Updates

For all who are interested, I finally posted Chapter 12!!!  Very exciting news.  A link to my stories can be found under the links on the right sidebar of my blog.  Please read and review.  :)

I'm mostly on top of my work for this week.  I have an editing quiz and a macroeconomic quiz, but I think they will both go well.  Happily I have no editing classes this week because my professor is out of town.  This will add more time to my day on Monday and Wednesday, though I do enjoy the class so it's a little sad.  The macro quiz is on GDP calculations.  I'm finding that I enjoy macroeconomics more than microeconomics.  I find it easier to understand and apply, though I am also finding that I understand microeconomics more with the addition of macroeconomic concepts.  They support and build upon one another.  I'm also really enjoying the system of macro homework online.

I did some copy editing for the Ring-Tum Phi after GCF tonight and got the most wonderful comment from Jacob.  I walked in with my guitar and asked if he needed any help and he was very grateful, and then commented on the guitar.  I said that I was the lead worship person for GCF and told him that I could serenade them if they wanted (jokingly) but then he said that he had already heard me play.  Apparently the Phi office can hear all of the music we play at GCF.  This wasn't much of a surprise as they are right down the hall in the Commons, but I had never really thought about it.  Jacob commented that he knows all is right with the world when he hears "the Christians singing" on Sunday evening.  This really made me smile.

Also, went to see "27 Dresses" with the girls last night.  LOVED it!  I'm continually impressed with Katherine Heigl's acting, and the story was fantastic.  Very funny, and good delivery from all actors/actresses.  I highly recommend it.  It's not just a chick flick, it actually kind of turns traditional romance on its head, which is really amusing in itself, but there are just such good one-liners.

Lastly, Jenny booked cruise tickets for a bunch of us for spring break last week.  We're going to go to Passion in Atlanta to spend a couple days worshipping God, and then we're going to go on a cruise with Carnival, haha.  A little ironic.  But it so matches the kids that are going.  The cruise leaves from Jacksonville and will go to Key West and Nassau, Bahamas.  Should be an awesome time!

Mock Convention 2008

I am currently watching the final session of Washington and Lee's 2008 Mock Convention on Channel 18 (Lexington's public access channel), and taking notes on what the speakers are saying to write up a full report later.  Va. Sen. Jim Webb is speaking right now and he'll be followed by Harold Ford, Jr., chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and West Va. Gov. Joe Manchin III.  Speakers yesterday included Va. Gov. Tim Kaine, Charles Wilson, Jesse Jackson, and others.  I only heard Tim Kaine.

W&L hosts a mock presidential convention every four years, in accordance with the democratic primaries.  Since 1948, the only nomination we've predicted incorrectly was in 1972.  We chose Ted Kennedy for the Democratic nomination.  Our picks don't always get elected, but they usually get nominated at least.  ;)  And it's understandable, since we're always picking a non-incumbent nominee.  It's a generally-known fact that incumbents tend to win over nominees that are new to the position.

To cut to the chase (I'm writing this background after the close of ceremonies), W&L chose Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination and Harold Ford for the vice presidential nomination.  A lot of people don't think that we'll get it right this year because the race is so close, but we'll see.  There's still some time before the official conventions in August.

The convention is held over a period of two days.  Happily, our classes on Friday were cancelled for the festivities.  ;)  Over 90% of the school participates in some fashion, usually by joining a state delegation.  I was a member of the Virginia delegation...state pride, ya know?  Each delegation does research to figure out how their real delegates are likely to vote in August, raises funds to support the convention, tries to find good speakers, and designs a state float to be trailed in the parade on Friday morning of the convention.  I'm sure they do more work than that also, but those seemed to be the most important responsibilities to me.

As for the convention schedule, there's the parade Friday morning.  The floats were pretty good -- I watched from the warmth of my office.  The convention officially convenes at 1 pm on Friday for a series of speakers.  I went to the first hour and a half or so of this, and saw Tim Kaine.  That was really cool.  He's a very dynamic and engaging speaker.  He spoke about voter participation and his support for Barack Obama...his speech compelled me to call up the Virginia voter registration office and order my absentee ballot and nearly compelled me to vote for Obama.  Nearly.  I didn't attend any of the other Friday speeches because I had things to do, and I wanted to call my Mom.  :)

This morning I would have attended, but it was cold, and I didn't want to get all dressed up, so I have been watching the proceedings on TV, while sitting on the couch in my pajamas.  It would have been cool to have actually been there, but...I'm still happy with my decision.

My impressions on this morning's speakers:

• Jim Webb: not as engaging as I had hoped, however he had some interesting points; tendency to ramble and to jump from topic to topic; was surprised by his statistic that the Republican party filibustered 62 times last year; agreed that the current administration doesn't have an exit strategy for Iraq and that's really not acceptable; some quotes: "You don't take out a hornet's nest by sitting on it, it's time to do something else;" "This issue is not going to turn around until we have new leaders...we have these leaders, we will work toward solutions;"
• Harold Ford: very dynamic and engaging, a lot of people I have talked to liked him; I felt that he mostly talked about things I already knew, so I actually didn't pay very much attention to most of his speech; did like his point that we're the only generation that has ever financed two sides of a war (we support our "enemy" with our dependence on oil); memorable quotes: "We have asked our military men and women...to go fight while at the same time you and I subsidize those who seek to kill them day in and day out." "Pick a Democrat who the nation will wrap their arms around, pray for, and believe in...a tall one for the world."
• Joe Manchin: talked a lot about blessings and being thankful for what we have, and giving back; really emphasized his West Virginia roots; pointed out that a good leader has to look past party lines and unite groups of people; we have to be careful to preserve the nation for future generations; every child should have a safe place and a healthy start; on 9/11, did it matter what was in your bank account?  did your house or car matter  did your race matter?  or were you more concerned about your family, friends, and fellow Americans?  that's what you need to think about today; memorable quotes: "If you think you can come from right or left and govern, you're wrong." "We as a nation came together as a country for this one day like never before, as Americans." "We need a change from the top to the bottom, and the change starts here...the greatest generation sitting before me now has the power to do that...not only for this nation, but for the world."

I feel extremely empowered.  This was an interesting and fun experiment, and I'm looking forward to seeing how this all pans out over the next year.

Choose your own adventure

If you were a teacher, would you fudge scores to encourage an underperforming student? Would you call that student out if you found out they were cheating?

If you had a friend in prison for something that you did, too, and you could reduce their sentence, would you turn yourself in? What if it was a matter of life and death, meaning you could save them from execution if you agreed to a prison sentence?

Would you risk the lives of eight men to save one?

Well, you could think about all of that, or you could just watch "The Emperor's Club," "Return To Paradise," and "Saving Private Ryan."

My journalism ethics class has been discussing these movies this week as a means for discussing the points of view of key moral philosophers.  We're looking at 7 key philosophers and their views of morality:

1. Aristotle: virtue-based; judge an act based on the virtues of a good person; a good person will act virtuously and seek to attain happiness, which is the final good; virtue is making choices guided by reason in accordance to the doctrine of the mean --> harmonization of the soul; you recognize virtue in other people and are naturally drawn to them
2. Jesus: care-based; the Golden Rule --> do unto others as you would have them do unto you; exemplified in the parable of the Good Samaritan, in which we learn that we must even do good unto those who are abhorrent to us because everyone is our neighbor
3. John Locke: rights-based; morality will extend and protect individual rights; respect for the government is tantamount to morality; the government exists to protect rights; moral behavior fully respects the rights of others
4. Immanuel Kant: duty-based; conduct conforms with universalisable rules; anti to situational ethics; can't use people as a means to an end; it's not what you do, it's what makes you do it --> your duty matters the most, not the results you are trying to achieve; do something if you could in good conscience tell everyone else to do it too
5. John Stuart Mill: consequence-based; morality is based on effects (utilitarianism); greatest good for the greatest number; minimize pain and suffering
6. John Rawls: justice-based; morality as actions that conform to principles of fairness that we can all agree on; very interested in social equality; if Rawls had his way, morality would be drawn up by a group of people who anticipated being placed in a stratified society but didn't know who they would be in the society (e.g. rich or poor), so they would have to agree on moral rules that would benefit themselves and everyone else before knowing how they would fit in; the idea is that people in this situation will seek the best solution that minimizes inequality and harm
7. Baier: trust-based; morality strengthens trust to constitute society

We haven't actually discussed Mill and Baier yet, so I don't have notes for them.  It's really interesting to consider the aforementioned ethical dilemmas in the context of these philosophies, though.  Some various thoughts we have discussed about morality in general:

• ethics is not just restraint, you don't avoid wrong by doing less or doing nothing
• ethics is not the brake pedal, it's the way that you drive
• the challenge with ethics is to create institutions that cultivate morality
• we are driven by sentiment, the nobility of the soul
• we could agree on the right thing and still be unwilling to do it
• morality generally has to do with assigning a value to people

So what would you do?

May the force be with you

Thank heaven, I have finally finished Chapter 12.  It's been a long time in coming, but it should be up on PS within the week.  A lot of rehearsal went into this chapter.  ;)  It does a lot of setting for the rest of the story, kind of like Chapter 6.  Hmm, I think chapters that are multiples of 6 are harder for me to write.  We'll see if I still feel this way when I get to Chapter 18.  Things to look forward to: Regulus and Voldy have a heart to heart, Liam comes closer to finding out about the man from the foggy night, and Regulus is given two tremendous responsibilities.  Poor kid.  He's only eighteen!

This weekend was fantastic.  I spent Friday afternoon sledding at John's house with Julie, Courtney, Allison, and John (naturally).  I have only been sledding a couple times in my life, and never on a hill so steep!  That was a little frightening.  But John is a good teacher, and quite good at talking us all into taking risks.  At one point we connected all three of the sleds, doubled the girls up on two of them, and all five of us went down the hill.  It worked for a whole fifteen seconds.  ;)  I spent the rest of Friday night, and also Saturday night, with Rachel and Christine.  Christine has never seen Star Wars, so we've taken great delight in showing her the movies, in numerical order.  She discovered the true identity of Darth Vader and the fact that Luke and Leia are twins last night.  It was quite amusing.  Our favorite and consistent joke:

Character from movie: May the force be with you.

Christine: And also with you!

Me: Let us pray...

*peals of laughter*

Steve talked about Eph. 2 and reconciliation tonight.  It made me think back to Urbana, both because of the Bible passage and the topic in question.  I know that I need to do a better job of recognizing that Jesus breaks down every barrier and sets us free.  As Steve said, I need to remember to live like I believe the gospel.  Because I do, and that should always be apparent.

Snow Day

Washington and Lee actually cancelled classes today.  I mean, cancelled.  Not a two hour delay, but a real cancellation!  We had several inches of snow, though it did not start snowing until about 7 a.m.  Morning classes were allowed because of this, so I still went to Ethics as usual, however the university closed starting at 1 p.m.

I was still in the J-School around lunch time, when the cancellation email was first sent out.  Kat, Nicole, Elliott, and I were all in the Lab preparing for this afternoon's Rockbridge Report.  We are all copy editors doubling as producers this term and knowing the J-School, we weren't sure if Rockbridge Report was actually going to be cancelled.  Prof. Luecke told Elliott that we weren't going to have it, but Nicole had already started packaging some of the J253 stories for the web.  Kat, Nicole, and I discussed the matter and realized that if we didn't produce the web site, the stories would be killed, and the reporters would lose their first articles.

Well, we couldn't have that.  We got the three 253 reporters, John, Helen, and Jane, and a 202 assistant, Queenie, in on our idea and when Luecke and Richardson showed up in the lab we told them what we had decided: we were still going to produce the web site.  They were skeptical because the roads were getting worse but we explained that none of us had to drive home because we all live downtown.  The professors were waiting for the storm to die down and roads to be cleared before they drove home, so they agreed.

It was a whirlwind of an afternoon!  Kat, Nicole, and I all produced.  I was in charge of multimedia...photos, slideshows, and extra graphics.  Kat did general organization and assignments, and Nicole actually put everything together.  Kat, John, Helen, and Queenie produced a breaking news story about the day's snow.  I took some photos around W&L and a local elementary school and made a slideshow.  I also worked on a graphic for one of John's stories, and taught Queenie and John some Photoshop basics.

We're dorks.  We know.  We didn't have to produce the web site.  Classes were cancelled.  But seriously, this is what real reporters do, right?

That's what makes us those kids.

Breaking News!!!

Va. Attorney General supports ADV churches

That's right, folks.  Remember my three article series?  Yup, the Va. Attorney General just said that the Virginia Division Statute is valid.

I'm going to go bask in the sun.  Check out some of the comments on the article, too.  They're fantastic.

Rush Week is nearly over!  Time to return to normal, and we get our babies tonight!  I've some really interesting discussions this week in class.  I'm going to try to be better at keeping a blog this term and writing about things that I'm learning and am interested in.  Issues to look forward to include:

• Latin American environmental history
• Ethics of journalism
• Copy editing
• Working in a newsroom
• Macroeconomic theory
• Waiting for graduate school applications
• What to do with my life if I don't get into graduate school
• Continuing coverage of the ADV vs. TEC situation
• Commentary on the book of Acts, which we are studying in my small group
• Updates on my PhoenixSong stories

Hopefully this will actually happen ;)