Archive for January, 2009
The Moon will turn an eerie shade of red for people in the western hemisphere late Wednesday and early Thursday as we experience the first lunar eclipse since August 28, 2007. In a lunar eclipse, the Sun, Earth and Moon are directly aligned and the Moon swings into the cone of shadow cast by the Earth. But the Moon does not become invisible, as there is still residual light that is deflected towards it by our atmosphere. Most of this refracted light is in the red part of the spectrum and as a result the Moon, seen from Earth, turns a coppery, orange or even brownish hue.
One can even use such knowledge to save their bacon. Can you say Christopher Columbus?
Lunar eclipses have long been associated with superstitions and signs of ill omen, especially in battle.
The defeat of the Persian king Darius III by Alexander the Great in the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BC was foretold by soothsayers when the Moon turned blood-red a few days earlier. And an eclipse is credited with saving the life of Christopher Columbus and his crew in 1504.
This is not just some wise tale!
Stranded on the coast of Jamaica, the explorers were running out of food and faced with increasingly hostile local inhabitants who were refusing to provide them with any more supplies. Columbus, looking at an astronomical almanac, realised that a total eclipse of the Moon would occur on February 29, 1504.
He called the native leaders and warned them if they did not cooperate, he would make the Moon disappear from the sky the following night. The warning came true, prompting the terrified people to beg Columbus to restore the Moon, which he did, in return for as much food as his men needed. He and the crew were rescued on June 29, 1504.
Some things are predictable and known. Other things like Planet X are postulates and suspected. On the known siade of things, the Moon will be in total eclipse from 0301 GMT to 0351 GMT. This will be visible east of the Rocky Mountains in North America, as well as in all of Central and South America, West Africa and Western Europe.
It will be in partial eclipse from 0143 GMT to 0301 GMT, visible west of the Rockies and from the eastern Pacific, and from 0351 GMT to 0509 GMT, visible across the rest of Africa and Europe and much of South and West Asia.
The next lunar eclipse won’t take place until December 21 2010. That’s exactly two years before God only knows what will take place on December 21, 2012. And then there’s February 14, 2013 or about 45 days after the most talked about date of the future. Planet X is projected to be 2.85AU from the sun with the earth directly between the brown dwarf and our sun. And talk about coronal mass ejections (CME) and sun spots? You’ve not seen anything like this fireworks display.
Try to make a movie out of this doomsday scenario! Art cannot imitate life to such an extent. But, while you can, and hopefully the weather will allow such a view, enjoy the quiet of mother nature.
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Tags: You know the latest trends from the hottest designers. You make sure to follow what all of the Hollywood elite are wearing and carrying on their shoulders. You are the epitome of a trendy woman and very in-the-now. So what are you wearing this season? With a plethora of new bags hitting the scene, it can be difficult to find the designer handbags that are right for you. Take a look at this helpful overview to get some great ideas and inspiration.
Trendy Designer Handbag Colors
2009 is more about color than previous seasons. Of course, black is at the top of the list and this will likely never change. In 2009, as is the case each and every year, black is a staple in both wardrobe and handbag collections. Few women can say that they own a purse that isn’t black, whether it’s your everyday handbag or one for a special occasion. This year, blacks and browns are both quite popular and, in fact, can almost be interchangeable.
Whether we are talking tan or sand, sable or chocolate, brown is a perfect color because you can easily wear this neutral in every season. In warmer months, tan or beige goes quite well with just about any outfit. Lighter browns tend to be worn with finer fabrics and fancier occasions. Of course, your darker browns can warm up a winter white outfit, or coordinate perfectly with a number of reds and other fall and winter ensembles and coats.
Eggplants and other deep purples are also tremendously popular this season. In fact, purple of all sorts made a comeback last year, and continues to remain a trendy color for the 2009 season. Because it is such a strong, vibrant shade, it is perfect for a handbag color. You can accentuate a black and white combination or highlight a warm, deep brown outfit with a number of purple-toned handbags. You have endless choices this season, even though purple is a strong singular color.
Trendy Designer Handbag Styles
As far as casual bags are concerned this season, tote bags and hobo handbags are still quite trendy. The Manhattan tote, by designer Jim Thompson, is one of the most popular bags in this category. This roomy bag will make most of us breathe a sigh of relief, as we tend to carry around everything but the kitchen sink on a daily basis. A lady must be prepared! Whether it’s for business or pleasure, a smart woman knows that she needs various critical items on her person at all times.
The Manhattan Tote has been seen on many celebrities’ shoulders; including the fashion forward Jessica Alba. The bag is a limited edition that comes in brown, black and green, and offers an enormous amount of carrying space inside.
Of course, you are not limited to this particular tote; many tote bags are trendy this season. Louis Vuitton has an absolutely gorgeous line for fall, and Gucci does too. The shoulder bags and hobos that Gucci put out last year are still quite popular this season as well. While whites and brights were the name of the game for Gucci this summer, this season offers some beautiful subdued leathers, complete with his signature tassels, hardware and of course the famous Gucci label.
Trendy Eco Designer Handbags
Another trend this season is the use of environmentally conscious materials and production processes. Suddenly, it has become très chic to actively care about our environment through our purchases, and this applies to our handbags as well. Many designers are creating custom-made beautiful bags from recycled materials, and you would never know the difference!
Stella McCartney, for example, has a gorgeous clutch this season that is completely vegan. Although her bags are pricey, they’re now made from materials you can feel good about! Donna Karan, too, makes an incredible black zippered bag this fall that is not only funky, but is made from organic lambskin. Be sure to check out her “Gotham” collection. How great it is that celebrities and designers alike are realizing the need to convert in this area by going green? It not only helps spread the word, but we get some gorgeous handbags out of it too.
Trendy Designer Evening Bags
For evening bags, the basics are still the best way to go this season. You cannot go wrong with basic blacks, sequins and shimmer. Whether you prefer a small pearly sequined bag or a tiny black box to go with your evening gown of choice, the classics are still the trendiest, and we don’t see this going by the wayside anytime soon.
The fall season of 2009 is carrying many of the looks from the summer forward, but it’s incorporating deeper colors and rich fall tones. By keeping these easy tips and guidelines in mind, you’re sure to stay trendy and happy all season long.
Introduction:
Every event which is reported in the news, has gone through some kind of “gatekeeping” process. How does a journalist or an editor decide what is newsworthy and what is not?
According to some media researchers, they refer to a set of so-called “News Values”. These are the criteria which enable them to determine whether a “News Story” is followed up in the first place and then whether it makes it in to the news, competing against all the other possible items.
News values are those professional codes used in the selection, construction and presentation of news stories in corporately produced mainstream press and broadcasting.
News values are a result of the productive needs of industrialized news corporations. It is clear that people who work for such corporations will display mixed ambitions, allegiances, politics and abilities as individuals. Within the corporation they are subjected to an extensive division of labor. Beyond the corporation there are its competitors, and the occupational ideology of the journalist and the broadcasting profession.
Within these contexts, news values operate to produce a standard product out of the contributions of all such people, practices and beliefs.
Language, as the main material of news, is the main subject of linguistics so it is obvious that linguists are eager to work on the process of broadcasting. Recentely many of the well-known linguists such as Noam Chomsky (1988), Roger Fowler (1991), Van Dijke (1998), Allan, Bell (1991), Norman Fairclough (1992, 1995, 2003), Guy Cook (1992), Michael Hoey (2001), Paul Chilton (2004) and Marina Sbisa (2005) … have been working on a so-called subject of “language of the News” and the term “News Values” is of great importance.
Edward S.Herman and Noam Chomsky (1988) in their pioneer book of “Manufacturing Consent” have mentioned five news filters and they believe that these filters are now controlling all broadcasting process in the west. This research is going to introduce news values and especially twelve news factors, mentioned by Johan Galtung and Mary Ruge, which are the most famous list of news values around the world and to see if these factors are working in Iranian press.
Theoretical Discussion:
there is no suggestion, of course, that journalists and editors refer to a list pinned on the wall of the office, but, rather, that they unconsciously measure a potential news item against these criteria. Numerous attempts have been made over the years to pin down news values more specifically. But it is hard to collate these into a hard and fast list of values, because different studies have approached the whole idea from different standpoints, using different assumptions and terminology. One of the best known lists of news values is supplied by Johan Galtung and Marie Ruge. Any media analyst’s discussion of news values will always refer to their list, which was initially intended for the coverage of international events.
Johan Galtung is a Norwegian professor who is seen as the pioneer of ” peace and conflict research” and founded the PRIO-International Peace Research Institue in Oslo, Norway. He is also one of the authors of the influential article named “the structure of foreign news” Published in Journal of Peace Research in 1965. Roger Fowler (1991) believes that: “a widely accepted analysis of news values in the following list of criterial factors formulated by Galtung and Ruge; they are worth studying in detail and in particular. It is worth reflecting on the great extent to which the factors are “cultural” rather than “natural”. The values they identified are:
(F1) frequency
(F2) threshold
(F3) unambiguity
(F4) Meaningfulness
(F5) Consonance
(F6) unexpectedness
(F7) continuity
(F8) composition
(F9) reference to elite nations
(F10) reference to elite people
(F11) reference to persons
(F12) reference to something negative))
[Fowler, Language in the news, P:13]
Now, Let’s have a more detailed look to each of these factors:
(F1): Fowler writes: “F1 says that an event is more likely to be reported if its duration is close to the publication frequency of the news medium. Because newspapaers are generally published once a day, a single event is more like to be reported than a long process”, (Ibid).
In other words, frequency is the time-span of an event and the extent to which it fits the frequency of the newspaper’s or news broadcast’s schedule.
(F2) Threshold means how big an event should be to be reported. Is an event big enough to make it in to the news? That depends of course on news organ.
(F3) How clear is the meaning of an event? The mass media generally tend to go for closure, unlik literature, where the polysemy of events is exploited and explored. As Fowller says: “unambiguity is self-explanatory though it must be added that mysterious events, as well as clear ones, are newsworthy if they can be related to cultural stereotypes.”
(F4) By meaningfullness we mean how meaningful the event will appear to the receivers of the news.
(F5) consonance means if the event match the media’s expectations or not. Journalists have a pretty good idea of the “angle” they want to report an event from, even before they get there. It is said that if the media expect something to happen, then it will.
(F6) if an event is highly unpredictable, then it is likely to make it into the news. The unpredictability does, however, need to be within the confines of meaningfulness and unambiguity. Journalists say that “A man bites dog is news but a dog bites man is not”.
(F7) once an event has been covered, it is convenient to cover it some more-the running story. Apart from anything else, it allows media organizations they already put in place to cover the original event. This will depend very much on the nature of event.
(F8) composition is a matter of the balance of the news. It’s a matter of the editor’s judgement, more than anything else. If there’s a lot of foreign news around, some of it will be dropped in favour of more domestic news.
(F9) Reference to elite nations relates again to a cultural factor which is called “cultural proximity”. Those nations which are culturally closest to our own, will receive most attention and coverage. Some nations, formerly called super powers, are more important in terms of news coverage. In part, of course, this is conditioned by the fact that news organizations will have reporters already stationed in European countries and in the USA so that when a story arises, there’s someone there to cover it.
(F10) It is a rule that the media pay attention to important people. Anyone the media pay attention to, must be important.
(F11) personalization connects with unambiguity and meaningfulness. Events are seen as the actions of individuals.
(F12) Bad news is good news. Bad news has many of the other characteristics as well-it may be unexpected, unambiguous, … .