways!

Hope you enjoy it!

Students' Protest in London against increasing tuition fees

So I am in bed with horrible developing tonsillitis, while my friends are trying to fight their way through the big tuition fees increase protest in London. I have been following the BBC website and it just looks so terrific to me. When I heard about this event weeks ago, I thought it would just be an innocent and sophisticated protest, which would show how devastated we all are about this horrendous decision about University’s tuition fees being raised up to £9,000 per year, up from current level of £3,290. But it turned into a riot, or I would even call it a jungle. Anyone would get angry and upset, but not to this level.

The protesters are made up of university students and lecturers, as well as sixth form students. These sixth formers are the ones who are most likely to face the climb in tuition fees if it ends up happening.

Students found their way to Millbank Tower, where the Conservative Party is headquartered and smashed the windows on the main floor, and hundreds filled the entrance hall of the building. Police tried to beat back the students, but they seemed to be stronger. The ones that stayed outside set a fire outside the building. Protesters were throwing bottles and other items on fire at the police line. According to Sky News, 5 policemen and 6 students were injured and taken to 2 hospitals.

Now, is it actually a protest against dramatically increasing tuition fees or just an excuse to throw heavy things at the police, because in this situation it seems like they can? This surely isn’t the way to change the Government’s decision. And the injury of 11 people was certainly not worth it.

More importantly, did today’s devastation in London bring anything good into students’ life? I very much doubt they achieved what they wanted to achieve.

James Joyce- Ulysses. Chapter 15, Circe

Metaphors, Themes and Analysis.

Chapter Circe of Ulysses is written in a form of a script. It is quite a confessional piece of reading. The themes introduced to the reader are themes of love, power, masochism, and consciousness. They are presented in a way to help the audience feel the battle between mind and body.

Chemical imbalance is another theme that supports the literary elegance of Circe. Specifically, Circe be might be seen as a metaphor for Schizophrenia. The chapter grows in the same way the disease does. The beginning of the chapter remains similar to the beginning of it, for example there is a strong anxiety and the reader is introduced to the elements of paranoia. There are lots of fantasies and actions throughout the chapter, they all slow and then the reader can feel a general paralysis. The chapter then follows to the part when the characters have systematic delusions.. This progress goes in the exact way as the disease of Schizophrenia.

The parent- child relationship highlights the theme of unique love, which is definitely worth looking at in this chapter. The characters experience it in different ways, mainly because the relationships were overcome with guilt. Stephen grieves at the memories of how he used to treat his mother. Whereas Molly thinks of her dead son Rudy and the sweater she knit for him. Bloom tries to visualise what Rudy might have been like as a young man. Love remains very strong in all these cases. The fact is that the characters try to learn the skill of forgetting the pain. While Molly and Bloom try to get over the death of Rudy, Stephen is trying to forget the pain of how he treated his mother.

There is also a theme of masochism present in the chapter which presents a fall of power in characters’ life. A new character comes in the middle of the chapter, it’s a girl called Zoe who’s affecting Bloom’s fantasy. The speech that Bloom is giving Zoe on her smoking problem takes Bloom into his unconsciousness. The reality fades away and Blooms becomes a famous speaker/ politician in his dream. In the end, his power fails and he is sacrificed. It makes him feel very low of himself; his ego and self esteem go straight down. This has an effect on his failure even in his own fantasies. This shows that we don’t have any control over our unconscious mind but they way we feel about ourselves influences our unconscious mind- and that’s what we can control.

The variety of relationship such as between mind and body or reality and fantasy interact with each other in the way that the end of previous and the beginning of new fantasy fade away. It has a relation with the conscious and unconscious mind.

The relationships between fantasy and reality as well as mind and body reflect on the conscious and unconscious part of Circe. The metaphor for consciousness in the chapter is shown through the characters’ thoughts of resurrecting the dead. Stephen thinks of his dead mother, while Molly and Bloom’s think of their dead son, Rudy.

In conclusion, the chapter is quite confusing to understand but it is definitely significant to understand Joyce’s theory unconscious and conscious mind as well as Freud’s views on psychoanalysis which declares that even if you hide something in your conscious mind, your unconscious mind will always bring it back to you.

Winol Week 4- Halloween Trends 2010

Our feature made it to the Winol's bulletin this week! That's rather exciting. This week's feature was about Halloween's Trends 2010. Halloween is just round the corner, it is the time to party, wear costumes, and revert back to your childhood. The feature is supposed to help those who struggle to find their perfect costume this year.

Producing the video was rather fun, finding male and a female model was surprisingly easy. We were going to rent some costumes from the costume shop in Winchester but unfortunately that couldn't happen because the closest costume lending shop is in Southampton. Therefore we asked people who were willing to lend us their treasured costumes and we found lots of scary/ sexy/ sweet costumes for our models to wear on the day of filming.

We decided that the theme and the format of the feature will be different backgrounds for the same outfit, which was different to the last fashion show made in the studio. For example, we had a witch sweeping the floor outside a house and in the next shot we had a witch flying by the moon. I thought it was quite a good way to express the idea of each costume.

The costumes we had:

For the girl we had a cat suit, a devil, a witch Alice in Wonderland and Pocahontas. Whereas the boy wore a batman outfit, a vampire, a pirate and a devil costume. We also had lots of masks that we took close ups of.

Thanks to Google images we found many interesting backgrounds that went well with the costumes, such as a dark forest, a ship for the pirate, etc.

While editing, we mixed all the different backgrounds and costumes together adding music that puts into a Halloween mood.
I definitely enjoyed doing this week’s project. It was quick, interesting, easy to edit. There was only one setting, no audio. We didn’t have as many problems with putting it all into one good piece like we did last week. Last week’s feature was much more complicated and it involved many different scenes, setting and lots of talking. It was nice to do something simple but very effective this week.

Here is the feature, Enjoy!

HCJ week5- Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud was a well known as a founder of psychoanalysis, who believed that self-conscious emotions and childhood experiences- mostly those sexual in nature- have an effect on what we become.
Freud thought that our self love as a race was a barrier to science in three ways:
1. It stopped us accepting that the Earth wasn’t the centre of the universe.
2. Darwin’s theory of revolution
3. The conscious brain was not in charge.
The key point in Freud’s theory is unconsciousness.

Freud wasn’t the inventor of the conscious/ unconscious idea but he was the one who made it well known and popular. The conscious mind is when a person is aware of what’s happening in the particular moment, their thoughts, fantasies, etc. There was a theory that Freud called preconscious, which is also known as ‘available memory’. Freud found this theory by working closely with the conscious mind. His patients were aware that anything could be made conscious.

Unconscious is the biggest part. This is when people are not aware of what’s happening in the particular situation. It also includes things such as drives and instincts because they are not available to awareness.

Freud’s theory of human nature presents a division of mind into 3 parts:
Id- it’s got animal instincts, people grow up with the aim to fit in the society.
Ego- it’s responsible for adjusting our internal urges to the demands and limits of the environment.
Superego- tells us what’s right and what’s wrong- The Police In Your Head.
Ego and Superego help us survive adopt to the social environment.


The battle between the Superego, Ego and id can result in Repression. It includes:
Sublimation, which means turning sexual energy into something else, like art or sport.
Displacement, which involves shameful thoughts that turn you into something/ someone else.
Projection, which sends feelings onto someone else.
Rationalisation- more socially acceptable explanation.
Regression- returning to earlier stage of development.

Nietzsche- Thus Spoken Zarathustra

Nietzsche is a German philosopher. He was most recognized for his criticism about religion and the role he played in society and mortality. What makes Fredrick controversial by even today’s principles is so many people see him as a mad man while others see him as a mad genius. One thing can be said about him- he was a man always seeking the truth. He was very anti- religious and rejected any kind of religion. In his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra he said ‘God is dead. And we killed him’, which means that the society stopped being influenced by God.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra touched problems that are most central to modern civilization such as the advancement of technology and its effects on human’s spirit. Nietzsche plays with biblical elements throughout the book; however, the ideas in the book oppose the ideas in The Bible. For example, Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness being tempted by the evil. He felt pain and hunger, while Zarathustra spent 10 years on a mountaintop being happily isolated from the rest of the world.
The main theme of the book is Ubermensch, which is a person with great powers and abilities.
‘Could you create a God? Then do not speak to me of any gods. But you could create an overman’ It seems like he almost desires to have a dictator who would have the will to power- It’s life’s next step for mankind because God is outdated.

An Overman as described by Zarathustra, is the one who is willing to risk all for the sake of improvement of humanity. In contrary to the last man whose sole desire is his own comfort and is incapable of creating anything beyond oneself in any form. This should suggest that an overman is someone who can establish his own values as the world in which others live their lives. This means an overman can affect and influence the lives of others. In other words, an overman has his own values, independent of others, which affects and dominates others lives that may not have predetermined values but only herd instinct.

An overman should be able to affect history. He will keep reentering the world through other people’s minds and affect their thoughts and values. Napolean who is highly admired by Nietzsche may be seen as an example here since he changed and created orders in Europe. What he did effects greatly in how Europe is today. This idea agrees with another of his most significant idea, the idea of the will-to-power.

Studen Survival- My 2nd feature!

In one of my recent posts I mentioned making my second feature that was based on how to survive a week as a student on a £20 food budget. Well, after days of filming, hours of editing and stressing over the audio levels, it is finally up on youtube! Yay! It has been such a difficult project. Hana and I put so much effort and heart into it.

We were very excited to begin with. Our plan looked just amazing! I was very looking forward to an upcoming week. I was definitely ready to take the challenge, even if I knew it comprised having to eat cheap, unhealthy and tasteless food for the whole 7 days. No one in the Finance Department was able to tell us how much roughly students spend on food weekly. The only way to find out was to ask them! From vox pops we worked out that the usual number spent on food weekly is about £20. That’s how much I decided to limit myself to. We decided to start the week off with empting my cupboards. Now that they were clear, the next step was to go food shopping. We rang Tesco Express Winchester to ask for permission to film in there, which we happily got.

The shopping bit so much fun. Running around and about the store trying to find the cheapest food/ basic values was actually quite difficult. We found some really good deals though.
From that day on, I filmed myself every day having a breakfast in the morning and dinner in the afternoon. Breakfast looked the same every day- coffee, toast with butter. That’s why we put only one shot of that in the actual piece. I tended to have lunches in the canteen, which was pricey. I’d usually come home but never had the camera to film it which was a shame! I tried to fill the audience in with what happened on the day by making a few video diaries where I talked about what I did/ ate.

To be totally honest, I wasn’t very happy with the final result. I imagined it would look much better than it does. My ambitions and expectations were much higher. We had so many technical problems during editing. We spent 11 hours at the university trying to put all the pieces together. When everything looked quite tasteful, it was highly disappointing to see the audio levels being very low. We couldn’t hear anything. The reason for it? We are still very unprofessional (even though, I believe we are getting there :-) ), instead of using radio mics, we were using only a microphone on the camera. We got the audio levels up somehow but it was hard work. It was still better than having to redo they whole piece again which we were advised to do.

The things I have learned from doing this project are:

1. Never, ever say the brands names while filming in the shop just in case it’ll end up looking as if you were promoting/ advertising the certain product. It unfortunately happened in our work and we had to get rid of it. It’s better not to stand near the signs promoting some products, just because you will have to get rid of it too.

2. Always- I mean ALWAYS use a radio microphone while filming a feature that includes walking and talking, or even talking in a distance. They camera microphone or even a gun mic will not pick up the sound very well. You will end up having to redo the whole speaking bit.

3. Eating cheap ready meals is not the best way to go. Just to warn you- They are tasteless.

4. Spending the rest of my money on alcohol and then filming myself while quite tipsy was quite amusing but left me with no money for the rest of the challenge. If you end up going to the pub with your friends while being tight on budget, either spend your money if it makes you happy OR just stick to soda water- it’s much cheaper!

I have written an article for www.Winol.co.uk and I will post it very soon.

For now- here my and Hana’s SECOND feature!

Remember not to be too critical because we really are still learning and I promise that our next features will be OUTSTANDING.

Enjoy!

Modern life creates a modern disease-Cancer.

Cancer is a worldwide killer. Scientists have found out that it is a man- made disease caused by the excesses of modern life, such as pollution as well as poor diet and a lack of exercise. The disease is so big that people warn about it openly on boxes of cigarettes. In today’s Daily Telegraph we could read about Prof Rosalie David and Prof Michael Zimmerman’s research about Egyptian Mummies whose death was hardly ever caused by Cancer. In fact there was only a few that suffered from something that now kills one in three people, which proves that cancer was extremely rare in antiquity. According to the researchers, the disease rates have risen massively since the Industrial Revolution, in particular childhood cancer – proving that the rise is not simply due to people living longer.

David and Zimmerman also analysed ancient literature from Egypt and Greece for indications of cancer, as well as medical studies of human and animal remains going back to the age of dinosaurs. They suggested that the evidence of cancer in animal fossils, non-human primates and early humans was rare, with a few uncertain examples. As they analyzed ancient literature, they did not find descriptions of operations for breast and other cancers until the 17th century. The first reports in the scientific literature of distinctive lumps have only occurred in the past 200 years, such as scrotal cancer in chimney sweepers in 1775, nasal cancer in snuff users in 1761 and Hodgkin's disease in 1832.

One possible reason cancers might have been comparatively rare in antiquity is that the short life span of individuals back then precluded the development of the disease. Still, the researchers did note some people in ancient Egypt and Greece did live long enough to develop all different types of serious diseases.

Well, if we know what causes such a nasty disease we can surely avoid getting it. Scientists say that a healthy diet, regular physical activity and maintaining a healthy weight could prevent a third of the most common cancers. Therefore, our life will not be in such a big risk of getting killed by the disease.

Freshers Fashion Feature

My first ever feature is so totally published on the internet! Yay. Hana and I worked so hard on it. It was definitely worth it. Watching something we both created and something that actually looks good and quite professional gives such a good feeling. Of course it was difficult to get all the shots and ideas to put together, but editing was killing us. Slow computers, constantly freezing Final Cut Pro was a nightmare. We got through it all though smoothly, which I am very proud of. I never thought that finding people to pose for us and talk us through their outfits would be so difficult. If someone asked me to do something like that, I would run without even thinking about it. It’s supposed to be fun! Many people were embarrassed and shy to be our models. Thankfully, we found some chatty and bubbly people who were happy to pose for us. I am just getting into fashion, as I know nothing about it. For me, clothes are clothes. There isn’t a ‘deep meaning’ in an outfit, expect for those colourful ones I wear which express my constant happiness. Therefore, I definitely had so much fun producing that piece, just because I have learned quite a lot from it.
I also love presenting. I feel good in front of the camera, it makes me happy. It’s a shame I have an accent, otherwise maybe I would have been going for the Winol presenter next semester :)

Here is our feature. Watch it, enjoy it, and leave comments!



This week, Hana and I decided to do something bigger. It’s a feature in a form of a diary. I set myself a challenge to try to live off a food budget of £20 this week. It’s great fun so far. We will see if I will be able to do it :) I will definitely write the results when we finish.

Till next time!

Modernism- The Age of Analysis

Each movement was played out until the progression of another began. A constant quest for uniqueness and originality emerged and the world of Modernism took off. How would the world ever be able to move forward if there was such a strong connection to the past? The answer was, it couldn"tmt. No one really knew at the time where this was all leading to, but they were definitely willing to find out. Artists at this point were pushing previously set boundaries and experimenting with things were never even heard of.

Modernism had an effect in many aspects, especially in Architecture, Music, Art and Science.
Modernism came after Romaticism and it means to religion, less Christianity, more individualism against democracy.

Modernist architecture emphasizes function. It attempts to provide for specific needs rather than imitate nature. The roots of Modernism may be found in the work of Berthold Luberkin (1901-1990), a Russian architect who settled in London and founded a group called Tecton. The Tecton architects believed in applying scientific, analytical methods to design. Their stark buildings ran counter to expectations and often seemed to defy gravity.

Another very important person that brightened the age of Modernism was Maria Sklodowska Curie, who was a Polish physicist and chemist, one of the most ingenious scientists of the 20th Century, and indeed of all time. She worked in a partnership with her husband Pierre Curie, whom she met in Paris. She is generally known for her discovery of the radioactivity of polonium and radium in 1898. Her scientific achievements led her to receive many honours and medals, most notably the Nobel Prize for physics in 1903 and for chemistry eight years later. Curie became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize and the first person to win two Nobel awards. She was also the first female to lecture at the Sorbonne University in Paris. After her death of leukemia caused by overexposure to radiation, her ashes were enshrined in the Pantheon, a monument to France's national heroes. No woman before her had received such an honour.

HCJ Week 1, Year 2. WilliamHearst, the birth of Popular Journalism and Tabloid Nation

William Randolph Hearst was born on April 29, 1863 in San Francisco, California. He was born into a family wealthy from his father's discovery of and involvement in some of the greatest mines in United States history (including the Anaconda mine, the Homestake mine, and the Comstock load). After attending primary schooling, young Hearst was off to Harvard, studying in journalism. He worked on the Harvard Lampoon and was even an apprentice under Joseph Pulitzer while there.

Frontier Thesis- America began to grow and expand. It gained a sense of adventure. The more west you went the more adventures and American you became
George Hearst was one of ten thousands of men lured to California by the promise of gold. This was known as the Gold Rush.

There were two types of early American Newspapers. Both of them were Penny Papers. One of them was political and the other was commercial. The political papers were financed by political parties- George Hearst wanted the Examiner to be a cheerleader for his campaign.

William Hearst took over the Examiner in 1887 and transformed it. The old Examiner had a front page filled with dozen of stories- a wall of text. He reduced the stories and doubled the size of the headlines and eliminated the advertisements, above the masthead he put endorsements and circulation figures. He also included illustrations- ‘they attract the eye and stimulate the imagination of the power classes and materially add comprehension’. He thought that pictures in a newspaper would help sell the paper as even people who can’t read would understand it. The writing became more focused and more urgent.
The Examiner was pro labour (democrats) anti-capital and railroad. It supported the unions but was occasionally guilty of virulent racism.

Yellow Kid

In 1896 Hearst poached the Yellow Kid from Pulitzer,
‘Yellow journalism, or “yellow press”, refers to an unethical, irresponsible brand of journalism given to hoaxes, altered photographs, screaming headlines, “scoops”, frauds, and endless promotions of the newspapers themselves’
This term was first used in the 1890’s to describe the competition between two rival New York City newspapers, the World, and the Journal. Hearst poached the yellow kid from Pulitzer in 1896. Pulitzer tried to stay in the game and got a cartoonist to copy the yellow kid. At the time there were to papers with the yellow kid and they soon began to be described as the yellow papers- YELLOW JOURNALISM.
Crime

The journal and the world even battled to solve crimes. The amount of awards that was suggested for anyone who had a crime with any evidence in terms to solve them was unbelievable. All the newspapers were desperate to publish the story first.

Tabloid Nation
The book is based on the rise and fall of the Mirror newspaper, which remains such an integral part of 20th century British popular culture. Harold Harmsworth, who is the main character of the book, was born in Dublin 1865. He was an indifferent scholar he was educated at St John's Wood, a small, private day school in London. He developed an interest in journalism when he began editing the school magazine.
The book also mentions The Daily Mail which was the first newspaper in Britain that catered for a new reading public that needed something simpler, shorter and more readable than those that had previously been available. One new innovation was the banner headline that went right across the page. Considerable space was given to sport and human interest stories. It was also the first newspaper to include a woman's section that dealt with issues such as fashions and cookery.

Reformation of Daily Mail from ‘a newspaper written by and for gentle woman’ to a normal daily newspaper was needed. Harmsworth wanted a change because as he said ‘women can’t write and don’t want to read’. Instead of writing about society he rather wanted the newspaper to be about something interesting and sufficiently simple.

University Style

The first week back at uni is the most exciting one. Despite the nervous feeling about the incoming year and the amount of already given work, it is still great to see friends that I haven’t seen all summer. While catching up with them and visiting old pubs and clubs you feel like you never left Winchester.
The only thing that has changed is seeing new faces while walking down to lectures. It’s impossible not to look at what the freshers are wearing. Their outfits say everything about them. You can play a game of guessing what they are like. Are they fashionable? Are they rich? Geeks perhaps?

This year it is modesty that took over female freshers fashion, whereas male freshers went for more of a stylish and modern style. The most seen shoes worn by girls are uggs- grey, brown or black colour. They are such stylish, school girl like, comfy footwear. They go well with skinny jeans, leggings, and even skirts. Flat shoes are definitely all you need this year- especially in a very hilly Winchester.

Brown big belts, jeans and t-shirts remind of Wild West. It’s quite a usual outfit that girls wear around campus. This could never be out of fashion. Another essential accessory is a bag. Of course, big bags still dominate in this year’s girls fresher’s fashion. What else does a female student need than a big bag that will carry all the important notebooks, lecture books and reading, pens, make up (of course), an ipod etc. We need all these things!

The most popular clothes shops in the student’s world are New Look, H&M, Next for girls. Burtons, Top Shop for guys. However, Primark, is of course the most chosen clothes store. Not only because of low prices but also because of the variety of different outfits, as well as costumes, you can make from Primark’s bits and pieces.


It's been interesting to find out all these information. The begnning of the year is looking promising :)

Passion about fashion?

Fashion hasn’t been my cup of tea for a long time. I used to dream of being a magazine writer. Being in the world of glamour was all I wanted to do. Then I stepped off that track a little and desired to be a presenter or a correspondent between countries. Writing about shoes and scarves couldn’t be more unexciting. Politics, Science, serious subjects are what’s pulling me, for sure. Boring? I don’t think so.

Now, after I started working for Winol Winchester News Online I became a feature writer as well as being a member of the Production Team. My first feature is aimed at Freshers Fashion. I must say it has been so enjoyable. Researching ‘what’s in’ this term and meeting new students has been more fun than I expected. Some of the outfits were unbelievably interesting. Some of them were crazy, quite colourful, well coordinated and some were just grey and modest- however- very stylish. I can’t believe I have never paid attention to other people’s styles. This project definitely changed my opinion on fashion. I realised that there is more to it than just a shoe. An outfit can tell you everything about the personality and the mood people are in. It might be a beginning of my new passion.

"Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street; fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening." Coco Chanel

The Dead Sea is... dying!

Israel's Dead Sea is, ironically, as old as life itself, is in a serious danger of drying. Hidden in the world's deepest valley and protected by majestic desert mountains, the Dead Sea is one important feature in a land of mysteries, miracles and biblical legends that we must see before it's too late. In another three decades, the evaporating Dead Sea could possibly become the dry sea.

The pier which used to lead directly to water, today it’s ending in the air. On the desert there are boards marking bathing beaches, although there isn’t a liter of water around . It is the lowest place on Earth- 1,300 feet below sea level -- it's closest to all the deep Earth's minerals and, most visibly, the Earth's salt and it still continues to shrink more each year, dropping a meter every century. Scientists are desperately looking for a solution to save it.

Scientists agreed that the reasons for drying of The Dead Sea are climatic changes and global warming as well as the use of Jordan waters for agricultural purposes.

One of the most seriously considered ideas for saving The Dead Sea concerns a construction of the canal that joins The Red Sea and The Dead Sea. Therefore, waters from the Red Sea would fill the drying surface of the dying sea. It’s hard to estimate whether it’s a good solution, however. Taking into account only goal is to raise the water level in the Dead Sea, the idea is certainly good. But no one knows how the investment would affect the surrounding ecosystem. Mixing the waters of two seas is spectacular, but the chemical composition of water in the Red Sea is quite different from the more saline one. Also, plenty of living beings would come with waters- although the vast majority of them wouldn’t live for long in a specific environment of the Dead Sea, but it’s really hard to tell how this experiment could be completed.

The end of the world in 2012?

Everything that has its beginning is most likely to also have an end. That's the rule. Life begins, lasts a while and then ends leaving memories behind. The world started billion years ago and it eventually will have to come to an end, like everything else. Is this a statemant we should believe in?

Scientific experts from around the world are predicting that 2.5 years from now, all life on Earth will end. There are a lot of websites with a variety of December 21 2012 predictions about the end of the world and information about how it will happen.
Some are saying it will be humans that would set it off. Others believe that a natural phenomenon will be the cause. And the religious folks are saying it will be God himself who would press the stop button. The following are some likely arguments as to why the world would end by the year 2012.

There are experts that say that on an ancient Mayan calendar 2012 points to the end of the world: they pick December 21 2012 as the exact day as that is when the calender ends. Others speak of a Nostradamus 2012 doomsday prediction.

The most realistic one I have read is about the Solar Storm. Our sun is in a bit of strife. The energy output of the sun is, like most things in nature, cyclic and it’s supposed to be in the middle of a period of relative stability. However, recent solar storms have been bombarding the earth with lot of radiation energy. It’s been knocking out power grids and destroying satellites. This activity is predicted to get worse and calculations suggest it’ll reach its deadly peak sometime in 2012. -read from http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/2012storms/ Scary.

Some 2012 end of the world predictions are connected to each other, some are not. It has got to the point where the thought of a 2012 end of the world doomsday is freaking some people out. Should you be freaked? NOT in my opinion. For starters, given past doomsday predictions and prophecies about the end of the world, earth should have ended by now! It was the 2000 prediction when the time was supposed to reset and the world explode. Since the earth is still here, it would be fair to say then that, to date, all doomsday prophecies and predictions about the end of the world (before 2012) have failed!

In my opinion, NO ONE knows the date, the day, the hour or minute when everything will disappear. We shouldn't predict or think about it. If it is to happen-it will happen. Why should we put this into the list of our worries? It's easier to seize the day and live life to the extreme.

CARPE DIEM!

A little internationally- Poland in a fight against flood.

Summer holidays are usually treated as the main period for people to go away for a well-deserved break. They save up money all year to enjoy their sweet rest somewhere exotic. Poland is well known for nice, sunny and hot summers. The hottest months- July and August when the temperature gets up to 40 degrees satisfy many tourists that come from all over the world. Unfortunately, the summer in Poland has been cancelled this year.

Water everywhere. 15 dead. Impassable streets, in fact there are no street. Just rapid streams. It looks like the flood from 1997 came back with stronger forces. Heavy rain has caused damage estimated at more than 266 mln zł, forcing the evacuation of thousands and thousands of people from their homes along the Vistula River, which flows from the southern Tatra Mountains into the Baltic. Emergency services do their best to help Poland not to get covered by flood completely. They have been blowing up the river embankment below the hole to help the water return to the river bed. Even strong and huge flood barriers don’t help anymore in many parts of Poland as they are in a very poor condition now after so many days of flood.

What’s happening to Poland? It seems like someone put a curse on it. It’s incredibly sad watching my own country being in such tragedies. Water gets higher day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. No one knows when it will stop raining, or when everything will go back to normal- it will take a long time.

Element doesn’t always strike with the force. Sometimes it sneaks into our villages and cities slowly destroying property and human life. This year it just fell from the sky. You can’t predict when big waters will come, you can’t stop them either. Seeing the images of devastation and the enormity of human despair, we can ask ourselves: Can such disasters not be avoided or at least can their imapact not be minimized?









Pictures taken from:
http://wiadomosci.wp.pl/gid,12306641,title,Polska-pod-woda---zdjecia,galeria.html
and
http://galerie.money.pl/powodz;zalane;tereny;w;zachodniopomorskim,galeria,3786,9.html

Citizen Kane and Tabloid Nation

CITIZEN KANE

The classic masterpiece, Citizen Kane (1941), is probably the world's most famous and highly rated film, with its many remarkable scenes, cinematic and narrative techniques and innovations. Within the maze of its own aesthetic, Citizen Kane develops two interesting themes. The first concerns the debasement of the private personality of the public figure, and the second deals with the crushing weight of materialism or an idea of American Dream. Taken together, these two themes comprise the bitter irony of an American success story that ends in futile nostalgia, loneliness, and death.

Citizen Kane was one of the first movies to portray the American Dream as anything less than desirable. As a child, Kane is fully happy as he plays in the snow outside the family’s home, even though his parents own a boarding house and are quite poor. He has no playmates but is content to be alone because peace and security are just inside the house’s walls. When Thatcher removes Kane from this place, he’s given what seems like the American dream—financial affluence and material luxury. However, Kane finds that those things don’t make him happy, and the exchange of emotional security for financial security is ultimately unfulfilling. The American dream is hollow for Kane. As an adult, Kane uses his money and power not to build his own happiness but to either buy love or make others as miserable as he is. Kane's wealth isolates him from others throughout the years, and his life ends in loneliness at Xanadu. He dies surrounded only by his possessions, poor substitutions for true companions.

The movie also demonstrates social values and beliefs. Charles Foster Kane is shown in his three major stages of life as which show a significance transformation in his beliefs. As a young, energetic man, he believes in changing things his way for the better of the society. However, all of this changed though during time. Comparing the young Charles Foster Kane to the old is a remarkable one. Not only did his system of value change but also so did his whirlwind of energy that followed him. He bought into the newspaper business, and claimed to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Which he even claimed and wrote on the first page of his newspaper the "Inquirer". This is just an example of how his values changed over time because as he got older and one of his employers who was a great friend of Charles wrote the truth about a play that he had saw staring Charles's wife at the time. Charles fired him because what he had said was the truth although, harsh, was fired. Surprisingly was that his friend wrote a letter back with the original copy of the letter Charles had printed in the newspaper. Almost to bring it back in his face to show how he has change and his system of values have decreased terribly. Beside the idea of age, Charles was a man who never showed compassion towards something and surrounded himself with "yes men" that would agree and do anything for Charles on a super fiscal note. Charles on the other hand blamed all of these upon the money he inherited. Even his dying words "Rosebud", demonstrates what he had, and lost, which was his childhood innocents. From that day forward he shielded himself away from people as he had with the slay from Mr. Thatcher. This is seen in the movie through its editing techniques. For example Charles and his wife Emily seen eating breakfast together. As time goes on they have grown farther and farther apart from each other which usually happened to Charles because of his inability to present emotion. The scene says it all by placing Charles and his wife at either end of the table so far apart to demonstrate their inability to communicate and Charles inability to care for something which he was unable to purchase.

Tabloid Nation

The book is based on the rise and fall of the Mirror newspaper, which remains such an integral part of 20th century British popular culture. Harold Harmsworth, who is the main character of the book, was born in Dublin 1865. He was an indifferent scholar he was educated at St John's Wood, a small, private day school in London. He developed an interest in journalism when he began editing the school magazine.
The book also mentions The Daily Mail which was the first newspaper in Britain that catered for a new reading public that needed something simpler, shorter and more readable than those that had previously been available. One new innovation was the banner headline that went right across the page. Considerable space was given to sport and human interest stories. It was also the first newspaper to include a woman's section that dealt with issues such as fashions and cookery.

Reformation of Daily Mail from ‘a newspaper written by and for gentle woman’ to a normal daily newspaper was needed. Harmsworth wanted a change because as he said ‘women can’t write and don’t want to read’. Instead of writing about society he rather wanted the newspaper to be about something interesting and sufficiently simple.

The Daily Mail started the publication of serials. Personally supervised by Harmsworth, the average length was 100,000 words. The opening episode was 5,000 words and had to have a dramatic impact on the readers. This was followed by episodes of 1,500 to 2,000 words every day.

The Daily Mail was an immediate success and circulation quickly achieved 500,000. With the strong interest in the Boer War in 1899 sales went to over a million. Harmsworth encouraged people to buy the Daily Mail for nationalistic reasons making it clear to his readers that his newspaper stood "for the power, the supremacy and the greatness of the British Empire".

In 1903 Harmsworth produced the first newspaper, The Daily Mirror, aimed at women. Kennedy Jones was put in charge of the project and spent £100,000 in publicity, including a gift scheme of gilt and enamel mirrors. On its first day, the circulation of the Daily Mirror was 276,000. However, sales dropped dramatically after the initial launch and by January, 1904, circulation was down to 24,000 and the newspaper was losing £3,000 a week.

William Randolph Hearst

William Randolph Hearst was born on April 29, 1863 in San Francisco, California. He was born into a family wealthy from his father's discovery of and involvement in some of the greatest mines in United States history (including the Anaconda mine, the Homestake mine, and the Comstock load). After attending primary schooling, young Hearst was off to Harvard, studying in journalism. He worked on the Harvard Lampoon and was even an apprentice under Joseph Pulitzer while there.

Due in no small part to his father's fortune, he soon was able to have a newspaper of his own to run. (The newspaper had been earlier won as repayment for a poker debt.) Still at Harvard, he wrote his father, demanding to take over the San Francisco Examiner. While his father wished William to work in managing the family's ranching and mining interests, he had very little interest in the newspaper himself, and allowed the young Hearst to do as he pleased. Soon after, on March 7, 1887, Hearst became the proud owner of The Examiner. From the very beginning, he was determined to make the paper a popular one.

He publicly nicknamed the small paper "The Monarch of the Dailies", and went about purchasing some of the best equipment money could buy. He also hired a talented and experienced staff, and soon, he was modeling his newspaper after the Pulitzer-style sensationalism, in a practice that would later condemn him in the eyes of the world.

In 1895, Hearst went for the "big cheese", and purchased The New York Morning Journal, becoming a direct competitor to his former mentor, Joseph Pulitzer. From the very beginning, Hearst would perform generally immoral acts such as hiring away staff from Pulitzer's paper, The World. Acts such as this ended up throwing the two into a bitter circulation war. The story that caught the attention of Hearst the most was the Cuban Revolution of 1895. He saw this as a key opportunity to promote his paper, and he spent a large amount of effort supporting Cuba Librè, the Cuban insurgent forces. In addition, he would try to disgrace Spain in whatever way he could, always making it as flashy as possible in nothing more than an effort to sell the most papers.

After the mysterious explosion of the U.S.S. Maine, in Havana Harbor, Hearst's actions are thought by many to have seriously influenced the very existence of the state of war that existed afterwards. Hearst traveled to Cuba himself, working with his reporters in the field. One of his reporters, James Creelman, actually took charge of an assault on a Spanish blockhouse and was wounded. Reportedly, kneeling beside him, Hearst said, "I'm sorry you're hurt. But wasn't it a splendid fight? We beat every paper in the world!" Just this simple statement represents Hearst's personality and viewpoints on war and journalism very thoroughly.

Eventually, the war ended, and with it, the common use of such overtly biased practices in journalism slowly faded off, also. In 1903, during his European honeymoon with his new wife, Millicent Wilson, Hearst started his first magazine, Motor. After a brief stint in politics, he went on to become a more legitimate agent for news delivery. He later expanded his business operation into radio and produced movie newsreels, making what would become Hearst Corp. into one of the first real multimedia syndicates.

William Randolph Hearst died at the age of 88 in Beverly Hills, California on August 14, 1951, leaving behind a huge legacy. Today, the Hearst Corporation owns 12 newspaper and 25 magazines (including the popular Cosmopolitan), besides managing other media enterprises

Greg Lovell's Election Campaign- Labour Party

Finally, after months and weeks of waiting, the General Election Campaigns in the UK have started. People don’t seem to be surprised to see a Conservative candidate walking through Chippenham town centre on a black horse while telling them about intentions and changes he would do if he became an MP. This political theatre appears to be quite exciting to me.

Finding a General Election candidate I could observe in a considerable town like Chippenham doesn’t seem to be difficult. However, all the candidates I have contacted were too busy to email or ring me back. One of the secretaries thought I was joking when I asked to help in a campaign and told me not to bother them. I decided to have one more go and I emailed Greg Lovell- a Labour Party candidate.
On the next morning I checked my emails while having a cup of coffee to keep me going throughout the day at work. My heart started beating quicker filled with hope, excitement and relief. My eyes were staring at an email from Greg Lovell. ‘That was quick’, I thought and read it through quickly.
An email was slightly different to what I expected. Greg was delighted to see that a young person was interested to see how he promotes his views. He also said that they weren’t doing the traditional knocking-on-the-door campaign- simply because of financial reasons and limited time he had with a full time job and his family. He, however, decided to spend Saturdays getting out into the town centers and meeting as many people as possible, giving out leaflets and talking to them about their concerns. It sounded good to me.

He left his phone number and asked to call him so we can discuss all bits and pieces about it. All happy and excited I grabbed my phone and rang him. A male voice answered with a serious tone- ‘Greg Lovell’. His voice changed when I told him who I was. It became happier, more relaxed and warm. I felt like I was talking to an uncle who hadn’t seen me in a long while. He tried his best to be helpful on the phone. We arranged a meeting for the 17th of April in Corsham’s town centre.

The sun was shining and the birds were singing. It was a quiet Saturday morning- sunny but cold. Drops of frost on the grass and cars were shinning in the sunshine like little diamonds. There were no clouds on the sky. It looked like it was going to be a lovely day.

It was my first visit in Corsham. It seemed to be a little, old town. Some people say it is a ‘useless place’ just because the number of shops in town centre was very small. But personally- I loved it. ‘So this is where Greg Lovell spent his childhood. Interesting- write this down.’ I thought wandering about with a notepad and a pen as I was a little early. At least I had a chance to see an open-air Little Wiltshire Farmers market filled with a smell of village food such as cheese, bread, bread rolls.

I finally got to meet the Labour Candidate for an MP of Chippenham. He was young- just approached his thirties- quite tall. He was wearing jeans, white shirt with black sweater and brown shoes, which I thought didn’t go with the entire outfit, but at the end of the day it wasn’t a fashion show.

His campaign was quite exciting. Besides it was the very first campaign I have ever attended, so no wonder why it was so fascinating. We were stood by Somerfield in the Corsham town centre. His friends- councilors- were helping Greg handing out leaflets. They were 7 people all together. They all had red badges with yellow writing ‘vote for labour’. There was a box full of posters, balloons, stickers, leaflets- 2 kinds. One kind for families and the other one for working mums. It looked like they were brilliantly prepared.

Many people were passing by, taking leaflets smiling or putting them right into their pockets as if they weren’t going to look at them again. Greg talked to them in a calm, respectful and convincing way.
A young lady with a baby seemed interested. Greg was telling her about his policy – protecting frontline services. The lady agreed that the NHS is a very important aspect in her and her baby’s life. Greg amused the lady with a little joke about the NHS. She has already agreed to vote Labour. They talked for a long time about the future and about how much needs to be improved. ‘Exactly’ nods the lady, says goodbye and rushes away.

A policeman came over to shake the Candidate’s hand and to ask about his campaign. Greg explained why it is easier and better to meet people on the street. He also explained to him the rules of the new constituency, why it changed and how it changed.

A man in shades came to say thank you for emails Greg sent to him. They then continued talking about other parties and their candidates. They exchanged opinions about a political debate they watched on TV on Thursday night. Greg declared that his opinions about it were biased. They were comparing what Cameron and Brown said that evening. The man also mentioned a problem he had by his house. It was a large number of lorries driving past his tiny road. He asked Greg to mention it during the next meeting.

The weather was getting hotter and hotter as the time was passing by. Still sunny, surprisingly wonderful compare to all the other days this week. Doves were walking on the pavement. It’s strange how I have never seen such white pigeons before.

When it got really busy just before lunchtime I thought I could help a little, as up to this point I was just observing, listening and writing things down. I grabbed a badge and a few leaflets and I started giving them away to people. A young man- early thirties- stopped for a chat after he took a leaflet. He was fascinated with Greg’s ideas and asked for ‘VOTE LABOUR’ posters to put upon his windows.

It’s interesting how many different people walked past in an hour time. Foreigners, teenagers, elderly people, young marriages with babies. Some of them looked happy but some of them were grumpy and unhappy about a Labour candidate campaigning in their town.

We all experienced an amusing moment when an elderly man wearing a beret came over to tell a story from his childhood when he was taught to vote ‘LABOUR ONLY’. He was a very confident, cheery man that made us all laugh.
It was an incredible experience to be able to help in such an important event. An unordinary day like this one doesn’t happen often. I was glad to be so closely involved with politics.

Life if Fragile. R.I.P

Poland is grieving the loss of a head of the country- President Lech Kaczyński, his wife and 94 other important political figures that died in a tragic plane crash in Smoleńsk, Russia, on Saturday morning. The Polish delegation was flying in from Warsaw to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyn mass execution of thousands of Poles by Soviet forces during the World War II. The machine crashed during terrible weather conditions- the fog limited sight to 500m. The plane broke into 2 pieces after its second try to landing. The body of president was found and returned to Warsaw.

What horrific news to hear at the beginning of a weekend while drinking a cup of coffee. I simply couldn’t believe what I was watching on TV. All the channels were talking about the same thing- crash of the president’s plane. How shocking. I think the whole world experienced the same feeling. This is the biggest loss that happened to Poland since the Katyn tragedy. It’s so difficult to believe that Poland lost so many incredible people who made the country better in the last 3 and half years.

Everybody unites in mourning in Poland.

We will all always remember every good thing that Lech Kaczyński and the rest of Polish political figures did for Poland.
This is so unbelievably sad :(

R.I.P

News day 3

Naomi House Hospice is arranging a fundraising walk from Winchester Cathedral to Salisbury on Sunday 6th of June. They are hoping a thousand people to join and help raise money for the hospice. The member of Naomi House gives all the details about this event

Audio Insert Name: Naomi House
IN WORDS: The walk is on the 6th of June
OUT WORDS: It’s quite a big money raise for us
0’22’



This year’s event is sponsored by Foresters, MITIE and the pupils and staff at St Swithun’s Junior School in Winchester.


The number of patients missing their appointment at Royal Hampshire County Hospital has recently increased and now is one of the key problems. Doctors are preparing a new scheme which they hope will reduce the issue. Andrew Cable, in charge of ‘patient flow’, explains the reasons why people miss their appointment and introduces to the new system.

Audio Insert Name: Missed appointments
IN WORDS: We phoned up patients
OUT WORDS: that has actually improved dramatically..
0’23’

News Day 2: Gneral Elections

Winchester City Council is preparing for fast coming General Elections. Students can make a real difference, but if they don't register, they can't vote. Alison Rayman, a member of Winchester City Council, explains all the reasons why we should register to vote and how we can do it.





You can register to vote both at home and at University by going on to the Winchester City Council website or by going on to the Student Union website. There are registration forms which you can download and send off to Winchester City Council.

William Cobbett

William Cobbett was an English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist, who was born in Farnham, Surrey. He believed that reforming Parliament and stopping the rotten boroughs would help to end the poverty of farm labourers, and he attacked the borough-mongers, sinecurists and "tax-eaters" relentlessly. He was also against the Corn Laws, a tax on imported grain.

He took to riding around the country on horseback making observations of what was happening in the towns and villages
At the time of writing in the early 1820s Cobbett was a radical anti-Corn Law campaigner, newly returned to England from a spell of self-imposed political exile in the United States. Cobbett disapproved of proposals for remedies for agricultural distress suggested in Parliament in 1821. He made up his mind to see conditions for himself, and to "enforce by actual observation of rural conditions", the statements he had made in answer to the arguments of the landlords before the Parliamentary Agricultural Committee.

He embarked on a series of journeys by horseback through the countryside of Southeast England and the English Midlands. He wrote down what he saw from the points of view both of a farmer and a social reformer. The result documents the early nineteenth century countryside and its people as well as giving free vent to Cobbett's opinions.

Some information about Industrial Revolution. You all probably know this stuff, but I thought it would be quite useful for me to have it here.

Industrial revolution

•Between 1815 and 1914, an industrial revolution took place. The industries in the cities eventually won the competition with the rural industries. Because of the industrial revolution that took place, urbanisation started in the 19th century.
•Grow of population
•Industrial revolution also effected transportation. In the 19th century bicycles, steamships and trains made it easier for people to move further away. In the 20th century, the explosion motor further accelerated this process. An ever-growing part of world population became subdued to market economy.
•a move away from farming into manufacturing.
•the revolution was something more than just new machines, smoke-belching factories, increased productivity and an increased standard of living.
•The INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION can be said to have made the European working-class. It made the European middle-class as well. In the wake of the Revolution, new social relationships appeared. As Ben Franklin once said, "time is money." Man no longer treated men as men, but as a commodity which could be bought and sold on the open market. This "commodification" of man is what bothered Karl Marx -- his solution was to transcend the profit motive by social revolution
On this theme, his Rural Rides has proved his most enduring work. It is a collection of journals written during his tours on horseback between 1822 and 1826, observing rural conditions and discussing the political perceptions of the agricultural community.


Cobbett's effectiveness lay less in his theories about paper money, electoral reform, or whatever, than in his creation of a mythical, but not insubstantial, lost Eden of old rural England. Cobbett glorified agricultural labor in its hardihood, innocence, and usefulness—and by its associations with patriotism, morality, and the beauties of nature. Cobbett exaggerated the material comforts of laborers in Old England, but he did not exaggerate the beauty of the man-made (yet natural) landscape where they worked and the decency of a life regulated by the cycle of the seasons rather than the steam engine.

Cobbett's readers may have been mostly in the industrial towns, but many of them had only recently abandoned an agricultural way of life. Cobbett kept alive in the consciousness of urban workers a folk memory of rural beauty and seemliness, and an allied sense of lost rights in the land.

Increased unemployment in Winchester

As unemployment in Winchester increases, the number of people claiming Job Seeker Allowance rose in January and now is the highest figure since August 2009. Martin Todd, Liberal Democrat Prospective MP for Winchester believes it is possible to lower the unemployment rate and gives the reason for such an increase.

Audio Insert Name: Increased unemployment in Winchester
In words: I think it should start to..
Out words: .. definitely see quite a significant increase in unemployment.
Duration: 0’22’

Immaneuel Kant-SUBLIME LOVE - NATURE AND ECSTACY - ROMANTIC POETRY, GERMAN IDEALISM AND THE LIMITS OF RATIONALISM

Immaneuel Kant is regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of the late 18th century's enlightened period. He was a German philosopher and professor famous for his three treatises: Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason, and Critique of Judgement.

Kant was a German liberal who believed in democracy and metaphysics. He suggested that metaphysics can be reformed through epistemology. All the objects about which the mind can think must conform to its manner of thought.

He claims that the transcendental investigation has shown our judgments can be objective. For example, when we make one of the kinds of judgments discovered in the transcendental logic, we are making a judgment about things as objects. Kant claims that at this point, we have discerned the principle limits of the synthetic a priori. The categories of understanding and the necessary conditions of sense experience (time and space) are all the elements that are necessary for all experience. For Kant, then, there is a world independent of us, but we can only know it through our experience, and therefore only through the synthetic a priori conditions of experience. The world "in itself" is called the noumenal world. The world as experienced us is the phenomenal world. Kant means therefore to not be an idealist of the usual sort, since he asserts that there is a world independent of our ideas. Kant also means not to be either a classical empiricist nor a rationalist: he asserts all knowledge depends on experience, but also analyzes what is known prior to experience and says that these things are absolutely necessary for there to be any experience.

John Stuart Mill- On Liberty

I must say I really enjoyed our HCJ seminar yesterday. It was probably one of the best ones and one of the funniest.

I have already blogged about Mary Wollstonecraft and about the feministic views she immortalised in her book "Vindication of the rights of women”. It't time to say something about John Stuart Mill and his book called 'On Liberty'.

He saw civilization as a struggle between society and the individual. I definitely agree with what he thought of individual's privilege to be free to do whatever they wanted to as long as they didn't cause any harm to the others. It was because he reckoned that society through laws and public opinions had far more power over the actions and thoughts of an individual than the individual had over himself.

I, however, didn't agree with one thing he said. In his opinion the government shouldn't be allowed to make the final decision. Ok. But if not them, then who should?

Here are some themes of his book that I found to help me understand the reading better.

Major Themes

The Struggle between Liberty and Authority
Individuals have often felt as thought their rights were being infringed upon by an overzealous government and have fought for the ability to have their government act they wish. Individual liberties have been trampled on by various governments and this fear of authority has resulted in democracies, where the majority of the people get to decide what actions are best for the state.

Tyranny of the Majority
With democracies, it is supposed that the will of the people is the impetus for the government's actions and that people are participating in a type of self-governing state. However, says Mill, this is not true, democracies enable a tyranny of the majority where public opinion stomps out the voices of the minority groups and pays their needs and opinions no mind. Mill thinks that this tyranny is the gravest sort, and seeks to find the maximum amount that society can impose itself on an individual while still maintaining personal liberty.

Self-Regarding Actions and Autonomy
A person whose actions only affect himself is not eligible to be coerced or punished for his deeds. According to Mill, it is not society's duty or even its right to protect a person from him or herself. The only punishment that can result from a self-regarding action is the weight of individual public opinion and the consequence of the actual action itself.

The Veracity of Public Opinion
There is no guarantee, and even a strong possibility that what the majority deems to be best indeed is not. The majority' s opinion is tainted with motives and biases that shouldn't come into play when deciding what is best for society as a whole. An analysis of past events, wars, and discriminations can show us that sometimes the majority's opinion is not rooted in good faith. Allowing the minority's opinion to be involved in debates and decisions can only be a good thing, no matter what the opinion is.

Religion and Liberty
Supporters of religion tend to view those who are less religious as less credible in their ideas for society. Mill refutes this theory and says that religious affiliation or lack thereof should play no role in the ability of a person to make an informed opinion about what is best for all society ­ the truth of matters. Mill points to nonreligious men with impeccable morals as proof that religious affiliation does not indicate trustworthiness.

Coercion
Mill is against societal or individual coercion in all cases, except when a person's actions are harming others. He thinks it a clear abuse of liberty when coercion is used to persuade a person to stop an action that only affects himself. When a person is injuring other members of society, however, Mill think s it fine that he be coerced to stop his actions and punished in a court of law if applicable. Mill also believes that the public has the duty to warn each other about a dangerous person and coerce one another to stay avoid him/her.

Society's Obligation
Society has an obligation to throw its influence towards those who are unable to process information and exercise their own liberty in a rational way. Examples of these individuals are children and undeveloped minds. Society has an obligation to children to try their best to make them rational, reasonable adults who want to follow their passions and be dynamic personalities. Part of this obligation, one that is shared by parents, is providing a strong education ­ Mill suggests that there be universal educational standards for all children so none fall behind.

Danger in the Government
Mill is very fearful of the power of the government and all his theories are molded not to give the government any more power of persuasion or procedure. Mill thinks that governments should not be allowed to make the final decisions regarding its constituency, that rather local officials should be appointed and with the central government advice, but most importantly with the input of all citizens, make the decisions.