LATEST ADDITIONS

All right, class. Your assignment is to write a paper persuading people to do something good for themselves that they really don't want to do.

<B>WAGNER: <I>Parsifal</I></B><BR>
Siegfried Jerusalem, Parsifal; Matthias H&#246;lle, Gurnemanz; Waltraud Meier, Kundry; Jos&#233; van Dam, Amfortas; G&#252;nter von Kannen, Klingsor; John Tomlinson, Titurel; others; Berlin Philharmonic, Daniel Barenboim<BR>
Teldec 9031-74448-2 (4 CDs only). Helmut M&#252;hle, prod.; Jean Chatauret, eng. DDD. TT: 4:16:35

During the late 1970s and early '80s, I worked my way through college by selling hi-fi, or more precisely, mid-fi. During those years, I heard and sold several hundred different loudspeakers costing under $1000/pair. Despite the fact that I experienced them under less than ideal conditions, I was nevertheless able to get a feel for their relative performance. When switching between speakers, the differences between them were drastically juxtaposed. No two loudspeakers sounded even remotely similar tonally, indicating that they all had severe colorations.

Christian wrote:

In January 2008, Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) Senior Intellectual Property attorney, Fred von Lohmann filed an <A HREF="http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/01/eff-files-brief-atlantic-v-howell-… brief</I></A> in <I>Atlantic v. Howell</I>, a case that hinged on the Recording Industry of America Association's (RIAA) contention that offering files on a P2P sharing network was in and of itself evidence of copyright violations, whether or not it could prove the files were ever downloaded by others.

<I>How could he?</I>, they seem to say. In obituary after obituary, one reads how tenor Guiseppe di Stefano squandered his voice. Too much smoking, too much drinking, too much shouting at late-night parties, they declare. It's almost as though opera lovers feel betrayed, unable to forgive an artist who abused such glorious gifts so early in his career.

<i>From left to right: <a href="http://www.selfdivider.com/base/index.php">Selfdivider</a&gt;, AlexO, <a href="http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/jules/jules.html">Jules Coleman</a>, JackCrank, and <a href="http://www.jeffwong.com/">Jeff Wong</a>. Friday, February 29, 2008, at In Living Stereo.</i>

These speakers inadvertently managed to put me in a good mood even before I listened to them, because of a dumb little gaffe committed by Thiel's packing department. Each speaker came with an Owner's Information sheet, which is nice. Each sheet included Unpacking (and Repacking) Instructions, which is nicer. But each sheet came packed <I>inside</I> the carton, underneath the speaker, where it was not accessible until after the speaker was dumped out of the box, which is pretty silly!

Yesterday's episode of Sunday Morning on CBS included a segment with Herbie Hancock, whose <i><a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/fredkaplan/101507jazz/">River: The Joni Letters</a></i> won two big prizes at the 50th annual <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/musicroom/robertbaird/021108/">Grammy Awards</a>: Album of the Year and Best Contemporary Jazz Album.

A study published in the open source science journal <I>PLoS One</I> investigates the neural processes of jazz improvisation. Johns Hopkins neuroscientists put piano players in a fMRI scanner with a special keyboard and asked them to perform different five-finger exercises: play a scale, play a melody, and improvise on either the scale or the melody.