Monday, December 1, 2008
Photoblog
http://f1215833808.blogspot.com/2008/08/why-do-you-play-ultimate-part-21.html
This man periodically uploads a photo essay consisting of photographs he takes of people participating in the sport Ultimate, or in community activities related to the sport. I've selected three pictures from this particular post to look at a little more closely. To give this look a structure, I have picked one each from before, during, and after a tournament. The title of the post is "Why do you play Ultimate, part 21"
Before
This picture shows a teammate passed out in the back of a car on the way to a tournament. Teams tend to carpool to tournaments, and the travel becomes a unique part of the shared experience among players. The photographer here is capturing a moment that contributes to that shared experience: getting intimate looks at people you may or may not know very well, stuck in a car for a drive that may last upwards of six hours. The photo is humorous, because the subject is resting her head against the seat-belt and thereby smushing her nose, but the close-up nature of the photo puts the emphasis on her face. We can see towels and socks in the trunk in the background of the picture, but the girl is the focus--she is what is important to the photographer, and he tries to freeze a memory of this person in an unconsciously vulnerable situation. Road trips, even short ones, require a lot of trust, and sleeping in the car takes even more. The photographer in a way takes advantage of this trust, but does it with what seems to be an intent to preserve, not ridicule.
During
Here we have a player/spectator on the sidelines of a beach Ultimate tournament. She is most likely a player because the sport does not have a fan base outside of its players, and the hat she is wearing is from a middle-tier team on the west coast. She is wearing a wristband that grants her access to this particular tournament, and drinking a Mexican beer. The photo ties in several elements of the community--the "fun" tournament, taken as a social event for players and often featuring alcohol consumption, the way spectators are players, and the way teams sell merchandise to friends and family to raise money for travel. The white shirt next to her has a print from a team called "Downtown Brown," which is an off-season tournament team composed of only minority players who get together to promote diversity and tolerance in the community. The overall sense here is that the Ultimate community is complex and encompasses many different kinds of people, playing for different reasons, none of which have to do with profit like big-time sports.
After
In this photograph a young man in a collared shirt made by Gaia, a company which manufactures clothing only for the Ultimate community, and holding a coach's whistle. We see again the Mexican beer and what appears to be a birthday cake, as inferred from the candles. The photo is from an after-tournament party, where players from different teams get together after a day of intense competition to relax, socialize, and enjoy the bonds of the community. Almost out of the frame is a man playing an electric guitar, and there is a very candid feel to the photo--especially with the pose of the subject and the cake all over his face. The "party" is likely being held in the home or apartment of several teammates who live together, given the context of the image and the way that many college players live in team houses. Again, the focus here is the community which exists as a part of the sport, but is not only about the sport.
This man periodically uploads a photo essay consisting of photographs he takes of people participating in the sport Ultimate, or in community activities related to the sport. I've selected three pictures from this particular post to look at a little more closely. To give this look a structure, I have picked one each from before, during, and after a tournament. The title of the post is "Why do you play Ultimate, part 21"
Before
This picture shows a teammate passed out in the back of a car on the way to a tournament. Teams tend to carpool to tournaments, and the travel becomes a unique part of the shared experience among players. The photographer here is capturing a moment that contributes to that shared experience: getting intimate looks at people you may or may not know very well, stuck in a car for a drive that may last upwards of six hours. The photo is humorous, because the subject is resting her head against the seat-belt and thereby smushing her nose, but the close-up nature of the photo puts the emphasis on her face. We can see towels and socks in the trunk in the background of the picture, but the girl is the focus--she is what is important to the photographer, and he tries to freeze a memory of this person in an unconsciously vulnerable situation. Road trips, even short ones, require a lot of trust, and sleeping in the car takes even more. The photographer in a way takes advantage of this trust, but does it with what seems to be an intent to preserve, not ridicule.
During
Here we have a player/spectator on the sidelines of a beach Ultimate tournament. She is most likely a player because the sport does not have a fan base outside of its players, and the hat she is wearing is from a middle-tier team on the west coast. She is wearing a wristband that grants her access to this particular tournament, and drinking a Mexican beer. The photo ties in several elements of the community--the "fun" tournament, taken as a social event for players and often featuring alcohol consumption, the way spectators are players, and the way teams sell merchandise to friends and family to raise money for travel. The white shirt next to her has a print from a team called "Downtown Brown," which is an off-season tournament team composed of only minority players who get together to promote diversity and tolerance in the community. The overall sense here is that the Ultimate community is complex and encompasses many different kinds of people, playing for different reasons, none of which have to do with profit like big-time sports.
After
In this photograph a young man in a collared shirt made by Gaia, a company which manufactures clothing only for the Ultimate community, and holding a coach's whistle. We see again the Mexican beer and what appears to be a birthday cake, as inferred from the candles. The photo is from an after-tournament party, where players from different teams get together after a day of intense competition to relax, socialize, and enjoy the bonds of the community. Almost out of the frame is a man playing an electric guitar, and there is a very candid feel to the photo--especially with the pose of the subject and the cake all over his face. The "party" is likely being held in the home or apartment of several teammates who live together, given the context of the image and the way that many college players live in team houses. Again, the focus here is the community which exists as a part of the sport, but is not only about the sport.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Citizen Journalism - The Turnpike
The New Jersey Turnpike is the 5th most-travelled highway in America and plays a major part in transportation throughout New Jersey. One reason the road was built was to take the interstate traffic off New Jersey's existing roads, which is why the highway was never landscaped. According to a letter that discusses Jersey's then-governer's intentions, "85 percent of the traffic at that time was estimated to be from out of state, why spend additional funds on landscaping?" Built between 1950 and 1952, the Turnpike was completed before the Interstate Highway System was even begun in 1956. The IHS was originally pushed by Eisenhower to provide for easier travel and increased national security--every so often, all lanes of a highway are used to help evacuate a city, generally in preparation for a hurricane. The IHS actually used the Turnpike, along with other major highways (such as the Pennsylvania Turnpike) as a model, which is especially interesting because out of the original plans for the IHS, every single road has either been cancelled or complete--except for Interstate 95, which features a discontinuity in New Jersey.
It is therefore not possible to drive the entire length of I-95 without interruption. Originally, I-95 was planned to run down where I-287 is now and parallel the Turnpike. Several factors contributed to the cancellation of this part of the road. Wealthy landowners in the Princeton area would have been displaced and therefore fought the project as a part of the Freeway Revolts (civilians protesting the construction of major roadways through their properties). The New Jersey Turnpike Authority would have lost revenue on the Turnpike is I-95 ran parallel, and therefore opposed this route for I-95 as well. Finally, Amtrak fought the project because they didn't want a new efficient road link between NYC and Philly, and the project was eventually scrapped. The two sections of I-95 currently exist about 10 miles apart from each other, so if you're driving northbound from PA it ends at US 1 in NJ, and turns into I-295 Southbound heading into Delaware. To continue on I-95 northbound, you have to go south on I-295 then east on I-195 and then take the Turnpike, which is also signed as I-95. In fact, disabled vehicle services on the Turnpike are obtained by dialing #95 on a cell phone, the way you dial #GSP (#447) on the Garden State Parkway.
This situation is scheduled to be fixed sometime in the 2010s when a new interchange is to be built, and I-95 is to be re-routed north of Philly to the Pennsylvania Turnpike and then to the main line of the New Jersey Turnpike, according to the Pennsylvania Turnpike/Interstate 95 Interchange Project.
It is therefore not possible to drive the entire length of I-95 without interruption. Originally, I-95 was planned to run down where I-287 is now and parallel the Turnpike. Several factors contributed to the cancellation of this part of the road. Wealthy landowners in the Princeton area would have been displaced and therefore fought the project as a part of the Freeway Revolts (civilians protesting the construction of major roadways through their properties). The New Jersey Turnpike Authority would have lost revenue on the Turnpike is I-95 ran parallel, and therefore opposed this route for I-95 as well. Finally, Amtrak fought the project because they didn't want a new efficient road link between NYC and Philly, and the project was eventually scrapped. The two sections of I-95 currently exist about 10 miles apart from each other, so if you're driving northbound from PA it ends at US 1 in NJ, and turns into I-295 Southbound heading into Delaware. To continue on I-95 northbound, you have to go south on I-295 then east on I-195 and then take the Turnpike, which is also signed as I-95. In fact, disabled vehicle services on the Turnpike are obtained by dialing #95 on a cell phone, the way you dial #GSP (#447) on the Garden State Parkway.
This situation is scheduled to be fixed sometime in the 2010s when a new interchange is to be built, and I-95 is to be re-routed north of Philly to the Pennsylvania Turnpike and then to the main line of the New Jersey Turnpike, according to the Pennsylvania Turnpike/Interstate 95 Interchange Project.
Monday, November 3, 2008
About the Vote
Rather than directly voting for the President and VP, we vote for electors. This mean we vote for whatever party's ticket we want, and that party has chosen electors who are technically free to vote for anyone eligible to be President, but actually vote for their party's candidates. Each state has a number of electors equal to the number of its Senators and Representatives in Congress. The District of Columbia also has electors as if it were a state, but never more than the number held by the "least populous" state. Currently, there are 538 electors and the majority needed to win is 270.
Presidential campaigns therefore try to win the popular vote in a combination of states to get a majority of the electors, rather than the national popular vote. Most states award all of their electoral votes to the party that wins the popular vote, but Maine and Nebraska pick a single elector within each Congressional district rather than winner-take-all, and then its remaining two electors are awared based on the statewide popular vote. If neither candidate gets at least 270, the House of Representatives chooses the president. In the same way, the Senate chooses the VP in case of neither VP getting the 270 or more. Congress has seen many proposals to switch to a direct popular-vote for the presidency, but it has never passed.
There are several US presidential election decisions that could have been reversed by a small change in the popular vote within a state. Because of the electoral college, reverses would turn a narrow-margin win into a large-margin loss, or vice-versa. Examples of this include the 1876, 1916, 1976, and 2000 presidential elections. The closest election by electoral votes was 1876, where three states saw each party claim their candidate won the popular vote and the electoral college fought amongst itself before creating a special commission, comprised of 5 Senators, 5 Representatives, and 5 Justices of the Supreme Court (8 of these were Republicans, 7 Democrats). This committee called the Republican Hayes the president, but most historians believe that the Compromise of 1877 played a big part in the decision, allowing Hayes to be elected but in return Reconstruction would be effectively over in the South. The 2000 election was officially decided by 537 popular votes in Florida, and Gore would have won a large-margin victory if he had taken Florida.
Political parties choose their slate of electors in each state, and they generally select party members with a reputation for high loyalty to the party and its candidate. There are faithless electors, though, sometimes--members of the electoral college who do not vote for the candidate they have promised to. This has happened 158 times, but many of those times were because the candidate died before the elector could vote for them. Other times it may have been by accident that an elector voted for somebody else--in 2004, an anonymous Minnesota elector voted for John Edwards to be president (instead of John Kerry), and also voted Edwards to be VP. This was most likely an accident. There have been times, however, when the elector was acting with intent--twice an elector has abstained, most recently in 2000 to protest the way Washington D.C. is not a state. All the other times, an elector or group of electors has essentially boycotted the candidate they were supposed to vote for, but never has a faithless elector changed the outcome of an election. Although some states have outlawed faithless electors, none to date have ever been charged with a crime. Faithless electors do risk ostracism or retaliation from the party they belong to.
In 1860, 4 electors in New Jersey were supposed to vote for the Northern Democrat Stephen Douglas, but instead they voted for Abraham Lincoln.
Presidential campaigns therefore try to win the popular vote in a combination of states to get a majority of the electors, rather than the national popular vote. Most states award all of their electoral votes to the party that wins the popular vote, but Maine and Nebraska pick a single elector within each Congressional district rather than winner-take-all, and then its remaining two electors are awared based on the statewide popular vote. If neither candidate gets at least 270, the House of Representatives chooses the president. In the same way, the Senate chooses the VP in case of neither VP getting the 270 or more. Congress has seen many proposals to switch to a direct popular-vote for the presidency, but it has never passed.
There are several US presidential election decisions that could have been reversed by a small change in the popular vote within a state. Because of the electoral college, reverses would turn a narrow-margin win into a large-margin loss, or vice-versa. Examples of this include the 1876, 1916, 1976, and 2000 presidential elections. The closest election by electoral votes was 1876, where three states saw each party claim their candidate won the popular vote and the electoral college fought amongst itself before creating a special commission, comprised of 5 Senators, 5 Representatives, and 5 Justices of the Supreme Court (8 of these were Republicans, 7 Democrats). This committee called the Republican Hayes the president, but most historians believe that the Compromise of 1877 played a big part in the decision, allowing Hayes to be elected but in return Reconstruction would be effectively over in the South. The 2000 election was officially decided by 537 popular votes in Florida, and Gore would have won a large-margin victory if he had taken Florida.
Political parties choose their slate of electors in each state, and they generally select party members with a reputation for high loyalty to the party and its candidate. There are faithless electors, though, sometimes--members of the electoral college who do not vote for the candidate they have promised to. This has happened 158 times, but many of those times were because the candidate died before the elector could vote for them. Other times it may have been by accident that an elector voted for somebody else--in 2004, an anonymous Minnesota elector voted for John Edwards to be president (instead of John Kerry), and also voted Edwards to be VP. This was most likely an accident. There have been times, however, when the elector was acting with intent--twice an elector has abstained, most recently in 2000 to protest the way Washington D.C. is not a state. All the other times, an elector or group of electors has essentially boycotted the candidate they were supposed to vote for, but never has a faithless elector changed the outcome of an election. Although some states have outlawed faithless electors, none to date have ever been charged with a crime. Faithless electors do risk ostracism or retaliation from the party they belong to.
In 1860, 4 electors in New Jersey were supposed to vote for the Northern Democrat Stephen Douglas, but instead they voted for Abraham Lincoln.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Sell! Sell!
Blogshares.org ranks blogs by links. I reviewed three of the site's top 5 ranked "humor" blogs in English, though the "industries" in which blogs are placed are not always a fitting category for a particular blog.
"Go Fug Yourself," for example, is really more of a fashion critique blog. Using the word "fug," an abbreviated form of the slang word "fugly" (fucking ugly), the bloggers posts pics of popular celebrities and red carpet walkers in attractive, questionable, or hideous getups. Some of the posts have just a comment or two about the clothes, a few have a little more talk to them, but mostly it's about the photographs themselves. The tone is almost always "what was she thinking?!" and often there's a link to something the comment references while bashing the star. The intended audience of these posts appears to be those who want to keep up on fashion and gossip but have not enough time (or perhaps a bit too much). Text is always separate from the images, and any person even a little familiar with the blog wouldn't need to see anything but the photo to get a general sense of the writer's opinion. When a dress is questionable, on the border between bold and bomb, there is usually a poll for people to vote whether they thought it worked or not. Commenting seems to have been disabled, but the writers have published a book. From its back cover: "Their smart, scathing dressing-down of fashion disasters has become a media sensation, with Time dubbing their website one of the fifty coolest blogs and Entertainment Weekly tagging it as one of the staff's twenty-five favorite sites on the Internet."
"I Can Has Cheezburger?" is perhaps more of a teen/college cult phenomenon. Commonly known as "Lolcats," the blog posts pictures of cats with captions--ostensibly from the cats themselves. The misspellings and grammar mistakes of the captions give almost an authenticity to the captions, but mostly it makes everything so darn cute. The cats are almost always in a funny or awkward position, photographed up close or from an odd angle, and often engaged with some object or other animal. The caption makes the viewer see the picture in a humorous light, and voila--it's all funnier than it should be. Viewers vote and comment, but the pictures usually stand alone or thank the source, and it is clear that viewers are encouraged to send in their own pictures--or even recaption the ones already up. There are several companion websites with similar themes--one is for dogs, another for celebs--but the cats were first and remain the most popular. It seems like the intent of the blog is to be cute, make people laugh, and get pageviews like nobody's business. And they've accomplished these three things extremely well.
"The Silverbacks" makes humor its bread and political commentary its butter. There are funny pictures of animals, amusing videos, syndicated comics reposted, and the occasional text joke. Frequently, though, the site pushes a Republican point of view, trying to make jokes at Obama's expense and even posting anti-Obama materials that don't try to be funny. The blogger also endorses drinking, gun ownership, and Christianity with permanent pictures down the left side of the page. While much of the content is indeed funny, there is also significant nudity and off-color humor. The blog warns you of that, however, and makes no attempt to hide its political affiliation. A few posts get a few comments, typically just "that's so funny!" or the like, and the audience is almost certainly southern males of at least past their mid-teens. The blog is very eclectic, but not especially unique--in fact, it mostly reposts content from elsewhere, in contrast to both of the previous blogs.
All three manage to be funny, but there is no clear reason why they seem to be cut above the rest.
"Go Fug Yourself," for example, is really more of a fashion critique blog. Using the word "fug," an abbreviated form of the slang word "fugly" (fucking ugly), the bloggers posts pics of popular celebrities and red carpet walkers in attractive, questionable, or hideous getups. Some of the posts have just a comment or two about the clothes, a few have a little more talk to them, but mostly it's about the photographs themselves. The tone is almost always "what was she thinking?!" and often there's a link to something the comment references while bashing the star. The intended audience of these posts appears to be those who want to keep up on fashion and gossip but have not enough time (or perhaps a bit too much). Text is always separate from the images, and any person even a little familiar with the blog wouldn't need to see anything but the photo to get a general sense of the writer's opinion. When a dress is questionable, on the border between bold and bomb, there is usually a poll for people to vote whether they thought it worked or not. Commenting seems to have been disabled, but the writers have published a book. From its back cover: "Their smart, scathing dressing-down of fashion disasters has become a media sensation, with Time dubbing their website one of the fifty coolest blogs and Entertainment Weekly tagging it as one of the staff's twenty-five favorite sites on the Internet."
"I Can Has Cheezburger?" is perhaps more of a teen/college cult phenomenon. Commonly known as "Lolcats," the blog posts pictures of cats with captions--ostensibly from the cats themselves. The misspellings and grammar mistakes of the captions give almost an authenticity to the captions, but mostly it makes everything so darn cute. The cats are almost always in a funny or awkward position, photographed up close or from an odd angle, and often engaged with some object or other animal. The caption makes the viewer see the picture in a humorous light, and voila--it's all funnier than it should be. Viewers vote and comment, but the pictures usually stand alone or thank the source, and it is clear that viewers are encouraged to send in their own pictures--or even recaption the ones already up. There are several companion websites with similar themes--one is for dogs, another for celebs--but the cats were first and remain the most popular. It seems like the intent of the blog is to be cute, make people laugh, and get pageviews like nobody's business. And they've accomplished these three things extremely well.
"The Silverbacks" makes humor its bread and political commentary its butter. There are funny pictures of animals, amusing videos, syndicated comics reposted, and the occasional text joke. Frequently, though, the site pushes a Republican point of view, trying to make jokes at Obama's expense and even posting anti-Obama materials that don't try to be funny. The blogger also endorses drinking, gun ownership, and Christianity with permanent pictures down the left side of the page. While much of the content is indeed funny, there is also significant nudity and off-color humor. The blog warns you of that, however, and makes no attempt to hide its political affiliation. A few posts get a few comments, typically just "that's so funny!" or the like, and the audience is almost certainly southern males of at least past their mid-teens. The blog is very eclectic, but not especially unique--in fact, it mostly reposts content from elsewhere, in contrast to both of the previous blogs.
All three manage to be funny, but there is no clear reason why they seem to be cut above the rest.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
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