Weekend reading
BIG MEN ON CAMPUS
The lacrosse furor and Duke's divided culture.
The New Yorker, September 4, 2006
This was a decent read, although I think a much more interesting article could have been written on the same subject. It would be fun to read a book-length account by James Stewart or David McClintick or Michael Lewis.
I don't think giving Division I athletic scholarships is consistent with having a top undergraduate program, despite what Duke, Stanford or Northwestern people would tell you, and I think schools like my own alma mater would be better places without de facto athletic admits.
Best line:
"If you were starting from scratch at Duke, no one would have imagined an athletics program where the budget is almost fifty million dollars." - Prof. Orin Starn
At CameraTechs, it's still all about film, Seattle Times, September 8, 2006
An interesting hodgepodge of mostly ill-informed points about why, when digital photography is so much better, there are still pockets of resistance. There is the obligatory reference to "vinyl records" (never to Steinway & Sons, for some reason) What I dislike most about articles like this one is not the ignorance or the one-sidedness, but the gratuitous "kick 'em while they're down" tone that always seems to slip in. To wit:
"The University of Washington's photography program hasn't kicked film out the door—not yet, anyway."CameraTechs is a fine shop that does excellent repair work, but the article would have you believe there is a prospect for them to become, on a national level, "the place to go for film equipment and camera repair." That's just silly. Oh, and "[f]inding film cameras might become more difficult." O.K. Trust me, there are plenty of film cameras to be had. I could go on, but I'm going to spare you.
Shoebox mentality
A few things to suggest that 99% of ordinary people who rely on digital photography for their family photos aren't going to have 99% of those photos in 20 years. I hope you're listening, parents.
Notable quote:
"It's all very well for manufacturers to continually up the specs and features of digital capture cameras, but if they cannot get their heads around what I think is their moral obligation to also put in place some way of permanently archiving the images I shoot with their gear, I may stop using it.
Oddly, when I asked Leica about this a few years ago - before they had been well shaken by Epson's RD1 debut, it was suggested that if I really needed a higher level of archive security for my digital files, there really was only one medium that could provide it; yep, you guessed. Film they said. It's the only way.
I have the feeling that if I asked the same question today, the same answer would be on the cards, in spite of the advances made for RAW capture software."
"she says the lights cost too much .. little does she know how much my fisheye lens cost."
Classic thoughts about concealing camera-equipment purchases from a spouse.
posted at 1:10 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home