Wes Phillips

Yes! Find out that it's a lot harder than you think to make a vinyl record. Best part: Incorrectly centering the disc. (Most record presses do a pretty good job of this.)

So I don't mind if you think I'm a hopeless dweeb for loving last night's <I>West Wing</I>. After all, when I asked my flight attendant for a special service on Saturday, I said, "you'll probably lose all respect for me . . . ."

If you read <I>Stereophile</I>'s audio news regularly, you'll frequently see items such as <I>XYZ Audio Acquired by Megalomart, Inc.</I> Have you ever wondered about what that really means? I haven't, and I <I>write</I> those stories. Heck, now that I think about it, over the last eight years, <I>Stereophile</I> has even <I>lived</I> one of those stories.

Perhaps there is no subject more vigorously debated among audiophiles than the primacy of the loudspeaker. Many 'philes believe there is no more important element in a hi-fi system&mdash;after all, they reason, it doesn't matter how good the components ahead of the speakers are; if the transducers can't reproduce the signal, you can't hear it. On the other hand, the source adherents maintain, speakers can't reproduce information that hasn't been retrieved from the recording. Loudspeakers can limit the amount of information you hear, but they can't increase it. This is one of those irresolvable paradoxes similar to the question of which came first, the roast chicken or the omelet.

Here's something counter-intuitive, despite the fact that cooking shows seem to be ubiquitous on the higher numbered channels, Americans' cooking skill have atrophied to the point that recipes now avoid once common terms like "dredge," "fold," and "cream." God forbid you should use my old fudge-making nemesis, "Cook until the soft-ball stage."

At least, that's what In-Stat's survey shows. Seems low to me, but maybe a lot of folks are putting white earbuds on those $25 flash-drive players.

Huckleberry looks pensive&mdash;which is definitely not in his nature.