ENTRY 30: Response to "Good Night&Good Luck"

This film is about 1950s when the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the U.S has reached an intense relationship. This film describes the press circles and it is about the influence of public opinion to the politics. 1950 was an era when the McCarthyism was popular at that time which brought a lot of harm to many people. In this era, individuals doing something relevant to the communist, such as attended the communist meetings, read “dangerous” books, had close people with “different” opinions, would be accused as a communist and punished. In the present, we have learnt a lot of the harm of public opinion to an individual. However, sometimes, public opinion is very useful to help people out of trouble and give a blow to the people in high position who abuse his/her power. This film exactly describes the justice of the press. In the film, the CBS publicly criticized the McCarthy and spoke for Miss Moss who was considered to be a communist. Though it lost the sponsors as standing in opposite position of the officials but it earn the support from the public. I really like the words by Murrow in the end that “the media can teach, illuminate and inspire people”. I wish that today’s media can also speak for justice but not for its own benefits.  

ENTRY 29: Reflection on the "War Games"

There is a film named “War games”. This film depicts the tension of the cold war in a kind of fancy way assuming that the real war is approaching; it also discussed the hot issue like the technology and the children rebellion, leading to its popularity among the Americans. This film grabs the attention by its unique way to doubt the technology which is so trustworthy and becoming more and more closely connected with people’s daily life. In the film, all the coming war omens are the illusions created by the computer, and because people so much rely on the technology and a real war is almost round the corner. Actually, the same like today’s phenomenon, people rely on a lot on the computer, which is very dangerous. For example, if my computer breaks down at the end of the semester, it means all works that I’ve done must be redo again. What a terrible thing. Now, many statistic about human have been processed into computer, it is very dangerous because once the information is lost, the security of individual information lose. So this film give a warn to people that though computer is a creation of human being, it doesn’t mean it is secure. So we should be careful about the technology.

ENTRY 28: Respond to The Novel The God of Small Things

The God of Small Things is a novel by Indian writer Arundhati Roy published in 1997. It is book that I suddenly picked from the bookshelf for its highly praised comment on the cover with the words “one of the most popular work” when I was a junior middle school student. But I finished reading it when I was in high school as it seemed not attractive for me until I become a high school student. This book describes the experience of twins, a boy and a girl, which focuses on describing the very small things around their lives. The story adopts the flashbacks to initially give us the adult figure of the main characters, which are numb, withered and silent, and then the time goes back to the days when they were young, an age of pure, naïve and vigour. Then a lot small things happened to them in a quick succession, silently and quickly ruined their childhood. In my interpretation the god of small things stands for the power of small things; though always they are neglected by us, they still have the profound and hidden influence on our behaviors and attitudes. Sometimes, a big accidence can destroy one’s life, giving them a big blow, forcing people to change to adapt to the new situation. However, when someone’s life is filled with the small things to press them, it is really hard for one to recognize their danger. They gradually accustomed to their current life, being unaware of the small little changes, and they are sad, they are mad, they are depressed but they have no outlet as they have no idea when things begin to go wrongly. Actually, whether some literature are good works or not cannot be determined simply by other’s comment, but your own feeling counts the most.

ENTRY 27: Infographic of Final Presentation by Poetry Section

This infographic used in the final presentation includs the division of labor of our group; the work process, the information about our group problems, the analysis of the electronic literature and other things.

ENTRY 26: Response to Today’s Presentation.

The Lying cotton review is a big project needs the contribution and the efforts from all the members involved in this project. From today’s presentation, I had a better understanding that a collective effort can make a lot. The design, art, production and also other sections of the projects, all of them have done a great job that to make things happen. Also, I really appreciate the chance as member in this group as my little piece of effort help produce something. Actually, it is amazing to see it; and the feeling of it is just like the new baby born. We are the first group of people who devotes into this project; I expect more and more people will join this group. I hope that this journal can be better in future and gain a bunch of audience who really enjoy the works in this platform.

ENTRY 25: About Poetry Section.

We are most pleased with the part of cooperation of the group members.

We attend the weekly meeting regularly. We exchange our own understandings of the poems and analyze the poems together. For the editing process, we finish our own part on time and then the whole task will smoothly proceed.

We have 3 major problems involved in our jobs.

1.      Criteria:

At first, because we are the novice as editors in the poetry section; it’s hard for us to set the criteria as different people have different opinion of what a good poem is. After setting the criteria, it’s also hard to select poem as some poems have their own strength while not meeting all the criteria. So we have to make a careful choice.  

2.      Interpretation:

As we are not native English speakers, it’s easy for us to wrongly interpret the poems with confused words. Sometimes, we encounter such situation that one member think highly of one piece of poem while another one doesn’t like it. Also, we have the trouble that because of our interpretation of the poem is different from what the author wants to convey, conflicts between author and editor occur.

3.      Communication:

The editing part really requires effective communication between the editor and the author.  Our communication with the author is not very effective. In some cases, editors fail to give clear suggestions to the author, and haven’t clarified the problems clearly, and it causes a problem that the revision poems that editors get are not the ones that we want.

If we have a chance to redo it again, we will do it differently.

1.      We will clearly define the jobs of editors and reach a common understanding of the criteria before we begin our job.

2.      Giving more time to understand the poem, increase the confidence and effectively communicate with the poet. 

ENTRY 24: Problem in Poem Selecting Part

Different people have different interpretation about one piece of poem, which is agreed by most people. However, the problem here is when we, as editors, meet with the poems that are hard to interpret by ourselves; we always assume that it is not a good piece of poem as it cannot inspire us to think. However, then problems come as that is a possibility that when this piece of poem is shared with other readers, they can fell something and they consider it is a very good poem as they may have the same experience with the author who want to convey an emotion based on his own experience. In my point of view, a good poem cannot be appreciated by one specific group by it should have the universal meaning based on the social background that we ordinary people somewhat are familiar with.