Bloggerstock: Stop the world--I want to get on/off

But first, a message from Dapper Daisy:
It's bloggerstock--where bloggers respond to a bloggerstock prompt and have their posts hosted on another blogger's site. Big thanks to Tazim for the following post. You can check out my post on Booya's wall at www.booyabobby.com. Enjoy!
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Hello Dapper Daisy readers! This is Tazim from the Being Tazim blog - about art, home décor, and handmade products. I am here today to share with you my Bloggerstock post.

"Stop the world, I want to get on/off"



Have you ever had a moment where you realized that you just want the world to stop? Maybe it was because you realized you were missing something, or maybe it was because you just wanted a minute to breathe. Tell us about a moment like this that you had.

What would this be like - Quantum Leap, where the 'real' person Sam leaps into is transported elsewhere for a certain amount of time - their world, essentially stopping momentarily? Or like the holodeck on Star Trek - where one goes inside to escape their real life and can easily step back in to it again, when they're done adventuring?

Leaving Canada for a year exchange in New Zealand felt a bit like being transported to a whole different world. If only the exploration could have lasted longer without taking out any more time from my life. Think about the possibilities = what would YOU do if you could make things stop for a moment?

While in New Zealand I lived differently because of financial barriers - but this wasn't necessarily a bad thing. I spent a lot of time catching up on old tv shows and movies that I'd missed in the last 5 years of not having a tv/cable. University life had been so hectic, coupled with having to work part time as well - but in New Zealand I couldn't work (legally) and classes were much more laid-back. Was this what I needed? Was I missing peace and relaxation? Maybe I needed to step away from My Home and Native Land to really appreciate it, too. Being in New Zealand made me realize how much I want to just travel in my life, and explore, and try new things. It made me realise that university life/ academia just isn't for me.

 
You can read the guest post on my own blog, written by Anna from http://aheartforall.blogspot.com/, right here.

A global media informed by U.S. political interests

In "Google Earth and the nation state: Sovereignty in the age of new media," Sangeet Kumar contends that new media entities pose a threat to national sovereignty because of their "borderless" nature and resistance to state regulation. Though he focuses his analysis on Google, I can see how his concerns can be extended to Twitter and Facebook in the future. With Last Moyo's analysis of CNN and Xinhua's coverage of the Tibetan crisis as an example, I argue that global new media entities do pose a challenge to national sovereignty but only to the extent that they spread the economic and social norms of a neoliberal world order.

Moyo's case study shows how media entities inevitably reflect the values and interests of their targeted national audiences. He shows how CNN constructed the Tibetan crisis as a struggle for cultural autonomy from an authoritarian Chinese regime. In portraying the Tibetan protests as "legitimate dissent," CNN examined China's human rights abuses against western notions of freedom and human rights. In selectively approaching this conflict rather than the Palestinian or other US-involved conflicts from a human rights angle, CNN failed to point out the hypocrisy of the United States' condemnation of China. The resulting news product also failed to bring out the complexities of the situation, including the plurality of Tibetans' demands and the historical context of Chinese and Tibetan views. Chinese-sponsored Xinhua, on the other hand, delegitimized the Tibetan protesters by portraying them as a western-backed threat to Chinese unity and economic dominance.

The CNN narrative, Moyo says, was the inevitable result of neoliberal policies and discourse that allow for western dominance of the global financial and political landscape. The Xinhua narrative, however, was the result of the Chinese seeing international narratives as unfair and threatening to national unity.

While media entities like CNN and Google do pose a threat to national sovereignty through their resistance to national regulatory bodies, when countries like China and India recognize the threat they pose to imagined national unity, they either develop a counter narrative--like Xinhua--or coerce the media into cooperation--like India. The power a nation has to do this will largely depend on the whether the market forces at work can effectively persuade media entities to oblige. China's response to international media through Xinhua reflects a strong resistance to becoming a subject of the new global media.

As media entities gain momentum, the nation state may have to decide whether to develop a counter narrative and risk being seen as a stubborn "rogue" state in the growing cultural and political consensus, or to negotiate with these forces.

References

Kumar, Sangeet. “Google Earth and the Nation State — Global Media and Communication.” Global Media and Communication. SAGE, Aug. 2010. Web. 30 Jan. 2011. .

Moyo, Last. “The Global Citizen and the International Media : A Comparative Analysis of CNN and Xinhua’s Coverage of the Tibetan Crisis.” International Communication Gazette. SAGE, Mar. 2010. Web. 30 Jan. 2011. .

Productivity: My life.

It's funny when one little image makes you realize how lame you are.

Experiment Results: Friends with jobs make you spend more money

I'm usually a rather spendthrift sort of person; I don't blow cash on clothes, make-up, coffee or any other such indulgences. As a vegetarian who likes to cook, I've also come to see myself as pretty free from the vices of junk food.

To track just how saintly my spending is, I made a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and since February 16th have been recording every single purchase I make.

The results were shocking.

By the end of two weeks, I had spent over $90 on junk food, pizza, alcohol and other empty calories. That's one-and-a-half times more than my grocery bill. How the hell did this happen? Perhaps unsurprisingly, I had a little help from my friends; half of those expenses were on the weekends.

I know the internet just erupted in a resounding, "DUH YOU IGNORAMUS! NO WONDER THE WORLD'S GOING TO PIECES--KIDS HAVE NO FORESIGHT!". But this is a revelation for me because my life before I turned 21 was nothing like this. Weekend fun used to be free movies on campus and a burrito. Now that everyone in our group is gainfully employed, they can live it up. Except me.

I love my friends and not for a moment do I want to feel left out, but I simply cannot afford to keep up with their partying lifestyles. I'm not earning any money right now and most worrying of all is that I don't have any plans to make money after I graduate in a few months. I've never felt more "behind" in my life.

One of my resolutions this year is to stay positive and to only dwell on depressing thoughts when they can lead to a productive outcome. So it seems to me that I need to decide right now how important making and spending money is going to be to me now and in the next few years when I have virtually no career path ahead of me at the moment. Now, I realize that having enough money to get me though the giddy party stage of my early 20's is not a worthwhile financial goal. But I'm asking myself with more urgency than ever before, "But then, what is?"

I think the main thing to keep in mind is that I need to be thinking about couple things right now; what I want to do to earn money after this semester, what career I want that job to help propel me toward, and what difference I want to make over the course of my lifetime. There are certain comforts of bourgeois life that I want both now and in the future. I just need to be careful and mindful to not turn those comforts into trappings. Comforts become trappings when you need them for status, friends and happiness. I'll need them as tools to move forward with my ideals.

Have you done similar experiments with expenses? What are your financial goals anyhow? Are there any that would be particularly helpful to have as a 20-something?

Women in the Middle East revolutions

Check out this fantastic time-lapse video of artist Jessica Sabogal's tribute to the revolution in Egypt.


I dont' consider myself an art critic, but I am a Journalism and Global Studies double major. This means that I have a bag of tools for critical analysis that I probably will never be able to use profitably...so to show my degree was worth the cash I have to dump any related epiphanies on my blog :)
But seriously, I thought a couple things about the painting were significant and helped me think of the whole "revolution" differently.

1. The subject is a woman, and that too a *de-glamorized* one.

2. Women have traditionally been invisible, marginal voices in revolutions (focus is usually on male violence), but in the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, women are figuring very significantly. The subject of the painting here is probably not meant to be seen as an onlooker or the subject of regime change. Though she *is* depicted in the act of reacting, the artist chose to focus on women as agents of change.

This is a long but very insightful Al Jazeera interview on the role of Arab women in the recent democratic revolutions. My professor sent it to me so I think you will find it well worth your time.


3. The style is graffiti-inspired. Seems like a pretty direct interpretation of Egypt's revolution as a bottom-up movement.

4. The painting isn't necessarily triumphant. In theAl Jazeera interview above there is a discussion about how Arab women don't share a homogeneous view on the priorities for or purpose of democratic change.The painting depicts shock, which can be either good or bad. Political revolutions are, above all, shocking and always inspire counter revolutions. I like this painting because it isn't just a snapshot in time...it signifies the whole process--both the revolution and the counter revolution.