We're Going On A Blog Hunt - Part Three

We’re up to number nine of my journey through Time.com’s 25 best blogs. If you’ve come this far, you may as well go a little further.

One of the most prolific blogs out there (65 posts in the last 24 hours!) has to be the media, gossip and pop culture blog, Gawker. Personally, I prefer the media and pop culture posts to the gossip, but there appears to be more than enough of all of them. Interesting features that I spotted were the ‘Gawker Stalker Sightings’ and the Open Caption threads (basically the same idea as the Cartoon Caption Contest on Radosh.net, but with a celebrity photograph instead). But what’s this… one of the main category headings on the home page is ‘Tom Cruise’. Surely there’s not enough Cruise posts to warrant a category of entertainment unto himself? Let’s refresh the site… but no, there it is again! Weird…

My partner-in-crime has suggested that I try the Daily Kos next, so any long-term damage I suffer as a result is on her head. The messages are fairly simple: Obama is a hero, McCain is a conservative and bordering on senile, and while I admit that the arguments are more detailed than your average leftist blog, it all pretty much amounts to the same thing. Of more interest is their dKosopedia project, a political encyclopedia which has useful articles on topics such as ‘How To Run For Office’ and the set-up of the US Government. If you were ever befuddled by what was going on in The West Wing, this may be the resource for you.

The Consumerist is a worthy match for Gawker in terms of prolificacy, in this case centering on the various ways us poor consumers are swindled. Posts from the day that I visited include: a man being refused an early termination on his lease for the apartment in which his fiancée was murdered, a Lonely Planet writer admitting to basing his book on information from his girlfriend, Sears refusing to refund the money for a television that they never delivered, and a Wal-Mart employee trying to coerce a customer by holding his credit card. Some will be pleased to learn that there are special sections on ‘Banks’ and ‘Airlines’. And once you feel that you an informed consumer, you can click on one of the flashy ads.

We're Going On A Blog Hunt - Part Two

Continuing my exploration of Time.com’s 25 best blogs:

I’m going with The Sartorialist next, because of its nifty-sounding name, and I’d forgotten it’s about fashion. The basic concept behind this blog is to take photos of what people are wearing on the street (as opposed to the catwalks), and then give others the opportunity to comment on the pics like one, giant magazine-flicking session. Y’know, it’s not too bad… the selection of outfits is usually pretty good, and I reckon I could browse around this blog for five minutes or so, which for me is, like, well… huge. For the truly fashionably-inclined, I could see this becoming just as addictive as Indexed.

To us Aussies, Bad Jocks sounds a bit strange at first, but fortunately it’s about the transgressions of sports stars rather than iffy underwear. Or not… I can’t say I particularly care about scandals of any kind, even the athletic variety. However, I did enjoy the list of all-time blood alcohol content rankings that Time mentioned, with former Detroit Tigers broadcaster Larry Sorensen reaching 0.48% (he also recorded a 0.36% and a 0.24%). Otherwise, this one’s not for me.

I find Boing Boing (A Directory of Wonderful Things) both intriguing and depressing; it’s got some interesting stuff, but it makes me feel nauseous to realise just how much junk there is out there. A random week: Cuban taser glove from 1935, motorcycles made from watchparts, tactical food fight spoons, Donkey Kong monster truck… I can’t take this abject pointlessness. Guess I’m not as postmodern as I thought I was.

Postsecret is another one of those one-trick blogs, but it’s a pretty good one: people send in homemade postcards with some sort of personal secret written on the front. In contrast to Bad Jocks, I find this blog oddly compelling. I think it’s because of the startling variety of ways people choose to express their secrets; of the postcards that I saw no two of them seemed anything alike. Definitely check this one out. And no, I don’t plan to be a contributor (or do I?)

Regret the Error is devoted to compiling various media stuff-ups, mostly from the US and UK, but I spotted some Australian entries there as well. Most of them are fairly humdrum to me, but the year-end highlights are good for a laugh. I think I’ll come back to this blog in about eight months.

We're Going On A Blog Hunt - Part One

Time.com have recently compiled their First Annual Blog Index, which as far as I can tell, is not so much an ‘index’ as a list of what the author considers to be the 25 best blogs out there today. Since I’ve been looking for some new sites to visit, I’ve decided to trawl through each of the blogs on the list, and see if I find them of interest or not. And since I’ve been looking for some new subjects to write about, I’m going to record my impressions here. Hopefully, you’ll find something interesting as well – those who find my blog naivete amusing and/or infuriating are best advised to turn away now.

The ‘Powerpoint Anthology of Literature’ feature on Radosh.net sounds impossible to resist, so I’m going to start there. It’s pretty cool in a geekish-bookwormish sort of way (I personally like the Lolita slide), but sadly, there’s not nearly enough of it (hmm, this sounds like a job for…). Elsewhere, to coincide with the Time listing, Mr. Radosh has helpfully put up a list of ‘greatest hits’ for newcomers. His voluminous writings on the teenage girl band Huckapoo (yes, Huckapoo) again prove that satire has not a hope in hell of keeping up with reality, as do the various entries on media censorship. Make sure to check out a few of the ‘New Yorker Cartoon Anti-Caption Contests’, where readers are invited to ‘submit the worst possible caption’ for a cartoon from the New Yorker magazine. Funny site – shall visit in future.

The Reverse Cowgirl sounds like the second-most impossible thing to resist, so let’s go there next. As the title implies, the subject of this blog is pornography (yeah, don’t try looking at it at work, folks), with ‘Porn Valley’, USA, on centre stage. The author’s more recent posts have tended to focus upon the creative process involved in writing a novel based in this infamous area of the world. Alright, alright, I had actually never heard of ‘Porn Valley’, and that pretty much explains why, although I think this blog is well written, I’m probably not going to be a regular visitor. Worth a look though.

According to voters at the Time.com site, Indexed currently has the highest average rating of the 25 blogs. It’s certainly a clever idea – using Venn diagrams and other graphical tools to make comments about the world – but how can you sustain that for over 1000 posts? Well, apparently you can… I can see that one might become addicted to it, but I wonder if reading too many entries could start making you go a little loopy. User beware.

More Of The Same #2

More Of The Same #1

Daniel Plainview and the Dangers of Capitalism

Last night, I saw Paul Thomas Anderson’s most recent film, There Will Be Blood. (Warning: spoilers ahead!) As anyone who has seen the film can attest to, the main character, Daniel Plainview (portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis) is a mean old bastard indeed. To recap his misdeeds: first, he drastically underpays a dirt-poor, God-fearing family for the right to drill their land for oil. Then he abandons his adopted son not once but twice, the first time as a child when his deafness becomes a burden and the second time as an adult when he announces his intention to form his own (rival) company. Third, he kills his best friend and supposed half-brother when he realizes that man is an impostor and may be after his money. And finally, in the promised bloody climax, he reveals to his arch-nemesis Eli Sunday that he has sucked all of the surroundings lands dry of oil as well, before clubbing the young preacher to death with a bowling pin.



If Daniel is the personification of capitalism, then the whole system appears to be rotten to the core, allowing greedy, unscrupulous men like Plainview to pillage the land and potential wealth of needy communities. But I got the impression that Anderson’s message was not quite as black and white as all that. For one thing, Eli Sunday hardly seems like an innocent himself; he too appears to crave power, except that he does so by manipulating people’s faith (a rather old-world way of gaining influence as opposed to Daniel’s new-world methods). Eli appears to fail because, as Daniel implies, he does not understand the logic of capitalism in the way his brother Paul did. Eli wanted the financial clout that Daniel enjoyed, whereas Paul knew that very few could gain such power and was happy with directing Daniel to the oil fields for a much smaller sum.



So does that mean that capitalism is simply divided up into the miserable and the less miserable? I think that Daniel’s son, H.W., offers a glimpse of redemption. During his early years, H.W. is Daniel’s ‘business partner’, and he develops a love for their work that lasts into adulthood. H.W. is aware of Daniel’s shortcomings – too competitive, unforgiving, morally questionable - and is determined to break free of them. After draining Little Boston of oil, Daniel retreats to his mansion, but H.W. marries one of the local girls, Eli’s sister Mary Sunday. H.W. seems as if he could work under any system, Daniel and Eli do not.

In the end then, I think There Will Be Blood is a portrayal of the disadvantages of capitalism rather than a renunciation of it. Which is not to say that it is resigned to things being the way they are. But those who try to re-make the world in their image often end up very much alone.

The Best Player in the AFL

Nothing earth-shattering here - I just wanted to see what result you would get.

On the Basketball Reference blog, it was suggested that the player who should be considered the best in the NBA at any point in time is the one who has earned the most (MVP) voting support over a period of years. Basically, a player's value is measured by:

0.4 * votes in season t +
0.3 * votes in season t-1 +
0.2 * votes in season t-2 +
0.1 * votes in season t-3

So if we apply that formula to Brownlow Medal voting, here are the best players over the past decade:

1997 Robert Harvey (St.Kilda)
1998 Robert Harvey (St.Kilda)
1999 Robert Harvey (St.Kilda)
2000 Nathan Buckley (Collingwood)
2001 Nathan Buckley (Collingwood)
2002 Andrew McLeod (Adelaide)
2003 Andrew McLeod (Adelaide)
2004 Mark Ricciuto (Adelaide)
2005 Chris Judd (West Coast)
2006 Chris Judd (West Coast)
2007 Daniel Kerr (West Coast)

Seems like a reasonable list to me. Moving to this system would prevent the Shane Woewodins of the league from walking away with the best and fairest award, but somehow I don't think it will catch on...

Who Are The Bandwagoners?

Part of the rivalry between AFL clubs is accusing other teams’ supporters of 'jumping on the bandwagon’ – that is, implying that they have a greater than average tendency to turn up/’come out of the woodwork’ when their team is winning more games. But for which teams is this accusation justified? To find out, I collected season-by-season numbers on a team’s winning percentage and average attendance (during the home-and-away season only), and estimated the following relationship:

Percentage deviation of team’s average attendance per game in season from trend average attendance*
= α
+ β x team’s winning percentage in season
+ γ x percentage deviation of league’s average attendance per game in season from trend average attendance**

*All trend measures are a 13-term Henderson moving average.
**Endogeneity?... Meh.

So the stronger the positive relationship between a team’s winning percentage and its percentage deviation in average attendance per game from trend average attendance, the more fair-weathered a club’s supporters are. I’ve only estimated this relationship from 1982 onwards (when South Melbourne became Sydney), as I didn’t want to hold today’s supporters to account for the fickleness of their long-dead predecessors.

And here are the results:

Estimate of β*

Sydney – 0.393
Collingwood – 0.356
Melbourne – 0.298
Western Bulldogs – 0.284
St. Kilda – 0.264
Kangaroos – 0.239
Richmond – 0.219
Geelong – 0.171
West Coast – 0.165
Carlton – 0.125
Fremantle – 0.110
Adelaide – 0.095
Essendon – 0.090
Brisbane – 0.084
Hawthorn – 0.030
*Port Adelaide is excluded as it has not played enough seasons.

Three points to note:

1) The non-Victorian teams are less likely to have ‘bandwagon jumpers’. Although Sydney is at the top of the table, a lot of that result is driven by the mid-1980s – take that period away and they fall to around the middle. The most likely explanation is that the smaller capacity of the non-Victorian grounds puts a constraint on how many ‘bandwagon jumpers’ there can be.

2) Collingwood is second! I’ve called Collingwood supporters a lot of things in my time, but I didn’t think they were fickle. I expected them to be down near the bottom with other well-supported clubs like Carlton and Essendon. (Although it could be argued that a successful Collingwood brings out more supporters from other teams.)

3) A recent history of success appears to be inversely related to ‘bandwagonism’. The bottom seven clubs have won 20 of the past 26 premierships, while the top five have won only two. (As further evidence of this claim, note that there was a lot more fickleness from Hawthorn supporters once their golden era in the ‘80s was over.)

Oh well, at the least, now we all have another reason to bag Collingwood.