travel

I chose this picture for two reasons: because it was the only picture I had with another person in it, and because I love the setting of it.  When my brother and I were in Colorado two summers ago we climbed Mt. Sneffles, a 14,000+ foot mountain, and on our way back down there was an incredible view of different peaks and valleys so I felt the desire to document it in a picture.  When I took the picture I wanted to focus on the background and have my brother only be a piece of the photo.  I wanted to make sure that the clouds and the jagged mountains were included in the picture; therefore I decided to take it a distance from him.  I think since I was so encompassed by the joy of climbing the mountain and being surrounded by so much beauty I was a little bit over excited about taking pictures because now that I look back at the photo I realize that it’s not as great as I once thought, especially to someone that was not actually there. 

            If my brother were to turn around and take a picture of me it would have been the opposite of the one I took.  It would have been the front of my body, and behind me would be Mt. Sneffles so it would be where we had come from instead of where we were heading.  The caption that he would put underneath would probably be something along the lines of “we just climbed that!”  My brother knows me pretty well so he would not have quite the same assumptions as if “the other” were somebody that he truly did not know.  However, he would probably make assumptions that I was exhausted judging from the look that was probably on my face.

            This activity has made me think about the way that I take pictures of people, particularly when I travel.  As I went searching for a picture to use I found it very difficult to find a picture that consisted of other people outside of myself. This has made me realize that a big part of capturing a true travel experience includes taking pictures where there are locals that are captured in their normal environment.  This is because it helps to see the culture of the place you are in.  A different way of representing others in pictures for me would be to just start representing them period which is something I am definitely going to do on the next trip I take.

Forrest Gump, The Greatest Coach Ever

            The title of The Alligator on October 18, 2010 read, “Gump Trumps: Urban finally fires Steve Addazio after the Gators’ second straight loss in The Swamp and third straight overall.  And an unlikely, but apparently qualified replacement has been put into place, Forrest Gump a former Alabama All-American, and current turf manager at UF.”  It was a joyous day on campus the day that Addazio was fired, however there was a lot of questioning about whether or not Gump was going to be a good replacement because he had never coached before, and didn’t seem like the brightest person in the world.  However, when the Georgia game rolled around he quieted all the doubters with a 70-10 old-fashioned whooping of the Bulldogs in which the offense was only stopped on a Mike Pouncey botched snap resulting in a turnover.  The Gators went on to win their next four games by a combined score of 267- 34, including huge wins over then number 10 South Carolina, and in-state rival FSU.  These wins miraculously propelled the gators into the SEC championship where they got a chance to avenge their 6-31 loss to Alabama earlier in the season.  Behind Gump’s amazingly simple play calling he was able to unleash the true talent of the team and lead them to a 31-6 victory that salvaged a season that at one point seemed like it was going to be an embarrassment for anyone associated with the team.  In a post-game interview when Gump was asked about how he chose to call his plays he simply replied, “I just opened up the book and pointed to a play and that’s what we ran.  That’s all I have to say about that.”  And another reporter asked him how it feels to win a championship he said, “good, I like winning.”

            I chose to write about Forrest Gump taking over for Addazio because even though Gator football might not be a big story nationally it certainly is a big deal to people on this campus and to me in particular.  I obviously had to alter the event greatly to have Forrest fit into it, and even talked about things that haven’t happened yet.  The post-game interviews showed Forrest reacting to his fame by being very humble, mainly due to his cluelessness as to how big of an event it was.  This is the same kind of reaction he had to the other big events he came across in the movie, like meeting the presidents.

The Vitruvian Man

Leonardo Da Vinci’s “The Vitruvian Man” might be the most famous ink drawing ever created.  It was done in 1487 and since then has come to be recognized as a metonym for health.  Because of this many physical therapy places have made it their logo.  A simple Google images search for “physical therapy logos” returned 14 results that had a physical therapy practice using the “The Vitruvian Man” or their own rendition of it as their logo.

When Leonardo Da Vinci first drew “The Vitruvian Man” it was respected as the most accurate drawing of a proportional man.  It was sometimes referred to as the Canon of Proportions because in mirrored text on the drawing he wrote all of the perfect proportions of a man’s body.  In recent years this picture has come to symbolize health, and in particular athletic wellbeing.  This is kind of interesting though, because some research has now shown that his proportions don’t even correlate to the perfect proportions that they once thought they did, but nonetheless people still think of athletic wellbeing when they see it. Due to this drawing being a metonym for health and in particular athletic wellbeing many physical therapy practices have now adopted it as part of their logo.  On Physical Therapy At Dawn's website they have this quote underneath a picture of “The Vitruvian Man.”  “The Vitruvian Man” by Leonardo Da Vinci…is the symbol of Physical Therapy At Dawn. Da Vinci’s anatomical and mechanical drawings represented some of the finest advances in science and mechanics and epitomize what we do for and what we bring to our clients.”  This quote I feel explains exactly why so many physical therapy practices use this drawing as their symbol because exactly what it says is what people come to think of when they see “The Vitruvian Man.”

some logos from physical therapy places using "The Vitruvian Man"

group project videoessay

group project videoessay

Regarding the Pain of Iwo Jima

            In war, people do not think of “the other” as real people with families and their own lives because it would make fighting them almost unbearable for a moral person.  In Regarding the Pain of Others Susan Sontag writes, “It is easier to think of the enemy as just a savage who kills, then holds up the head of his prey for all to see.”  Sontag is saying that when we think of those that die on the “other” side we think of them as not the same as us.  We picture them instead as a savage because that makes it easier to justify the murder of them.  If you sit back and think about war and the tens of millions of deaths that coincide with it, it is really astounding the brutality that humans do to each other.  You have to wonder how it is possible for people to kill that many people just like themselves.  The answer is that they do not think of them like themselves, but as savages.  In Letters From Iwo Jima this concept is illustrated in two ways.  The first is when the American soldier burns alive the Japanese soldier in the tunnel with a flamethrower, and then attempts to kill the others with a grenade.  The Japanese subsequently capture him and they beat and stab him to death.  While they are doing this one of the Japanese soldiers yells at him, “So you thought you could blow us up, or burn us alive, did you?”  These brutalities on both sides I believe highlight the mutual feelings towards each other that they think of each other as savages.  Perhaps an even better example is when Shimizu says, “I don't know anything about the enemy. I thought all Americans were cowards. I was taught they were savages.”   These sentences show that his leader understood the concept that in war people think of the “other” not as real people with real lives because it would make it harder to kill them.  Since he understood that he told those under his command that the “other,” in this case the Americans, were savages so that they would succeed in battle.