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In this issue
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review

A developing story

By Jim Mullen


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | I was watching the news with a teenager the evening Kodak announced that it was going to stop making Kodachrome film for cameras. He said, "What's film for cameras?" Obviously, Kodak should have stopped making the stuff five or ten years ago. Did they think that people who take pictures with their smart phones are suddenly going to go back to pictures they can't e-mail, that take 24 hours to develop and that cost a small fortune? Photos they can't crop, resize, enhance, Photoshop, or remove redeye from?


Wouldn't a bigger story be, what kind of throwback is still using film? Are they the same people who still use fountain pens, wear bowties and buy long-playing records? Do they think they are holding back the barbarians from the gates, or are they simply late adapters? Who couldn't help but notice over the past few years that gigantic film-return sections of the local big-box stores were half empty? Who hasn't noticed that if you want to show someone a photograph now, you e-mail it or you post it on Flickr?


News anchors, that's who. They seemed totally shocked. If Kodachrome can go, what's going to bite the dust next, they seemed to be thinking. Selectric typewriters? Pay phones? Antimacassars? VHS tapes? Pong? Jukeboxes? Super 8 movies? Slide carousels? Spats? Why, if Kodachrome can go, is anything safe?


You'll still be able to buy other brands of film for your camera if you want to keep alive the august tradition of showing all your new, expensive photos to friends for a day or two before carefully filing them and the negatives ("Grandad, what's a negative?") inside a shoebox that will sit at the bottom of the closet until they pass out of living memory.


Every five or ten years they'll be pulled out and the kids will ask, "Is that Uncle Bob or Uncle Barry when they were kids?" "Where was that taken?" "Who's the lady on the horse?" "Did people really dress like that?" "What happened to all your hair?"


Finally, when you're no longer around to explain who the people in the pictures are, the whole collection will be dumped into the trash faster than a losing lottery ticket on a Sunday morning. One or two pictures will survive and, for years, uncles and aunts and cousins will try to puzzle out who is in the photo and where it was taken. It's difficult because everyone's great-great-grandparents and small children all look pretty much alike.


There's a Web ad that runs a dozen black-and-white yearbook photographs in an attempt to get people to reconnect with their old high school classmates. Each time I see it, I could swear they come from my high school class. The kids look so familiar. But it's the haircuts and the clothes that trick me. I don't think it would make a big difference if the photographer had used Kodachrome or not.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

Comment by clicking here.

Jim Mullen is the author of "It Takes a Village Idiot: Complicating the Simple Life" and "Baby's First Tattoo."


Previously:


Thinking outside the lunch box
What's good for the goose is good for the scanner
Newspapers will survive, but network TV?
A really big show of generation gaps
When pigs flu
The reports of our decline have been greatly exaggerated
Mergers and admonitions
Invest in gold: little, yellow, different
Stuck in Folsom Penthouse
Collecting karma
Setting loose the creative ‘juice’
It's all in the numbers
You're damaging your brain with practical skills
The real rat pack
The unspeakable luxury of the Park-O-Matic
Gross-ery shopping



© 2009, NEA

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