Conspiracy Theories

Posted on October 21, 2012 by azarur

Conspiracy Theories

I love conspiracy theories (“CTs”). They are tremendously entertaining. As far as CTs go, there are two kinds – and in my experience, only two kinds. The first kind, are CTs that are almost unavoidably linked to groups that are discontent with some form of authority. The key feature of this type of conspiracy theory is that the postulators do not feel the need to – and in many cases they just cannot – describe the reason why the conspirator came up with the theory in the first place. The postulator comes up with the CT to promote discontent against the authority who is the supposed perpetrator.

The perfect example of Type 1 CT is the whole man on the moon thing. I think there is unequivocal evidence that men landed on the moon. Retro reflectors (yes, those things in Big Bang Theory are actually quite real, although I doubt one could run the retro reflector experiment from the roof of an apartment building, especially because the equipment to run it costs millions of dollars and weighs a couple of tons). Lunar rocks that were brought back (no, there is no secret stash of lunar rocks under the Antarctica’s ice sheet). And yes, even those photos. But to me, the clincher is to simply ask “Why?” Yes. A simple “why” would do. Why would anyone want to fake landing on the moon? “To scare the USSR” the proponents of Type 1 CTLL (conspiracy theory lunar landing) say. Really? And according to a bunch of anti-government nut cases the Russians were just that stupid to fall for a conspiracy forged by the US. Forget their super-sophisticated radar (for 1969 that is) that tracked Apollo 11 on flight as it left the gravitational pull of our planet, and tracked the Eagle module as it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere. No. They were meant to believe that the US shot a rocket on a moon trajectory (which the Russians have calculated based on their radar measurements and published – it’s fascinating math for 1969!) then orbited the moon and shot a lander down, but they did not land (really?) and then came back. I don’t buy it. As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle said: once you get rid of all the impossible, whatever is left, improbable as it may be, must be the answer. So the answer is: the US did in fact put a few guys on the moon.

Despite my big rant about Type 1 CTs, this entry is really about Type 2 CTs. I went through the whole thing with T1CTs because it helps understand T2CTs. So what are T2CTs? They are also a kind of conspiracy theory, but in this case they are not postulated by anti-authority groups. They are postulated by inept people. But not just any kind of inept people. T2CT proponents are the worst kind of inept people. They are narcissistic, self-centered, distorted-sense of reality, inept people. In stark contrast to T1CTs, which are often very well conceived, T2CTs are shaky. They change over time, they are full of holes. Why? Well, because (a) the people that conceive them are inept (obviously) and (b) because of their narcissistic nature, their perception of reality is, by definition, warped. Thus, the CT changes over time as the proponent’s perception of reality shifts. The CT has little connection with reality, and instead reflects a homocentric view of the universe, which causes it to sounds in many cases like a child’s silly excuse.

T2CTs would be fun, except the sad reality is that they are more damaging than T1CTs. You see, the reason these narcissistic, self-centered idiots get to propose CTs in the first place, is that they are often leaders and they happen to be very charismatic. They are captivating. So people listen to their theories. And in many cases, despite how crazy these theories may sound, people believe them.

The prototypical T2CT goes as follows:

  • Perpetrator screws up. This step is critical, because the bigger the screw up, the bigger the CT will become.
  • Perpetrator gets caught. Now, this step is hard, because perpetrator may be inept, but he is not stupid. He knows he is screwing up, and as he starts screwing up, he starts laying the foundation for the CT. So the people who are in charge of catching the screw up have a tremendously difficult task of cutting through the layers of lies to get to the bone-dry and simple truth: the perp screwed up.
  • Perpetrator gets reprimanded. This is the simplest step. It follows Newton’s third law of thermodynamics: every action commands a reaction of equal intensity but in opposite direction.
  • Perpetrator publishes the CT. The perp can’t stand being proven wrong or shown inept. He is too self-important to admit he is wrong. The CT must be published wide and far. Everyone must hear his warped truth. And many believe him.
  • The many challenge the outcome. They argue with those who are trying to reprimand the perp.

Now, here’s the damaging piece. If the perp is (or was, previously of his screw up) in a position of importance for a particular cause or endeavor, the cause which he previously represented may be destroyed by the CT. A fight ensues between the perp and his own previous cause: if the cause is to move on unscathed, then the perp must fess up to his own ineptitude. I have never seen a self-centered, narcissistic perp own up to his own mistakes, and so sadly things tend to get nasty between the perp and those who still support the cause.

Hugo Chavez has ruined Venezuela. Many say beyond repair. He has screwed up just about everything that can be screwed up: private enterprise, social stability, investment, foreign relationships. In 13 years in power he has never – not once – admitted he was wrong about anything. Every indicator of peace and progress in Venezuela is worst than it was in 1999. What is Chavez’s response? Obviously hundreds of T2CTs. Most against the US government, but many against his own people. He has even blamed his own cancer on some kind of super selective cancer inducing agent that the US has produced. The sad reality, however, is simple. He is just an inept leader. The list of these perps is long and distinguished. Napoleon. Hitler. Ahmadinejad.

But there are also perps among us. The simple perps. Those whose actions do not alter the course of nations, but have the potential of royally screwing our own lives. A bad teacher. An assistant coach that is a pedophile. A former football star that gets away with murder. A bad CEO.

There is however one silver bullet: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s. In the face of a T2CT, one must use the same analysis as with a T1CT: eliminate all the impossible, and the only thing left is almost always the ineptitude of the perpetrator. Hard as it may be to believe, that charismatic, larger-than-life leader is nothing but inept.

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Milk and the Second Law

Posted on April 6, 2012 by azarur

Picture this. You go to a store asking to buy a gallon of milk. You are presented with two options:
First, a gallon of milk produced by milking the cow that the store owner, who also happens to be a farmer, keeps in her backyard.  The cow eats grass (which grows for free on her sprawling back yard), is healthy and, other than the occasional methane emission, is fairly clean. That gallon of milk costs about a buck fifty ($1.50)
Your second option is much cooler. The farmer takes the milk produced by the same cow.  Then she bottles those methane emissions we mentioned earlier (i.e., the cow farts). Both the bottled gases and the milk are shipped to a processing plant. There, the milk is fractioned into individual proteins, lipids, carbohydrates and water. The separation process is quite energy intensive, but fear not, the processed farts allow you to recoup about 15% of the energy required to separate the milk (the rest comes from coal or natural gas). Once the milk is separated, then it is reconstituted into better, purer, better defined milk.  It then gets packaged and sent back to the store, where the store owner offers it to you for about a hundred bucks ($100).
Which would you choose?
Well, if you are the US government, clearly you pick the second option.
There is a program being funded by ARPA-E, the super advanced division of the Department of Energy dealing with alternative means to fuel our growing national fleet of cars, that does what is equivalent to the second cow.
It goes like this: they take electricity (which is produced cleanly through wind turbines, PV cells, or slightly less green from natural gas) and combine it with carbon dioxide (CO2) in a “super bug”. This super bug, a weird species of bacteria that can only be found in the most inhospitable corners of the planet, is capable of combining electricity with CO2 to produce larger chain hydrocarbons, typically up to C5 and C6, at about 9% efficiency. Those can then be fermented through a less scary bug, beer yeast, to produce up to about 20% ethanol, or a heavily engineered yeast to produce about 4% butanol or propane diol. In other words, you can take electricity and convert it to an ok substitute for gasoline at about anywhere from 3% to 18% efficiency.  That “gasoline” will then be burned in an internal combustion engine for a car at about 20% efficiency, resulting in an overall system efficiency of conversion of energy-to-miles of anywhere between half a percent to 4%. It would only cost about $100 to do your daily commute (of roughly 20 miles).  Sweet, right?
Or… Maybe you could just take that electricity you had at the very beginning, stick it in a battery and run an electric car.  That would have an energy-to-miles efficiency of about 90%, give or take. Your daily commute would cost $1.50.
In the real world, no one would buy the $100 gallon of milk. If you were the store owner, you would see the 125 people that live in your town and like milk go to your store, and every single one of them would buy the milk that came directly from the cow. Problem is you only have the one cow, and that’s about enough to supply milk for only one person per day (knowing absolutely nothing about cows, I have no idea if this is true or not, but assume a lazy cow that only produces milk for the one guy per day).
However, the US government wants to help you.  So, they offer you a loan of $1,250 There are two things you can do with that money:
First, you could buy 125 cows, as it turns out each cow costs about 10 bucks. You also have a big enough back yard so that the cows can eat for free in perpetuity (BTW, these cows live for more than 50 years, do not need a bull to stay productive, and never decrease their milk output… Cool cows, huh?). That way you would have enough milk for everyone, for the next 50 years, as soon as you could buy those cows.
Or, with the same amount of money, you could build a prototype of the milk producing plant and get enough milk to supply one person for one day.  Oh, by the way, that would take about 5 years.
This is now absurd, right? Who on their right mind would do the second option? Feed the entire population of the town -essentially forever- against building a prototype (which may very well fail, by the way) that may supply enough milk for one guy for one day.  Oh, and by the way, that one guy just may not feel like paying $100 for that one gallon of milk if there is natural milk available for $1.50.  Who would even consider the second option?? Care to make a guess?? You are right!!! The US government.
If you take every number above and multiply it by one million you get a very close estimate of driving cars in the US. There are about 125 million drivers in the US, and it would cost roughly $1.25 B to create the infrastructure that would allow them to drive their cars 100% on electricity.
I have no idea of how much it would actually cost to build the pilot plant that converts electricity to liquid gasoline, or milk to reconstituted milk, but I can tell you that between DOE, ARPA-E and their cousins, they are spending at least that amount of money on biofuel research and other schemes as outlandish as the one described above.
Another great example is – from the same research section that brought us reconstituted milk – taking hydrogen, engineering an algae to process hydrogen and CO2 and convert them to methane and higher order carbon species. Guess where the hydrogen came from in the first place… Give up? OK, I’ll tell you.  It came from methane reforming, where you take methane and combine it with water and a bunch of energy to produce hydrogen and carbon monoxide. So, wait a minute… You take methane, which is clean and abundant in the US. You make hydrogen out of the methane.  Then you take the hydrogen and run it through a very complex genetically engineered algae in hopes that it will combine that hydrogen with CO2 and give you some higher order hydrocarbons, although you know most of it – if it even works – will become methane… AGAIN!!
How about just taking the methane and sticking it in the same car.  Oh… You don’t like that… You need to add a cumbersome tank to your car. And it smells bad. Ok. So let’s take the methane and stick it on a high efficiency combined cycle power plant and produce electricity at 60% efficiency, and then stick those electrons on the same electric car from before. Total efficiency: 54%. Efficiency of the methane-hydrogen-methane-and a-bit-of-gasoline scheme? I don’t really know… Maybe 0.005%.

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The Circus

Posted on October 15, 2011 by azarur
DSC_5873

This gallery contains 38 photos.

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The Multiverse

Posted on September 8, 2011 by azarur

Most people (and by that I mean most utterly geeky people) understand that one of the consequences of the mathematical frameworks developed in the quest to unify quantum mechanics with general relativity is that there arises a non-zero probability of the universe not being that at all.  That instead of a universe, there is a Multiverse, or to say it colloquially, that many universes co-exist.  This is true for both leading unified quantum gravity theories: string theory and quantum loop gravity.

  • Penny: Morning, Sheldon. Come dance with me.
  • Sheldon: No.
  • Penny: Why not?
  • Sheldon: Penny, while I subscribe to the many worlds theory, which posits the existence of an infinite number of Sheldons in an infinite number of universes, I assure you that in none of them am I dancing.
  • Penny: Are you fun in any of them?
  • Sheldon: The math would suggest that in a few I’m a clown made of candy. But I don’t dance.

I frequently attend breakfast at the physics and astrophysics departments at MIT, Harvard, and other equally impressive institutions. These gatherings are designed to allow uber-nerds to share their research and their latest thoughts with the rest of us mortals, in a way that we, the sub-200 IQ holders, can digest.  Much as if Schroedinger tried to explain wave theory to third graders using pokemon cards, an abacus and some laundry lint. I have been surprised to see how many of these greatest of all human thinkers are spending their time these days talking about the Multiverse (and how little progress are they apparently making).  And I must ask…

Since it is also well understood that the probability that the human race will be able to experimentally confirm, or deny, the validity of the Multiverse argument is at best extremely small, and perhaps even zero. One must ask then, why all the hoopla? In a time where brain power would best be used to solve global energy and health crises, or even lend a few neurons to law makers in Washington, why waste these rare and valuable reasoning primates chasing an evading theory? There is certainly no economic or humanistic value that will arise from finding a neighboring universe, or proving it non existent.  Even if we did find one such promised land, we would not be able to travel there, much less drill for oil or use as alternate landfill.  Why then?

The answer (or at least my answer) is quite simple, but indeed astonishing. The human race lives in our universe, but its fate and vector reside in a parallel universe. It is in this parallel universe that ideas are generated, and it is because this parallel universe exists that human beings are capable of shattering their own inertia and make change happen.  This is the universe where the humors of the body are replaced by germs, and monk nonsense by modern medicine.  Where the ether gives way to the periodic table. Where women can vote and skin color only matters to define your choice of sun screen.   This is the universe where we stop using oil and other non renewable resources.  The universe of a wall-free Berlin, of an non-oppressed Libya, and maybe even a peaceful middle east. This is the universe where humans are not confined to Earth, but where they can fly and travel through the other universe.

In this parallel universe I still have all my hair. I weigh ten pounds less. I have a lot more time to enjoy my children. I am richer, taller and have lower blood pressure. I am also kinder, have more integrity and loyalty, and I’m even able to dunk a basketball. I have been the goalkeeper of the Mexican national soccer team, I’ve pitched for the red sox and won several marathons.

While my parallel universe is certainly not real, – at least not real in any space-time-defined region – it is certainly intriguing to consider the possibility that consciousness and morals cannot be described in our universe with the mathematical tools at our disposal.

As mentioned earlier, two theories are rapidly being developed in the halls of leading academic institutions with the aim of unifying general relativity with quantum theory. In doing so, string theory and quantum loop gravity theory also attempt to resolve one of the major flaws of Einstein’s general relativity: its inability to deal with singularities, such as the big bang or black holes.

String theory posits that all matter in the universe is composed by different states of a single, elemental string, much like sounds in a symphony can be created by the different vibrations of musical instruments. String theory, beautiful as it is, fails to describe what the space, or volume, that the universe occupies is made of. In other words, while string theory can explain what matter atoms are made of, it fails to describe what constitutes the fabric of space-time; string theory assumes that space-time simply is.

In contrast, loop quantum gravity states that volume is comprised of space atoms.  These space atoms are quite different from the much more familiar matter atoms that are the building blocks of everything we can touch, see, smell or taste. Space atoms are what constitute the volume that the universe (or Multiverse) occupy; without them, the universe is reduced to utter nothingness.  Space atoms are also interesting in that they can spontaneously arise. Matter atoms can only be produced from other atoms or from energy through Einstein’s famous equation: E=mc2. Space atoms, however, can be created from nothing.

Both of these theories give plausible explanations to singularities that we either infer (the big bang) or can observe (black holes), albeit making some pretty far fetched assumptions.

But back to my parallel universe. I believe that life is a singularity. I further believe that consciousness is a singularity. Finally, I believe that what we loosely call the natural law,  or the moral compass, best described succinctly in the Ten Commandments (v.g., Thou Shall not Kill, etc.), is a singularity.

Most proponents of string theory argue that quantum loop gravity theory is flawed precisely because of this fundamental notion: nothing can be created from nothingness. And yet… A thought has no mass. No matter to compose it and it occupies no space. And yet, it exists.  Furthermore, it can be generated from nothing.  A desire has everything a thought has, and then adds a two new dimensions: velocity and direction.  Finally, a thought or a desire can be further expanded to be given a moral connotation, or mathematical sign: good or bad; positive or negative.

 

In grad school I collaborated with (more like helped out) a super smart girl named Carol. Carol, who is now a brilliant neurosurgeon at one of Boston’s leading hospitals, was back then working on trying to identify regions in the brain of mice that would trigger them into action. If you will, she was trying to pin-point the specific regions where desire would arise. She was doing so using a variety of advanced techniques such as functional NMR and advanced brain imaging (I helped her out with a very cool thing which was to image individual cells and their internal morphology through low vacuum scanning electron microscopy – I was quite good at using all sorts of electron microscopes, especially in the summer when it was 100 degrees in the lab, but cool and relaxed in the electron microscopy facility, a fact that was always being pointed out to me by the manager of the facility… But that’s a different story altogether).

Carol would trigger a desire on a mouse and identify the region of the brain that was responsible for it. Then she would burn off (with a laser) or cut off (with a tiny knife) said region and, lo and behold, the mouse would stop exhibiting that desire. She could get mice to starve themselves to death, or to stop fearing a cat. Carol used to argue with me that the origins of those fundamental thoughts were clearly in this universe, since she could physically obliterate the brain cells responsible for them and thus make them disappear.

You may be inclined to agree with Carol: after all I am using a bad extension to argue the case that there is a parallel universe where the fate of the human race is decided, by using fallacious arguments from fundamental particle physics and cosmology… But wait just one second. What if…

What if life is indeed a singularity? What if all the brilliant space anthropologists that have unequivocally stated that life is out there, that our universe is teeming with it, that life is unavoidable, are wrong?  What if we are alone in this universe? What if the big bang was a unique set of conditions – indeed the only set of conditions – that would lead to a stable universe that could evolve to host life?  If that were true wouldn’t it then make sense that every other stable universe would start with exactly the same conditions and lead to exactly the same outcomes? That would mean, as Sheldon suggests, that there are an infinite number of mes.  Except that, contrary to his suggestion that he is different in all of them (or a candy clown), all of my other mes are exactly the same, living the exact same lives, thinking the exact same thoughts…

The implications of this are truly remarkable. The probability that my theory of equal parallel universes do exist is pretty small.  It implies that there is only one unique solution to the equations describing a unified theory of everything (or TOE).  How small?  About 1 in 10^128. That is about the same probability of picking a specific ball on the first try out of a very special lottery machine.  The lottery machine is about the size of the known universe and the lottery balls are about the size of protons.  Interestingly, it is just as unlikely as if we were to say that ours is the only universe, or about as probable as life arising spontaneously from the big bang and developing consciousness and intelligence on its own.  And those things happened.

I don’t actually believe that thoughts or desire arise in a parallel universe. I do believe however that each one of us is capable of imagining a different universe, and if there are indeed an infinite number of universes, then the one we imagine is just as probable as the next one.  If we can imagine a different universe, then we can probably build that universe, and in doing so realize our potential as human beings.  Just think about it… If you get it wrong in this universe, you may get it right in another one.

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Flamenco

Posted on August 6, 2011 by azarur
La Chinita

This gallery contains 11 photos.

I’ve never been a big fan of dancing.  For the most part when I try to dance I look like C3P-O with some sort of robotic itch.  To someone as un-coordinated as I am, the perfection and annoying rigidness of … Continue reading →

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The Last Roll

Posted on July 6, 2011 by azarur

I’ve always remembered my two grandfathers with tremendous love and gratitude. The two of them left with me a legacy that, together with my parent’s unending guidance and care, have for the most part defined who I am today.

My two grandfathers were as different as two men can be. Alfredo, my father’s father, was a college graduate and an engineer at heart. Neif, my mother’s dad, was a businessman that probably did not finish high school. Neif was born in Lebanon and came to the Americas in the early 20s. Neif had vision and passion. Alfredo was born in Mexico – of Lebanese parents. He was meticulous and precise.

Alfredo was not a tender guy – i don’t ever remember being held or kissed by him – he was practical. He discovered, perhaps earlier than anyone else, that i was a really smart kid. While other grandfathers were teaching their grandsons how to build kites, Alfredo taught me algebra and Euclidean geometry. He used to sit me down and give me extremely complex math problems – probably to keep me quiet while the adults talked (i was his oldest grandson, and apparently a handful) – and I was not allowed to talk or get up until i solved them correctly. He challenged me constantly and never once treated me like a child. To this day i love math, and it is undoubtedly thanks to him. Alfredo also taught me one of the most valuable lessons i ever learned: to respect and thank my parents.

Neif loved life. And he loved his family. He loved traveling. He loved good food and good wine. He loved movies. The first memories i have of him is probably from when i was 3 or 4. He would take me on “walks” through his back yard, and the end of which we would inevitably pee in some tree. “It’s good for the plants,” he would say every time. Neif taught me how to play backgammon – and how to win every time. He taught me that everything is negotiable and to never pay full price for anything. He bought expensive suits at Sack’s on 5th Avenue and demanded 30% discount, which he often got. Neif, with his brother Michael, built a movie theater empire in Mexico. One of the happiest memories of my childhood is sitting with him in one of his otherwise empty crown jewel movie theaters watching Star Wars – over and over again – eating popcorn from a bulk-sack as he smoked cigarettes next to me and my brother.

These two men were as different as two men can ever be. They saw each other every day at the Lebanese Club in Mexico city. Fittingly, Alfredo played dominoes with other equally clever old guys. Neif played backgammon. Despite seeing each other every afternoon and politely saying hello, they rarely talked, and when they did it was only to make small talk. They had very little in common. One of them was larger than life. He knew life was to enjoy and people existed to be loved. The other was precise and calculating. He loved his family, but it was hard to notice. They only shared two things in common: their two grandsons (my brother and I) and their love for photography.

Neif owned a Leica R2. Alfredo owned a Carl Zeiss Contaflex and a Rolleiflex. They both taught me to love photography from a very young age. Neif would teach me to compose, to find subjects and perspective. Alfredo would teach me to focus precisely, to determine depth of field and shutter speed appropriate for the amount of light. And they both told me to always shoot transparency film when you wanted your photos to last for a long time.

One time in New York, almost thirty years ago, Neif bought me my first roll of Kodachrome Professional – the professional version of Kodak’s transparency film – and allowed me to borrow his revered Leica. When the film was developed weeks later i saw in awe how beautiful my pictures were. Every landmark building in New York had been recorded from unusual angles at dusk, when the light colored them in hues of pink, orange and purple. The chairs in front of the public library were a shade of deep green in stark contrast to the filthy stone floor beneath. The twin towers of the World Trace Center appeared made of gold with the sun shinning between them. The pictures combined the precise focusing and perfect depth that Alfredo would approve of, with the profound inspiration and artistic angle that Neif would enjoy.

As the years passed I became a Nikon addict. I bought my first film camera, a Nikon N2000 in 1985. Years later, after I had gotten a stable job, I bought my first Nikon F3. I owed a string of professional Nikon film cameras, F4, FM2, F100, before buying my first digital: a Nikon D100. From there I moved up to a D1H, a D2x, a D300s, and finally a D3s. I have probably taken a hundred thousand pictures in my life, including thousands on Kodachrome film. Subjects ranging from my children and my wife to street vendors in Mumbay. From the planets and the moon to individual atoms of Silicon on a wafer. From the Eiffel tower at sundown, to the Temple of Heaven at dawn. And yet, I believe my best pictures ever came from that first roll of Kodachrome.

When Afredo died, I inherited the Carl Zeiss. However, by the time Neif passed away, the Leica had been lost. Since then I never passed on the opportunity to look at the used Leica shops across Switzerland, Germany and New York for a mint R2. Finally, three years ago I found one at B&H in downtown Manhattan. I paid an arm and a leg and walked out the proud owner of an obsolete piece of technology that had nothing but sentimental value. To accompany this irrational behavior, I overpaid for one last roll of Kodachrome. You see, Kodak had announced they would discontinue the lauded film and rolls were in short supply.

The last roll sat in the fridge at our Boston suburban house for two years. Finally, somehow, I decided it was time to shoot that legendary film for the last time. Fittingly I decided I would try to reproduce that first roll. So, last week at the end of a business trip, I secretly took to the streets of New York with my new old Leica on hand and the last roll firmly loaded.

Thirty years had passed since that sunny afternoon in the summer of 1981 when I first borrowed Neif’s Leica. And I couldn’t help but to cry. I really don’t know why I cried. Was it the fact that I never really told either one of my grandfathers how much I loved them? Was it the fact that my life has taken me so far from my roots? Or was it plain and simple nostalgia? Whatever it was, the streets of New York seemed strangely lonely, even as I walked among thousands of people. Every click of the exquisitely precise electronically controlled mechanical shutter resounded in my head like a bullet shot and I wondered if every human being enjoys living in the past as much as I enjoyed that warm afternoon in May while I cried and shot. Slowly, but surely the day winded down. My last shot was that of a fully illuminated Empire State building reflecting the golden shade of the setting sun. the only pictures missing from my roll were those of the now destroyed World Trade Center, and fittingly I shot only 34 of the 36 available slides.

The story, alas, does not have a happy ending.

I continue walking down 5th avenue towards Abe’s, the best professional film processing lab in the world and I wonder if I really want to see those new-old pictures. Will they be as good as that first ever roll? Were those shots really as good as I remembered? To say that I am a very decisive man is probably a huge understatement. And yet today I am not sure whether I want this last roll of Kodachrome 125 developed. I finally reach Abe’s on 18th street, having not yet made my decision. I reach the counter and I am greeted by an ancient looking Jewish man. He looks frail, and yet full of life. He has deep blue eyes and – strangely – an impossibly pleasant smile. He looks at me and simply says “How can I help you, young man?” Non-commitally I ask how long does it take them to process Kodachrome. His eyes fixed on mine, he smiles again and informs me that they stopped – that everyone stopped – processing Kodachrome a few months ago. The chemicals are no longer being made by Kodak. The film cannot be processed. Ever. He watches with a strange look as yet another tear rolls down my cheekbone. I quickly swipe it and pretend to rub my eyes. He asks simply: “Tired?”

I look at his smile, his eyes, and I can’t help but travel back 30 years in time and reminisce once more. About Neif and Alfredo. About the simplicity of a child taking a photograph. Of appreciating beauty without time or agenda. And I respond: “No. Just sad.”

“Why, don’t be sad. I can sell you a very good, brand new digital camera. You won’t need to use film anymore”

“Well… Could you give me a discount?”

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The first post

Posted on July 6, 2011 by azarur

Should always be some kind of iconic publication. So here it is: Iconic Publication

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