I read in the Science Times on the way into work an article by Guy Gugliotta about rowing on Greek and Roman ships:

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Consider the galley slave, clad in rags, chained to a hardwood bench and clinging to an oar as long as a three-story flagpole. A burly man with a whip walks back and forth shouting encouragement. You’ve seen the movie.

That galley slave would have known that the rowing stations in the middle of the ship were best, although he might not have known why. That took scholars to figure out. “Think of the oar as a lever,” Prof. Mark Schiefsky of the Harvard classics department said. “Think of the oarlock as a fulcrum, and think of the sea as the weight.”

The longer the lever arm on the rower’s side of the fulcrum, the easier to move the weight. In the middle of the ship, as the rowers knew, the distance from hands to oarlock was longest.

This explanation is given in Problem 4 of the classical Greek treatise “Mechanical Problems,” from the third century B.C., the first known text on the science of mechanics and the first to explain how a lever works. It preceded, by at least a generation, Archimedes’ “On the Equilibrium of Plane Figures,” which presented the first formal proof of the law of the lever.

Dr. Schiefsky teaches Greek and Latin as his day job and reads Thucydides and Sophocles in ancient Greek for fun. He also majored in astronomy as an undergraduate, and about nine years ago, feeling science-deprived, he joined a multinational research endeavor called the Archimedes Project, based at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.

I kept trying to visualize why rowers in the middle of the ship had a longer distance from the hands of the rower to the fulcrum. I still do not see any difference in the distance from the hands to the oar lock for the rowers in front, middle or end of the ship.

Here are some images from Engineering in the Ancient World by J. G. Landels:

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I think from these images its obvious where an oarsman sits in relation to the front of the ship does not change the length of the effort arm; what can effect a change in the distance of the effort arm is the distance from the side of the ship where the oarlock [the fulcrum] would be.

My only conclusion is that this article is an April Fool’s joke.

Anyway the article did get me to buy:

Engineering in the Ancient World by J. G. Landels
University of California Press
$21.95

I’ve been sick, a never ending cold, and work has been busy. However, go look at these interviews and images of Vietnam by Philip Jones Griffiths.
Why Iraq? Because the same intellectual masturbation that put us into Vietnam has put us into Iraq.

A friend who writes a blog about music posted this YouTube video of the Chicago group, Swing Gitan. I’ve never heard of them before, but the guitarist plays amazingly:

My Life in Music

TWIS, a radio/podcast, is discussing time: is there a point at which time can no longer be divided? They had been discussing attoseconds when someone called and asked this question. My answer especially after reading two of the papers cited on the blog BackReaction would have been yes at Planck scale. However, one of the host, Dr. Kirsten Sanford, said that some
physicists reject time as a dimension; which actually left me puzzled with two questions which may be a single question:

How do they ‘related’ to time, do they believe it is just a description of space, a ‘ruler’?

Is time considered a real dimension as the three spatial dimensions or is it a mathematical construct?

My right hand is a mess, a reaction to photographic chemicals, even though I wear gloves. Gloves are great but sooner or later I get the stuff on me. I need to be more careful.

I’m still nailing down the developing time for Tri-x at 200 ISO in Rodinal at the moment I believe its 11 minutes with 15 secs. agitation at the beginning, 10 secs every two minutes until 9 minutes then agitation also at 10 minutes. I am developing two more rolls today to confirming this. Of cause this is for me, my tank, my agitation, my exposures, and the negatives I like, which tend toward grain and contrast. When I get confidence at 200 I go on to 400 and 1600. Why skip 800? The idea is if I can’t get what I’m looking for at 400 I probably also need more than 800; however I’ll have to see the results for 1600 it might be much too grainy and too high contrast for much use, though I doubt it. Also, maybe 1200 may work well in D-76 or Microdol-X.

Gallagher’s Steak House, W. 52

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They have been my dry cleaners for 30 years.
They are closing down this month because rents in the neighborhood have gotten so high.

Trusting Dry Cleaners, Court Street, Feb 2008.

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Eleven minutes in Rodinal seems to work well with TRI-X at ISO 200.
My discipline is coming back. I’m thinking of buying a Hasselblad xpan with a 90mm price about $1500.
It should be fun. It will probably necessitate buying a descent tripod.

Shea’s, Dumbo 1980’s

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‘G’ painted on a Red hook Street.

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I have been shooting this weekend, not a lot - three rolls.

Most of one roll was shot on a tripod with ‘guess’ exposures. All I did was extent the exposure, no stop watch, no real procedures. At some point I want to sit down and read more about reciprocal failure and night exposures. I have to stop messing around like this; I should have did my research first, and then planned my shooting with some intelligence not just luck.

I am thinking of developing the Tripod roll in Microdol-X to hold down on the contrast.

I hate losing discipline. I have not finished Rashomon, which I like so should have finished within two days. I did not go to gym last week. I’m drifting too much. I need to attack photographic problems with thought and discipline.

I think I’ll be taking some days off during the week to shoot houses of South Brooklyn. I will shoot the side of the street that has no parking so I’ll be able to get clean images of the building with no cars.

For the first time someone asked why I took their picture. It was a woman. I said for myself; she asked what I would do with it. I said print it if I liked. Then she asked what I do with the print; and I said sell it if I liked it. The reason I took her picture was she was attractive and did not have a cellphone in her ear. So many people are walking with cell phones in their ears.

The F Train leaving Smith and 9th and approaching Carroll Street Station.

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So my Leica M3 is a happy camera again. Sherry Krauter [Golden Touch] did a great job; no light leak and camera is working very smooth. The 35mm lens is clear and made good images. If you need your Leica repaired I highly recommend her.

I decide to try something new exposing Tri-X at 200 and under-developing hoping to get my shadows nailed and holding down my highlights. I am using Rodinal and joy of joy I have two different times for development at 400 ISO: 12 minutes and 14 minutes both for 20 degrees. Its hard to figure out how much to cut back on time if you have two different time. So I went with 12 minutes with 30 seconds of gentle inversions for the first 30 seconds. then with three inversions every two minutes. On a fast first inspection the negatives look a bit dense so my I will probably cut back to 11 minutes on the next two rolls which I hope to shoot this weekend. [On a more detailed insoection I think I'll try 30 seconds less: 11min 30 sec.] I need to sit down with a loop and look close up at them and an overall feel. It was not the most controlled test; I was walking where there was fairly strong light, strong shadows and sometimes backlighting. I might do a real controlled test; grey card and shoot half the roll in light and half in shadow. I am back to liking Rodinal; especially the beautiful grain.

I do want to shoot more of Court Street between Kane and Degaw this time around four or five p.m. Tripod exposure if around .5 second. Ideally store lights will be on but with enough ambient light outside that they will not be harsh.

Court Street Between Kane and DeGraw.

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The bridge looking down Washington Street towards Plymouth Street, ca. 1980.
There were still warehouses and factories. In the print you can read Washington on the street sign.

When this shot was taken I did not realize my family had been living in this neighborhood since about 1845. As far as I can tell the last of my family moved out about 1925.

Around 1979 I started running across the bridge every night at around 3:30 a.m. I worked nights at the N.Y. Times. I was a copyboy, which was basically an internal messenger in the newsroom. I worked with people like: Kathy Ryan, Michael Spector, Al Siegel, Frank Camp, Susan Faludi, Sam Solovitz and Perry Lang.

As for Sam he was a dear friend and my mentor, rabbi in New York speak, read his OBIT.