Fly on the wall

I go to café for no reason. Just being in the room filled with smell of coffee and sweets makes me relax even though I’m not a huge fan of coffee.

Monsieur Bean in Willow Glen is my favorite one. This place has colorfully painted chairs and unique pictures that seem to be painted by kids, under the warm orange lights. There is no music but I can hear people talk, laugh, type their laptop keyboards, and grind coffee beans.

People do what they love to do or have to do. They do things that they can do at their home, but they choose to be here because they simply love to be in this place where just has coffee and some other stuff. I often come here when I have a lot of homework to do. I don’t like to spend much time in school library because being surrounded by people who do their works with serious look makes me uncomfortable sometime. In this cafe, however, there are still some people who look pretty serious, and there are also people look so happy as well. I like to see those people and wonder what they are thinking or talking about, then I come back to my work. There are some people practicing French pronunciation, or playing their guitars, which sometimes make me annoyed. But other time I like this noise because it makes this café filled with the warmth of a happy home.

Word of the Week#4

(1)The word of the week:rekindle

(2)Source: Being and Time by Martin Heidegger

(3)The entire sentence in which I found this word:

"Even though in our time we deem it progressive to give our approval to 'metaphysics' again, It is held that we have been exempted from the exertions of a newly rekindled --------."

(4) Dictionary definition of the word:

verb: relight, revive

(5)He tried to rekindle their friendship.

Word of the Week#3

(1)The word of the week:perplexity

(2)Source: Meno by Plato

(3)The entire sentence in which I found this word:

"Well, did we harm him any by numbering him like stingray and making him aware of his perplexity?"

(4) Dictionary definition of the word:

noun: do deal with or understand something

archaic an entangled state

(5)she paused in perplexity

Comparing media

The story I choose for this assignment is protester marching on the U.S. capitol on September 12^th. This news is about thousands of conservative protesters from across the country converged on the Capitol Saturday morning to demonstrate against President Obama’s proposals for health care reform and voicing opposition to big government, what they say is over-the-top spending. I checked TV, print, and online news to compare how this story is delivered.

TV:

I watched FOX NEWS. It was approximately six minutes long news showing pictures and videos of massive crowds in front of Washington at the beginning of the news. This visual approach tells how big this event was. Those pictures were constantly shown as a newscaster, who was in a studio, talked with a reporter, who was in that scene of this marching. They first argued the number of people who attended the marching to clarify how big this event was. Then they wondered if these voices of angry people were heard by President Obama, who was in Minnesota at that time. Then they discuss the prospected following actions by White House and concluded that this number of people is too large to ignore.

Print:

Los Angels Times put this news in a top page asserting a big picture of tens of thousands of protesters marching in Washington D.C. And the story continued to another page for more detail. In continuous page, it had another picture of a large number of people standing in front of White House. Since this is two pages long coverage, it had a well-descried background story with some comments of politicians and protesters. Also, at the previous page (left side of the page), there was an article about President Obama delivering his speech about his healthcare. Obviously these two stories are placed next to each other purposely to be compared.

Online:

ABC News had an article online titled “Tea Party Protesters March on Washington.” The article itself isn’t that long, but it had a minute long video summarizing this news and showing a bunch of people marching in Washington D.C. and some angry comments of protesters.

Each type of media seems to be emphasizing how big this marching was since they all shows pictures of a large number of people booing and accusing President obama.

Library scavenger hunt

(1) What type of system is used to organize the books in the MLK Library? Briefly describe how it works.

 In MTK Library, the systems called “The Dewey Decimal Classification” and “the Library of Congress Classification” are used to organize the books.

The Dewey Decimal Classification system organizes books on library shelves in a specific and repeatable order that makes it easy to find any book and return it to its proper place. And once you have found a classification number for books useful to your research, browse the areas surrounding that number, as you may find other books related to your subject close by.

 The Library of Congress Classification system organizes material in libraries according to twenty-one branches of knowledge. The 21 categories (labeled A-Z except I,O,W,X and Y) are further divided by adding one or two additional letters and a set of numbers.

 (2) What is in the “Browsing Library” on the first floor?

 This area has English language following materials: new novels and nonfiction titles, feature movies and TV series in DVD and VHS formats, educational DVDs and music CDs

(3) What types of electronic databases are available in the MLK Library?

There are so many databases available especially for SJSU students, such as ProQuest and SJPL databases are available:

(4) Briefly explain how to access the library's electronic databases.

Logging in to the page. You need to make your own account in advance.

(5) List 10 daily newspapers that are available in the MLK Library.

The Mercury News, SF Chronicle, USA Today, NY Times, LA Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Fresno Bee, The Financial Times and The Dispatch.

(6) Give the title and call numbers of a video, DVD and CD.

Video

Title: Surprising studies of visual awareness by Daniel J. Simons.

Call number: XD0796 

CD

Title: My Name is Chicken Joe

Call Number: PENDING

DVD

Title: Anchoring Home Fuel Tanks, A Presentation of FEMA's Mitigation Division

Call Number(s): HS 5.120:F 95/DVD

(7) Find a reference book; give the title and call number, and briefly describe the type of information found in this book.

Title: Communication research measures : a sourcebook. Volume II

Call number: P91.3 .C623 2009

This book belongs to categories of research and methodology so you should be able to find how to conduct communication research.

(8) Find a DVD, CD, newspaper and book in a foreign language. Give the title and call number for each.

DVD

Title: Kids return

Call number: JPN-ENG DVD Kids

CD

Title: Glay-drive: complete best

Call Number: JPN CD POP Glay

Newspaper

Hokubei mainichi

Book

Momoko no omoshiro kenkō techō

Call number: JPN 613 Sakura

(9) List five magazines available the MLK Library.

COSMOPOLITAN

TIME

VOUGE

PEOPLE

NEWS WEEK

(10) Locate a scholarly article on John Steinbeck. Give the call number, title and author.

Call Number:

Title: The Last Knock Knock

Author: Hall, Donald

(11) Locate a book about Steinbeck. Give the call number, title and author.

Call Number: PS3537.T3234 Z715496 2009

Title: A John Steinbeck reader : essays in honor of Stephen K. George

Author: Barbara A. Heavilin.

(12) Find a book on farm labor in the California Room. Give the call number, title and author.

Call Number: REF CAL 331.89283

Title: FARM LABOR PROBLEMS

Author: Sherry, Gerard E.

(13) Find a book on San Jose in the California room. Give the call number, title and author.

Call Number: 133.1097 Lee

Title: Haunts of San Jose, California

Author: David Lee.

(14) Find a book on California minorities. Give the call number, title and author.

Call Number: Thesis HM 2004. H843

Title: California civil rights initiative and underrepresented minorities in education

Author: Qiana Houston.

(15) What is in the MLK's Cultural Heritage Center collections?

This center offers the collections including the Africana, Asian American and Chicano collections.

(16) List three things you'll find in the Center for Beethoven Studies

1. The largest collection of Beethoven materials outside of Europe

2. A variety of educational programs and projects

3. The Guevara Lock of Beethoven's Hair

(17) What is the difference between a scholarly journal and a popular magazine? How can you tell them apart? (2 pts.)

A scholarly journal is written in the jargon field for scholarly readers and more structured while popular magazine is written in non-technical language for anyone to understand and does not necessarily follow a specific format or structure.

(18) List five mass comm (journalism/PR/advertising) journals available in the MLK Library.

1. Monaural speech separation and recognition challenge.

2. Speech separation using speaker-adapted eigenvoice speech models.

3. Speech fragment decoding techniques for simultaneous speaker identification and speech recognition.

4. Super-human multi-talker speech recognition: A graphical modeling approach.

5. List of reviewers.

(19) How many art installations are there in the library. Briefly describe your favorite one.

I like pictures of Snoopy on the entrance (San Fernando side).

It’s really unique to put cartoon characters on public library entrance! 

The word of this week

(1)The word of  the week:exquisite

 

(2)Source:  Jean Paul Sartre's NAUSEA  

(3)The entire sentence in which I found this word:

"It's finished: the  crowd is less congested, the hat-raisings less frequent, the shop windows have something less exquisite about them: I am at the end of the Rue Tournebride.

(4) Dictionary definition of the word:

adjective: extremely beautiful and delicate

noun:literary a man who is affectedly concerned with his clothes and appearance; a dandy

(5)This artist has an exquisite sense of music.

My favorite Writing

"According to one study, 15% of Fortune 500 companies maintain an external corporate blog. That number will likely grow rather than shrink. PR professionals need to realize a blog by itself is not a strategy. However, A blog that work in conjunction with other avenues can effective."

 

Editorial page 24

"Blogging alone does not make up a communication strategy"

By Erica lacono

PRWeek August 2009

 

I chose this conclusion part of an editorial on PRWeek magazine.  It was my first time reading it and I really enjoyed its fresh topics. This article is basically saying that using an active blog can engage various stakeholders; however, failing at having two-way communication is not effective. For example, it shows an example of Twitter using its blog exclusively to explain its latest security breach, mentioning media to a blog posting when they had questions. Author thinks that an important issue regarding to security deserves more attention than a simple post. Although there is nothing wrong with company using a blog for as a communication tool; however, you have to reflect public opinion (such as media) on your posting and cease to be the two-way communication. Indeed, the very last sentence of the article well expresses that a blog can be used as business strategy only when it links to its stakeholders. 

 

Word of the week

The word I picked for this week is (1)"despair."

I know that it's not an exciting word and we do not want to hear or use it as much as possible but I learned this word in a book called (2)"The Sickness unto Death" by Soren Kierkegaard.

This is actually an assignment book for my philosophy class and it made me really confused and disappointed. Because he thinks that people can't avoid facing despair and without despair, we can not be the self.

Here is the very beginning of the sentence of this book.

(3)"Despair is a sickness of the spirit, of the self, and so can have three forms: being unconscious in despair of having a self, not wanting in despair to be one self, and wanting in despair to be oneself."

Hummmm...

He explains what exactly these mean in a story, but here are definitions of despair that I found in dictionary.

(4)

noun: the complete loss or absence of hope

verb:lose or be without hope

I'm not a logical type of person but learning philosophy is fun....as long as I understand.

So here is a new sentence that I make using this word.

(5)"I despaired of ever finding the lost cell phone last year."

You know what, it's a real story.

I was so sad that I lost my phone during final week of last fall semester and I also lost my wallet that my sister gave to me during winter session!

I couldn't believe that these things could really happen!

They were all my faults but losing these things really crushed my spirit out of me.