Cell phones and the gelman library.

Right now I am listening to some typical GWU undergraddie talk away. She is mad at her boyfriend because he broke her digital camera. Evidently they have a date this evening for Valentine's Day. She is so peeved because she wanted to "remember this night" with pictures. Now this is plan is ruined because her boy-toy has abused his borrowing privileges and messed up the camera. At least three separate people have stared at her, stopped typing or doing whatever it is they were doing to not to subtly convey that this one should stop talking.

Not an original post I realize. But what is with people? I know many GWU undergraddies are inane but this girl makes me wonder about the virtues of reproduction..

Musings about archival work and megapixels

For some time I have stubbornly held to my ways. Though I sometimes stick with notebook and pencil, more often I have used my computer so that I could just take notes while working with materials. While taking notes seemed to force me to work, read and plow through, I have always noticed so many people busy clicking away as they took digital pictures of the letters, notes, and whatever else constituted the special collection under examination. I found this odd. I also found it something to envy since I was not cool enough to have a digital camera that would permit me such on the spot copying. Well, this past Xmas my Father purchased a digital camera for me that has 7 megapixels. I really have no idea what a megapixel is--it in fact sounds like a cool movie theatre I would go to if I lived on the Skywalker Ranch. But whatever a megapixel is it allows me to take pictures of documents with text, not be very good at taking pictures, hell not even understand taking pictures and then when I transfer to a computer I can actually focus in and read this stuff. Even better, I still managed to discriminate. I did not just take a snapshot of everything--what I feared I might do if I went this route. I have decided I like megapixels.

Metro expansion to Tysons and Dulles

Now in many respects I could care less if silly people could make it out to Tysons Corner to spend more money on really cool stuff that I just cannot afford. I say, let those people guzzle gas, sit in traffic and just deal with the costs of consumption. But let's be honest, extending rail to tysons and then on to dulles is not about the mega-shopping experiences to be had out that direction; it is about getting even some tiny portion of drivers off the road. Long-term, public transportation that people will use just makes sense. Crank out all of the free-market arguments that you want. Talk of viable alternatives such as rapid bus if you so choose. (Ride the circulator in DC. White people still will not use that one. I ride the bus in DC. I am an anomaly.) But what people will use is mass transit that involves train/rail in some capacity. So, here is my proposal: civil disobedience from a quasi-civil servant agency. Shut down metro for two weeks. Let people feel the pinch. Then start it up again for a day. Thereafter, shut it down again for an unspecified period of time. I don't drive-though I realize that people with kids and other responsibilities need to have cars. But if you want to get around entirely by car and be dependent on it, move to ohio.

Distortions at the Screen Actors Guild Awards

Daniel-Day Lewis (DDL), most recently of the excellent No Country for Old Men, made the following comment about Heath Ledger at the Screen Actors Guild Awards the other evening:
"That scene in the trailer at the end of the film is as moving as anything I think I've ever seen."

Now I found that scene touching, raw and, as DDL put it, "moving." But to rank it up there in significance with anything he has ever come across. I hope he is only making reference to film. Actors, unsurprisingly, occupy different landscapes than the rest of us normal people. However, to think that anything on film rivals something from what occurs in one's own world is just distorted. Don't know much about DDL, and do not really care to know, but give me a break. Go witness a child say something truly unbounded by all of the assumptions and collected crap that adults peddle around; witness some old couple that has been married for say half a century walking hand in hand along some sidewalk; or witness an actual gay couple exchange vows unencumbered by inane laws throughout this country that often prevent them from doing so. In short, get after some real life experiences; there one can justifiably locate truly moving experiences.