Pictures That Lie

On August 2006, a picture of the aftermath of the Israeli bombing of Lebanese capital by the photographer Adnan Hajj was published by the Reuters news agency, depicting dark black smoke wafting from the capital buildings.The picture interested me since it was another way to skew people's opinions on the Middle Eastern war front. The picture was manipulated to make the clouds of smoke look more numerous and darker, making it look like a more horrible and catastrophic event. Hajj denies that he manipulated the photo for this purpose, claiming he had used bad techniques to get rid of some dust marks. The manipulation of the photo was not harmful persay, it just skewed the perspective of the bombing, making it appear more devastating.

CLT Visit

The Center for Learning and Technology (CLT) was filled with a variety of resources available to students. I had personally never been to the CLT before this visit and was quite impressed by their facilities. I was glad to see that they have both Macs and PCs available. Though I personally can use both fairly proficiently, it is nice that if you prefer one type of computer over the other you can have a choice. I also liked the way the CLT was organized. The computers were divided up into sections depending on the software that was on them, such as a graphic design section. I was surprised that they had so many other types of equipment for sound recording and such. The presentation room was also extremely nice. I am looking forward to utilizing the graphic design area for our class. Also it is nice to have a group of technicians to help out if I have problems with any of the programs or computers.

Copyright Presentation

The copyright presentation by Jason Hardin was extremely interesting and I learned some interesting facts. It was fun to use the clickers during the lecture and see what everyone thought the answer to the questions were. One of the things Hardin talked about that I knew nothing about was the Higher Education Opportunity Act created in 2008. I was really greatful that HEOA made such provisional exceptions for education and made colleges and universities have alternative resources to prevent illegal downloading. What I found most interesting was the Disney Corporation's role in changing copyright law. When Walt Disney's 50th death-day was coming up, the Disney Corporation lobbied at Congress and was able to lengthen the years that the copyright was valid from 50 to 70 years. I can't wait for the 70th death day of Walt Disney to come up and watch that political debate go down. When it comes to the illegal downloading of music, there are usually two kinds of people: one who think that downloading music for free is no big deal and the second who thinks its wrong, but still does it when given the opportunity. I myself fall in the second group and I think copyright over music is nessecary and that the authors should be given the deserved profits from those songs. I personally think that the best way to discourage illegal downloading is the go after the sites that can facilitate such activities rather than the people that may be doing it. It would make it harder for people to illegally download music if such sites and applications did not exist and it would discourage the activity all together.


Copyright Presentation by Chelsea Lewis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at clewis1300.blogspot.com.