Today’s diatribe is devoted to the topic of digital photography.

Let’s start with the obvious. Digital cameras let you take a lot of pictures. A lot. My Nikon D70 will do more than 700 shots on my current memory card. Unlike film, the processing cost is zero, and you can get a reasonably good idea of how the picture will turn out right after you take it.

Unfortunately, the net result is that you end up with a lot of photos. In my case, nearly 8000 over the last 2 years (this is not counting the ones I deleted immediately on the camera or upon brief inspection). If you are also, as in my case, averse to throwing things out that might be interesting/useful/valuable, this poses difficulties. A certain amount of organization is necessary. Particularly since I’ve started using the Nikon in raw mode, this organization needs specialized software because the actual picture files themselves all require substantial tweaks to look good.

Hence, I not only have to spend time cataloguing and organizing photos, but manipulating them in Lightroom. It can end up a bit much. My old-old computer (the PowerBook G4) was for tasks other than photo editing a perfectly acceptable machine. For e-mail, papers, web-browsing and web-page stuff, it was more than sufficient for the task.

So yes, digital cameras do make for good pictures, and in my case, probably far better ones than I could have produced just using film. It’s also an incredible time sink. Witness the half a day I just spent rationalizing those thousands of photos, labeling the ‘good’ ones, shifting them into a hierarchy based upon date, resizing and copying them for upload to the new Gallery photo album software and so on. I hope the results are commensurate with the effort.

Now, back to reading about the origins of anthropology as a discipline. And for those of you fearing global warming, don’t fret, it looks like the next few weeks here will be plenty cold.

My activities today were limited by two things. First, I don’t have real winter clothing. Oh sure, I’ve lots of layers. But going outside with the temperature in the low thirties and a wind howling out of the north at 25+ mph really doesn’t suit me. The novelty of the snow is wearing off anyways, so there aren’t too many places I’m keen to go to. Second, I have to get this new website up sometime, and now seems as good a time as any. The results you can see for yourselves.

My rather lazy Saturday was punctuated by news that ought to have surprised precisely nobody: Hillary Clinton is running for president. Oddly enough, while my grandfather has gone from Hillary-hatred to something approaching respect, I have gone from Hillary-respect to significant Hillary dislike. It’s not that she’s a bad person (that I know of), and as mentioned earlier, I’d dearly like to have a president who is not a male WASP. It’s just that pandering pro-war centerists aren’t really my breed. Her behavior on the flag-burning bill is exemplary. Tactically, supporting a law rather than a constitutional amendment on the topic may have been the right choice (given that the courts have traditionally thrown out such laws). But the grandstanding that she did accompanying the vote was pretty disgusting. Either she was blatantly pandering, or she’s turned into a crypto-social-conservative. Neither is pleasant, and in the former cases, it’s not merely disgusting but stupid: if she started beating up gay people in front of cameras, the Right still wouldn’t vote for her, so what’s the use? She reminds of John Kerry: the DLC establishment candidate who thinks she can triangulate her way into office. Hardly an inspiring picture.

Did I mention that it snowed yesterday? Well, it did. Enough, in fact, that on the way to my Arabic placement exam, I made a little detour into Washington Square to take pictures. First real snow of the winter here, and the novelty hasn’t worn off yet. My concerns about the test proved unfounded: aside from a few problems with spelling, it felt pretty trivial. Good, now I can find something else to obsess over.

My grandparents were downtown, meanwhile, for a doctor’s visit, so we met up for lunch, at the Afghan restaurant in the East Village. I’m constantly astonished by how we manage to find parking within easy walking distance of our destination. In this sense, Manhattan cam be more convenient than Paris.

In honor of the impending weekend, I spent the rest of the day trying to finish my computer setup and a chunk of the next week’s readings. I had the bright idea to try and install Windows on an external USB drive, so that I’d have a portable Windows installation for my Mac (that would not take up much of my already too small 120GB internal hard drive). This, it turns out, is easier said than done, and since all of the web tutorials on the topic insisted it required disconnecting the internal hard drive, I simply gave up. For now VMWare Fusion will have to suffice. Incidentally, I’m a bit bummed that the Mac only has an unpowered microphone jack. This means my headset can’t be used for Skype.

In spite of the fact that I spent most of the day locked in a padded cell somewhere feverishly muttering Arabic vocab (okay, the library, not a padded cell), today was dominated by two statesman.

First came the subject of a talk by one of Columbia’s Ottomanists, Prof. Philliou: one Stefanaki Bey. Actually, as she explained, he had about as many names as layers of identity. Which is to say, he was born in present-day Bulgaria in the late 1700s (an Orthodox Christian), spent many of his early years in present-day Romania where served in the bureaucracy, served the Ottomans in various consular and diplomatic posts throughout the 1830s and 40s (having the privilege of both weekly audiences with the sultan, and the ear of the British ambassador), and spent his last few years as titular head of what was essentially a sort of justice ministry. Here’s a Bulgarian Christian who keeps private correspondence in Greek, is a close confidante of the sultan, and ends up serving the empire from the end of the Napoleonic Wars until after the Crimean War (indeed, he was one of the few Orthodox Christians to continue serving in the Ottoman bureaucracy during and after the Greek War of independence). Fun presentation, at which I saw all manner of folks from the previous semester.

The other statesman in question is of course the inestimable Barack Obama who seems to have inched a good bit closer to declaring a run for the presidency. He is, as we’ve seen so far, a sharp guy and a great speaker. And let’s face it: it’d be nice to have someone who isn’t a Protestant white guy running the show for a change (which is why it’s too bad Russ Feingold isn’t in the race). That said, Obama has so far been long on rhetoric, short on details and results. His comments about Iraq have become increasingly equivocal, while those on Iran are deeply troubling. He reminds me, in short, of no one so much as Bill Clinton: great with words, but we’ve no idea what lies behind them. Are we getting JFK (who was after all a moderate liberal cold-warrior who had few real achievements) or MLK?

Stefanaki Bey is a good argument for why studying history can be fun. What type of political lesson will Barack Obama be?

Arabic again this morning (well, 4 days a week, so that’s hardly news). I’m rather slow to pick up names, but I think I’ve got a few now in my class. Except for the fact that I was advised to attend the later section instead (fewer people in it). More time to sleep and do homework before class is always nice of course, but I guess I’ll have to start all over again with this name thingy.

For the afternoon, I accomplished surprisingly little, except resurrecting my notes from earlier Arabic classes. Reviewing something about the nominative, accusative and genitive case endings seemed appropriate.

My Middle Eastern history class in the evening put me in a rather rotten mood. It’s an odd bit of students, but it seemed like we had a nice mix: the clueless ones, who don’t really know what they’re talking about, the inarticulate ones who may or may not know, but can’t express themselves coherently, and the rest of us. Lordy, I hope it isn’t like this all semester. The prof. seemed okay, but I’m really not sure how a split lecture seminar class is going to work out. Better to just do one or the other, I’d say.

Meanwhile, all the news sites and punditry are awash with prognostications about the Bush ‘surge’ proposal for Iraq. What really irks me is this idea that everytime Bush opens his mouth and says something about Iraq, people have to pay attention and talk about it for the next few weeks. Let’s face it: Bush will do whatever he wants on Iraq, and Congress is too lily-livered to do a damned thing about it. Heck, they can’t even get a higher minimum wage passed. More to the point, Bush could send the Messiah and the 4 Horseman of the Apocalypse to Iraq, and it wouldn’t make a damned bit of difference, good or bad. WE DON’T CONTROL WHAT’S GOING ON IN IRAQ. At best, we’re making a modest contribution to that country’s misery. So please assorted newsfolk and pundits, save your breath for something that’s at least slightly consequential.

Good news all around. First, the baggage folks at Islip airport called around midnight last night. Sure enough, when I went down this morning, my bag had been left with the doorman. Second, right after my Arabic class, a package from Apple arrived. My new machine is here. Nail clippers and notebooks, where to begin?

Arabic class is indeed the main constant in my weekly schedule: four times a week for 75 minutes. The wrinkle is the placement test on Friday that I am less than thrilled to take. Somehow, my vocabulary seems to have a knack for shrinking when I’m not using it regularly.

After lunch came anthropology, a course whose content looks quite interesting, but whose general purpose I still can’t quite properly describe. The Anthropology of Intervention, yes. But somehow I always conceived of anthropology as oriented toward poorly understood cultures, not political/ideological moments. We shall see.

I did get a chance to play a bit with the new laptop. So far, refurbished is just as good as new, and the $400 off was certainly worth it. I am slightly concerned about some rather random “program blah unexpectedly quit” behavior. Hopefully there’s an easy explanation. I will say that the MBP feels like a real nice machine, but it also feels like it needs to be babied a bit. The case is just asking to get scratched. Since it’ll be acting as a desktop mostly, that’s not a huge problem. More difficult is that unlike the Compaq laptop, it doesn’t have a simple docking mechanism, which leaves me with 4 cables to unplug each time I want to move it. Finally, the screen quality isn’t that good. Mind you, it’ll do, but I’m glad I’m using an external monitor for most of my photo-related stuff.

I know it’s bad form to be irritable on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but I can’t help it. Every year, we get the same load of baloney about what a great hero MLK was and how his dream is finally becoming a reality and blah blah blah. But as any moron with half a brain would know by reading MLK’s speeches, post 1966, MLK was about more than simple racial harmony (which contrary to popular belief isn’t exactly thriving either). He had a lot to say about the poor, unjust wars, and so forth. He was hardly the safe namby pamby liberal we seem intent on turning him into.

That said, I spent the day predominantly on errands of no great importance. My Kanga (PowerBook G3 original) is now on eBay, as I came to the conclusion that less is more, and, well, I just ordered a new (refurbished actually) MacBook Pro. My rationalization is that I need a laptop and the Kanga wasn’t really going to work as a substitute for the non-functional Compaq. So there we are. I backed up files, took a few pictures, bought all manner of odds and ends in some way necessary to the apartment, and came up with a definite course list for the term. Worthy pursuits all, though I’m at a loss to say where the rest of the day disappeared.

It is still disturbingly warm for a New York winter. It is not, admittedly, in the 80s as it was a few days before Thanksgiving, but it’s still a good clip warmer than back in San Francisco. Meanwhile my checked luggage has conspicuously not arrived.

My thoughts were to return to my apartment ASAP, but as it was Sunday morning, breakfast couldn’t be avoided. I also allowed myself to be talked into (by my grandparents) a stop at Trader Joe’s to refill my refrigerator (currently in a slightly empty state), and to Home Depot to pick up lightbulbs (don’t ask). The good news: I now have 6 bulbs that will supposedly last 9 years. The bad news: I hate fluorescent lights.

Getting back downtown was surprisingly easy, and after dropping my stuff in the apartment, we went out to lunch at the usual Thai restaurant on W. 4th St. I returned, quite stuffed, to discover that my new roommate had arrived. Cheers!

The rest of the day was devoted to unpacking, rearranging, and feeling slightly glum about not having all manner of things (including books from the NYU library) that were of some importance. The airline, bless their heart, did not call. My bag is still AWOL.

I had the alarm all set for 6AM, so naturally I slept until almost 7. Oops. This was followed by some very frantic last minute packing and trying to squeeze things into my bags (most of them packed around 1AM last night). Then we were off in the general direction of the San Jose airport. Us being tight on time, this was the perfect moment for CalTrans to shut down the onramp from 92 to 101 south. Cue complaints and 5 minutes of trying to figure out how to get onto 92 West in Foster City.

Somehow though, I did arrived at the airport, got to the right terminal, and checked in my baggage. The interminable security line terminated after only 15 minutes, so I said goodbye to Dad, and flitted through, arriving at the gate just as boarding commenced. This being Southwest (first-come first-serve seating) I was afraid of getting stuck in a bad spot, but instead I had an aisle seat near the back. The 4 hour flight to Chicago was hard to measure as my only time-keeping device, my cell-phone, had to be kept off. The rather talkative couple next to me, from rural Wisconsin (though originally from near San Jose) kept me engaged when the iPod, the book or the Sudoku game on the back of the lunch packet failed.

My stopover in Chicago’s Midway airport was pretty short. I nearly managed to board a flight to Durham North Carolina by accident, which was slightly disturbing. The plane I was supposed to take actually ended up being a bit latish, so I had a nice long stand in the line, eating bits of the lunch I’d brought on the plane from home. On the less than two hour flight to Islip (Long Island), I almost fell asleep quite a number of times, and so arrived in New York around 7:30PM still a bit groggy.

Grandma and Grandpa were at the airport to pick me up, which was nice. My checked in baggage, however was not. Nor could the folks at the airport tell me where it was, or what had happened to it. Nonetheless, the fact that half-a-dozen other folks were having the same problem was encouraging.

Driving back to Westchester from Islip was lengthy, but pretty quick. The Cross Island Parkway, notorious for its miserable traffic, was moving nicely in the 75-80 mph range. Back at my grandparent’s place, we had dinner before, with no difficulty whatsoever, I went to sleep around midnight local time.