We’ve done the face-to-face welcome, so I thought I would shoot over to our class blog and welcome you here as well. I am looking forward to a very engaging semester and if class on Tuesday was any indication, you all seem up for the challenge!
Over the next few days, I will send each of you an invitation to join this blog as writers. All of the invitations will be sent to your KU email addresses, so make sure you check them. If you did not receive an invite, please make sure to check your junk mail because sometimes these invites get swept up in the university’s spam filter.
When you receive your invitation, click on the link provided and follow the instructions for joining the blog. It will take a few days for us to work out all the technical kinks, but I will make sure everyone is up in running well before I ask you to post.
In the meantime, hope your semester is off to a fabulous start!
I found that by reading the transcript it was almost like reading a different story than what I heard. It was easier for me to understand what they were talking about by reading it rather than hearing it. I liked having the hard copy in front of me because Iike to highlight things that stick out to me and what I think is important. I was also able to recognize the techniques of their story-telling, like we did in class by listening, by seeing it in front of me. I noticed a lot of things I hadn’t before by reading it. I would read a paragraph and then think I never heard that before when listening. For me, I think listening and reading the transcript at the same time got me the most out of the story.
Sounds like everyone hates this Greenspan fella for his ‘miserable 1 percent interest’. So how’s he been in office for longer than I’ve been on this planet? Irresponsible people are the root of this prob anyway, right? Weed them out. Maybe keeping the economy where it’s at could be the best choice if we don’t know the best nor the worst move to make on this delicate system.
My understanding of the jargon steadily decreased with the increase in new terms and their interrelationships. I found this video “Understanding The Financial Crisis–For Kids and Grownups”. The title would be more fitting just ‘For Grownups’, but kudos nonetheless for the explanation.
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This Act was also mentioned in the video: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bliley_Act#Changes_caused_by_the_Act
The crux is miscommunication and avarice. My highly unprofessional opinion places the blame of this issue and most others on society’s decay. Morals and brain cells need to be revived; get cho shit togetha people.
I don’t know if it’s really a decay in morals and brain cells. People have always been greedy since the beginning of time. The difference between now and then is that we live in a global environment where everyone is increasingly becoming tied together. Because of this it only takes a few corrupt people to screw everyone over. The greed is just the same as it was before, except now greedy people bring others down with them as well. It’s actually worse because you would think that when someone’s actions have such dramatic consequences they would finally take some responsibility. Really they don’t care though, and that won’t change regardless of how many lives they ruin.
I have to agree. It does seem like alot of the people who really benefited from it all were the people betting against Magnetar. And these are the same people giving the “global pool of money” what it wanted. If people were really content with just steadily increasing their money, we wouldn’t have gamblers! Or the stock market. Everything that can make you an overnight millionaire is a risk. But this corrupt version even exploited that part of human nature by incorrectly labeling these CDOs as Triple A!
hmm the link didn’t go thru for the video; let’s try this again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4Ns4ltUvfw
Oy…. Those financial terms are a doozy. I, like I’m sure many others were, was VERY confused by the financial terms in the transcript. I thought it sounded like an entirely different language when I was listening to it, but reading it may have been worse. I lost track of all of them, at one point and had to go back and reread. Not only did I lose track of the terms, however, I also found it more confusing to read all the speakers’ names, rather than hearing the differentiation in their voices. Those changes, though subtle, made it that much more interesting.
Along with that, the transcript was pretty dry, especially when Adam Davidson and Alex Blumberg were “setting the stage” like we discussed in class. Although this was really helpful while listening, I followed the anecdotes and personal stories a lot better as I read them.
Radio is, in my opinion, better when listened to, but I will say that there were certain parts that I picked up on a little more than I did while listening. It was nice having it laid out in front of me, but at the same time, I think that the perfect balance would be (and is) reading while listening.
Well, it’s certainly a different experience to read it than it is to listen to it. While being able to see the transcript made some things clearer, it just took the magic out of it. You can read it at your own pace, yes, but that may not be the best way to read the story. Yes, I could follow the financial jargon better seeing it written out and being able to reference back if I needed to, with out having the speaker continue on with out me, but it really loses something with out the human element.
The tension and the drama decreases exponentially when you’re reading it, instead of having it told to you. Nuances like vocal expression, tone, and music really play a large role in the listening experience, and I missed that atmosphere while reading. Another thing that is different while reading is that you have more freedom to draw you’re own conclusions. It’s harder to lead your reader in transcript format than if they are listening to your voice. I’m glad to have listened to it before attempting to read it, because I think it would be much harder to read it before listening to it. It’s still a well crafted story, but in my opinion, nothing can top the feel of the radio show.
Reading the transcript was okay, but it didn’t really make much sense by itself. I needed both the audio and the transcript to fully understand it. While reading it alone, it was easy for my mind to wander back to the rampaging squirrels… Anyway. Listening to it by itself posed a similar but not nearly as bad problem. When I combined them, some things like some of the fancy words clicked and it was easier to go with the flow of the show and not get lost. Like someone else said, reading + listening = something that works
I have to say I definitely prefer listening to the audio. I try to follow along with the transcript as I listen to the show so I understand it a little better. If you stuck the transcript in my face without Ira Glass and company speaking, I would have given up in a millisecond. I don’t understand finances and politics to begin with, so a story like this really makes my head spin. When you experience both, though, you realize how different both methods are. When you listen, the story comes to life through the voices of the broadcasters, and it feels like they’re pulling you into the story more, which, for me at least, helps me at least follow what they’re saying. When you have the transcript before you, you can read it at your own pace to understand, but the material is even drier, which makes it harder to focus and more irritating when you’re trying to understand. The two combined, though, are perfect!
Well everyone is talking about this silly economic mumbo jumbo, we must remember the important issues as well. Like that NASA satellite that was going to crash and possibly kill somebody between 57 degrees latitude north and 57 degrees latitude south. Sure it hit the pacific ocean, but think of how many poor dolphins lost their lives to shrapenal damage and radiation stuff, that might turn the survivors into mutants. We must remember what’s important guys, cause you only live once and everything is trying to kill you all the time. Have a nice day.
Well, now that I’ve finally figured out where to post all this, I thought that reading the transcript was incredibly different. I thought it was confusing when I was listening and found it even worse reading it! The financial “mumbo-jumbo” is throwing me off. So, again, I just paid attention to the different things that jumped out of the story itself. For example, in episode 355, when listening, I found the different music and voice inflections interesting but after reading it, certain lines stuck out to me. I knew that, for example, in the beginning they played wine glasses “clanking” and I knew that they were somewhere public…maybe a restaurant? I wasn’t quite sure. But then they clarified. On the transcript, the setting is presented in such a dry way. You don’t get that “clanking” etc. So that was only one thing I noticed. I’ve discovered that I just like to listen to it. I tend to do other things while I’m listening and the radio show enters my subconscious without me even knowing!