When the slave trade began in the 16th century, Africans were displaced throughout the world, entering foreign lands and cultures in captivity. Throughout these areas, native and African cultures morphed and reemerged in what is referred to as transculturation.
You've heard of Kwanzaa, the holiday based in African American culture, but similar traditions have appeared in nearly every slave territory. Perhaps you know the Rumba, which is an Afro-Cuban form of dance and associated music (learn more at Wikipedia). Another example of this transculturation, which I would like to focus on, is Capoeira.
Capoeira is an Afro-Brazilian form of art, dance, music, and game that came about during Colonial Brazil, before slavery ended in the late 1800s. Capoeira encompassed martial arts disguised as dance with distinct instruments and sounds, creating a game that slaves played in their living quarters or on the quilombos (runaway slave communities).
Beneath the surface, what seemed like a game was actually a form of resistance. By learning the ways of Capoeira, slaves learned fighting techniques and frequently mocked their owners. Blinded by the circle of fun and energetic participants playing the musical instruments and singing, owners seldom noticed the deep-rooted aggression that the game expressed. Capoeira was and still remains a sign of the rise against oppression. As a common theme in the class, games are not always for the sole purpose of fun and enjoyment, and often have a more powerful, although less apparent, meaning.
Here is a video of Capoeira today:
(You'll notice in the first seconds of the video a blast from the video games past: a shout out to the best Tekken character, Eddy. He's actually of Afro-Brazilian decent and uses a Capoeira form of fighting…who knew?)
Are you ready for some March Madness? We're finally into the month of March and with Selection Sunday only a few short weeks away, the tension is mounting. Brackets are going to be filled out everyone and their mother and more money will be bet on schools you've never heard of and probably never will again than all the commercials cost for the Super Bowl. But in all seriousness, March Madness is a great time to be a college basketball fan. With Michigan as a sure lock to be in the tournament this year and a good chance to be somewhere between a 3 and 5 seed, I can confidently say that I actually care a lot more about this year's than most other years. Especially with the constant looming of the flawed BCS college football system, there has been relatively no change in the NCAA bracket in many years.
Many college football fans are upset with the current state of affairs when it comes to how teams are picked for bowl games, and especially the National Championship game. Many want a +1 format (4 team playoff, 3 games) so that more teams have a real chance of proving they're the best team in the country. The problem with this is that football games are so much different than basketball games. I've played in AAU tournaments where we played 3 or 4 games a day for a whole weekend. You would be lucky to find a football player that wants to play 2 or 3 games in a week. The amount of wear and tear on your body from a football game compared to a basketball game is comparing an apple to a watermelon. Yes they're both fruit, but I don't know of anybody who is going to eat a few watermelons a day.
That being said, basketball is one of the few sports I know of that you can schedule them very closely and still be able to play and compete at a high level. Will the run to the championship game be tough on the players? Of course. But that's the point. Its not supposed to be easy. If it was, you'd have the finals full every year with Kentucky's, UNC's, Duke's, and Syracuse's with no mid majors or Cinderella stories(Butler). The sheer unpredictability of the tournament is why people watch it. There are very few times in which the final four are just the top seeded teams and only once where they are all the #1 seeds(I'm looking at you 2008). It's also one of the few things in sports (and Vegas) where there are no surefire bets. Teams have to win six games to become National Champs(sorry 16/17 seeds, but the past speaks for itself). If you've got a horse in the race, they most likely have a shot at making a run, except for the 16 seeds I just mentioned. That's never happened and probably never will. Unless this happens...
Note: This is the Onion. If you take this seriously, people will laugh at you.
Anyways, March Madness is one of the best times of the year to watch college basketball, or any sport for that matter. When you can turn on the TV or go online and watch dozens of games and be excited by most of them, what's not to love? I'll be pulling for another National Championship from the Maize and Blue but I'll still be watching the other games as well because, who knows, there could be another Virginia Commonwealth or Butler again this year. One thing I know I'll be cheering for before Selection Sunday, for the first and hopefully last time, is an Ohio State win in basketball this weekend. If Michigan beats Penn State and Ohio beats MSU, three way tie B1G champs. Anyways, I'll leave you with this video as you're waiting for Madness to begin. Go Blue!
I'm not sure how many people actually follow the U of M football on and off the field. Yes, a lot of people attend the games at the Big House and cheer on the team, but the team on the field didn't just show up one day on campus and try out for the football team. Most of them were starting to get recruited while they were still sophomores and juniors in high school. I know that might sound a bit over the top, but these athletes are be told by men that are at least two to three times their age that they should come play football at this university or that and be pulled in every way imaginable, especially for the very top tier recruits. I check out MGoBlog quite frequently and the amount of people that write and care about football recruiting, as well as basketball to a somewhat lesser extent just because of the team size, astounded me. I think i should preface this by saying the whole reason I really got into following football recruiting is because a good friend and former teammate of mine committed to play football here. I started to wonder who else would be coming in to play with him and it just took off from there.
He's the one on the far right if you were wondering.
I personally went through the football recruiting process, although not at as high a level as division 1 football. I was mostly getting looks at from D-3 and smaller D-2 schools. I went on visits and got some phone calls, but I didn't realize what it really meant to be a highly recruited, BCS level recruit. I found this pretty short video that helps scratch the surface of what high school athletes go through.
-courtesy of NCSAsport
When you realize how small the percentage is of high school kids that get drafted is, you can begin to see how high the level of competition is and how little room for error there is for even getting looked at by BCS schools. This is a very high stakes game that that can decide whether someone gets a free education at a great university, or has to pay their way like most college students because of either a lack of exposure or just lack of talent.
That being said, recruiting season is in full swing with most of the big name recruits getting offers and taking visits and colleges hosting junior days to get a closer look at the athletes they are recruiting. Michigan just had quite a successful junior day-type event. It started with two recruits verbally committing to Michigan around 1 on the Saturday we played Ohio(State) and ended on Sunday when U of M have received verbals from 8 total recruits in a 36 hour period. This has never happened before in the history of U of M football recruiting. Keep in mind that these kids that committed are not even done with their junior years of high school and won't even be freshman until the fall of 2013. To put it in perspective, Michigan didn't receive a single commitment for their class of 2012 class until the end March. Its the end of February and Michigan has 13 out of a possible 20-22 spots filled.
If you asked almost any coach, they would tell you that recruiting is the lifeblood of a program. Without good levels of talent, it is almost impossible for a team to do well. Of course there are always players who are "under-the-radar", late bloomers, or deemed as "projects", meaning they have a lot of potential but are not college ready to see the field and need to be coached up before they see the field. The coaches work with players once they're on campus and attending college is obviously a big part of success, but the product on the field had been through a process that is the real way teams win championships. One could say that a major reason the SEC teams do as well as they do because of their ruthless recruiting tactics and the sheer numbers of top shelf talent they bring in every year. I won't get into an argument about oversigning (its ridiculous and shouldn't be allowed), but I will say that it is slowly being gotten rid, or at least limited of by most colleges.
The games in the Big House and the players on the field *couch* Denard *cough* might get all the attention, but the process the players goes through before touching the field is the real game that is played by coaches on a daily basis.
I
went to the UM Library system’s Computer and Video Game Archive at North Campus
with a friend for the first minor quest. We played games from pre-2000 and post-2000 devices as I attempted
to connect the perspectives I’d encountered in UC-256 to these video games,
including theories about competition and fun.
Stephen
Garcia, one of our guest speakers, previously lectured about the psychology of
competition. I found that many of the theories he discussed were directly
applicable to video games. The N-Effect, “the discovery that increasing the
number of competitors (N) can decrease competitive motivation” seemed
especially evident while playing Mario Kart, a 15-year old game on the Nintendo
64 platform (Garcia 1).
Initially, when only my friend and I played the game,
our times were nearly 12 seconds faster, a significant difference, compared to
when we increased N to four by allowing two other individuals to join our game.
Based on Garcia’s guest lecture, this result was unsurprising because according
to the N-Effect, a smaller number of competitors leads to a higher competitive
motivation because social comparison increases. Additionally, Garcia stated
that closer relationships with the comparison target cause a stronger social
comparison, therefore increasing competitive behavior and motivation (Garcia
Lecture). I had a close relationship with my friend, but I had distant
relationships with the other two individuals we had just met.
Later
that day, I played Super Smash Brothers Melee on the Gamecube, a game released
in 2001. I had played this game throughout my childhood, and although it had
been a long time since last playing it, I already knew the basic strategies and
techniques to easily defeat the highest level AI enemy. I remembered reading about
Tejada-Flores’ types of “games” in climbing that were used to make those practices
meaningful to the gamer (Tejada-Flores 1-2). I decided that applying his
perspective to my game would make Super Smash Brothers Melee much more
challenging and thus, actually meaningful.
I gave myself various handicaps,
from fighting multiple enemies at a time to not allowing my character to use
weapons, to choosing the weakest champions available to play. I did this
because I had already mastered the basics of the game, and playing without any
sort of handicap would have been far too easy and a meaningless activity. By
defeating enemy AI characters in much more challenging matches because of my
handicaps, I had a more meaningful experience.
According
to Koster’s Theory of Fun, successful games have certain elements incorporated
into them: preparation, a sense of space, a solid core mechanic, a range of
challenges, a range of abilities, and skill required in using abilities (Koster
11). After I thought about his perspective, I realized that there isn’t much of
a difference in older games or modern games. Sure, newer games may have better
graphics and more complex game-play, but successful games of any generation
have the same basic factors that make them so great. Koster states, “Games do not permit innovation. They present a pattern… you
don’t get to change the physics of a game” (Koster 8). Do you think that the same theories apply to new and old games, or is there some type of difference? I'm interested in hearing what you think!
I initially was introduced to the concept of flow my first year while in the School of Art & Design's Concept, Form, & Context program. The TED talk by Csikszentmihalyi made me increasingly interested in the concept.
Brief additional online researching of the topic brought me to the synthesis of the psychological state of flow to the methods and practice of the Montessori style of education. For those unfamiliar with the Montessori education, our trusted free online encyclopedia tells us that it is a specific approach to teaching and learning, utilized in approximately 20,000 schools worldwide. Named after Italian physician and educator Maria Montessori, the style has several principles upon which it is built, of which a few are listed here:
1. Classrooms have students of mixed ages, commonly from ages 3 to 6
2. Students have a choice of which activity they engage in
3. Work time is long and uninterrupted
4. Students are intended to learn by personal "discovery" instead of strict instruction
Being a product of the Montessori method, I was able to Relate this approach to the ideas presented by Csikszentmihalyi. By having a choice in which activity a student engages in, they allow personal interests to motivate their actions, and aren't forced into any particular activity. Coupling this with having long work time and not being interrupted by a bell to change subjects every 30 minutes allows full immersion of the student into the work - ideal conditions to promote a state of flow. Finally, since the students are intended to lean through personal discovery, they develop a feeling of self-confidence and accomplishment which is essential to immersion into flow.
I recently came across this article that shows the populations of major U.S. cities color-coded by race: Race Maps of America
Here is a picture of Detroit (also found in the article):
Note: Red represents White, Blue is Black, Green is Asian, Orange is Hispanic, Gray is Other, and each dot represents 25 people
After reading the article by Claude Steele this past week, the message presented by these maps immediately entered my mind. The maps clearly demonstrate that in our modern society, even though the Civil Rights movement and the likes are in our history, segregation continues to thrive. In each map, there are prominent dividers between Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians. Notable is that many of the minorities are located in the center of the city, where poverty and crime flourish. We would like to consider our country a "melting pot" by which many different perspectives and cultures are infused into one. In this visual, we would expect a rainbow rather than the separation observed.
To connect this with our discussion of Indian culture with Deloria (note that Indians are not even distinguished in the maps), it looks as though all minorities in the country are squeezed and contained within their own sort of "reservations" by which their cultures and heritage live, yet barely exist beyond.
The connection between the maps and Steele's message is that this physical separation amplifies the demographic distinctions and self-fulfilling prophecies among entire communities. Steele talks about how once one student "disidentifies" self-esteem with academic performance, his friends and social group are likely to follow. The clear barriers between races continue to encourage this "groupthink," and close off different, positive prospectives from influencing these social groups.
