scott d. feldstein

Apple fanboy that I am, I sometimes do criticize the company and its products. Remember the iPod Shuffle, that perfect thing I bought years ago? Also remember that its successor was what the Spanish call el terrible.

I’m sure some Apple watchers noticed today that the big Steve rolled the product back to its previous design. Apple is a special technology company. One that continually, product after product, year after year, walks the edge of innovative design. And, of course, sometimes they make mistakes. Good on them for realizing it.

I know there are a lot of people out there who look at Apple TV and people like myself and go “huh?” Well, TechCrunch has a brilliant primer on where I’m at, where I think things are heading and why I’m so pleased about it.

Apple just announced some new products today. The new iPods are impressive, but I have no need for one. Alas, there’s no new iPad that does FaceTime video calls. (Sorry, Dad.) But there is one new thing that I want: Apple TV.

It’s getting pretty close to fixing my broken-ass living room entertainment experience. It’s got 99¢ TV episode rentals, HD movie rentals (apparently with lots of just released to DVD selections), Netflix streaming, YouTube, Flickr.. Plus it integrates with iPhone and iPad.

Not too shabby for something that fits in the palm of your hand and costs $99.

Before I pre-order mine, though, I have an obstacle to overcome: My TV. I got it as a much-appreciated gift when I moved into this apartment. Problem is, it does’t have the HDMI input required for Apple TV. So if I want Apple TV, I have to get a new television.

Anyone want to sell me their old one? If it works and has an HDMI input, I’m interested.

What’s keeping unemployment high? It’s “uncertainty” with regard to government tax and economic policy. Business would like to hire people, really. It’s just that everyone’s worried about the fate of the estate tax and corporate tax rates and the fate of Bush’s tax cuts. (Which could expire on everyone! Have you seen legislation that preserves it even for the middle-class?) On top of that, “Obamacare” has businesses running scared and unwilling to hire the people they so desperately want to hire.

Or so the Right tells us.

Now, I’m not an economist. I didn’t even stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. But I know the distinctive aroma of bullshit when it wafts my way.

First off, the economy tanked well before any of the above items were factors. And actually, the economy has lost fewer and fewer jobs since they did appear.

Second, none of this BS alters the general rule: If a business can sell more widgets than it currently makes, it will expand and hire. If the demand isn’t there, it won’t. And right now the demand isn’t there because people are out of work or afraid that they might soon be. Feedback loop. The more people are unemployed, the less demand there is; the less demand there is, the more people are unemployed. The fed can lower interest rates and make sure capital is cheap for businesses who would like to expand, but if demand isn’t there it doesn’t matter if the interest rate is zero–they won’t expand.

How did the feedback loop start? It started when the housing market and the financial sector tanked. People woke up and realized that their nest eggs–their homes and their 401ks–had lost a hell of a lot of value. They responded by spending less money. Spending less money means businesses start letting people go–which of course causes people to spend even less money than before. Rinse, repeat.

Finally, our anemic stimulus spending has given us an anemic recovery.

They’re going to tell you that we’re in this fix because we have such a high deficit and debt. Or because businesses are scared of healthcare reform. But don’t you smell something? I do.

Fall classes begin at Marquette today and it got me thinking about my own undergraduate days. One of the most valuable and memorable things about my studies at Carroll was something called Common Course. I’m surprised I haven’t written about it before, but I can find no mention of it anywhere on the blog.

Common Course consisted of two four-credit classes offered during the month of January only. Most people took them in their Freshman and Sophomore years. The interesting thing, though, is that they were required courses for every major. And it was not limited to the students: it seemed that no matter what you taught at Carroll, you had to also occasionally teach Common Course.

It was a course that we all had in common, hence the name.

Typically there was a lecture in the morning, held in a large auditorium. Different speakers every day. Then there was a small discussion section. To the best of my recollection, one year my discussion was led by an economics professor; another year it was a philosophy prof. In the afternoon there were sometimes films, again back in the large lecture hall.

The curriculum? Everything from Sigmund Freud to Adam Smith. The great ideas of the western world. It’s where I first ran across The Tragedy of the Commons. Films included Koyaanisqatsi and Lord of the Flies.

They were, without doubt, the most enjoyable and rewarding courses I ever took. A few years ago I heard that Common Course is no longer required at Carroll. If that’s so, it’s a shame. I’ll never forget those frosty January days, my head bursting with truly transformative learning experiences.

You can all breathe now. I have compiled for you a list of my favorite science fiction films of all time. There are half a dozen other greats that I could easily add to it, but you have to stop somewhere. I stopped at 14. If there are any of these that you haven’t seen, take it as a given that I recommend you remedy the situation as soon as possible. Here we go. In no particular order…

• The Terminator I’ve written about this before

• The Matrix A mind-bending classic that feeds our paranoia and our distrust of technology.
• Star Wars Nerds everywhere believe Return of the Jedi is better. They are wrong. Kids today often prefer the new “prequels.” They are stupid.
• Aliens Tossup between this and the first Alien film. But the space marines just kicked so much ass.
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind “Meet me in Montauk.” This one grew one me after the first viewing.
• Blade Runner “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.”
• Donnie Darko “Twenty-eight days, six hours, forty-two minutes, twelve seconds. That is when the world will end.”
• The Thing Diabolically simple. The setting: An Antarctic research facility inhabited by a small group of men. The premise: An alien who, after killing you, makes itself look exactly like you. Horror and paranoia ensue. Brilliant.
• 12 Monkeys A prisoner is sent back through time to prevent a biological plague released by a terrorist organization known as the Army of the Twelve Monkeys. Or maybe he’s just a delusional mental patient. One of the best time-travel movies ever.
• Back to the Future Can anyone not like this movie? It’s just so much fun. “If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits eighty-eight miles per hour you’re gonna see some serious shit.”
• Brazil After seeing this, every bureaucratic runaround smells like a “27B/6.”
• 2001: A Space Odyssey An epic movie about evolution, science, alien life and artificial intelligence. You will never trust your computer again, no will you ever hear The Blue Danube the same way again.
• Gattaca Eugenics, prejudice and the triumph of the human spirit.
• Contact A brilliant and realistic story about first contact with extra-terrestrials and also about the nature of belief.

“John Connor gave me a picture of you once. I didn’t know why at the time. It was very old – torn, faded. You were young like you are now. You seemed just a little sad. I used to always wonder what you were thinking at that moment.” — Kyle Reese

For all its dated special effects and its inexplicably Austrian-accented cyborg, The Terminator still stands out in my mind as one of the finest science fiction films ever created.

The story perfectly encapsulates our distrust of technology, brilliantly covers the paradoxes of time travel and gives us a pretty decent love story into the bargain. Performances by Linda Hamilton, Michael Biehn, Paul Winfield and Lance Henriksen were terrific. All this plus a killer robot! If you’re one of the six people on the planet who has just been too busy for the last 25 years to watch it, I urge you to make the time as soon as possible. To the rest of you who have seen it: you know what I’m talking about. High five, baby.

As so often happens, however, things went downhill with the sequels. Everyone seems to love Terminator 2, but I don’t. It seemed like a weak retread of the first movie. The third Terminator movie also seemed lame. Too many car chases and explosions, not enough story and character. I have not yet seen the fourth film.

Here’s one bright spot, though. A couple of weeks ago I started watching the TV show Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles via Netflix streaming. The show was terminated a while back, but I have now watched every episode of the two seasons that did get made. Good stuff.

I forget how many excellent photographers read this humble blog, but I have been reminded of this fact by of all their comments on recent photography-related posts. That being the case, I thought perhaps some of them might want to weigh in on a few equipment issues I’m mulling over.

First, I love my Lightsphere II flash diffuser. But I think I should get an AmberDome for it, to better match the indoor incandescent lighting I frequently use it in. It might also be handy for matching the ambient light in sunset situations as well. (Observe the mismatched light situation here. People say “it looks like they’ve been cut and pasted in from another shot!” Of course it’s because they’re lit with a different color light than the background.) Thoughts on gelling or otherwise color-shifting your flash/diffuser?

Also, my umbrella stands are really cheap. They haven’t broken yet, but I do feel the need to get sturdier ones. And since decent ones are not that expensive, I was considering this lightweight Manfrotto model. I use these to mount an SB-600 flash and a shoot-through umbrella. I have two such rigs and I trigger them remotely from my Nikon D300 camera through Nikon’s “Creative Lighting System” (CLS). Often I use just one stand and not both, so I thought maybe I’d buy one of these and see how I liked it before getting a second one. I’m toying with the notion of getting some sandbags to weigh them down outdoors in breezy weather, too.

And I need a proper case for them. Having them stick out the end of a gym bag is getting pretty old.

Now that I think about it, my shoe-mount clamps are kind of ghetto, too. Recommendations?

I only own one camera body these days and I borrow/rent one when I need a backup. But that should change at some point. Thinking about buying a used, lower-end Nikon body so I can stop wasting money on rentals.

Finally, as I mentioned in the comments of a previous post, I’m trying to sell the Sigma 50-150 f/2.8. I got it primarily to shoot distant indoor ceremonies. But I find that even at 2.8 I sometimes can’t get the shutter speed I need when racked out to the full 150mm. Lately I’ve been using the shorter, but much brighter, 85mm f/1.8. In fact, I don’t think I’ve shot the 50-150 this calendar year.

I’d like to replace it with a 35mm f/1.8. Something I could put on my second camera and have an assistant shoot a b-roll of the reception. Plus, I think it would just be a fun lens to have, given how much I love the 85.

I’ve been thinking about time travel again. If Einstein is correct then it’s possible to travel into the future (I mean faster than the we usually do). This is because of the time dilation feature of the theory of special relativity. You just get into a space vehicle and accelerate it to near the speed of light for a while, then turn around and come home again. When you arrive home you’ll find that while a few years passed onboard, 100 years have gone by on earth. Everyone you know would be long dead and their progeny would have super cool iDevices that you never heard of.

Time travel into the past is not possible as far as we know.

But here’s the thing. What good is traveling into the future? What possible benefit could you bring to the people of 2110? Would they thrill to your stories of a hundred years ago? Maybe. But we’re living right now in what is surely the most documented age in history. Surely historians and archaeologists will be mining the remnants of youtube and cable television and newspapers and the web, etc. What knowledge do you personally possess which would fundamentally improve their understanding? On top of that, you’d be a complete ignoramus–totally unaware of a century worth of new knowledge in medicine, science, politics, technology and every other subject.

Time travel into the past is a different matter. You could assassinate Hitler. You could encourage the pharaohs to tinker a bit more with that steam engine of theirs. You could encourage Victorian age physicians to wash their hands more. You could fundamentally change the world. And even if you were only in it for yourself, you could make a killing in the stock market.

But alas, going backward in time is impossible. Damn.

While I’m on the subject…

I have known several amateur photogs who have expressed a desire to buy a certain piece of equipment. And every time I hear them say it I strongly encourage them not to do it. The thing they want to buy is an 18-200mm zoom lens.

If you don’t know a lot about photography, a zoom that goes from 18mm to 200mm pretty much encompasses 95% of focal lengths you’d need to shoot pretty much anything. 18mm is adequate for a big, wide landscape; 200mm is damned near enough to shoot birds or distant sporting events. Everything in between–groups of people, portraits, architecture–is also covered. So why do I discourage people from buying such a lens?

Because it’s a houseboat: Not a very good house and not a very good boat. A lens that does everything seems too good to be true–and it is.

Getting even just two quality lenses to cover these focal lengths will yield better results. For example, I shoot almost everything nowadays with an 18-55mm zoom and my 85mm prime.

There are no shortcuts. If you want professional results from an SLR camera, you have to switch lenses for different types of shots. Technology may one day overcome this, but it hasn’t yet. Now you know.