LATEST ADDITIONS

Mohsin Hamid, author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, was asked on a book tour, "So tell me, sir. Why do they hate us?" Having spent half his life in America, the Pakistani writer had to think about who "us" and "they" were. This fine essay is the result of that thinking.

Back in the bad old pioneer days of high fidelity, the 1960s and early 1970s, amplifier manufacturers embarked on a specifications war, claiming ever lower percentages of total harmonic distortion. But, as J. Gordon Holt presciently pointed out in the 1960s, without reference to the spectrum of the distortion harmonics, the actual percentage was not in itself a reliable indicator of an amplifier's sound quality. And as those early low-THD models had distortion spectra that were heavily biased toward the sonically objectionable fifth, seventh, and ninth harmonics, and suffered from other related ills, they tended to sound quite nasty.

That harmonious accord between SoundExchange and the Digital Media Association (DiMA) on webcasting that we reported last week? Apparently not so harmonious—and possibly not even an accord.

"I have a really special loudspeaker I want you to hear," said Immedia's Allen Perkins at Home Entertainment 2006.