Day Twenty-Eight: We're All Clogs in the Capitalist Machine...

Owing to the brevity of the yesterday's entry, I consider it most appropriate to begin with a hopefully more enlightening account of the events that may be of interest to the reader than that which I quickly and tersely typed out in my last blog.

Following the completion of my quick entry I met a sore Dr. Easton at his office on the second floor and took the elevator, what with his injured state, to his basement lab with the intention of preparing the scanner he purchased recently for use to scan the "film-photographs" (I use this cryptic name to describe them as I do not know and unfortunately failed to ask what the correct terminology was) of the leaf of the Archimedes palimpsest that was removed by a manuscript scholar in his travels in 1846 and has been kept at Cambridge University for some period of time; it was evident that the prospect of scanning these (I will try again) "negative-like-photos" is of great excitement to Dr. Easton, as his voice (as it always does when something fascinating is afoot) characteristically augmented in volume as we progressed closer to the point at which we would finally scan these "translucent-photos". And, as is also characteristic of Dr. Easton, we somehow found ourselves on a tangent, just as we were 85% done with the task at hand, trying to find out how we could scan the pages of the auction guide on the palimpsest issued by Christie's auctioning service when the manuscript was put on auction in 1998. (It was a slow yet steady digression let me tell you...) In any case, I found myself using the new scanner to enter the pages into the computer and save them as .pdf files, a project I intended to finish today after the Kodak visit; this intention, however, has gone unrealized as the computer, either automatically or by an inadvertent move on my part, logged off Dr. Easton's computer account after I retired yesterday and, as logging-on back on to the account requires a password that I do not know, the work, I regret to say, remains uncompleted at this time...It is still an honor and pleasure to work with Dr. Easton again, I must say, which will come as no surprise if the reader has noted my tone toward the astronomy work of this week's mornings...

An account of today would by no means be complete without comment and characteristic Lucero critique of the Kodak visit this morning. To begin I ought to say, before I ramble, that the trip was enlightening and enjoyable regardless of how much I carp in the next few lines...BUT...I have a few critical comments. It is understandable that we were not shown an empty building for our tour, but it seems overly-commercial to substitute the facility tour with a capitalistic bombardment of Kodak merchandise. While admittedly fascinating, to show off merchandise in an unctuous way to high school students that (maybe I am only speaking on my part, I admit) have no intention in the slightest of purchasing a camera for the next ten years seems quite presumptuous. My critique may belie my awe and interest in the technology and products we saw, and I must say that I feel a great pride as a local Rochesterian to see this seemingly great (or so it was presented to us) transformation of Kodak focus and the excellence with which they are seeming to do it. I just am saying that we were probably not the right audience for the saleswoman that treated us, in my mind, as credulous clogs in a capitalist machine, clamoring to buy, buy, buy...!

Mr. Pow...have you looked into the "outdatedness" of the map that hangs in the computer lab on the second floor yet? Joe...it still has the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Zaire, divided Yemen, divided Germany, complete Indonesia, complete Ethiopia, British Hong Kong, etc.! I do no need Dr. Easton's highfalutin equipment to tell me that this document is ancient!! (it is from about 1990 or so, considering all its errors when compared to the modern map) If RIT can "shell-out" money to feed fourteen people lunch three times, they certainly can afford a new map with the 24 countries that the 1990 one does not show! You are missing new 24 countries!

Just a thought from an innocent observer...

This same innocent observer also would like to inform all that today's "Classical Piece" is...

Leonard Bernstein's Symphonic Dances from West Side Story

MAMBO!

Good Day,

Tyler C. Lucero