The Scottosphere

Aver­age length of a Super Bowl broad­cast: 215 min­utes (3:35). [source]

Aver­age dura­tion of game­play (time ball is in play) in an NFL game: 11 min­utes. [source]

Footage of play­ers “stand­ing around” in an NFL broad­cast: 67 min­utes. [Ibid.]

I rest my case.

Sev­eral folks were kind enough to send us dig­i­tal copies of the pho­tos they took at our wed­ding. It’s fun to expe­ri­ence the occa­sion through so many other points of view, and it helps fill in the gaps that we would have oth­er­wise missed.

Note to any­one doing this in the future: con­sider ask­ing all your guests to take a photo of one clock! After import­ing all the images into Light­room, it became clear that nobody is par­tic­u­larly vig­i­lant about set­ting the time and date on their cam­eras. Com­put­ing an accu­rate time off­set for each pho­tog­ra­pher would be a help­ful strat­egy for orga­niz­ing every­thing on a sin­gle timeline.

Of course, as a film shooter, I’m lucky if I can remem­ber the dates of my own pho­tos with any accuracy.

I real­ized today that my film scan­ner (a Nikon Coolscan 9000, for those of you who care) was dis­con­tin­ued a few months ago. It looks like Nikon is get­ting out of the scan­ning busi­ness. A quick check of eBay con­firms that my machine is now worth roughly twice what I paid for it a few years ago. While many man­u­fac­tur­ers have decided that the film busi­ness isn’t viable, it also refuses to die. Kodak made big waves in the last year with the sur­prise intro­duc­tion of two new pro-grade color films for still pho­tog­ra­phy. Appar­ently they’re doing quite well.

The resale value of dig­i­tal cam­eras is not that dif­fer­ent from auto­mo­biles. You pay a mas­sive pre­mium to be the first owner, after which it loses value rapidly. If you wait more than 10 or 15 years, you’ll prob­a­bly have to pay some­one to take it off your hands.

Film equip­ment is dif­fer­ent. I bought my Leica used in 2006, and due to sta­ble sup­ply its resale prices have more or less tracked infla­tion. Assum­ing I sold it today (not hap­pen­ing!), that would amount to a free 5-year rental. Not bad. Own­ing well-loved but dis­con­tin­ued equip­ment like the Coolscan is start­ing to look like an investment.

Ever opti­mistic, China’s state-owned press bids a fond good rid­dance to Google. (This is “good news for its rivals,” the arti­cle asserts.)

This morn­ing, I noticed a new mes­sage on my home answer­ing machine. Barack Obama appar­ently called while I was out. (“Hi, this is Pres­i­dent Barack Obama. I rarely make these calls and I truly apol­o­gize for intrud­ing on your day. But I had to talk to you about the elec­tion in Mass­a­chu­setts on Tues­day because the stakes are so high.”) This after­noon, I picked up the phone and heard another famil­iar voice: “Hello, this is Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton.” He wanted to remind me to vote on Tues­day. Also, to remem­ber that he per­son­ally knows Martha Coakley.

I won­der if one of them would be so kind as to record a new greet­ing for my machine?

This mes­sage was paid for by the Demo­c­ra­tic National Committee.

Amend­ing a pre­vi­ous entry:

2008 Boston Yel­low Pages: 1451 pages
2009 Boston Yel­low Pages: 1075 pages
2010 Boston Yel­low Pages: 864 pages

I had to buy some­thing at Yup­pie Mall yesterday—you know, the one that counts Neiman Mar­cus as an anchor ten­ant. I try to avoid malls at this time of year, not so much as a rejec­tion of the com­mer­cial­iza­tion of Christ­mas, but mostly on account of my extreme dis­dain for saxophone-based Christ­mas med­leys. You know, those “jazzy,” Kenny G-style impro­vi­sa­tions on “Sil­ver Bells” issu­ing from hid­den speak­ers so numer­ous that the rever­ber­at­ing sounds have no locat­able source other than inside your head? The kind of tunes that make you want to go on a mur­der­ous ram­page? Right.

Well, as I was leav­ing Yup­pie Mall, to my incred­i­ble sur­prise, my favorite Christ­mas carol ever came on the PA: John Gardner’s adap­ta­tion of Tomor­row Shall Be My Danc­ing Day. I stopped in my tracks. Since when did shop­ping mall PA pro­gram­mers develop such good taste? (And an appre­ci­a­tion for com­pletely indis­cern­able time signatures?)

Could this be a come­back for choral music? Last month, I was a lit­tle star­tled to hear the open­ing mea­sures of Vivaldi’s Glo­ria in the bath­room at Hong Kong Inter­na­tional Airport.

I am read­ing another biog­ra­phy of Theodore Roo­sevelt. It is 1902, and the Amer­i­can peo­ple are out­raged over secret reports of atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted by Amer­i­can sol­diers against the insur­rec­tos in the Philip­pines (under Amer­i­can con­trol since the Spanish-American war). Par­tic­u­larly revolt­ing is the use of the so-called “water cure,” which inflicts a suf­fer­ing which “must be that of a man who is drown­ing, but can­not drown.” Furi­ous, Pres­i­dent Roo­sevelt orders Sec­re­tary of War Elihu Root to send a cable to the Com­man­der of the Philip­pines Army:

THE PRESIDENT DESIRES TO KNOW IN THE FULLEST AND MOST CIRCUMSTANTIAL MANNER ALL THE FACTS… FOR THE VERY REASON THAT THE PRESIDENT INTENDS TO BACK UP THE ARMY IN THE HEARTIEST FASHION IN EVERY LAWFUL AND LEGITIMATE METHOD OF DOING ITS WORK, HE ALSO INTENDS TO SEE THAT THE MOST VIGOROUS CARE IS EXERCISED TO DETECT AND PREVENT ANY CRUELTY OR BRUTALITY, AND THAT MEN WHO ARE GUILTY THEREOF ARE PUNISHED. GREAT AS THE PROVOCATION HAS BEEN IN DEALING WITH FOES WHO HABITUALLY RESORT TO TREACHERY MURDER AND TORTURE AGAINST OUR MEN, NOTHING CAN JUSTIFY OR WILL BE HELD TO JUSTIFY THE USE OF TORTURE OR INHUMAN CONDUCT OF ANY KIND ON THE PART OF THE AMERICAN ARMY.

The book was writ­ten in 2001, years before the phrase “enhanced inter­ro­ga­tion tech­niques” would enter the pub­lic con­science. Fast for­ward to 2009. For­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney explains Amer­i­can pol­icy on FOX News Sun­day:

I knew about the water­board­ing. Not specif­i­cally in any one par­tic­u­lar case, but as a gen­eral pol­icy that we had approved… It was a good pol­icy. It was prop­erly car­ried out. It worked very, very well.

What a dif­fer­ence 107 years makes.