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Read the full story, South
Kaibab to Bright Angel: in the Hiking Grand Canyon section of the Kaibab Journal. |
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I missed the Betamax
wave, thank goodness. [I also pretty much missed 8-track tapes,
too.] But, eventually a VHS player/recorder was cheap enough to
buy, as was the tape. Now, you could actually tape shows, and
buy (or, rent) copies of movies. And, thus began my video
collection. I taped mostly movies and mostly I never watched
them! Well, in economics we talk about something called a
"reservation price," which is what you'd pay just on the off
chance you might want to "consume" some good. So it
was with these movies. I didn't do much insofar as TV shows goes
except for the Babylon
5 series. I taped the original airing (at the slowest speed;
6 episodes to a tape!), and then I taped the reruns on TNT when they
picked up the fifth season. Then I taped them all again when the
shows went to the Sci Fi channel The advent of the Laserdisc interested me a lot, but was way too expensive for my tastes. I can remember another student in grad school musing about being able to buy a multi-disc set of Lawrence of Arabia. I am pretty sure that was before the restored movie was re-released to theaters in 1989 (which I saw twice within a week). And, during a film festival on campus one year that featured movies by Orson Welles, I caught a session with Roger Ebert who was using a Laserdisc to go through Citizen Kane practically frame by frame. Too cool, but still too pricey. So, I was quite enthusiastic about the DVD revolution and started to build quite a library of movies. When blu-ray came along (I decided to give HD DVD a pass) I was leery of replacing my DVDs. So far I haven't really done that, with a few exceptions. The blu-ray player does a good job on DVDs - in fact, if you couldn't play a DVD on the blu-ray I am sure I would not have moved that way. Now, I pretty much only buy blu-ray discs to add to my DVD collection. [If you click on the picture of my videos, above, you'll see a larger image and can see my copy of the Lost series on blu-ray next to my DVD copy of Repo Man.]
But, I wonder why. It seems to me (and, probably everyone else),
that the whole "on-demand" market is just going to get
better and better. Why not just pay $1 every time you want to
see your favorite movie rather than pay $20 to own a copy. I do
like the extra features on the discs, and the on-demand services will
have to find a way to include that if I am going to switch sooner
rather than later. Still, it makes me think that my lifelong
quest to obtain these movies has been for naught. As it is, I
already get sucked into watching a movie on my satellite service even
though I own a copy! Just last night |
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Years ago I read John Kenneth Galbraith's autobiography, A Life in Our Times, which I really liked. But, why? Well, I remember it as being well-written (which is true of his books anyway) and full of details about being raised in Canada and ending up at Harvard and working for the price control agency during WWII, as well as doing a study of the value of our strategic bombing during WWII (or, was that in another book?) and working for the Kennedy administration. But, I clearly don't recall any but the barest of details - the kind you could write out in a paragraph not unlike the one you are reading! I do remember one specific comment of his that has stuck with me for years (yes, I read it a long time ago). Once he finished reading a book he would sit down and write up a page, or two, of comments and notes about it so that he wouldn't forget what he had read! To this day, I do the same with nonfiction books. In fact, I can't read something of substance without a pen and pencil, pad of paper and sticky notes at the ready. Consequently, it takes me a long time to read these books, but I have notes to refer to so that I can recall what I learned. For books I use in my teaching that is not the case. Forgetting what I read, that is. I read them over and over, if not in their entirety, then at least major sections/chapters. I take voluminous notes and often have put together PowerPoint slide shows to draw out the details for my students. Of course, what my students do is read them once and don't take notes and forget what they've read pretty much as soon as they put the book down. But, that's not really their fault, is it? And, clearly, our educational establishment would never think to require the level of effort necessary to insure that students actually understood what they have read. But, that is the topic for another blog. As I noted in my previous blog (On Storage), I have a lot of DVDs. And, I watch them. Frequently and repetitively in some cases. And, I am sure that I remember more from a movie (even one I have only seen once) then I have from the most recent novel I have read. And, that got me to thinking about whether we could have a world without a written language, or perhaps only one we use infrequently. For example, the signs on the highway almost always have a picture of an airplane when the airport exit is coming up. I suppose we could say that signs posting numbers don't count anyway (speed limits, highway numbers, etc.). But, in the far off future, we may be doing everything by voice anyway . . .
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But, unlike most pundits, I like Ron Paul. It takes a while and you really have to listen to his message carefully, but if you do, you may find he is the most sensible candidate in the race. Yet, his opponents have hijacked the narrative on him as a crazy person. That is not only unfair, it is just laying the groundwork for what the Dems would say should Paul win the nomination. But, I don't think he can win the nomination, but can change his tack to further his cause. To wit . . .
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and
they were aired in letterbox. Now, I did watch the whole series
a couple of times, but not the Sci Fi version. Of course now I
own the DVDs (and have watched them all the way through at least
twice).
- an hour of 
