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Alright, here are some general guidelines regarding how we see the grades as we read the journals. Some differences may exist between your tutors, so make sure to check first before taking this post as gospel. (^__^) I’ll be starting from the description of what I believe is a D grade then move up to an A at the end of this post.
I will also try to write a sample journal for each grade letter as well to try to facilitate in a clearer understanding of what the requirements are. In general, the main requirements for the journals are that they appear coherent, comprehensive and concise. Together, these elements should form for a brief yet sophisticated and powerful argument.
I’ll just kick this post off beginning with the most dreaded D grade~ LOL
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Grade D Expectations
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A grade D paper would be one that demonstrated near to no effort in reflection. This would be a paper that not only goes along with everything that was said in the course, but it would also be one that appears to have very little relevance to anything required of the question. These papers do not have much of an argument and demonstrates clear ignorance of the lecture as well as readings. To make it harder to give it a higher mark, a D grade paper would also sometimes artificially prolong a pointless argument and end with no relevant conclusion.
To achieve a D grade, a person simply needs to never go to lecture, never read the lecture notes, and never read the readings. On top of that, they will also need to be completely unreflective of the media’s relationship with crime, or anything for that matter. (^__^)
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Grade C Expectations
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A grade C paper would be one that seems to have had little reflection on their personal stance on the subject. This would be a paper that strongly takes one side of an argument and generally provides evidence to support that position. The problem these papers encounter is that their arguments don’t properly anticipate, consider and effectively address opposing arguments. This makes it hard to give it a good mark because it demonstrates a bias that is easily countered by opposing claims.
Occasionally, it is possible for the argument to stray away from its point and coherence may be problematic as these papers are generally following the format of the questions as their plan. Achieving a C grade requires that one go to the relevant lecture, read some of the lecture notes, and possibly address some of the readings. In general, the author does seem to think about the question but the effort placed into identifying the central theme of each question is unclear. (^__^)
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Grade B Expectations
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A grade B paper would be one that has placed a fair reflection on a personal stance in response to the question. This would usually manifest itself in writing as the author notes different sides of the argument but still manages to push the paper towards a personal opinion. In this way, the paper does appear fairly balanced in regards to the arguments made. The place where these papers tend to fall over is in the organisation of the paper and thus, making it slightly difficult to follow their argument sometimes. There may also be a tendency to argue at too wide a scope in these papers.
Achieving a B grade requires that not only go to lectures and do the relevant readings, but also demonstrating that they have thought about and could draw out as well as analyse the most important arguments from each. In general, the author appears to have thought about the question and it is clear that they understood what the question required of them, but somewhere along the execution of their arguments, they managed to stumble a little.
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Grade A Expectations
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A grade A paper would demonstrate a serious reflection on the issue at hand and manages to push forward their personal stance on the issue. The author not only balances their arguments, but in doing so also effectively demonstrates the weakness of those opposing arguments through that balance. The paper also has a clear vision of its conclusion and as the journal begins, it moves the argument forward seamlessly towards that end point. It also isolates the most important arguments central to addressing the question by setting limits around its own consideration of alternative perspectives.
Achieving an A grade requires that one demonstrates sensitivity to topics covered in the lecture and readings, but only utilises them when it is relevant to their argument. For an A, the author appears to have thought carefully not only about the question but also on their responses to that question and effectively puts out a strong response to that end.
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Alright, so now with all these “requirements” jotted down, allow me to give myself a made-up question to answer and then answer them to demonstrate what each journal may look like. For these purposes, allow me to ask myself the question:
Locate video games in English about women as offenders and as victims. How are they portrayed? See if you can find any other images in the Japanese gaming industry. How do the portrayals of women compare with the findings in other countries (as described in other readings)?
Before I begin, I must say that none of the sample journals are truly representative of any of my views—not even the grade A one. I wrote all the journals with my mind in other people’s heads (so to speak), so you should not take any of these positions as my own and you certainly should not believe everything that is said in these sample journals (there are some clear mistakes—if you want to clarify and “be sure” about what is “wrong”, do ask and I will happily tell you).
Right then, off we go then~
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Grade D Response (Here, “D” stands for “DO NOT WRITE LIKE THIS!”):
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For this question, I have chosen the English video game called Bio Shock to portray a woman as an offender and another game called Mario Bros. to show a woman as a victim. I played Mario Bros. a long time ago, but I still remember it and one thing that I always remembered about it was that the main character, Mario, is always trying to save Princess Peach from a big evil turtle.
Princess Peach is annoying because she is always shouting and so stupid too—why is she always being kidnapped by the turtle? Why does she not think of maybe putting GPS on her and carrying around something to defend herself with? With GPS, Mario can track her instead of having to go to every castle and jumping on flag poles to find her in the turtle’s big castle. Also, Princess Peach should learn Tae Kwon Do or carry around an umbrella to fight with! She is always getting kidnapped, so she should learn to protect herself!
Bio Shock is a more modern game and you can see that because it has beautiful graphics. The game has an evil woman character who has a very long name that I cannot completely remember, but she is very evil and looks very evil as well. She wears an ugly purple dress and her face is always angry and she also has a very big and crooked nose. She is evil because she kidnaps children and does crazy experiments on them. How can her heart be so cold to do that to children? So unforgivable.
I think these two games can be quite fun though. But Japanese video games are difficult for me to talk about because I don’t play any video game in Japanese. But I think that the Japanese are very conservative and women are therefore probably going to be like Princess Peach in their video games. I can imagine Japanese video games with woman screaming “tasukete kudasai” (my friend told me that is how the Japanese say “Help me!” but I am not sure) all the time! That must be so annoying! I will never play Japanese video games, they must be so bad. What video games do Japanese make anyway? All the games I play are English and have nothing to do with the Japanese.
I also think that the Japanese just copy all the English games because I see my friends playing sometimes. For example, there is a game I really like called Resident Evil, but I was so shocked when I saw my friend playing the same game but he told me it is called Bio Hazard. I look at the game and it is exactly the same game! 100% the same! Even the things they say and the movies in the game are the same! I told my friend that they copied another game, but he dare says that it was the English game that copied the Japanese game!
That’s crazy. The Japanese have no creativity, how can they make a game like Resident Evil? Also, all the characters in the game speak English even in his “Japanese game”, so how can he believe that it was Japanese who made it first? He’s so stupid. Anyway, in conclusion, the Japanese can only make good games if they copy from other people. Otherwise, their games are not worth playing.
WORD COUNT: 564
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Grade C Response (“C” for “Comely”, yes? (^__^)):
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For this question, I have chosen the English video games of Bio Shock to portray a woman as an offender and Mario Bros. to depict women as victims. Mario Bros. is a series of video games, but each one always begins with the capture of Princess Peach.
In every instance, Princess Peach is always portrayed as defenseless and whiny, making her the image of the typical woman in trouble. Her name also portrays the ideas of “womanliness” with the associations of “princess” and “peach” as well as her everlasting affinity with the colour pink. All these ideas depict her womanliness, but more importantly, they also convey the idea of vulnerability and non-resistance (Cho 2009), which eventually requires the unlikely male character (he’s a fat Italian plumber with a poor sense for fashion), Mario, to save this poor princess.
In contrast, Bio Shock is a more modern game for the current-generation of computers and consoles. The main female villain of the game goes by the name of Dr Bridgette Tenenbaum and the evil that she represents is quite clear. Not only is she dressed in the stereotype of the evil English nanny, her main crime is the use of children for her experimentations. As if that were not enough, she actually looks evil as well (Reiner 1997)—there is nothing beautiful about her, she has a crooked nose and seems to wear an eternal smirk on her face.
This is comparable with Japanese video game portrayals as well. I have chosen two Japanese video games to compare. The game, Rei~Zero~, will be used to discuss the woman as a villain and the game, Devil May Cry 4, will be used to demonstrate woman as a victim in Japanese video games. It is interesting to note that the women that I will discuss in both games share a similar name, Kirie for Rei~Zero~ and Kyrie for Devil May Cry 4.
In Rei~Zero~, Kirie is the root of all evil in a haunted Japanese mansion. She is the most powerful ghost that haunts the mansion and her appearance actually elicits fear but she is slightly different from the villain as described in Bio Shock because she is actually well-dressed in a white Japanese kimono. In many ways, it is hard to tell her beauty although the game does imply something of it, which forms the stereotype of the femme fatale—the beautiful evil woman (Reiner 1997).
Kyrie of the Devil May Cry 4 franchise, on the other hand, features the classic portrayals of the female victim and certainly shares all the same characteristics of Princess Peach from the aforementioned Mario Bros. series., except maybe that she is wearing a white dress instead of a pink one.
As we have seen, the portrayal of females are quite similar regardless of where the video games are from and certainly, this says a lot about the conception of females in the world we live in. Berrington and Honkatukia’s (2002) study is also relevant as the female as mad is also seen in the evil characters of these games (the mad scientist in Tenenbaum and the viciously vengeful spirit in Kirie). Also, Princess Peach and Kyrie do fit the molds of the poor thing as well, although both were purely victims and did not commit any crime unlike in Berrington and Honkatukia’s study.
WORD COUNT: 568
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Grade B Response (“B” for “Bounteous”, for lack of a better word (@__@)):
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For this question, I will analyse the concept of the female as an offender and as a victim through several video games as it is difficult to appreciate the full scope of portrayals by looking at only one or two games. In general, it seems safe to argue that the stereotypes of an “evil woman” (as found in Berrington and Honkatukia 2002, and Cho 2009) apply to the world of video games as well, although each is not as simple as the stereotypes may convey.
For example, in Bio Shock, the “evil” Dr Tenenbaum may appear as simply evil by her actions and thoughts about the world, but a fairer analysis would likely conclude that she is more “determined” than she is “evil”. Certainly, her choice for using kidnapped children as her experiments to carve them into monstrosities may be considered wrong, but a closer examination of her actions and speech also reveals that she knows that she has dealt much unnecessary suffering to others and is working hard to undo her transgressions—but not by repenting, rather by actively working alone on a solution to return her subjects to their innocence.
While it is easy to characterise her as “evil” because of what she has done, that judgment would unfairly wipe over the complexity of her character that the game’s creators have endowed upon her. The same argument would also apply to the female villain from a Japanese video game, Rei~Zero~, where the vengeful ghost, Kirie, also has a backstory that made the evil understandable.
It seems important that this journal acknowledges the complexities in the reasons behind the motivation for such evil to be perpetrated because the creators of both games have gone to extents to provide stories in an attempt to make their stories more believable. In saying this, the concept and significance of the audience in shaping how content is formed cannot be ignored (Ditton et al. 2004).
Of course, this may seem odd as many people consider games to simply be just that: games. Some are unconvinced that games have any stories to tell or that they’d be any good even if they did. Consider the thoughts of film director, Ube Boll, who worked on turning several video games into movies and commented, “A lot of video games have no story. I did the movie House of the Dead and got bashed and I said, ‘What were you expecting, Schindler’s List?’”
So audiences for video games may not necessarily be expecting any stories in their consumption of video games, which then frees the game’s writers to ignore any sense in the game’s story elements. However, the converse could also be true that because there is no expectation of a story, the game’s writers are more free to explore and express concepts and ideas that may not be available to other media. Critically-acclaimed games, such as flower and Shadow of the Colossus, are examples of games that have explored the concepts of “peace”, “time” and “justice” in completely different ways—both allowing the player to experience these ideas on their own.
Then there is the concept of the female victim in games which has been around from as early as the Japanese sensation, Mario Bros., and more recently games like Devil May Cry 4 and Dead Space. While there have been some developments in the concept of females as victims in games, it is clear that generally the discourse on this issue has not progressed as far as it could have.
Yet, the problem may lie with the understanding of “What is a victim?”, because it is quite clear that game developers are very sensitive in portraying women in these situations—for example, female victims are always treated with an odd degree of respect in games, especially when compared to male victims. For example, in games, where males and females are victimised, it is more likely that the same amount of brutality is not depicted to the female when compared to the male victim (e.g. Onimusha, Resident Evil, Dead Space, Afro Samurai and so on).
Of course, this is not always true as there are also some games that do not distinguish between male and female victims and depict them as equally “victimisable”, but these games are usually those that provide freedom for the player to victimise. In other words, the player is the one that controls the way in which the game’s protagonist treats other game characters and that is not determined by the game’s story (e.g. Grand Theft Auto, Saint’s Row, Metal Gear Solid, Samurai Spirits, Fallout and so on).
In conclusion, it is important that we do not oversimplify the concepts of the female as portrayed in video games because although there may be some truth in Berrington and Honkatukia’s (2002) dichotomy, it also ignores the larger and sometimes conflicting concepts of the “female” in video games.
WORD COUNT: 820
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Grade A Response (“A” is, of course, for “Awesome” \(^o^)/):
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I begin this journal in objection to the question because I feel that to classify women into either offenders or victims completely misses the point since game portrayals are not the simple dichotomy that some may wish to argue. While I will not refute Berrington and Honkatukia’s (2002) two models to make sense of female criminality, I came to my conclusion when I found myself struggling over what a pure female “victim” and “offender” was within the context of video games.
While it is understandable that this clear division can sometimes exist within movies, news, and other forms of media, it is not altogether clear that this is true for video games as well. Take, for example, the Mario Bros. character of Princess Peach—a “perfect” victim with her pink dress and sheer naivety in dealing with the world. Yet, the concept of Peach as a victim is a time-limited argument because in other games in the series, she would assume various roles including Mario and Luigi’s last hope for salvation in Super Princess Peach.
Certainly, a fair analysis of women in the video game world requires an understanding of the backstory as well as context of the game itself. It is neither fair nor objective to take one video game, especially if it is from a series, and then analyse it only within the specifics of that particular game. The same is true for female villains and to demonstrate, let us consider Dr Bridgette Tenenbaum of Bio Shock.
While she has committed what is likely to be the most horrendous of crimes—kidnapping children for her experiments, the game does not allow her to be constructed purely as the evil villain that Berrington and Honkatukia (2002) argues for and neither does she fit into the evil female moulds that were portrayed in lectures. Throughout the game, it was clear that Dr Tenenbaum was constructed as a determined scientist and her stubborn nature led to a refusal to admit her mistakes and work on a solution alone (something which is stereotypically attributed to men instead of women, see Werner and LaRussa 2004).
In Dr Tenenbaum thus, gender only plays as much a part in her actions as an observer would like it to. In other words, any claim that her actions are to do with the ideology of gender is misled because the game clearly does not portray her as purely evil but rather as a highly intelligent scientist that believes that certain sacrifices need to be made for the advancement of scientific progress (an argument akin to the contemporary debate on embryonic stem cell research).
From this analysis, one may criticise my point of view for being uninformed on the concepts of patriarchy, so I hereby refute this point by noting that contemporary studies into patriarchy have moved beyond understanding it as a male-female dichotomy—with some going so far as to de-gender the concept by reconceiving it into what Eisler (1996) calls “domination culture”. Of course, this is not to deny the oppression of females in society today, but rather it is to provide more informed view of what patriarchy actually means and does in society.
At this point, it seems important that I concede to only using two games to demonstrate my points due to space restrictions, but I am sure that any fair analysis of most games regarding the concept of victim and offender will reveal that none of them are as clear-cut as Berrington and Honkatukia (2002) makes them out to be.
This difficulty in distinction may be unique to games however because it is an interactive media form and as more games go online, the evidence of an active audience and participatory culture have never been so clearly realised (Robinson 2008). In this culture of gaming then, it appears that the gamer can not only shape what the protagonist is like but also perform what they believe she would do in any given situation and thereby decide whether the characters they play are “female” or “male” regardless of the character’s virtual gender.
In conclusion then, it seems that I am unable to furnish an answer to this question because female video game characters today are neither “victims” nor “offenders”, “American” nor “Japanese”, and, strangely enough, “female” nor “male”.
WORD COUNT: 718
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Right, I hope this helps but again, don’t take this to be a good example of anything because I certainly didn’t spend too much time working on it, well, I used up about three hours working on all four journals and also failed to proofread them (so you could see how poorly thought out they are)… so… yea… LOL. I did try though…
Nonetheless, try to capture the spirit of the argument and what differences there are in that regard instead of reading it for any meaningful content (I pulled most of the “facts” from memory, so… LOL).
All the best with the journals and look forward to another post on this journal writing series later.
Yes, ’tis I once more alongside my trusty sidekick, Spamboy. In this post, Spamboy has advised me to flood your sensory systems with some overall guidelines on writing journals and also to divulge to all of you the crime concepts of actus reus and mens rea.
So without further ado, let the spamming begin!
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Some Guidelines for Writing Individual Journals (FAQ Format)
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Writing journals is sometimes not always as simple as it seems since the requirements are not always clear what writing one entails (as opposed to an academic essay, for example). With that then, we have tried to provide you all with some further pointers to give you a sense of what is expected.
Before I begin though, I have to say that, in ways that even they themselves do not know, this guideline was fine tuned by your colleagues, Ruby and Yan. (^__^) Also, thanks to Allison for proofreading this for me and expanding the question set. Right, I shall begin my self-administered auto-questioning interview session now:
Q1. How many journals do I have to do?
A1. You must do the first and last weekly journals (that is, Week 1 and Week 13). As for the remaining weeks, choose six of them to write journals on. You should end up with 8 journals in total.
Q2. Is there a difference between a journal and a mini-essay?
A2. Yes, a journal is a lot more personal in its style of writing and thus, thoughts may be more “raw” in that they may not be as developed and supported as in an essay. The use of the personal pronoun, “I”, carries a lot more weight and meaning in a journal and is encouraged; whereas an essay would strive for a more reasoned position and removal of the self from the thought process.
In this way, the journals are more “self-oriented” and personal thoughts are not as discouraged, but they must still fall within an acceptable range of comprehensibility and relevance. Creativity, in this way, is measured by your ability to adapt the resources provided for you throughout this course to come up with an angle that is insightfully yours.
Q3. How is it possible to discuss the questions at length with so little space to write?
A3. You don’t actually have to adhere strictly to the journal questions found on your course syllabus. In some ways, it may be better to think of the journal questions as “directions” more than actual questions; in fact, it would actually make things a lot more difficult and confusing if you opted to answer each question in its fullest possible way. It is a lot better and easier for you to identify the “essence” or rather, the “gist” of each journal question and reflect on it from there.
For example, instead of simply considering each question point-by-point, you would do better by taking into account the main topic in focus, the lecture notes, the readings, as well as other miscellaneous thoughts you had regarding that particular topic. Looking at all these elements that constitute that topic, read the journal question again, discern a general direction and write out your thoughts on the issue.
While this sounds like an excruciatingly long process, I really should point out that it really shouldn’t be all that long—your thoughts will likely occur to you naturally as you sit through lecture and read the readings. Feel free to accept or reject any points made by anyone, you can’t go wrong as long as you can argue convincingly.
Q4. Regarding media examples, how should I understand the requirement to limit it to only one A4 size?
A4. In terms of media examples (such as newspaper clippings), it was stated that you have to limit the size of your examples to one A4 size. You may interpret this requirement in two ways, both of which are acceptable for submission purposes.
The first way you could do it is simply not bother with providing the example in full and instead, provide an A4 sheet of the reference to that example, much like you would a reference segment at the end of the paper (thereby fitting everything into one A4 sheet). This can also be called the Tsui interpretation.
The second interpretation is that you may use the original examples, but clip them so that they are the size of one A4 sheet of paper. In this scenario, you may use as many A4 sheets as you need since you will likely have more than one clipping and so long as the clipping is the size of one A4 sheet of paper, you’re good to go. Here then, is the Fun interpretation of the requirement.
Finally, this entire section belongs in the appendix, which comes at the end of your portfolio.
Q5. Must I really use local examples only?
A5. While encouraged, it is not a rule that you can only use local examples. One of the tutors for the course possesses the Chinese-reading ability of a giant toad; in fact, it is quite likely that a giant toad could read more Chinese characters than the said tutor (@__@). In this way, it is safe to say that although you are encouraged to utilise local examples, it would also be nice if you could spice things up by providing examples and comparisons from abroad.
Q6. Can we use Chinese (or any other language) in our journals?
A6. Yes, but the usage of a foreign language must be restricted and it must also be translated to English in the fullest possible way. Ideally, journals will still adhere to writing formats such APA, ASA, MLA and so on (all of which actually require foreign languages to be romanised); I can see that it would be unreasonable to strictly enforce this requirement though, so, in the end, please feel free to utilise the source languages if you feel that it is required in your journal; otherwise stick with English.
Q7. What if my dog ate my computer along with all 8 journals in it!?
A7. Submit your dog. (^__^)
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On the Crime Concepts of Actus Reus and Mens Rea
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This section is generally for those who are still learning the basics of crime—if you are a pro at this stuff, you have no reason to be reading this since it will just embarrass me as I display my amateur knowledge of this stuff (^__^”) But if you are someone who is slightly more of an amateur in crime than me then read on…
We had gone through the simple elements of mala prohibita and mala in se in a previous post, so with that, I would like to now talk about the concepts of actus reus and mens rea. (In reality, I actually did criminology because I wanted to learn Latin… as Katz noted, who cares about crime stuff, right? (@__@))
I must mention first though that these concepts are more related to law, but I do believe they serve a good point to understand the idea of crime. Also, I have to note that these are less local examples and more American in their nature; the idea though, is to get those you are not completely familiar with crime to better grasp some of its major elements.
Having dealt with the understanding that crime’s key defining feature is that it is an act that is regulated by the legal code of a specific place, we now move on to the more traditional conception of what “makes” a crime. In general, a crime is said to be established only if guilt can be established and this consists of two important parts—actus reus (or the guilty act) and mens rea (a.k.a. the guilty mind).
The two are brought together under a key principle of natural justice (ius naturale) that “actus non facit reum, nisi mens sit rea“, that is, “the act itself does not constitute guilt unless it is done with a guilty intent”. In other words, in order to say that a person has committed a crime, the accusers must establish guilt not only in the act but also in the mind.
In general, most criminal offences adhere to the requirement that both elements be demonstrated before a person can be charged as guilty under the law. Understanding the requirement for the two principles to go hand-in-hand also creates boundaries on behaviour that cannot be regulated by criminal law—that is, thoughts cannot be criminal without an action nor can actions be deemed criminal if there was no such intention in the first place.
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Actus Reus, the Guilty Act
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This sounds all sensible and simple. Of course, a person must be guilty in action and mind before they could be called guilty, right?
Well, actually, as our budding lawyers in the course will tell you—it’s actually a lot more complicated than that. Consider the simpler of the two, actus reus: it may seem obvious—if someone does something criminal, then it is a criminal act (by the way, this is also referred to as a “positive action”); but what if I didn’t do anything?
What if I decided to just “let” someone die? Well then, actus reus could instead be established under the principle of omission. The idea of omission is “the act of neglecting to act”. The neglected act may have saved another person from harm, but it was not done and thus harm had occurred. Of course, the omitted act must be an obligation or duty under law for it to be deemed criminal, thus much of it depends on existing laws as well as their interpretations. This all seems quite straightforward, but if you fancy to ponder—what does this all add up to in a controversial issue like passive euthanasia? Hmm… (@__@)
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Mens Rea, the Guilty Mind
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Leaving that thought, I move on to the more complicated concept of mens rea. Let us start with the basics for now: mens rea has three levels that range from the most serious charge of intent, a moderate charge of recklessness, and the least serious charge of criminal negligence. The differences between the three may seem obvious, but to be sure, let me go through their definitions quickly:
• Intent is where an actor foresees the consequences of their actions and desires such an outcome;
• Recklessness is where an actor foresees the possibility of certain consequences and still chooses to act in that manner though they did not intend for such an outcome to result; and
• Criminal negligence is where an actor fails to foresee the possible consequences of their actions and, most certainly, did not intend for such an outcome. (Criminal negligence is establised by the legal fiction known as the reasonable person test—a test that is embodied in the question: “Would a reasonable person have acted in the same way as the accused given the same circumstances?”)
So far, so good; but think carefully and you may realise another point of pressing concern: do we always need to prove mens rea in order to established criminality in every case?
Well, the short answer to that is simply: No, not all crimes need the provision of mens rea. These crimes are generally said to have strict liability and here, liability is said to be strict as the act is itself criminal whether or not there was any intention to commit it. For example, in some parts of the United States, statutory rape (having sex with a minor) is a strict liability offence—thus, the act of sex (actus reus) is enough to establish guilt with only evidence of the act. Here, there is no need to consider whether there was any intention to have sex with a minor NOR does the element of consent matter: the act is all that is needed to convict the individual.
Finally, to demonstrate how much more complicated the concept of mens rea can get, let us briefly consider the insanity defence. Many consider the defence to be one that is prone to abuse since “you can just act all crazy and get away with it!”; in fact, in the U.S., it has been called “the rich man’s defence” because of the resources that it requires to form a case around it. Indeed, under this defence, one could be judged as “not guilty by the reason of insanity”—a wonderful escape route for anyone who has the money and acting skills of Edward Norton (in reference to the outstanding film, Primal Fear :P)
Yet despite all the wonders it is said to work, the insanity defence is almost never used and, even more strangely, some people opt to replace their plea of insanity with a normal plea of guilty instead. Which leaves me with a question for all of you: Why? Why would one not utilise such a wonderful defence if one could afford it? Hmm… (again, LOL)?
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Phew… that dragged on for a lot longer than I had hoped. Either way, that will be the last time I discuss crime in a legal context since the concepts of actus reus, mens rea, mala in se, and mala prohibita were all that I wanted to get across in regards to crime and its meaning. I am not an expert in law and legal issues (otherwise I’d be a true lawyer instead of a purported criminologist), so posts after this will finally be dealing more with the criminological side of things.
Right, I’ve kept this post in the docks for too long (and Spamboy is all tired now from over-spamming :()—so it’s time to publish! Totsiens all and have a good weekend!
[This post was proofed on Saturday, 21 February 2009 at 12:13 am. If you see any errors that require correction, feel free to point them out and blast me to smithereens. (^__^)]
Hello all!
Seeing that you were all so very wonderful in your first tutorial and also willing to place your faith in us by not dropping the course, the all-merciful Bench has decided to commute your sentence of 13 individual journal entries to 8 individual journal entries.
While the Bench had thought it a fair sentence previously, on reviewing the fact that all of you had exhibited good behaviour and in light of other mitigating factors (e.g. some of you already submitting journal drafts), we now believe that a reduced sentence of 8 individual journal entries would better benefit the community.
The new requirements are as follows,
~1~
You MAY choose 6 weeks between Week 2 and Week 12
to write your journal entries about.
~2~
You SHALL complete journal entries for Week 1 and Week 13.
These would be the first and final entry.
~3~
You SHALL submit a minimum of 2 journal entries for the reading week
mid-semester assessment.
~4~
You SHALL submit a total of 8 journal entries by the deadline of
5:00 pm on Friday, April the 24th, 2009.
Here’s an exercise in law and a taste of criminal justice—try to negotiate the differences between the words “may” and “shall” in a legal context (it’s not as simple as you may think).
After this quick exercise, it is hoped that you can appreciate how precisely the law must be crafted in legal systems that adhere to due process and why every word matters in a legal document (imagine how much stress our lawyer friends must go through daily as they pick apart those evil words!). Indeed, if you ever wondered why sometimes legal decisions may seem “unjust” or “stupid”, you may want to ask yourself first: what does the law actually say on the issue and what does “upholding the law” actually mean?
Right then, back to work. I hope that makes sense and that the lawyers in the course won’t execute me for writing this travesty of a post! I tried to frame this using random legal lingo because, well, I thought it would be nice to “get to know” some of its jargon, LOL.
Totsiens, friends! (no, totsiens is not legal jargon but it is a way of saying “see ya!” I used “ciao” too much last semester, so I thought I’d spice things up a little by using a different language, LOL!)
As the first tutorial is over, and I guess (some of) you have started to search newspaper clippings in relation to your topic chosen for later presentations, or for writing individual journal entries.
Here’s just a reminder that Wisenews and Wisesearch (the search engine) could actually search English newspapers and magazines (for Hong Kong newspapers, SCMP and the Standard, also iMail and Hong Kong Standard which are disappeared from the market…). Please limit the source into ‘English’ if you would like to search English news clippings only. In fact, the data-base contains the clippings from 1998 until now. The detail of how to access the data-base has been mentioned in an earlier entry
And if you’re interested to older news clippings, you could also search from a data-base called Hong Kong Newspaper Clippings Online, which contain the English news clippings from 1971 to 1994. You could access the data-base through HKU Library website:
HKU Library Homepage –> then click “HKUL Digitial Initiatives” , then click “Hong Kong Newspaper Clippings Online”. The news clippings are in English, including SCMP and Hong Kong Standard.
Also, just added a link of Bilingual Laws Information System (by the Department of Justice) on the sidebar, you could search the most updated laws and regulations through this data-base (both Chinese and English version are available)
Hope these will be helpful. Just leave a comment, or send a email to your tutor if you have any queries.
Happy searching 🙂
Allison
(p.s. Here I should thank Mr. Chu Hoi-dick who teach me the importance of searching database…)
Hey all, this post was written to address two issues,
1) It has been brought to our attention that the course readings were temporarily out of stock at the HKUSU Photocopying Centre in Chong Yuet Ming Amenities Centre. I do apologise for any distress and difficulties this may have caused, but please be assured that this problem has been resolved and that the course pack will be available again today (Thursday, 5th February). You will notice that the new pack will have some notes scribbled on the first few readings—forgive me for this as I was unable to find a correction pen to wipe them out in my rush to resolve this problem. Again, please accept my apologies for this oversight.
2) Those who have sat to ponder the tasks of the tutorial may also have noticed that the requirements for Week 2 and Week 3 sound extremely similar. The difference is simply that in Week 2, you will be working primarily within your groups so that you will have more time to get to know the members in your team as well as to coordinate and allocate responsibilities for the rest of the semester. In some ways, you could conceive of Week 2 as still part of the orientation period; but as we move on to Week 3, things will begin to get a little more “serious” as discussions occur between groups and each group take turns to discuss their preliminary observations on their topic of interest. In essence, Week 3 will set the tone for the rest of the tutorials this semester.
Hopefully, that helps to clear up the main differences between the two weeks as well as set aside questions pertaining to the course reading pack. Right then, cheerio friends!
Hello friends, in this post you will find three items of interest. To help in making sense of it all, I will go through each one briefly (they are actually quite self-explanatory, but JUST IN CASE… LOL)
1. Tutorial Outline (click here to download)
This is basically the tutorial outline you got in lecture today—unless you weren’t in lecture today… Then you may want to download this to orientate you to what to expect in the tutorials. Don’t worry, they are NOT as crazy as they look.
2. Tutorial 1 Worksheet (click here to download)
This is a worksheet for the first tutorial. Take a look at the questions but don’t think too hard about them because, well, you really can’t answer it without a group… LOL. Either way, this is just so you know what to expect in part of Tutorial 1.
3. Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s on Journalism at HKU libraries (click here to view)
The video you watched today is available from the HKU library catalogue. Unfortunately, some quick hands have snatched it and it is now due sometime in February* (@__@)
Right then, I have to get out of here! Later all!
*Thanks to Jenny for spotting this mistake—I initially wrote that Outfoxed was due back in October, LOL. My humble apologies for that error and sincere thanks for the correction! m(_ _)m
In case you haven’t got the hardcopy from last lecture (or, you lost it), just download it for reference. It list out all the topics, readings as well as the questions for your individual journal.
Hi there. Just write a little note on how to search the news clippings through Wisenews – a local news clipping search engine, in which we could access through the library website. I guess most of you have used it before.
To access Wisenews:
1. go to the library homepage (www.lib.hku.hk)
2. click “Electronic Resources” (the third item under the title “Research Toos”)
3. click “Key Chinese E-Resources”
4. click the second item “Wisenews”
After entering the Wisenews website, click “WiseSearch” (at the top right-hand corner), and you could start searching what you want…
Wisenews has most of the news clippings of media in Hong Kong, both in Chinese and English (so there’s SCMP), as well as other Chinese societies. However, most of the clippings in Wisenews are text-only, so, for photos and pictures (which are important items for a news report nowadays), it’s better to find a physical newspaper for reference…and you could find old newspapers in a library (for HKU, they are stored on 1/F of Main Library)
Allison
SOCI0067 Crime and the Media 