4/27

I watched Blue Valentine today. The story line was too sad to watch. It is about a family in which something is very wrong with the couple. They break up as a result and the movie focuses on the process where their relationship come to an end. As much as I would like to explain all about it, I can't. It was such a...grotesque story that I do not want to remember any of it. But I am sure you can use it in order to talk your girl/boy friend into breaking up with you. This movie will show you how wrong it can be if you do not choose your mate very, very carefully. Yet perhaps this movie could also be good for a couple who are both cool enough to talk about the content. It might help them review their relationship from a completely new perspective.

Anyway, I am happy that it is none of my problem!!!!!!

The class on 4/27 started with visiting websites which share various types of documentaries and for free. The part "for free" is very important because it distinguishes the materials we learned in the very last part of the lecture....but I will not talk about it because I am not supposed to do so.

Anyway, the first one was Free Documentaries. I think the following quote from the site helps you understand what it is like.

At freedocumentaries.org we strongly believe that in order to have a true democracy, there has to be a free flow of easily accessible information. Unfortunately, many important perspectives, opinions, and facts never make it to our televisions or cinemas (you can watch movies in our media category if you want to know why).

As they talk about a true democracy, most of what they provide is on politics. For example, you can find names such as "Iraq for Sale", "The Israel Lobby" and "Hacking Democracy". The site provides streaming videos, which are not very clear, but watchable in terms of resolution. The second one was called Media Education Foundation or MEF. So let's see what the mission is.

MISSION: The Media Education Foundation produces and distributes documentary films and other educational resources to inspire critical reflection on the social, political, and cultural impact of American mass media.

(from MEF website)

So this site is also a bit of political, but it focuses more on the problem of media literacy, which is Rab's favorite topic, I guess. The reason this site is amazing is because they are very much prepared to help you by providing study guides, handouts and transcript, which are all downloadable for free. Rab said that a professor of media studies opened this site. I really want to say good job to him.

After that, Rab introduced Youtube, Google Video and Veoh to us. I think all of us are familiar with them, at least the first two. Youtube has been very popular since the broadband network spread to the whole part of Japan. Veoh is probably not as popular, but quite useful because being minor means videos are not deleted as often as in Youtube. So there could be videos which can be seen only in Veoh.

And I would like to introduce a way to download videos on Youtube.

1. Open a video that you want to download on Youtube.

2. Add "fire" after jp.youtube of the URL. (So if the video's URL is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhddQRj7gdc, you just have to change it to http://www.youtubefire.com/watch?v=fhddQRj7gdc. Very easy, right?)

3. Follow the instruction and enjoy!

I hope this will help.

Lastly, Rab told us about the danger of Facebook. Facebook does not care about users' privacies. They treat our information like their product. I always had wondered how they make money from SNS until I listened to him. Now I understand that is how they make a living. I watched Social Network, and I was surprised how crazy founder of Facebook Mark Zuckerburg is. Facebook was not even his idea. He stole it from yacht guys and did not care about it. I admit he is very, very smart, but he is too immoral. It makes sense that he is doing dirty business.

However, I have no choice but to keep Facebooking, and the movie was quite fun.

(Sorry for not adjusting the font sizes. I do not want to be bothered to do so. Even though I write lots of things despite that it is not necessary, I have tons of work to do. So just please pardon me.